‘Take your time,’ she says. ‘Read it through and let me know if there’s anything we need to change or add or correct.’

It’s my statement. My own words stare up at me. It’s not a confession, I tell myself. You made a mistake but now you are doing your best to help. The words are blurry though. There’s a declaration too, printed all across the top. It says I’ll be liable for prosecution if I state anything that isn’t true, and suddenly I find myself thinking, could I actually have gone in there and forgotten? Could I have done something and hardly remembered, hardly realized? Like before? Like back then?

She’s holding a pen out to me. I remember lifting my foot, the click of the phone camera.

‘But …’ I say, ‘I’m not in trouble, am I?’

She looks back at me with a strange, expectant expression. ‘No …?’ There’s a beat of silence then, as though she’s giving me room to say something else.

I tell myself I’m being silly, panicking over nothing. I know myself, don’t I? Surely I know the things that I’ve done. I pull myself together and take the pen she offers. I sign, my hand nice and steady. Easy. Done.

‘By the way,’ she says as I hand her back the pen. ‘We were able to check Ms Jones’s bank statements. Turns out you were right about the direct debits and the money running out.’

‘Really? I was?’ I don’t know whether to feel sad or relieved, whether that makes things better for Ms Jones or worse. I suppose right now I’m just glad the officer knows I haven’t lied.

PC Delliers nods. ‘So at least we’ve cleared that up. Now, just one more thing. Do you have details of this tenant’s next of kin? We’ll need to contact them, as soon as we’ve ID …’

Of course. We have next-of-kin details here for all our tenants. Ms Jones’s file is on my desk. It is a thin file, just the basic forms and nothing more, but it’s as neat as any file I keep, even though its corners are a little crumpled now, crushed from that day when we opened up her flat. I flip through the sheets to the relevant page, her email address catching my eye as I do.

‘Here.’ I turn the document around so that we can both see it. In the next-of-kin space, Ms Jones has written a name, Peter Duggan, and a phone number with a London code. Her brother? Her father, despite the different surname?

The officer makes a note. ‘Thanks. If it’s her, we’ll make contact. A relative, someone who knew her. Hopefully they’ll be able to shed light on what the hell has happened here. Whether there was anyone else involved.’