‘I was so what? You can say anything, Regan. I’m just happy to be making eye contact here.’ With a woman, a human being who once knew me as good, even honourable.

‘You were so real,’ she managed, at last.

‘What do you mean, “real”?’

‘At work, when you heard he’d been stabbed. When the police came. You were so believable, when all along . . .’

My smile faded. ‘Why did you come today?’

‘What?’

‘If you think I stuck a knife in my own friend, why would you want to see me?’

Her brow creased as she pressed back in her seat, defensive now. ‘I’ve always wanted to see inside a prison. I’ve never had the opportunity before.’

Good God, she was serious. I’d forgotten her fascination with street crime. As if to demonstrate her thirst for knowledge, she did a theatrical one-eighty, eyes on stalks as she checked out the other cons in the hall. She wanted to ask what he’d done to get put in here, and that one, too, the one on the far side with the older male visitor drinking orange squash. Who was the scariest, the most dangerous? Were any of them kiddy fiddlers or gangsters or celebrities? She probably thought she’d be allowed to bring her mobile in, Instagram a few pictures of the lags’ shower facilities. Maybe she expected there to be a gift shop on the way out where she could buy a mug or Christmas cards designed by the inmates’ kids. The latest John Grisham novel.

‘Glad to be of service, Regan,’ I said.

When she left, I knew I’d never see her again. Either that or she’d try to start a romantic relationship with me. Finally, the secret to being visible as a middle-aged man: wear the neon bib that identifies you as the offender in the room. A little crackle of plastic to get the juices flowing.

*

Sorry, I digress. The mind lacks discipline. I was talking about a visit to your grave. New grounds for appeal.

So what’s happened is this: a mate of Nabil’s rigged up our computer so it picks up cable TV and there we were, watching a BBC police drama called Hackney Beat, when I saw a familiar face on-screen.

None other than DC Ian Parry.

He was playing a suspect, actually. Evidently, there’s a thin line between hero and villain in casting (as in life). They’d made him look unkempt, a school-of-hard-knocks type, but you could tell he was a professional actor, a man with good teeth and a honed physique who wants to be a star, not a civilian. The credits rolled just slowly enough for me to get his name: Simon Whiting.

‘I don’t fucking believe it,’ I said, under my breath. My nervous system didn’t know what to do with the development, not at first, lashing adrenaline about and making me think of the ambulances that come sometimes when an inmate has overdosed.

‘Bullshit, innit,’ Nabil said. He thought I was expressing dissatisfaction with the clichéd ending to the storyline – criminal in cuffs, cops in the pub, pints raised in celebration – and I played along; I had no intention of sharing this frankly dynamite piece of news. You’d think we’d spend hours talking, wouldn’t you? Honing our histories from our bunkbeds, dreaming up our futures, keeping each other hopeful, but it’s not like that. We have to shit in each other’s presence, but we couldn’t give a shit about each other.

*

Meetings with briefs take place in a special room, out of earshot of staff for confidentiality reasons. Mine doesn’t want to be here, I can tell by the way he opens his laptop to create a screen between us, and by the way he struggles to transform a dead-eyed stare into a friendly, co-operative one the moment he realizes I’ve noticed. It’s an odd thing, seeing yourself held in such low esteem in someone else’s eyes. Not because I’m an inmate – he has scrupulous respect for prisoners’ rights – but because he thinks I’m a fantasist.

‘So you have some new information, Jamie?’ he says, typing. I imagine the line: Latest hare-brained theory . . .

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I know who Ian Parry is.’

‘Ian Parry?’

I remind him of the account I’ve given over and over of the false police interview. Even when it was discredited in court and subsequently minimized by my defence team, I’ve never wavered, never betrayed a shred of doubt. ‘If you google Simon Whiting and Melia Quinn, I bet you’ll find a link straightaway. They know each other. I’m pretty sure they were in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof together years ago.’

His fingers pause on the keyboard. ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.’ Not a question, merely a polite repetition.

‘Then once you find him, he’ll be able to tell you who Merchison is.’

It came to me last night, Kit: Simon Whiting and the actor playing Merchison must have been in the photo on your mantelpiece. In fact, wasn’t it you who said one of the cast was called Si? That’s why Melia removed it from sight. Once I’d met them, she couldn’t have me turning up at the flat unannounced and recognizing them in the picture. Clare noticed it was gone, but for once her theory – which I disregarded, anyway – was wrong.

My solicitor checks something in his notes on-screen before saying, in a measured tone, ‘Mrs Roper was last employed as a lettings agent, I believe.’

‘Yes, she was, but I’m talking about before that. She went to drama school and then she was an actor for a couple of years.’ I lean in a little, try to galvanize him with my positive energy. ‘This could lead to the kind of new evidence that means we can appeal, right? Come on, if Simon Whiting confesses to this masquerade, we must have a chance?’

He nods, respectfully vexed, before reminding me that the police case is closed and there is next to no chance of securing additional manpower at this stage. ‘But I can see if someone in my office is available to follow this up. I can’t promise anything, but if we do manage to make contact with Mr Whiting, and if he does disclose anything new and helpful—’

‘He will,’ I interrupt.

‘Then I’ll be in touch. But you need to know it’s unlikely we would get permission to appeal even if his account did match yours. I don’t have to remind you that the alternative would have been a conspiracy to murder conviction, which in itself carries a heavy sentence.’

‘I know that,’ I cry, ‘but I’d plead guilty to that, wouldn’t I, because it’s true! Don’t you see it’s the principle? I’d rather be in here for the crime I did commit.’

I’d rather know she wasn’t out there, living her best life – at the expense of mine.

And yours, of course, Kit. Especially yours.

*

I try not to calculate the exact fraction of attention my case will occupy in the solicitor’s mind over the next few weeks. I try not to think about the myriad variables – both professional and private – in his and his unnamed junior colleague’s lives that might have a bearing on the act of looking into my lead. Waiting is both my occupation and my goal, after all, my raison d’être.

Oh, but there is something of note to tell you during this fallow period: news from Debs in an otherwise dry and guarded letter, the same one she writes to me every other month:

I thought I ought to let you know, in case you hear it in a more upsetting way, that Clare is getting married. Her fiancé is your friend Steve . . .