“Oh, yes?”

“Brooklands.”

“Right.” Sinclair had gone to the big steel sink in the corner and with the sleeves of his white coat pushed back was scrubbing his hands and his forearms, on which whorls of wiry black hair thickly flourished.

“Richard Jewell’s place, you know?”

Sinclair turned off the tap. He was listening now. “Who was dead out there?” he asked.

Quirke pretended to be busy, scribbling in a file on his desk. He looked up. “Eh?”

Sinclair had gone to the window and was peering at the body on the slab. “At Brooklands-who was dead?”

“Diamond Dick himself, as it happens.”

Sinclair did not respond except to go very still. “Richard Jewell is dead?” he said quietly.

“That’s him in there. Shotgun blast.”

Very slowly, like a man moving in his sleep, Sinclair reached under his white coat and brought out a packet of Gold Flake and a Zippo lighter. He was still staring at the corpse resting at the center of that deep box of harsh white fluorescent light beyond the window. He lit the cigarette and blew a ghostly trumpet of smoke that flattened itself against the plate-glass pane and slowly dispersed. “You all right?” Quirke asked, peering at him. He could not see Sinclair’s face except as a faint reflection in the window where he was standing. His sudden stillness and slowness were at once more and less of a response than Quirke had anticipated. He went and stood beside the young man. Now both of them were gazing at what was left of Richard Jewell. At last Sinclair stirred, and cleared his throat.

“I know his sister,” he said.

It was Quirke’s turn to stare. “Jewell’s sister? What’s her name, Dannie?”

“Dannie, yes.” Still Sinclair had not looked at him. “Dannie Jewell. I know her.”

“I’m sorry,” Quirke said. He had lit a cigarette of his own. “I would have…” What would he have done? “Do you know her well?” He tried to put no special emphasis on that word well, but for all his effort it still came out sounding coy and insinuating.