‘Osaki?’ She laughed then sobbed. ‘Not likely. He never said boo to a bloody goose. Am I going to lose my flat over this? Will I get kicked out because he’s gone and died?’

Ava folded her arms and made herself count to five.

‘Mrs Shozo, your husband is the victim of a crime. There will need to be a postmortem. The body will be released to you for burial when a criminal investigation has been successfully completed.’

‘Oh, that’s just great. I can’t afford to pay for his funeral. That stuff’s expensive. I didn’t ask for any of …’

‘Who were you referring to when you said “we” left this morning?’ Ava cut in.

Kylie stuck her chin in the air. ‘Beef.’

‘Presumably Beef is the gentleman who entered the flat after you?’

‘That’s right. And my private life’s none of your business, you snooty bitch.’ Kylie took a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and shoved a stick in her mouth.

‘You can’t light that in a police van, but you’re at liberty to smoke it outside,’ Ava told her. ‘Did you have a conversation with your husband before you and Beef left this morning?’

‘No. He was in the bedroom.’

‘Can you describe your current relationship with your husband?’

‘Are you stupid?’ Kylie laughed.

‘Apparently,’ Ava mumbled. ‘Look, Mrs Shozo, we’ll need to take you and – sorry, does Beef have a real name?’

‘Sheldon,’ Kylie said quietly.

That explained the use of the nickname then, Ava thought.

‘You and Sheldon will have to come to the police station, give statements, and provide fingerprints and DNA samples to be excluded from other evidence at the crime scene if you’ve both been at the flat recently. We’ll also need to establish your movements yesterday and today. We’ll need contact details for his family, too.’

‘Tokyo. I’m not phoning to tell them about this.’ She lit the cigarette anyway.

Ava opened the van door to release the smoke.

‘That’s fine. We’ll contact the Japanese embassy. So, help me understand. Very briefly, you and your husband were separated but still sharing a flat. How did he feel about that?’

‘He just frigging cried. Not in front of me, mind, but I heard him locked in the bathroom. For a while he tried to persuade me to stick with it, you know, but he couldn’t get work. We never went out or had any fun. He’s some sort of computer geek, yeah? When I first met him, I thought he’d be able to get a good job here that’d pay a ton. No point marrying someone who isn’t going to pay the bills, right? So I said yes when he proposed, got him a bloody visa and what happened? I ended up forkin’ out for all the rent, the bills and basically looking after him. Can you believe that?’