The day Hardy had met Sal, over a decade ago, he’d been with Abe Glitsky. Glitsky was half black and half Jewish and every inch of him scary looking – a hatchet face and a glowing scar through his lips, top to bottom. Sal had seen him, raised his voice. ‘Hey, Abe, there’s this black guy and this Jew sitting on the top of this building and they both fall off at the same time. Which one hits the ground first?’

‘I don’t know, Sal,’ Glitsky answered, ‘which one?’

‘Who cares?’

Now Sal was dead and the newspapers had been rife with conjecture: early evidence indicated that someone had been in the room with him when he’d died. A chair knocked over in the kitchen. Angry sounds. Other evidence of struggle.

The police were calling the death suspicious. Maybe someone had helped Sal die – put him on an early flight.

‘I didn’t know Sal was your father,’ Hardy said. ‘Not until just now.’

‘Yeah, well. I didn’t exactly brag about him.’ Graham took a breath and looked beyond Hardy, out the window. ‘The funeral’s tomorrow.’

When no more words came, Hardy prompted him. ‘Are you in trouble?’

‘No!’ A little too quickly, too loud. Graham toned it down some. ‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t know why I would be.’

Hardy waited some more.

‘I mean, there’s a lot happening all at once. The estate – although the word estate is a joke. Dad asked me to be his executor although we never got around to drawing up the will, so where does that leave it? Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘You weren’t close, you and your dad?’

Graham took a beat before he answered. ‘Not very.’

Hardy thought the eye contact was a little overdone, but he let it go. He’d see where this all was leading. ‘So you need help with the estate? What kind of help?’