‘Your pathologist can prove that, can she?’ Amy asks. She leans back in her chair, crossing one skinny leg over the other. ‘No, I didn’t think so. And answer me this. Why didn’t he struggle? Why didn’t they find evidence of defensive injuries in the post-mortem? I’ve seen the report, DS Butler. My solicitor has it. He has all of your so-called evidence. The only findings in that post-mortem were consistent with how he was found – asphyxiated in that hotel room. Sex play gone wrong.’

‘Jonathan was never into that shit, and you know it,’ Freya snaps.

‘But you can’t prove it, can you?’ Amy says again.

‘We have the plastic bag. We have the tape that you wrapped round his neck. And the ends of the tape will perfectly match up with the roll we seized from your garage,’ Freya says, clear, confident.

‘So fucking what?’ Amy replies. She’s still calm, although two matching red spots have appeared on her cheeks. ‘How did he get to the hotel? What about his movements on social media? Why is there no evidence of Jonathan anywhere except in that hotel room?’

But Robin knows. ‘You wrapped his body in cling film, and then at some point over the weekend you drove it to the hotel.’

‘How precisely did I do that?’ Amy scoffs. ‘Given I’m assuming you have CCTV? And you’ve found nothing in my car.’

She was right. They checked the CCTV for the whole weekend and neither Jonathan’s car nor her Audi were seen.

‘Your work van,’ Freya says, and both Robin and Amy turn to her. ‘You transported the body in your work’s van. Nobody would think anything strange of a catering van from a hotel turning up at the trade entrance. And then you shipped the body in on a catering trolley.’

Amy raises her eyebrows. ‘Not just a pretty face, are you, sweetheart? But the question remains, can you prove it?’

Robin watches as Freya’s whole body tenses. No, they can’t, he knows. There is no CCTV at the trade entrance, no cameras in the corridors. And a dead body wrapped in cling film leaves nothing behind.

Amy stares at Freya, her eyes amused.

‘Do you know how long a strangled man takes to die?’ she says. ‘No more than a few minutes—’ a glance to Robin, a small smile ‘—hypothetically. But fuck, it feels like longer.’

Next to him, Robin hears Freya start to cry, but he doesn’t dare look away from Amy. He doesn’t want to break her concentration.

‘Holding a belt up high enough, it takes effort. Listening to him gasp and choke, the bag going in and out…’

‘You’re a monster,’ Freya whispers.