The women’s client that day – David Goldrab – lived out past the racecourse and along the main route out of Bath on a side road off the area called Hanging Hill, where the great Lansdown battle between the royalists and the parliamentarians had been fought nearly four hundred years ago. It was a funny place, noticeable chiefly for the landmark known locally as the Caterpillar, a line of trees on the crest of the facing hill that could be seen for miles around. But Hanging Hill was also, to Sally’s mind, vaguely sinister. As if it had been infected by its history, an air of corruption seemed to hang over everything. Local rumour had it that the Brinks Mat gold had been melted down in foundry flasks somewhere around here by a Bristol gold dealer, and there was something Sally found uncomfortable about both David and his home, Lightpil House. The grounds, with their shrubberies, gravelled walks, tree plantations, ponds and outlier groves, had all been established in the last decade by landscapers with diggers and earth-movers, and looked totally out of place. The house, too, was modern and seemed to overwhelm its surroundings. Built with the buttery stone that all the buildings in Bath were made of, in a style meant to mimic a Palladian villa, it had a huge two-storey-high portico, an orangery with a row of glass arches, and was guarded at the entrance by electronic gates topped with gilt pineapples.

Marysieńka drove the Honda down the track that led around the perimeter to a small parking area at the bottom of the property. From here they carried their cleaning kit up the long path that meandered past the swimming-pool and through immaculately tended hedges of rhododendron and ceanothus. The door was open, the house silent, just the television on in the kitchen. This wasn’t unusual – they quite often didn’t see David. The agency had made clear that he didn’t want to be bothered or spoken to. From time to time he’d wander through the kitchen in a towelling robe and FitFlops, mobile tucked under his chin, a remote control in his hand, wincing and shaking his head disappointedly when the Sky box refused to co-operate, but often he’d be locked in his office in the west wing, or over at the livery stables where he kept his show horse, Bruiser.