Williams led me to a small, plain, antiseptic room of the sort you might go to for a blood test. A body, covered by a sheet, lay on a trolley.

‘Show me,’ I said.

An attendant in white overalls was standing nearby and Williams gave him a nod. He went to the trolley and pulled back the plastic sheet.

It was Lily and it wasn’t Lily. The same features, hair, throat, lines and the asymmetries that make up a face. But no living face is that still, showing that the life current has been turned off. I’d seen corpses embalmed and made ready for the ground or the flames, and she didn’t have that frozen, painted look. In a strange way that difference helped to give me some distance at a moment when I needed it. I nodded at Williams and stepped back.

We retraced our steps until we were outside the building again. I hadn’t noticed the cold when I left my house in a shirt and jeans but I did now. I shivered as the wind hit me. Williams turned his back to the wind and lit a cigarette. He held out the packet to me and I was tempted but refused.

He took a few deep draws, exhaled and the wind carried the smoke away. ‘We have to talk,’ he said. ‘This is your turf, Hardy. Where?’

I told him to follow me and I drove to the coffee place in Glebe Point Road next to where the Valhalla Cinema used to be. A lot of places in Glebe used to be where they aren’t anymore. Too many. I found a parking spot in Hereford Street, went inside and ordered a long black. Williams must have parked well away because he took ten minutes to arrive and looked pissed off. Maybe because I hadn’t ordered him a coffee. The place was thinly populated and I picked a corner furthest from the other patrons. Williams ordered at the counter and sat down. We didn’t speak until the coffees arrived, mine only thirty seconds before his. Service can be slow but cops have a way of speeding it up and a savvy Glebe coffee bar worker can usually spot a cop.