‘The other two of them held him down and the third man came back in with the kettle in his hand. I wanted to beg them to stop, but the Belfast one, he just looked at me and told me again to keep my mouth shut or he’d pour it right down Liam’s throat and into his eyes. So I had to sit tight and I was afraid to move – and God forgive me, I closed my eyes because I didn’t want to see it. I couldn’t see it and I heard the screams of him.

‘They scalded him with that boiling water all over his chest, right up to his neck, and they held him down while they did it. And I … I let them … I didn’t stop them.’

Her body convulses into sobs and Christopher, this big lump of a man, simply drops his head and cries, too.

I can’t deny that the scene, and the news of the barbaric nature of the attack, has my stomach twisting, too. There’s a darkness to this that I can’t comprehend. Why Liam Doherty? What had he done to deserve this?

‘Do you have any idea who did it?’ I ask, but Bernie won’t or can’t answer.

She looks at me and her eyes widen as if she is realising something else. I see it. The fear, stark, as if I’m posing a direct risk to her.

‘Oh, God. Oh, God. Don’t … you can’t say any of what I told you in the paper. Tell me you won’t say any of that in the paper? They said if you did …’

Her sentence is cut short by the door to the relatives’ room opening and the arrival of a distinctly unimpressed DS King.

‘You shouldn’t be here, Ingrid,’ she says. ‘You know that. Come on, now. The nurse is looking for you.’ Her tone is very much like that of a schoolteacher.

I can’t refuse to leave the room, no matter how much I want to. I have to go back to have my blood pressure checked. Even though I’m sure it will be fine. As we walk back down the corridor, I hear DS King give two young officers a roasting, informing them that no one but next of kin should be allowed near the Doherty family. As she directs me through the double doors into the main cubicle area again, I catch a glimpse of DI David Bradley, DS King’s superior officer, walking down the corridor, his coat flapping around him, his face grim.

At least, I think, as I disappear behind the curtains and clamber back up on the trolley where I am supposed to be, I’ve not come face to face with him. This day has been stressful enough without getting a dressing down from the sanctimonious Bradley.