I flicked my fag-end away and watched Banksy nodding like he was thinking about it. Course, he was actually trying to decide the best way to tell me what he really thought, but I didn’t know that at the time, did I? Right then, I was still buzzing because I’d broken the case wide open, sitting there like a twat waiting for him to tell me how we should work it.

‘I still don’t quite get this business with Kevin’s boyfriend.’

‘Shaun,’ I said. ‘I’ve said his name like a hundred times.’

‘Yeah, with Shaun.’

I told him again what had happened that night in the TV room when Shaun had gone up the pole, what had been said to him and how he’d been ever since.

‘So, she knew that’s what would happen, did she?’

I nodded, remembering her exact words. Stone cold . . .

‘She knew he wouldn’t be able to speak afterwards?’

‘That’s her job, isn’t it?’ I chose not to tell him what Malaika had said to me on Saturday. All that bull about an attempt to ‘shock’ Shaun out of his mania and Dr Bakshi allegedly saying it had been something worth trying. I didn’t bother telling him because it was blindingly obvious that Malaika had been every bit as alarmed by what had happened in the TV room as me. That she only said what she did afterwards because the nurses look after one another and she was trying to stick up for her colleague. As a copper I’d done similar things myself and so had Banksy.

So it wasn’t relevant.

I said, ‘Look, Shaun had been trying to tell me everything that night. He was desperate to let me know it was one of the staff . . . right? That was what set him off, because he was terrified. Because he knew what the woman who’d killed Kevin was capable of.’ I didn’t want to talk to Tim like he was daft or wet behind the ears, but I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t getting it. ‘She needed to shut him up.’

‘Yeah, I hear what you’re saying,’ he said.

We watched a well-dressed, middle-aged couple walking hand in hand towards the entrance. Lucy’s parents. I waved and Lucy’s father conjured a frosty smile.

‘I tell you something else,’ I said. ‘The woman who killed Shaun also sexually assaulted me.’

‘What?’

‘When I first came in.’

Banksy looked properly confused. ‘Why are you only telling me this now?’

‘I just want you to know the kind of person we’re dealing with.’

‘What did she do?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Fair enough, but you know . . . make a complaint, Al. I mean that’s something we can arrest her for.’

I shook my head.

He sighed and sat back. Muttered, ‘Fucking hell . . .’