Maybe being stuck in here’s thrown my timing off a little, because an hour or so later – I’d decided to leave it a bit longer, in case Femi and the rest were keeping an eye out – when I snuck out of my bedroom again, things had moved a lot faster than I’d reckoned on. The most irritating thing was that I’d missed them taking Kevin’s body away and that’s not because I’m ghoulish or anything, but because that’s a moment that counts for something as a copper. Should do, anyway. It’s about paying the proper respect, besides which, as someone who’d cared about the victim – and I’d already decided that’s what Kevin was – I had no way of knowing when or if any of us would get the chance to say a proper goodbye.

I’d wanted to be there when they carried that body bag out.

By now, the forensic bods were busy doing their thing, coming and going with toolkits and evidence bags, decked out in their plastic bodysuits and bootees, same as the detectives. It was easy to tell who was who though, because, as usual, the detectives were mostly standing around and nattering, looking uneasy, waiting for the CSIs to finish. I’d found a spot just inside the doorway of the dining room where I knew I couldn’t be seen directly by anyone in the nurses’ station and I watched one of the CSIs on their way out. I guessed all the emergency vehicles were parked outside the main entrance. I watched him – I think it was a him – signal to the nurses’ station, then wait at the airlock for one of the staff to open up. A minute later, Malaika – one of the healthcare assistants – came running towards him brandishing the keys.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘No rush,’ the CSI said.

Not for poor bloody Kevin, at any rate.

For the half a minute or so the CSI was standing inside the airlock waiting to be let out the other side, it was like something out of a science-fiction film. I imagined he was an astronaut about to step into the blackness of space or on to the platform of an orbiting station, and not just that grim brown lobby and the stinky lift down to the car park. I remember thinking it would be fun to tell people that, wondering who would get the biggest kick out of it. I could probably convince Shaun that I had seen an astronaut, of course.

I was also wondering exactly what that CSI was carrying away in his Styrofoam evidence box; what they’d found in Kevin’s bedroom. A weapon, maybe? Was there a lot of blood? Debbie had certainly screamed like she’d stumbled across something horrific, and, trust me, it takes a lot to give a mental-health nurse the heebie-jeebies.