Life’s a game.

She studied the timetable, working out a route that would get her to Eastbourne, avoiding Brighton Station, and then to Gatwick Airport, which was now part of the new plan crystallizing in her head.

Her phone suddenly beeped. She pulled it out, hoping desperately it was a message from Ricky, but it wasn’t. It said:

Silence is golden? X

She suddenly realized she hadn’t responded to his last text. She thought for some moments, then replied:

Problemo. x

A few minutes later, as she was stepping on to the train, her phone beeped again, with a reply.

Love, like a river, will cut a new path

whenever it meets an obstacle.

She settled in her seat, too shaken up to think of a quote back. Instead she replied with a single x.

Then she stared bleakly out of the window at the chalk escarpment rising on either side of her as the train pulled out of the station. She was engulfed in icy, dark fear.

The interior of the Marriott Financial Center hotel had a cool, slightly Zen aura, Roy Grace thought, as he left the checkout desk and carried his bag across the foyer. And it all felt very fresh. Table lamps that looked like inverted opaque Martini glasses. Slim white vases on black tables, from which sprouted tall stems so elegant, so perfect, they seemed to have been designed rather than to have grown.

He found it hard to believe that this place, right on the edge of Ground Zero, had been badly damaged in 9/11. It felt important, solid, indestructible, as if it had always been here and always would be.

He walked past a cluster of businessmen in dark suits and ties, talking earnestly. Pat Lynch was waiting for him, standing on a red rug in the middle of the cream marble floor. He was dressed casually, in a sleeveless green flak jacket, over a black T-shirt, blue jeans and stout black shoes. Roy could see the bulge where his gun was.

Pat raised his hands. ‘All done and dusted? Dennis is parked up outside. We’re all set.’

Grace followed him into the revolving door. The world changed abruptly as he stepped out the other side into the damp, October morning. Traffic several lines deep trundled past. A cement mixer chuntered in front of him. A doorman, his elegance marred by a plastic shower cap over his peaked uniform cap, held open the door of a yellow cab for three Japanese businessmen.

As they walked a short distance along the pavement to the Crown Victoria, Dennis pointed up at a wide expanse of sky. It was bounded by a thin scattering of skyscrapers on one side and the much denser mass of downtown New York on the other. Steam or smoke poured from a low-rise green building that was shaped like a vent. Almost directly in front of them was what looked like a makeshift bridge across the street.

‘See that space, buddy?’ Pat said, pointing at the sky.

Grace nodded.

‘That’s where our towers were.’ He shot a glance at his watch. ‘Half an hour earlier than this, on the morning of 9/11, you’d have been looking at the World Trade Center. You wouldn’t have sky, you’d have seen those beautiful buildings.’

Then he walked Roy past the car to a street corner and pointed to the blackened hulk of a high-rise to his right, from which hung massive strips of some dark material covering the outside like giant black vertical Venetian blinds.

‘I told you about the Deutsche Bank Building, right, where they recently found more body parts? That’s it. We just lost two firemen there, back in the summer – back in August. And you know the thing about those two men? They were both at Ground Zero on 9/11. They went into the World Trade Center. They survived that. Then they died here six years later.’

‘Very sad,’ Roy said. ‘And ironic.’

‘Yeah, ironic. Makes you wonder sometimes if this whole place is jinxed – you know, cursed.’

They climbed into the Crown Victoria. A brown UPS truck was trying to reverse into a tight space in front of them. Dennis, behind the wheel, raised a cheery hand to Roy.

‘Hey! How’s it goin’?’ Then he looked back at the UPS truck, which had just mounted the kerb for the second time, perilously close to a letter box, and was now inching forward again. ‘Hey, come on, lady, it’s a van you’re driving, not a fucking elephant!’

It began reversing again. Even closer to the letter box.

‘Shit, lady!’ Dennis said. ‘Mind that post box! Damage that and it’s a federal fucking offence!’

‘So, more stamp dealers?’ Pat said, trying to focus on the task ahead.

‘I have another six on my list.’

‘You know, if we don’t get lucky today, we can broaden the search for you,’ Pat said. ‘Dennis and I, we can take care of it.’

‘I appreciate that.’

‘It’s no big deal.’

Dennis drove them past Ground Zero. Grace stared at the steel fences, the concrete barriers, the mobile storage and office units, the cranes rising like giraffe necks, the banks of floodlights on tall poles. The area was vast. Almost beyond-comprehension vast. He kept thinking of the two men’s description of it as the Belly of the Beast. But it was a strangely quiet beast now. There wasn’t the usual din that came from most construction sites. Despite all the work that was going on, it felt almost reverentially quiet.

‘You know, I’ve been thinking about this woman in Australia, right? In the river,’ Pat said, turning again to look at Roy.

‘You have a theory?’

‘Sure. She was hot, OK, so she dove into this river, didn’t realize there was a car under the surface, with its trunk popped open. She dove straight into the trunk and snapped her neck. The impact caused the car to rise and fall a little. The water pressure and the current swung the lid shut. Boom!’

‘It’s a no-brainer!’ Dennis grinned.

‘Yeah, that’s what it is,’ Pat said. ‘A no-brainer.’

‘You want us to solve your problem cases for us, just send us the files,’ Dennis said.

Grace tried to ignore their banter and to concentrate on thinking through the latest information he had received from Glenn Branson. They had spoken a few minutes before he left the hotel. Glenn told him that Hawkes had paid two thousand, three hundred and fifty pounds to Katherine Jennings for a few stamps, after Hegarty had refused to play ball. Then, after she left the dealer, the surveillance team had lost her.

Had she rumbled the surveillance unit? Grace wondered. Unlikely, as they were pretty good. Although it was always possible. Then another thought crossed his mind. Chad Skeggs’s rental car parked outside her flat. She had not been back to her flat while the car was there. Was it Chad Skeggs she was running from?

The stamp dealer had told Glenn that Katherine Jennings seemed scared and very nervous. Tomorrow morning, when it was daytime again in Melbourne, they would find out whether anyone called Anne Jennings had died recently there and, if she had, whether she had been wealthy enough to have owned three million plus pounds’ worth of stamps and forgotten about them.

It was starting to seem as if Kevin Spinella’s instinct about this woman had been right.

Suddenly, Dennis braked hard. Roy peered out of the window, wondering where they were. An Oriental-looking man walked by dressed in white chef’s overalls, with a baseball cap perched the wrong way round on his head. It was a narrow street with brown-stones on both sides and a row of garishly coloured awnings over shop fronts. Just beyond them was another awning, this one in elegant black with white lettering. It read:

ABE MILLER ASSOCIATES. STAMPS AND COINS.

Dennis stopped the car in front of a no-parking sign right outside, and shoved a large cardboard sign, bearing the crudely stencilled word POLICE, under the windscreen. Then the three of them went into the premises.