‘Well, we were in a small town called Winterville, in upstate New York. Near the Adirondacks. It was the town in the movie where the first bank robbery happened so we were there a while. Yeah, we were there too long. Jeremy was doing his ambassadorial stuff, talking to the mayor, visiting the high school, all that. But then he started bringing this one girl on set. She was fifteen, sixteen at most. I didn’t get involved. He was training her in as his assistant, he said. Giving her an opportunity. He met her parents, took them to dinner and … well, what I’m saying is that he wasn’t hiding anything. And, of course, he was busy, making a film, and we were going to be moving on. I didn’t think too much of it. Until, well, our last night in town I was in my room at the hotel, doing rewrites and I went for a walk and …’

‘You saw something?’

‘Yeah, I saw the light on in Jeremy’s trailer. We were having an early start the following day, some dawn shots in the town and then moving out, heading to the next location, so when I saw the light I was surprised but I thought it was typical workaholic Jeremy stuff. I went over to the trailer and just walked straight in, to say hello. Or, I don’t know, maybe I knew, maybe some part of me knew.’

At this, Dalton paused, sighed, rubbed his hands over his face in a scrubbing motion, then clasped them together in front of his chest, like a schoolboy preparing for first confession.

‘Christopher, what did you see?’

‘I saw Jeremy having sex with someone. I couldn’t see her face. He was on top of her. He was being rough, yeah I think anyone would say that. But she wasn’t making a sound. He didn’t hear me, not then. I saw, I saw a half-empty bottle of vodka. And a Tropicana carton. And I saw a bag. It was the same bag the girl used to carry around all the time.’

‘The schoolgirl, his assistant?’

‘Yeah. It was a patchwork kind of thing, looked home-made. I recognised it.’

‘And you think it was her.’

‘I do. But I didn’t stay long enough to find out for sure. And I thought there was a chance she had left it there earlier, that it hadn’t been her he was with when I saw …’

‘But you suspected?’

‘Yes, I suspected it was her. I said as much to him the next day, when we were finished shooting. He asked me to drive with him to the next location. I agreed so that I would have the chance to talk to him about it.’

‘And what did he say?’