I’m about to protest, to remind him of the other bruises she has, and then I have a sudden, horrible memory. I’m gripping Bethany, my thumbs digging into her skin just below her collar bone, my fingers pinching her arms, shaking her as I shout, “I will never forgive you!” I swallow uncomfortably. I made those bruises.

‘Have you thought about the other people who were staying with us? Joe Hart, for instance?’

Traitor.

‘You think Signor Hart hurt your sister? She employ him as her personal trainer, no?’

I remember Joe and Bethany had an argument the night before she was attacked, but he’s hardly likely to have hit her. Or did he? In any case, he’d already left the island early the previous morning. Hadn’t he? I think of the glimpse I had of the man who looked like him at the Ferragosto festa. Was I imagining it, or could it have been Joe? He might have stayed on after he’d left our holiday house.

When I don’t reply, Ruggieri shrugs, dismissing me. ‘We have to consider all the option. I have the details for the men who stay with you – Joe Hart and Luca Castaglioni. We speak with them on the phone. We know how to do our job, Signor Flowers.’

I feel like a balloon that’s been punctured.

‘Does Dr Virgili also think my sister simply fell and hit her head? And what about the… the sexual assault?’

‘He agrees that it is possible she was not attacked,’ says Biondi. I’m surprised at how good his English is: much better than his higher-ranking colleague’s. He has an accent, as if he’s spent time on the east coast of the States. ‘No one tested your sister for blood alcohol levels, so we cannot be certain. Neither did the hospital staff check for semen, because she was fully dressed. The signs of the assault, as you refer to them, could be from consensual intercourse, or an incident that happened a few days ago. But as Maggiore Ruggieri says, there was no indication of a struggle, apart from the wound to her head and some bruising to her arms and chest. There is no evidence she was attacked. If she had been hit on the head, it is unlikely now that we will find who did it. Most of the holidaymakers have already left. In any case, she remembers nothing – apart from drinking. And, Signor Flowers, we know that your sister has a history of drinking to excess. We interviewed some of her former work colleagues at the BBC in London.’

The traitorous bastards. Bee once told me she was surrounded by people who’d stab their grandmother to get ahead, but I’d thought she was being overly dramatic.