‘No problem, if you don’t want to answer,’ said Strike. ‘You’re under no obligation here.’

‘I ain’t got nothing to hide, it’s just fucking personal stuff, innit? We split up,’ he shouted, ‘because of drugs, and her family and her friends putting down poison about me, and because she didn’t trust nobody because of the fucking press, all right? Because of all the pressure.’

And Duffield made his hands into trembling claws and pressed them, like earphones, over his ears, making a compressing movement.

‘Pressure, fucking pressure, that’s why we split up.’

‘You were taking a lot of drugs at the time, were you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And Lula didn’t like it?’

‘Well, people round her were telling her she didn’t like it, you know?’

‘Like who?’

‘Like her family, like fucking Guy Somé. That little pansy twat.’

‘When you say that she didn’t trust anybody because of the press, what do you mean by that?’

‘Fuck, innit obvious? Don’t you know all this, from your old man?’

‘I know jack shit about my father,’ said Strike coolly.

‘Well, they were tapping her fucking phone, man, and that gives you a weird fucking feeling; haven’t you got any imagination? She started getting paranoid about people selling stuff on her. Trying to work out what she’d said on the phone, and what she hadn’t, and who mighta given stuff to the papers and that. It fucked with her head.’

‘Was she accusing you of selling stories?’

‘No,’ snapped Duffield, and then, just as vehemently, ‘Yeah, sometimes. How did they know we were coming here, how did they know I said that to you, yadda yadda yadda… I said to her, it’s all part and fucking parcel of fame, innit, but she thought she could have her cake and eat it.’

‘But you didn’t ever sell stories about her to the press?’

He heard Ciara’s hissing intake of breath.

‘No I fucking didn’t,’ said Duffield quietly, holding Strike’s gaze without blinking. ‘No I fucking did not. All right?’

‘And you split up for how long?’

‘Two months, give or take.’

‘But you got back together, what, a week before she died?’

‘Yeah. At Mo Innes’s party.’

‘And you had this commitment ceremony forty-eight hours later? At Carbury’s house in the Cotswolds?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And who knew that was going to happen?’

‘It was a spontaneous thing. I bought the bangles and we just did it. It was beautiful, man.’

‘It really was,’ echoed Ciara sadly.

‘So, for the press to have found out so quickly, someone who was there must have told them?’

‘Yeah, I s’pose so.’

‘Because your phones weren’t being tapped then, were they? You’d changed your numbers.’

‘I don’t fucking know if they were being tapped. Ask the shits at the rags who do it.’

‘Did she talk to you at all about trying to trace her father?’