‘Around three, three-thirty. I punched in. They’ll have a record of it.’

‘And what time did they find your dad?’

‘Around ten at night.’ Graham didn’t seem to have a problem with the timing, although to Hardy it invited some questions. If his memory served him, and it always did, Sal had apparently died between one and four o’clock in the afternoon. This was the issue Graham was skirting, which perhaps the police were considering if they were thinking about Graham after all. He would have had plenty of time between one o’clock and when he checked into work near three.

But the young man was going on. ‘Judge Giotti, you know. Judge Giotti found him.’

‘I read. What was he doing there?’

Graham shrugged. ‘I just know what everybody knows – he’d finished having dinner downtown. He had a fish order in and Sal didn’t show, so he thought he’d check the apartment, see if he was okay.’

‘And why would the judge do that?’

The answer was unforced, Graham recounting old family history. ‘They were friends. Used to be, anyway, in high school, then college. They played ball together.’

‘Your father went to college?’

Graham nodded. ‘It’s weird, isn’t it? Salmon Sal the college grad. Classic underachiever, that was Sal. Runs in the family.’ He forced a smile, making a joke, but kept his hands clamped tightly together, leaning forward casually, elbows resting on his knees. His knuckles were white.

‘So. Giotti?’ Hardy asked. Graham cast his eyes to the floor. ‘You weren’t his clerk, were you?’

The head came back up. Graham said no. He’d clerked for Harold Draper, another federal judge with the Ninth Circuit.

‘I guess what I’m asking,’ Hardy continued, ‘is whether you and Giotti – him being your dad’s old pal and all – developed any kind of relationship while you were clerking.’

Graham took a moment, then shook his head. ‘No. Giotti came by once after I got hired to say congratulations. But these judges don’t have a life. I didn’t even see him in the halls.’