‘Big fucking deal,’ said Somé, with easy contempt. ‘My proper stuff goes for upwards of three grand a coat. I slap the logo on shell suits and they sell like crazy, so it’d be silly not to.’

‘Yeah, I was going to ask you about that,’ said Strike. ‘Your – ready-to-wear line, is it?’

Somé looked amused.

‘That’s right. That’s the stuff that isn’t made-to-measure, see? You buy it straight off the rack.’

‘Right. How widely is that stuff sold?’

‘It’s everywhere. When were you last in a clothes shop?’ asked Somé, his wicked bulging eyes roving over Strike’s dark blue jacket. ‘What is that, anyway, your demob suit?’

‘When you say “everywhere”…’

‘Smart department stores, boutiques, online,’ rattled off Somé. ‘Why?’

‘One of two men caught on CCTV running away from Lula’s area that night was wearing a jacket with your logo on it.’

Somé twitched his head very slightly, a gesture of repudiation and irritation.

‘Him and a million other people.’

‘Didn’t you see—?’

‘I didn’t look at any of that shit,’ said Somé fiercely. ‘All the – all the coverage. I didn’t want to read about it, I didn’t want to think about it. I told them to keep it away from me,’ he said, gesturing towards the stairs and his staff. ‘All I knew was that she was dead and Duffield was behaving like someone with something to hide. That’s all I knew. That was enough.’

‘OK. Still on the subject of clothes, in the last picture of Lula, the one where she was walking into the building, she seemed to be wearing a dress and a coat…’

‘Yeah, she was wearing Maribelle and Faye,’ said Somé. ‘The dress was called Maribelle—’

‘Yeah, got it,’ said Strike. ‘But when she died, she was wearing something different.’

This seemed to surprise Somé.

‘Was she?’

‘Yeah. In the police pictures of the body—’

But Somé threw up his arm in an involuntary gesture of refutation, of self-protection, then got to his feet, breathing hard, and walked to the photograph wall, where Lula stared out of several pictures, smiling, wistful or serene. When the designer turned to face Strike again, the strange bulging eyes were wet.

‘Fucking hell,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘Don’t talk about her like that. “The body.” Fucking hell. You’re a cold-blooded bastard, aren’t you? No fucking wonder old Jonny’s not keen on you.’

‘I wasn’t trying to upset you,’ said Strike calmly. ‘I only want to know whether you can think of any reason she’d have changed her clothes when she got home. When she fell, she was wearing trousers and a sequinned top.’

‘How the fuck should I know why she changed?’ asked Somé, wildly. ‘Maybe she was cold. Maybe she was— This is fucking ridiculous. How could I know that?’