‘I do. Spent many an unpleasant Friday night after chucking-out time getting a load of verbal from customers who didn’t like their korma and thought the situation could be resolved by throwing it at the owner. That’s why they have 24-hour camera surveillance now, both inside and out,’ Monroe noted, keeping her eyes on her notepad.

‘What did you order?’ Graham asked Andrew.

‘Do you want to keep this relevant? If not, we can leave,’ the solicitor said.

‘I’m just wondering if the details will help Mr Jenson remember how long it took to place his order and for it to be cooked, only your client’s recollection was that there was some delay.’

‘I had a jalfrezi, and the wife had cod and chips.’

‘So your memory’s pretty good, then,’ Graham noted. ‘That’s great. How long do you think you were in Prashant’s from entering to leaving?’

Andrew Jenson cast a sideways look at his lawyer. ‘Twenty minutes, maybe more,’ he said.

‘Let’s see,’ Graham said, waiting for Monroe to flick through the file again and locate a different page. ‘Yes, here we go. You arrived there at 8.55 p.m. and left at nine ten. You parked right outside, got back in your vehicle and presumably went straight home.’

‘If you knew which takeaway I went to, why did you ask?’ Andrew asked though gritted teeth.

‘Let me handle this,’ his solicitor cut in. ‘Are you trying to back my client into a corner, Detective Inspector? You know the rules. You’re supposed to summarise what evidence you’ve got in advance of an interview.’

‘I’m not interviewing a suspect though, am I? This is a voluntary witness account we’re taking here.’

The solicitor swallowed, looked across the room to Ava, who returned her gaze steadily, then the lawyer appeared to smile. It wasn’t friendly.

‘All right. Carry on,’ the solicitor said.

‘The thing is, Mr Jenson, you gave a statement the day after your father was found dead. In it you claimed to have arrived home rather earlier from work and there was no mention of the takeaway. Those details came later from your wife’s statement.’

‘So what? I’d just been told that my father was dead, murdered. You think I was worried about a bloody curry under those circumstances?’

‘Which is why we’re asking you again today, now that you’ve had a chance to think more clearly about the sequence of events. In your written statement given to uniformed officers you claimed you’d left work late, at about 8 p.m., and had arrived home at about eight thirty. The problem is that we now have a period of almost two hours that are unaccounted for, give or take some driving time.’

‘I’m not having this. I’ve done nothing wrong. He was my dad, for Christ’s sake. Why the hell would I kill him?’