I give him my statement, and then ask about the woman perched on a bar stool. She’s in tight jeans which show off the curves of her legs, and a loose black top, which has slipped down, exposing a creamy, freckled shoulder. A glass of water stands untouched by her elbow. She shifts in her seat and pulls the top back up, as if she can feel our eyes on her.

‘Bit shaken up, but okay. Knows the guy apparently, had trouble with him before. Sounds stalker-like if you ask me, but she says she’s not pressing charges.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Sabine Wester.’

I look across at her. It’s easy to see why I thought she was Tanya, even if it was only for a brief moment. It’s been over a year, but from the sting of it you’d think it was yesterday, and clearly the mere thought of Tanya is another trigger of mine.

‘I’ll talk to her,’ I say.

He snaps his pocket book closed. ‘Knock yourself out.’

She turns to look at me as I slide onto the stool next to her. Blue eyes, not green, I find myself thinking.

‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Thanks.’

Her voice is smoky going on hoarse, probably an after-effect of the screaming and the hand clamped across her throat. She gives a little cough, reaches for the glass and takes a sip.

‘You’re welcome.’ The wound in my arm throbs like someone’s just turned the pain dial right up. ‘You know the guy?’

Sabine winces and looks away. Her top slips over her shoulder again. She pulls it back up. ‘Sadly I do,’ she says, turning back to look right at me. ‘What you might call one of life’s mistakes.’

‘Let me guess, he doesn’t see it that way?’

‘Something like that.’

She picks up a beer mat. On it a grinning white squid wraps its tentacles round a glass of foaming dark beer. She turns it over and over, hitting it against the bar and sliding her fingers down before flipping it and starting again. Bruises are already starting to form on her neck. By tomorrow they’re going to be very visible.

And I’ve seen all this before. Enough times to know how it usually ends. The muted trumpet breathes its last. The piece segues into a more upbeat sax number.

‘You need to press charges, stop him doing it again.’

She’s still working the beer mat. ‘He showed up outside my flat the other day so I called the police. You know what they said?’

I can probably guess. Truth is we, they, only have limited powers until a crime has actually been committed. Unless there was a restraining order and the man had breached it, there’d be little they could do.