Michelle wagged a finger. ‘Oh, you’re very good.’ She reached into the drawer to take out the bottle and add a last splash of vodka to the mug. ‘I would have liked to have been your friend, DI Dawson. You have this way about you. I see you and I think everything’s going to work out fine.’

DC Power scraped his pen across his notebook but it had run out of ink, and Michelle offered a biro from a drawer.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome.’ Michelle winked at Sasha. ‘You’re very lucky to be able to work with this handsome man, I can tell you. All I ever got to look at all day was Mr Wishy-Washy, Alan Manning.’

‘Tell me about Lydia,’ prompted Sasha.

Tears bulged in Michelle’s eyes. ‘I didn’t mean for it to happen, I honestly didn’t. Lydia was freaking out, she was being so mean to Karin, and I couldn’t stand it any more, so I got this idea to cheer her up, help her relax. I thought I’d get her some smack, or whatever they call it. Just a little bit, just as a one-off.’

‘But Lydia had been clean for some time, you know that.’

‘Yes, I suppose she had.’ Michelle eyed Sasha guiltily. ‘But I thought that just this once wouldn’t hurt, not if it… helped her calm down. So I found this young man, a dealer, he was on her own estate actually, and bought the stuff and went to her flat.’ She lifted her arms. ‘I went to cheer her up, I swear, but we got into this silly argument. Lydia could be… intolerable. She started making all kinds of accusations about Karin, that she was responsible for Becky’s death, that she had locked her in that cellar… and I just got so cross. There was a bit of pushing and shoving, it was nothing really, but you know what she was like, as light as a feather, and I must have pushed her harder than I thought. She stumbled on her tatty carpet and hit her head on the wall.