He was looking straight down at me. His fingers balled into a fist once more. ‘Mrs Cawson, you just need to give me the book and you’ll be safe. Your husband and stepdaughter will be safe.’ He began to crouch down to me again. ‘Mrs Cawson, do you want them to be safe?’

‘Yes,’ I croaked. ‘Please.’

‘Then you know what to do.’

Yes, I knew. ‘The book.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I haven’t got it here,’ I said.

‘Then where is it?’

‘I can get it. I can get it for you.’ I was shattered into pieces. I would have said or done anything to make him leave me alone.

‘Then we’ll –’

And then the world shook again, and his arms stretched out like wings, falling down, towards me, towards the tiles. I twisted to the side as his waist fell on to mine, thudding the air from me, and his cheek cracked against the floor just centimetres from my own, to make the tiles judder. His eyelids dropped.

‘Jane?’

I turned my head and saw someone else standing where Grest had been. ‘Are you all right?’ Tibbot was breathing heavily and gripping his truncheon, one of the heavy wooden ones that the older policemen had kept from the days before the Soviets came. He dropped to his knees and pulled Grest’s body from mine. ‘Jane, are you all right?’ he asked.

‘I … think so.’ The impact of Grest’s body had left me winded, but no worse than that, I thought.

He pulled Grest’s head up before throwing it back down with a thump. Blood dripped from the Sec’s nose, swirling into the flowing water. Tibbot took a pair of handcuffs from his jacket, quickly locking Grest’s wrists behind him, before helping me to my feet. Spots of light seemed to fly around the room, but my mind began to focus better.

‘What happened?’ he said, as he turned off the taps and put his hands underneath Grest’s shoulders, dragging him out to the landing. But I couldn’t immediately answer him. ‘Jane, what’s going on?’ he asked again, frustrated by my lack of reply. He pushed Grest against the solid bannister, where he used the Sec’s belt to bind his ankles tightly together.

I took a moment, trying to order my thoughts. ‘It must have been him,’ I said. ‘No one else knew about the book. He killed her.’

Tibbot looked Grest up and down. I saw a hardness in Tibbot’s eyes that I hadn’t caught before. It seemed to come from what he had lived through, what he had lost. I had seen a quiet sadness, but this cold determination was new to me. Perhaps it had always been there and I just hadn’t perceived it. Something else we were all hiding.

‘Go into the bedroom,’ he said quietly.