Leticia was totally stressed out by the time she walked into Staines police station. Anton and Leroy had a friendship going back to childhood. He was a big guy, charming but intimidating, and she had never trusted him. When Anton had set up his restaurant he’d admitted he’d borrowed some money from Leroy. Leticia really wanted Anton to succeed but there was some kind of taint about Leroy and some of the unsavoury characters he hung around with. She had brought it up with Anton, who had become quite defensive. Her fear was that Anton’s loyalty to his childhood friend was stronger than his connection to her.

Now, she really didn’t know what to do for the best. The same two uniformed police officers that Anton had mentioned, PCs Cottesloe and Wickens, were there. They offered her coffee, which was vile, and took her into a rather pleasant interview room, all pot plants and fabric settees, which sounded quite different from the dark basement in which Anton said he’d been questioned.

‘Ms Mountjoy,’ Cottesloe began. ‘Thank you for making time to help us try to get to the bottom of what happened to this unfortunate man in his last few hours.’

‘No problem, happy to help,’ she said. This wasn’t at all what Anton had described happening to him.

‘I understand you are the girlfriend of Mr Anton St Jeanne?’ Cottesloe asked.

‘Yes.’

‘May I ask for how long you two have been going out together?’

‘About eighteen months.’

The two policemen went through the arrival and departure times of the car, which Leticia knew only hazily, and then asked her whether she had heard a splash just before two a.m.

‘I can honestly say that I didn’t. The music was quite loud.’

‘What was playing, do you remember?’ Wickens asked.

She hadn’t expected this. ‘I couldn’t tell you, to be honest. It wasn’t my kind of thing.’ It was a lie, but a harmless one surely. She just couldn’t be sure what if anything Anton had been asked about this.

‘Where were you sitting, Ms Mountjoy?’

‘In the front seat, next to my boyfriend.’ A small lie, but surely not important. She had been sitting in the back, behind the driver’s seat.

Cottesloe was reading a handwritten document in front of him and looked up. ‘Had you met the Chinese man in the back seat before?’

Her look of bafflement must have been obvious. She had no idea what Anton must have said. After what seemed an age she said, ‘There was no Chinese man in the back seat.’

‘You don’t seem very sure,’ Cottesloe said.

‘It’s a pretty simple question, wouldn’t you say, Jim?’ Wickens asked, earning a nod from Cottesloe. The cops both stared at her, looking down at the papers in front of them and up at her. ‘No one in the back seat,’ Wickens began to write.