Stan had pointed out his son in several of the photographs housed in the folders which he had been working on when Minogue arrived. The son at sports events, the son at garden parties (did people still have them?), the son rigged out in tennis gear and shaking hands with a tennis star. No detail of genealogy escaped Stan Davis and he had a story to go with every face in the albums. Where was Stan’s son now? Oh, he had done very well in the insurance, and he had up and gone to London. Stan’s wife had died two years ago. Stan didn’t want to take up the son’s offer of his own flat in London yet, he said, but he didn’t look at Minogue as he said it. He wanted to see the Museum off the ground before he left. That’d be his legacy if he did leave, Stan had said. Minogue remembered Stan Davis’s wan face, a man in his seventies but with the clear and grave countenance of a child looking at him as if to say: Well, that’s my story and what do you think?

Minogue continued glossing over Hoey’s notes. Hoey lit a cigarette. The coffee had killed Minogue’s incipient appetite, leaving him with a smouldering space in his belly. Fine had anticipated the questions and the details which the detectives sought. He had left the room twice during the interview, both times to answer the phone. He took the first call before the lumbering Johnny Cohen had made it down the stairs at a run. Cohen had pounced on the second ring with the second call.

“He must have had a row with Paul somewhere along the line,” Hoey murmured. “And they sort of kept their distance, if you follow me.”

“Um. I remember the way he mentioned about Paul dropping out of the uni after two years, all right,” Minogue agreed.