Jonah sat back, watching her for a moment, absolutely certain that this was an account her solicitor had rehearsed with her. They might even have rehearsed the tears. The problem for him, and the prosecutor, would be that it could just about be true, and therefore was difficult to disprove. Despite its unlikeliness. Despite all the obvious doubts that her actions raised.

‘I’ll admit that I’m finding that hard to believe,’ he said, after a deliberate pause for consideration. ‘Particularly given the care you took to clear up any traces of Alex being in your house.’

‘However hard it is to believe, you need to start trying,’ Louise said thickly. She drew in a slightly ragged breath. ‘I didn’t kill him, and somebody else did. I want to know how he ended up there, too. I really, really want to know, so I can prove to my husband that I wasn’t shagging someone else.’

She descended quite suddenly into actual sobs, and dropped her head into her hands, the heels of her palms squeezing into each eye socket.

Jonah glanced towards Lightman, whose face was as neutral as ever as he sat up to ask, ‘Do you know a man called Issa Benhawy?’

Louise raised her head slightly, and her mouth twisted, as if she hadn’t expected any kindness and was almost satisfied to have it confirmed. ‘No,’ she said, from behind her hands. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘What about Step Conti?’

‘No,’ she said, pulling the hands away and scrabbling in her handbag until she found a tissue. Her eyes looked raw and red. Perhaps the tears had been real this time. ‘Definitely not.’ She looked towards Patrick, and then asked, ‘Why? Who are they?’

‘Alex Plaskitt’s husband and his best friend.’

There was a profound silence for a moment, while Louise stared at Jonah, her mouth ever so slightly ajar. And then she said, ‘His husband?’ at the same moment that her solicitor said, ‘Are you serious?’

‘Indeed,’ Jonah said, answering both of them with a very small smile.

‘Let me just clarify this,’ Patrick said. ‘You are attempting to suggest that my client was involved in some sort of one-night stand with a gay man, and … what? I’m not quite clear. Decided to stab him? Without motive?’

‘What your client and Alex Plaskitt were doing in her marital bed remains unclear,’ Jonah said, his voice and expression hard. ‘The outcome is, however, exceptionally clear.’

There was a slight pause, and then Louise said, ‘Do you think … he might have been trying – to rob me?’

Jonah glanced at her in surprise. The theft angle was on his list of possibilities, but he hadn’t expected Louise Reakes to think of it. Unless, perhaps, Louise remembered more than she was letting on.

‘What makes you ask that?’