What had she meant by that, I wonder now. She said I could become fixated on things and that made her tense. And now I catch myself in remembrance of that scene, but I’m interrupted when at the edge of my vision, I see the door open. I stand to get a better look as the back of a man pulls the door shut, locking it. I sieve my memory. Could it be him, the man I saw that night? He seems the same build, has the same dark hair. He turns and heads down the steps and I see his face properly for the first time. I’m expecting a jolt of recognition but it doesn’t come. Rather it is a dawning – a gentle light spreading. It must be him: same hair, same shape face. He’s too far away to make out his features clearly but there’s something in his gait and the way that he navigates the pavement that gives him away. And the jacket is the same one, or could be.

Who is he? There is someone there behind the killing, hiding inside him. How is he feeling about what he has just done? I search his faraway features without luck. But there must be misery and regret and shame and guilt somewhere under that face.

And then, just as he walks around the corner and out of sight, I realise: the police haven’t arrested him. Is it possible that they haven’t seen him yet? I don’t know how a murder – even an allegation of murder – wouldn’t have had them round here straight away.

But I am here and he’s here, or was moments ago, free. And she, the woman, was in there not two days ago. So where is she now? Has he disposed of her? Concealed or covered what evidence there might have been? She is after all somewhere, right now, hidden, occupying a place in time and space. But she won’t be for long. She is slowly disintegrating cell by cell and becoming less her and more something else. I know this. I know it.

When I buried Rory, he was just five days dead. But for the intervention of the funeral parlour, he would have been black from decay. Putrefaction. His organs would have begun to liquefy. Bacteria would have bloated him around the eyes and to see him like that would have convinced you that he was destroyed, gone. But the undertaker gave him a whiff of life. He looked good enough to breathe.

So now, in that house somewhere, or in the garden or a basement or somewhere, definitely somewhere, she is quietly merging with the earth. Whoever she loved would be frantic. And I – I, who might have changed history – am standing here mute once again. For a second time I have let him slip away unchallenged and I hate how passive I have become.