As they climbed the stairs to the office, they heard the landline ringing. It stopped just as Maggie got the first key in the door. ‘Bugger.’ Five seconds later, though, Robin’s pay-as-you-go rang. ‘Harry?’

He seemed not to hear her. ‘Robin? It’s Harry.’

She closed the door behind them. ‘Is everything all right?’

Maggie stopped, halfway out of her coat.

‘Valerie just came barging in here. She’s saying I killed Becca.’

‘I was here early – I don’t know how she’d even know I’d be at the office at eight. Jas and Suze are round the corner, by the way – I told them to come back in an hour.’ He took another turn across the floor, trainers squeaking. He looked younger again today, a T-shirt and soft navy hoody taking the place of the chambray shirt. ‘She buzzed downstairs so I went to let her in, obviously. She seemed okay then, shaky but okay, so we came up here to talk. As soon as I closed the door, she … went nuts.’

‘Tell us what she said, as close to her actual words as you can.’

‘She said she knew I’d given Becca painkillers, that I’d got her addicted to pills so that I could “have my way” with her. Sleep with her, control her.’

‘Control?’

‘If she needed drugs and I was giving her them, she’d keep coming back to me.’

‘But you’ve been friends since you were kids, Valerie told us that herself. Why would you need to?’

‘That’s what I said. But she said you’d told her Becca was sleeping with the person who gave her the pills.’ He stopped pacing and looked at them, Maggie then Robin.

They glanced at one another. Shit. ‘I’m sorry, Harry,’ Maggie said. ‘That is true. We didn’t tell you because Becca didn’t want you to know, and—’

‘When?’

‘Not when you two were together, obviously. June, maybe a week or so into July. It was a flash in the pan, a fling. Nothing meaningful.’

‘How do you know that?’

Robin glanced at Maggie again. ‘Lucy told us.’

‘Great. So now I can’t trust her, either.’

‘I think you should interpret it as knowing you can,’ Maggie said gently. ‘Becca asked her to keep it under her hat so she did. Becca didn’t want you to think badly of her. She cared about that – a lot.’

He dipped his head and turned to the window.

‘Harry,’ said Robin. ‘Steven Cotton’s irrelevant.’

‘Hardly.’

‘She spent a few nights with him, under the influence.’

‘A few nights during which he got her hooked on painkillers.’

‘Actually, he didn’t,’ said Maggie. ‘Or we don’t think she was really hooked. We’ve heard she wasn’t doing it any more. She’d stopped.’

He sniffed, rubbed his hand over his face.