It is much more than poor taste: it is bizarre. Dr Goodison’s own girlfriend died that way – even though he doesn’t know that Lockhart knows about that, it still seems an extraordinary remark. There is something about the man’s bonhomie, his blokiness, that sets Lockhart’s now-clean teeth on edge. It’s the man-to-manliness of it, the we’re just two professionals doing our job so we can josh amongst ourselves thing. It doesn’t work for him. ‘Unofficially, we’re not looking for anyone else in connection with Mr Warren’s death,’ he says. ‘But obviously it’s up to the Coroner to ascertain the precise circumstances surrounding the incident.’

‘So it’s just like the other one then, a suicide? Not been all that lucky on that station.’

Lockhart has to pause for a moment here – can Goodison really be that callous, or is he just covering up his own emotional pain with a pretence?

‘We’re pretty sure it was a suicide, yes.’

‘Well, interesting. Listen, I can walk you down to the mortuary if you like, it’s easy to get lost in this place, even the staff do sometimes.’

‘Do you have the time?’

‘Technically it’s my lunch break, although morning clinic is overrunning of course, but I can show you the way quickly. There’s a short cut, back route, outside and in again, as long as it’s not raining out there, that is.’ The doctor turns to the receptionist behind the desk and lifts his hand, splaying his fingers in a five minutes gesture. The receptionist looks back at him with raised eyebrows.

They turn in the opposite direction from A & E and through a pair of swing doors with no signage above them. A few paces down the corridor, Dr Goodison turns left and presses the horizontal handle on a fire exit door that allows them into a concrete courtyard surrounded by hospital buildings. As they cross the courtyard, the doctor asks Lockhart where he grew up and Lockhart says West London and the doctor says, ‘Thought that wasn’t a local accent there, thought I could tell a fellow southerner.’ He adds that he grew up in Dorking. Lockhart reflects that Dorking and Southall are not really as similar as the doctor seems to be implying.

‘What brought you up this way?’ the doctor asks.

‘The job,’ Lockhart says.

‘Me too!’ the doctor says brightly, as if they have discovered unlikely or unusual common ground, like an obsession with Chinese opera or a shared dislike of coriander.