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could I really judge?) I sent Tallulah a message asking her to verify that she’d been through her brother’s list of contacts. Her answer was unambiguous:
    I know everyone on there.
    Hmm…I sent Tallulah another question:
    Can you think of anyone who might have a grudge against Gavin? Or a score to settle?
    A message came back:
    No. Everyone likes Gavin. No enemies that I know of. Although obviously there’s one now…
    Another quickly followed:
    BTW the police are still looking into these possibilities. But so far, nothing. Why am I not surprised? Zzzzzzzz…
    I had to laugh. Tallulah certainly didn’t rate the police highly for their efforts. I wrote back, asking her to notify me of any updates. Then, pulling my tablet out, I turned to my next line of inquiry and started scrolling through the images from Gavin’s flash drive that I’d downloaded earlier. But again, apart from the last shot—the one of the old photo—nothing struck me as especially strange. After a few minutes I put my tablet away and pulled out my notebook.
    Inside was a paper copy of the old photo from Gavin’s flash drive, which I’d quickly printed at home before leaving for the casting. As the train came to an unexpected halt, I carefully examined the image of the smiling boys under the stark fluorescent lighting of the train car. If I was hoping to find the fragment of an address written on the brown envelope in the background, I was disappointed. It was clean. And whatever marks I could see on the picture itself appeared to be scratches on the surface of the original.
    The more I thought about it, the more I questioned why Gavin even had this image on the stick. I mean, the photo itself seemed banal enough: two young boys having fun on a sunny day. I could only guess that it was included because one of the boys was Johnny Vane, but if so, why this particular old picture—especially when all of the other photos were of Johnny now, today?
    I wondered whether Gavin’s job brief from Harper’s Bazaar magazine had included getting images from Johnny’s childhood. I quickly opened his phone again and searched in his agenda. Nothing. Then I searched his emails, and while I found several relating to the booking, I didn’t find anything that gave specific details. I quickly sent Tallulah a message asking about it. Her answer came back immediately:
    Yes, looked into that, but found nothing on G’s laptop and nothing printed—though he must have had an email with the details. I tried his agent but he wouldn’t release any details. That’s standard procedure for any kind of agency BTW.
    Grrr!
    I scribbled a reminder to myself on my TBLI (To Be Looked Into) list.
    I picked up the photo again and noted another interesting thing about it: in the background, across the river in the right-hand corner of the picture, I could just make out the edge of a tall, turreted building that felt somehow familiar, like it was somewhere in the city. If it was, that meant the boys had been snapped at some point along the Thames. I needed to find out where that photo had been taken. Maybe it was near where Gavin had been attacked. And if so, was that a coincidence—or not?
    While those thoughts ran through my mind, I grabbed my tablet again and started researching Johnny Vane online. (For once the Tube’s Wi-Fi signal was strong.) If I assumed that the photos of Johnny were a factor in Gavin’s attack, then perhaps the closer I was able to get to Johnny, the closer I would also get to Gavin’s attacker. It was a lead worth following, I thought.
    I knew who Johnny Vane was, of course, but I had no idea about his background. After a few minutes of delving into his personal history though, I was more convinced than ever that I should follow my gut concerning the old photo.
    According to various online sources I checked out, Johnny had a twin brother—so he was probably one of the