Chapter 8: Dinner at the Thompsons'

I said, "I'm just leaving."

Maria stepped to one side of the doorway and let me through, and I walked past her with my heart going like a drum.

She didn't follow me down the corridor.

She didn't say anything else at all.

I got out to the street and called Martin from the corner and told him what I'd found.

He was quiet for a long time.

"Send me the photographs," he said. "Tonight. And don't go back into that building for a week."

"I need the log too."

"You need to be alive in a month," Martin said. "Send me the photographs."

I sent them.

Then I sat in the flat in Bermondsey and waited and nothing happened for four days.

On the fifth day my phone buzzed with a number I didn't know.

It was James.

"Lucas? It's James. From the bar."

"I remember."

"Listen, this is a bit mad. My parents are doing dinner on Sunday and I'm meant to bring someone and everyone else I know is working."

"Your parents."

"It's just a house. It's boring. My mother will ask you about your research and my father will talk about the hospital all night."

I stood in the kitchen with the phone against my ear.

"Alright," I said.

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Great. I'll send you the address. Don't dress up, he hates that."

The house was in Blackheath, on a road with plane trees and low walls.

It was four storeys and the front door was painted dark green and there was a car on the drive worth more than my old flat.

James met me at the door in a jumper and jeans.

"You came."

"You invited me."

"I know. I'm just surprised."

He took my coat and hung it up and walked me through into a drawing room with two sofas and a piano nobody played.

Thompson was standing at the window with a glass of wine.

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