The first flat has no problems. The tenants have looked after it well, kept it tidy and clean and well-aired. Everything matches the inventory as it should. The mum stands in the doorway of the kitchen, watching me as I walk round, a baby balanced on her hip, a toddler busy crayoning at the table in the kitchen. There are family photos stuck up all over their fridge, her husband making up the group of four.

Family Is The Dearest Thing.

But where were Ms Jones’s family? Where were her friends?

The frightened part of my mind wants to shut it all out, but with each flat I visit, questions seem to breed, multiplying in the tissue of my brain. I try to tell myself, the police aren’t even sure yet if it’s her. You’re assuming that body on the couch was your tenant, but you don’t know that. Maybe someone was squatting there, maybe Ms Jones is elsewhere, totally fine.

The next flat I visit is messy, lived in. There’s a family with five children, toys everywhere. My mind flashes back and forth: these living spaces, full of life and movement, and the grim emptiness of Ms Jones’s apartment. Lifeless, frozen in time, a mausoleum. Something happened there, but what, but what? The scene lies wrapped in cobwebs, abandoned months ago with no one ever knowing. Now her home is cordoned off for forensics, a crime scene, where any kind of horror might have happened.

In the final flat live a couple – modern, young. There are rows of books on the shelves and artsy prints on the walls, the same as you’d see in a hundred London flats. And Ms Jones’s flat too, under the dust, seemed so ordinary. Those cups I saw, hanging in her kitchen – this couple here have exactly the same ones.

And there were plates on the table and glasses and wine for her guests …

And I so want to believe that the body wasn’t hers.

The visits eat into my lunch break but I don’t have much of an appetite anyway, and really I’d rather just get on. I head straight back to the office and when I get there and check my phone, there is a message for me. The police officer I spoke to just yesterday wants to see me again. She’s arriving three minutes from now and I hardly have time to take off my coat and scarf before she is knocking at the office door. Emma is out, meaning Abayomi must have buzzed her up.