I shook my head. ‘No. I heard nothing and saw nothing. That bloody security light is out. I keep meaning to get it fixed. But, no, I saw nothing. Not until this morning. I thought it was just a black plastic bag blown onto the railings.’

‘And do you have any idea who might have done this, or why?’ she asked, her pen poised above her notebook ready to write.

I shook my head again. My arm ached. My right hand was still throbbing after pulling the flowers from the gate. I’d cleaned it up the best I could, dressed the cuts. I must have looked a right sight – two dodgy arms? That was all I needed. I was more useless than ever before.

‘No. I don’t understand why anyone would be so cruel.’

‘When you called this in, you told our dispatcher the items had special significance. That you believe the Laura mentioned in the note is your late daughter. What of the other items?’

‘The arrangement is identical to the one we hung on the gate at Laura’s wake,’ I said, trying to push memories of that awful week out of my head.

I didn’t have the mental energy to allow my brain to go there – to relive those horrors – just then.

‘Forget-me-nots were Laura’s favourite flowers. Her eyes were the same colour …’

Constable King nodded sympathetically while Constable Black sat at the table and looked on. I wondered what they made of me – this lonely older woman, living out here on my own. I wanted to tell them that it wasn’t always that way. This used to be a happy home. I’d had a husband who loved me until the day and hour a heart attack took him from me. A daughter … a son …

A mobile phone rang and Constable Black lifted his from his pocket, said he had to answer it and walked out of the back door into the yard.

‘Has anything of this nature happened before? At any time following Laura’s death?’

I shook my head. ‘Do you think it has something to do with that poor girl’s murder?’ I asked. ‘DI Bradley said I wasn’t in any danger, that no one knew I was with her when she died and that I’d heard her last words.’

‘We’ve no reason to believe that at the moment,’ Constable King said, ‘but it’s one of the lines of inquiry we’ll be looking at.’

I felt uneasy. Vulnerable.

‘Try not to worry too much,’ Constable King said. ‘It could be someone with a very warped sense of humour, but rest assured that we’re taking this very seriously and we’ll act accordingly, putting on extra patrols in this area. I’ll talk to the DI, see what he thinks.’

Constable Black walked back in, his tall frame almost filling the doorway. He looked at me first before walking to his colleague.