“My father was fifty-nine when he remarried. Ailsa was in her mid-thirties I suppose. As I say, they seemed happy.” He jerked a thumb at the house. “He bought this to live in after he was married and he bought another place down there for Susan and me.” He pointed down into the expensive air over the balcony. “He wanted us all to be close but independent.”

It sounded about as independent to me as the pubs and breweries but Gutteridge didn’t need telling. He finished his drink in a gulp and set the glass down. A real drinker, even if he paced himself, likes to have them end to end, gets nervous in the gaps. I knew the signs from personal experience and it was comforting to observe that Gutteridge wasn’t a drunk. He ignored the glass and went on with his story without the support of liquor, another sign. He crossed his skinny ankles which were bare and black haired above long, narrow feet in leather sandals.

“Mark made a lot of money. He was a millionaire a few times over. Death duties took a lot of it, but there was still plenty left over for Susan and me. And Ailsa. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, we seem to be getting away from the matter at hand.”

“I don’t agree.” I said. My drink was finished now and the tobacco between my fingers wasn’t burning. I felt fidgety and ill at ease. Gutteridge’s personality had had a strange effect on me, his words were hard and economical. He’d be a terror in the boardroom when he was trying to get his way. He made me feel flabby and self-indulgent, this in spite of what I’d seen of his failings and the fact that it was he who had the million dollars. Or more. I felt about for the words.

“Things are connected,” I said. “It sounds obvious but sometimes the connections are extraordinary. I don’t mean to sound Freudian, but I’ve known men who’ve beaten the life out of other people because of what happened to them when they were ten years old. There’s a background, a connection to something else always. This trouble of your sister’s, you can’t expect to cut it out of your life, clean and simple. I’ll have to look around, look back…”