April was standing facing the gardens, on that little raised, gravelled terrace at the back of the house. I don’t know if you remember it that clearly, but I do. It was beautiful, that place. Part of a night that seemed universally beautiful.

There wasn’t as much to see now that it was dark. Just a few solar lanterns scattered through the grounds. But April was looking out at the view anyway, twisting her lower lip to blow smoke into the air.

And I’m positive you were saying to her, ‘Whatever you’re scheming, I want you to leave her out of it.’

‘Oh, please,’ April said, dismissively. ‘I have a right to talk to anyone I want.’

And I remember that you made a frustrated huffing noise. You said, ‘What about everyone else’s rights? Don’t they matter?’

For a moment April just inhaled and exhaled, and then she said, ‘No, not really.’

‘Please,’ you said next, in what I now know to be a very rare tone of voice for you. ‘Please don’t.’

And April turned towards you and said, very slowly and clearly, as if she’d been play-acting with her tumbling sentences all evening, ‘I’m going to do exactly what I want.’

Then she started to walk inside. And in the fraction of a second I stood there – before pretending I’d just arrived and greeting you both with false enthusiasm – I saw your expression. You looked desolate. Like a man who had just lost something.

3

The team held a miniature briefing outside the front garden of number eleven, their breath billowing into the air. Jonah kept it as swift as possible in the bitter cold, for his own sake as much as theirs.

‘I’ll take Juliette to see Alex’s girlfriend,’ he told O’Malley and Lightman. ‘Domnall, you take Louise Reakes to the station to give her statement. And make sure she mentions the car engine on the record. I’d like Ben to check with this friend of Louise’s to find out if she saw anything strange when she left the house. Louise thinks that was at about midnight. And, Domnall, see if you can find out when it snowed last night. We have footsteps probably belonging to the victim that were made after the snow stopped. Hopefully some of that might narrow our window before we get on to traffic cameras. Currently we’re looking at twelve until four, and we’ve so far got two references to loud engine sounds last night.’

Lightman nodded. ‘The neighbour in number nine also says he was woken by a door slamming at two. He thinks it was at the Reakes house, but I wouldn’t rule out it being a car door.’

‘As far as Louise has said so far, there were no exits or entrances from her house after midnight,’ Jonah said. ‘So that could be interesting.’