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don’t know. The girls will love it,’ said Slim.
    â€˜Shut it,’ said AJ.
    By Sunday evening it had been decided that AJ would stay at Leon’s, at least until his mum came home. He’d pay Leon some rent – a bit more dosh would come in handy. AJ popped round to Elsie’s to ask if he could use her washing machine.
    â€˜That looks bad, love,’ she said. ‘Hold on a mo.’ She went to her bathroom and came back with a tube of arnica. ‘When Debbie visited me from Australia, she brought this. Said it was good for everything.’
    AJ didn’t like to say that it was so long since her daughter had visited that it might not work any more. Nevertheless, he allowed Elsie to put the cream on his face and the touch of her paper-soft skin made him feel better.
    â€˜What happened with the police?’ he asked.
    â€˜I think they cautioned Frank. Jan said it was a “misunderstanding”. There you go love, nothing changes.’
    Monday came too soon, too bright. On his way to work, AJ felt the key in his pocket. The sharp, cold iron brought back the overheard conversation and the stranger’s words.
I will see you at Jobey’s Door.
    He shuddered at the thought. He knew what he was going to do. Give the key to Morton. And he wasn’t going to ask about the Jobey file. Life was already complicated enough.

Chapter Seven
    When AJ was small he had seen letter boxes as metal mouths waiting to trap him, keyholes were eyes watching him. Still to that day, he felt a front door told you more about the inside of a house than anyone needed to know. Finding Baldwin Groat’s door wide open that morning, he thought the chambers felt naked, vulnerable.
    Morton was already attached to his phone.
    â€˜I’m trying to find out where Mr Baldwin is. No, he’s not in chambers. If he was I wouldn’t be calling. Neither is he at the Old Bailey.’ He put down the phone. ‘Mr Jobey,’ he said. He paused and took in AJ’s black eye before continuing. ‘Stephen is off sick – you will be assisting Louise Finch.’
    Louise Finch was a barrister, a tall elegant woman, and AJ, with a young connoisseur’s eye for the ladies, would have described her as fit. Weighed down by briefs, wig and gown, they piled into a taxi and set off to the Old Bailey.
    Ms Finch looked intently at her iPad while AJ looked out of the window and thought of the thousands and thousands of doors out there – maybe millions – each one with its own lock; of all the keys that guaranteed entry into homes, businesses, shops – each with an address and every address known to the key’s owner. Here he was with an ancient piece of ironmongery, with a named door to call its own, that left an orange mark on his hand. The only thing he didn’t have was the address. All weekend he had thought about the key. The more he thought, the more the key itched at him, for it gradually began to occur to AJ that it might unlock a door at the place shown on the map that he’d photographed in the Museum. He took out his mobile and studied the image, blew up the spot marked X as big as it would go. Curiosity nibbled the edge of his resolve to be rid of the thing.
    It was a truth, he knew, that a mystery was almost irresistible. Take Bluebeard’s wives, he thought. Bluebeard gave them the keys to the castle to look after while he was gone, told them they could open any room but one – and look what they did. They just couldn’t resist it. He put his hand in his pocket, almost expecting to feel the key sticky with blood. A vision developed before him of this unknown Ingleby waiting in the shadows, a man with a blue beard.
    â€˜This is a forgery case,’ said Ms Finch.
    AJ jumped.
    â€˜I didn’t mean to interrupt your daydreaming, Aiden, but I thought you might be interested in a little background to the case.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said AJ. ‘I