The sound of fountains came in stereo. A deep splash from the courtyard below and a lighter trickle from the next room, where open arches cut in a wall over-looking the courtyard had marble balustrades stretched between matching pillars. It was that kind of house. Old, historic, near-derelict in places. ‘Ambient temp eighty-one Fahrenheit, humidity sixty-two per cent . . .’ The American spoke clearly, reading the data from the face of his watch, then glanced through a smashed window to what little he could see of the sky outside. ‘Passing cloud, no direct sunlight.’ Dropping clumsily onto one knee, Felix Abrinsky touched the marble floor with nicotine-stained fingers, confirming to himself that this statement was correct. The tiles werewarm but not hot. No latent heat had been stored up from that morning’s sunshine to radiate back into the afternoon air. Bizarrely, it took Felix less effort to stand than it had done to kneel, though he needed to pause to catch his breath all the same. And the silver-ringed hand that came up to wipe sweat from his forehead only succeeded in smearing grease across his scalp and down his thinning ponytail. Police regulations demanded he wear a face mask, surgical gloves and – in his case – a sweatband to stop himself from accidentally polluting biological evidence. But Felix was Chief of Detectives and so far as he was concerned that meant he could approach the crime scene how he liked, which was loose, casual and lateral. Not to mention semi-drunk. All the virtues that first got him thrown out of the police in Los Angeles.