He’d been six months older than Beatrix and was doing the same postgrad in Politics as her. In total, there had been six people taking the course, and while Vale stated in his interview with Smoulter that only Beatrix and another student, Robert Zaid, had actually known each other before the start of the year – Beatrix and Zaid had done the same History degree – he said that all the students had got to know each other relatively quickly after the postgrad course began in September 1986. They weren’t best friends necessarily, Vale said, but they knew each other quite well. That meant that, when Beatrix had left the house party in Lambeth at around 11.45 p.m. on 3 March, and she’d come across Adrian Vale on the steps outside, smoking, they’d had a short conversation.

SMOULTER: What was the conversation about?

VALE: We talked about the course, about some mutual friends, and then I think we just talked about movies. She asked me if I’d seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and I said I hadn’t seen it yet, but I had seen The Fly. She joked that she didn’t have the stomach for that one, and I told her she should definitely go to see it because the special effects –

SMOULTER: Okay. What else?

VALE: That was it, really.

SMOULTER: That was literally all you talked about?

VALE: Yes.

SMOULTER: Which friends did you discuss?

VALE: Uh. I think we mentioned Robert.

SMOULTER: That’s Robert Zaid?

VALE: Yes.

SMOULTER: He was the one who did the same History course as Beatrix – is that right?

VALE: That’s right, yes.

SMOULTER: Anything else?

VALE: No. Like I say, it was a fairly short conversation. Maybe five minutes. Perhaps ten.

SMOULTER: Five or ten?

VALE: Uh … closer to ten, I guess.

It was clear from the transcript that Smoulter’s alarm was going off: he didn’t like Vale, maybe saw something in his manner that put him on edge, so a lot of his questioning was hostile. Yet even though Smoulter had come straight out the gate and piled into Vale, Vale had remained polite, his answers consistent and rational, and he rarely appeared evasive.

SMOULTER: How did she seem?

VALE: Seem?

SMOULTER: When she left the party. Was she drunk? Was she upset? Did it look like she’d been crying?

VALE: No, not really. She seemed fine.

SMOULTER: So you’re saying she wasn’t drunk?

VALE: If she was, it didn’t seem like it.

SMOULTER: Had you seen her drinking that night?

VALE: Yes. Everyone was drinking. It was a party full of students. That’s what most students do.

SMOULTER: Are you saying you don’t?

VALE: No. I don’t drink.

SMOULTER: You don’t drink alcohol? Why not?

VALE: My father was an alcoholic. He died when I was fifteen. Alcohol doesn’t hold much appeal to me.