‘It was plain strange. As you say, why run to something he’s scared of? But the fact is he did. He pulled on the lead so hard that I let go and he started running at full pelt across the golf course towards the footpath on the other side. He disappeared through the hedge on to the footpath and I thought, that’s it, he’s lost, but when I got through the gap in the hedge, there he was, stock still. I called him but he didn’t come. I called him but he didn’t so much as make a noise. I walked towards him. He was standing at the side of the pothole. I thought at first it was a mannequin. Some stupid teenage prank. I saw the legs and the feet on the path and the rest of the… her I couldn’t see.

‘You’re a naughty boy, Oscar, I said as I came closer. He slinked off a little and flopped himself down on the path.’

Clay heard the sound of staunched tears in Jackie’s voice.

‘I… I saw her toenails were painted and I thought, mannequins don’t have painted nails. I touched her ankle with the tip of my little finger, right hand, and I felt bone beneath the skin. And then. And then. It was as if the story on the news about the lady found on the riverbed somersaulted into my mind. Water. Dead body. I don’t remember taking out my phone and calling emergency services but the next thing I knew I was talking to some woman on a switchboard. I told her where I was and what I – what he, what Oscar had found, and I waited there. It seemed like hours but it was probably seconds, a minute or more maybe. I heard the siren coming and I thought, what if the person who’s left this woman’s body here is still around? What if he takes me next? What if I end up in a ditch? Or a river?’

She gathered her dog to her body and held on to him as if her life depended on his closeness to her.

‘Jackie, did you see anyone at all?’ asked Clay.

‘I saw a light, a torchlight, a speck of moving light heading down to the houses on old Allerton Road. Then it disappeared as it got too far away.’

‘A man?’

‘Too far away to tell.’

Clay smiled, wanted her facial expression to register in her voice.

‘You’re doing very well, Jackie. Come on now, stay with me, keep going.’

As she spoke, Clay knew in her heart that the woman sitting next to her in a marked police car on a dismal day on Menlove Avenue had, by sheer chance, walked over a line that most people would never cross in the course of a lifetime.