Jonah glanced towards the rear room of the mortuary, where there were sounds of movement. ‘Can you send me a still of the girl? We’ll need the video too, but if you could get that straight over, I’ll see if anyone recognises her.’

‘Sure,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ll do it now. Is your email …?’

‘On the card I gave you,’ Jonah said. But he told him what it was anyway.

As he hung up, Issa was being led to one of the chairs by the manager of the mortuary, a woman Jonah had unbelievable respect for. Issa’s face was white, pinched and terrible, and Jonah felt an awful lurch of vicarious grief.

‘Take a few minutes to rest,’ the manager said, as Issa sat, heavily. He looked close to vomiting, and Jonah wondered whether it was the physical sight of Alex that had done it, or the sudden and complete loss of his desperate illusions. It was no longer possible to ask if it might not be Alex; Issa had seen his husband’s body with his own eyes.

Jonah wondered, too, whether denial had been Issa’s way of escaping what he had done. He wouldn’t be the first killer to convince himself he hadn’t hurt anyone.

‘I …’ Issa turned his head, and stood again. ‘I need … some air.’

‘Sure.’ Jonah watched Issa leave by the main door, and went to fetch him water in a paper cup. As he was filling it from the cooler in the corner, an email arrived from Charlie. It had two large video attachments, which he knew his phone would take a while to download. But there was also a still, presumably of the drunk brunette.

It was clearly too soon to show Issa an image of someone Alex may have known, but Jonah was curious to look anyway. He opened it, his left hand pressing the button awkwardly and his right hand on the cup.

He came close to dropping his phone as he opened the attached image. The girl leaving the club was, unquestionably, Louise Reakes.

10

Louise

You probably want to know why I didn’t stop drinking straight away. Right after I realised there was a strange man pawing at me, and that I had no idea how it had happened.

I did actually stop, for a while. I managed a week. But it was torture. Every time you and I saw each other, I felt stilted and awkward and dull. After the third time you’d looked at me strangely and asked if I was feeling OK, I told you I’d been under the weather, and then I sank three glasses of gin.

I decided I’d have to wean myself off the sauce more slowly, and learn to behave the same way around you once I was sober. But I didn’t really believe I could.