Elaine is dead. It doesn’t feel like it can be true. She had only just come into my life, dramatically, and now has swiftly gone. I feel pain for someone else for the first time in eighteen months. But not for long. My rational mind is too quick to tell me she had had a good life, a better life than most people on the planet; she got nearly four decades. I have no factual basis for the assertions, but it’s better than saying she was lucky.

I know the police will want to talk to me. There’s a pretty good chance I’ve seen her killer. Blond, tall, fit, not yet forty. Those are my guesses, based on the glimpse of him I had. Is that why he hasn’t come looking for me? Was the death of Elaine enough to scare him off? Now my death is a genuine possibility.

I put the boxes in the back next to the fridges. By the time I’ve cracked open another beer, a police car sweeps into the drive, and the rain comes with them in large drops, hitting hard. The two police that I spoke to last night get out and run to my front door. I put my beer down and walk out to meet them, friendly and open. They apologise, dripping, for bothering me, but say there are a couple of things to do with an incident at the Slade house that they need to ask me about. Thunder and delayed lightning dramatise the moment, as if it needs it. I don’t invite them in, and they don’t suggest it. Under the cover at my front step, they proceed to ask me where I was and what I was doing the night I found Elaine bashed in her house.

I remember the policewoman’s name is something Murray. She has red hair pulled back tightly, and it doesn’t make her any more friendly. She does not like me — no prizes for guessing that.

I say, ‘She’s dead, isn’t she? That’s what the media said.’

‘What media?’ the policeman questions me with a sudden intensity.

‘The local paper.’

‘You saw an article?’ He is inspecting me like I am a newly discovered species.

‘I saw the headline. Didn’t read the piece. It’s true, isn’t it?’ I’m losing confidence, even though I trust Ian, and I actually saw the headline.

‘No.’ They look at each other.

‘No? Is the paper lying?’ Now they both look at me as if I am a pathetic sort of small-time trouble-maker.

The policeman says, ‘There was some confusion at the hospital. A woman called Ellen Sade, who lived on the other side of town, was found dead in her house. The editor of the newspaper has apologised for the mix-up on the radio, reprinted the issue, taken back the copies they can.’

‘Is Elaine Slade okay?’