‘It is interesting, Mr Shute, how you use that word “strangle”. Because although the post-mortem records that she died from a blunt force trauma injury to the head, it also shows that she had bruises on her neck. The post-mortem report says this: “Present on the neck, four sites of cutaneous bruising and a further five sites displaying fingernail abrasions. It has not been possible to date the contusions using any back-calculation but a reasonable conclusion is that somewhere up to forty-eight hours before her death, pressure had been applied to the deceased’s neck in a throttling action.” So, my question is, Mr Shute, did you strangle her?’

‘No comment.’

‘Is that how you knew she had been strangled? Because you were the one who did it?’

‘No comment.’

‘Was it beyond your control?’

When he says the words this time, the memory comes in a wave back to me. It was from a film we had seen together at the cinema, Dangerous Liaisons. John Malkovich kept saying the line over and over again. I don’t remember why, but I remember he did and she, the girl, cried harder each time. I cannot tell them this in a way that sounds good.

‘No comment.’

‘Okay. The thing that we are concerned about is that it doesn’t look that good for you at the moment. By your own admission, you were in her house. We believe she must have invited you in because there were no signs of forced entry. By your own admission, you saw her being strangled. She in fact had been strangled. You were the last person to see her alive and the first person to see her dead. Now unless another person broke into the house while you were there and killed her in front of you and then repaired the door and left, we can only see one way this murder happened. It was you.’

There’s no way out of this. ‘No comment.’

‘You were in love with her. You were writing her letters telling her you would never let her go.’

Jan interrupts, throwing her hands back in high dudgeon. ‘It doesn’t say that! It says that he can’t let her go. And, as we have already established, he didn’t send the letter.’

‘Okay, then that you can’t let her go. And then we have this money that you empty out in cash from her account. We think that you used that money to help you disappear after the murder. And it did help you disappear for a very long time, didn’t it?’

‘What’s your evidence that he used that money?’ says Jan, bridling.

‘Well, you tell us, Mr Shute. Did you use the money? Is it lying safely in a suitcase somewhere collecting dust?’

Jan and I look at each other and then flick our eyes away before it can be noticed. My eyes land on Blake’s. She noticed.

‘No comment,’ I say.