‘About a twenty-minute walk. I wanted Cuckoo to move in with me when she said she couldn’t stand her old place any more, but she wouldn’t; she chose that fucking five-star prison instead, just to get away from the press. They drove her into that place. They bear responsibility.’

Strike remembered Deeby Macc: The motherfuckin’ press chased her out that window.

‘She took me to see it. Mayfair, full of rich Russians and Arabs and bastards like Freddie Bestigui. I said to her, sweetie, you can’t live here; marble everywhere, marble isn’t chic in our climate… it’s like living in your own tomb…’

He faltered, then went on:

‘She’d been through this head-fuck for a few months. There’d been a stalker who was hand-delivering letters through her front door at three in the morning; she kept getting woken up by the letter box going. The things he said he wanted to do to her, it scared her. Then she split up with Duffield, and she had the paps round the front of her house all the bloody time. Then she finds out they’re hacking all her calls. And then she had to go and find that bitch of a mother. It was all getting too much. She wanted to be away from it all, to feel secure. I told her to move in with me, but instead she went and bought that fucking mausoleum.

‘She took it because it felt like a fortress with the round-the-clock security. She thought she’d be safe from everyone, that nobody would be able to get at her.

‘But she hated it from the word go. I knew she would. She was cut off from everything she liked. Cuckoo loved colour and noise. She liked being on the street, she liked walking, being free.

‘One of the reasons the police said it wasn’t murder was the open windows. She’d opened them herself; it was only her prints on the handles. But I know why she opened them. She always opened the windows, even when it was freezing cold, because she couldn’t stand the silence. She liked being able to hear London.’

Somé’s voice had lost all its slyness and sarcasm. He cleared his throat and went on:

‘She was trying to connect with something real; we used to talk about it all the time. It was our big thing. That’s what made her get involved with bloody Rochelle. It was a case of “there but for the grace of God”. Cuckoo thought that’s what she’d have been, if she hadn’t been beautiful; if the Bristows hadn’t taken her in as a little plaything for Yvette.’

‘Tell me about this stalker.’

‘Mental case. He thought they were married or something. He was given a restraining order and compulsory psychiatric treatment.’

‘Any idea where he is now?’