‘Yes,’ Issa said, swallowing. ‘He’s a good friend to both of us. Alex likes to go out – with Step and a couple of others. I sometimes join them and sometimes leave them to it. I’m not quite such a hard drinker.’ He gave a watery smile.

‘You don’t think he could have … argued with Alex?’

‘No, of course not,’ Issa said, his voice shaking. ‘He was his friend. I don’t know how … If Step had been there, he would have helped. You don’t know what happened to him?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ Hanson said. ‘You presumably haven’t spoken to Step this morning.’

‘No.’ Issa shook his head. ‘It didn’t – occur to me, for some reason. I just thought Alex had got drunk and – and maybe was sleeping off his hangover there.’

‘So you can’t be certain that Step wasn’t involved?’ she went on.

Issa’s gaze flicked from Hanson to Jonah, and then it rested back on Hanson.

‘No,’ Alex’s husband said in the end. ‘I just don’t think he could be.’

Hanson gave him a half-smile, one of those expressions that sat uniquely between solemn sympathy and warm support. It was a hard expression to pull off, and Hanson, Jonah thought, did it very well. ‘Of course. We’ll need to talk to him.’

‘Yes. Yes.’ Issa picked up his phone from the side table and read out Step’s number, and then his address, both of which Jonah wrote down.

‘Are there other family members we should inform?’ Hanson asked gently, once that was done. ‘Parents? Siblings? Or would you prefer to call them?’

Issa’s expression made Jonah’s chest ache. He was so transparently a man unable to believe he really had to do this.

‘His parents live in Surrey,’ he said, inconsequentially. ‘I’d … rather you told them. We never got on all that well.’

Once they had taken their contact details, Jonah told Issa as gently as possible that he would need to identify the body, either in person or over a video link. Alex’s husband shook his head at the suggestion of a remote link.

‘I have to see for myself.’

‘The coroner requested a post mortem,’ Jonah said. ‘I know it’s a hard thing to have to deal with right now, but it will help us. It’s standard practice with a sudden death like this. Once that’s done, we’ll call you in.’

‘What if – what if it isn’t him?’ Issa’s eyes were large and dark, and full of a peculiar hope. ‘What if you’ve got it wrong?’

Jonah found himself momentarily unable to think of anything to say. He couldn’t tell Issa that he had seen the body, and knew that it was Alex. It seemed unreasonably cruel. And yet to say anything else seemed even crueller.