“Okay, Liz, are you going to tell us the truth now?” Annie asked once the interview room was set up and the tapes turned on.

“We didn’t do anything wrong, Ryan and me,” Liz said.

“I have to remind you that you’re entitled to a lawyer. If you can’t afford one we’ll get a duty solicitor for you.”

Liz shook her head. “I don’t need a lawyer. That’s like admitting I did it.”

“As you like. You know we found drugs in your flat, don’t you?”

“There wasn’t much. It was only…you know, for Ryan and me.”

“It’s still a crime.”

“Are you going to arrest us for that?”

“Depends on what you have to tell me. I just want you to know that you’re in trouble already. You can make it better by telling me the truth, or you can make it worse by continuing with your lies. What’s it to be, Liz?”

“I’m tired.”

“The sooner we’re done with this, the sooner you can go home. What’s it to be?”

Liz nibbled at her trembling lower lip.

“Maybe it would help,” said Annie, “if I told you we found traces of Luke’s blood under your bathroom sink.”

Liz looked at her, wide-eyed. “But we didn’t kill Luke. Honest, we didn’t!”

“Tell me what happened. Convince me.”

Liz started crying. Annie passed her some tissues and waited till she calmed down. “Did Luke call at your flat the day he disappeared?” she asked.

After a long silence, Liz said, “Yes.”

“Good,” breathed Annie. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“But we didn’t do him any harm.”

“Okay. We’ll get to that. What time did he arrive?”

“Time? I don’t know. Early in the evening. Maybe sixish.”

“So he must have come straight from the market square?”

“I suppose so. I don’t know where he’d been. He was a bit upset, I remember, because he said some of the kids from the school had pushed him around in the square, so maybe he had come straight from there.”

“What happened in the flat?”

Liz looked down at her chewed fingernails.

“Liz?”

“What?”

“Was Ryan there?”

“Yes.”

“All the time? Even when Luke arrived?”

“Yes.”

So that put paid to Annie’s theory that Ryan had interrupted something between Liz and Luke. “What did the three of you do?”

Liz paused, then took a deep breath. “First we had something to eat,” she said. “It must’ve been around teatime.”

“Then what?”

“We just talked, went through a few songs.”

“I thought you did your rehearsals in the church basement.”

“We do. But Ryan’s got an acoustic guitar. We just played around with a couple of arrangements, that’s all.”

“And then?”

Again, Liz fell silent and her eyes filled with tears. She rubbed the back of her hand across her face and said, “Ryan rolled a joint. Luke…he’d…like he was a virgin, you know, when it came to drugs. I mean we’d offered to share before but he always said no.”

“Not that night?”

“No. That night he said yes. The first time. It was like he…you know…wanted to lose his virginity. I don’t know why. I suppose he just felt it was time.”