But this whole magical process only worked as long as there was beer in the fridge, and there was none left. The precious moment was dissolving. I would have to act, I would have to get up and go to the corner shop, and I would have to go out and see Pierce, and I needed to check the recordings of the interview. The commitments I had made were fading back in, a growing racket.

The shoulder bag I took to work was in the living room, leaning against the seldom-used armchair with the poor view of the TV, the one heaped with dirty laundry. It troubled me, the bag. Its shape troubled me, its poor posture. It was guilty. Something had happened. An ill odour clung to the thought of the DVRs.

I stood and – not thinking too much, trying to silence the awful thinking that was coming in now that I didn’t have anything to drink – picked up the bag. Then I returned to the sofa and sat with the bag in my lap.

I stayed like that a while. Then I opened the bag.

It looked pretty good. There were my notebooks and assorted pens, and my copies of Murder Boards and Night Traffic. My laptop was there, safe in its padded side-pocket. The other worthless bits and pieces that float around in my bag were all present: a comb, a couple of memory sticks, a USB cable. There were no DVRs.

The bag’s lining was black and quite loose, and it can be easy to miss objects. I took it through to the kitchen and started to methodically remove every item from the bag, laying them out on the kitchen table. There were no DVRs.

I ran my hands around the insides of the bag, feeling every seam and pocket, feeling the whole thing in its unusually light and empty state – it’s never empty, this bag, never. I squeezed it, exploring if something might have slipped in between the lining and the fabric of the bag itself. There were no DVRs.

They were gone, both of them. I had lost the recordings of my interview with Pierce.