‘I don’t know. On the floor, I think. Yes, on the floor. I think it ended up by the window somewhere.’

‘And the sleeve. Did you see that?’ she says quickly.

I close my eyes and try to claw the memory closer to the foreground. ‘On the sofa maybe. Yes, leaning against the base of the sofa. I think.’

Nasreen looks over at Jan and beckons her over to her laptop which she opens.

‘Look at these scene pictures they uploaded to the Digital Case System,’ she says to Jan.

Jan looks over Nasreen’s shoulder and then a look of realisation crests over her.

‘Exactly where he says it was,’ Jan mutters.

‘Looks like he was there, all right,’ Nasreen says.

‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,’ I say.

‘But hang on, I can’t see the record itself. Is there a picture of the room by the windows?’ Jan asks.

‘No, the photos only go to here,’ Nasreen says, pointing to the screen. ‘Okay. Jan, can you get a request to the Crown over please? Tell them that we want that record sleeve examined for prints and compared against our client’s arrest dabs.’

Jan nods.

‘And the record itself, too. They must have it as an exhibit somewhere, I’d have thought.’

Jan scribbles a note and looks back at the screen. ‘Wait a sec,’ she says, catching something. ‘Enlarge that pic there. Isn’t that a bit of a record, there? Looks like it could be.’

Nasreen frowns at the screen and nods. ‘You might be right, Jan. Good eyes,’ she says and then turns to me. ‘We will do our best to get this information from the Crown. But you should be aware that we don’t even know at this point what in terms of real evidence they have retained. The police did not initially have this as a murder. Some of the scene was photographed and preserved for the inquest. But we have no idea how much from the original scene exhibits they still have.’

‘But how can that be? Aren’t they relying on that for their case? I mean, to prove I was there. DNA, prints and all that?’

Nasreen laces her fingers together so the red polished ends are aligned.

‘No, Mr Shute. That is not what they are doing at all. Their evidence of your presence at the scene comes entirely from your admissions in the interviews. If, and I mean if, they still have any of the items from the room, they might be able to do a fingerprint lift but DNA is out of the question. If they didn’t do it at the time – and frankly, they wouldn’t have even for most murders back then – any DNA would have degraded by now. And that’s if they preserved it properly.’

‘So why are we asking for things they probably don’t have?’