‘Yeah, well, I suppose. Why would she lie? That’s what I thought, anyway. So I gave her my mobile number and we talked a few times, when she could hook up with her friend Rochelle. She had it all figured out, so the press wouldn’t find out. Suited me. I didn’t want my mother upset.’

Agyeman had pulled out a packet of Lambert and Butler cigarettes and was turning the box nervously in his fingers. They would have been bought cheap, Strike thought, with a small pang of remembrance, at the NAAFI.

‘So she phones me up the day before it – it happened,’ Jonah continued, ‘and she was begging me to come over. I’d already told her I couldn’t meet her that leave. Man, the situation was doing my head in. My sister the supermodel. Mum was worried about me leaving for Helmand. I couldn’t spring it on her, that Dad had had another kid. Not then. So I told Lula I couldn’t see her.

‘She begged me to meet her before I left. She sounded upset. I said maybe I could get out later, you know, after Mum was in bed. I’d tell her I was going out for a quick drink with a mate or something. She told me to come really late, like at half one.

‘So,’ said Jonah, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably, ‘I went. I was on the corner of her road… and I saw it happen.’

He wiped his hand across his mouth.

‘I ran. I just ran. I didn’t know what the hell to think. I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t want to have to explain anything to anyone. I knew she’d had mental problems, and I remembered how upset she’d been on the phone, and I thought, did she lure me here to see her jump?

‘I couldn’t sleep. I was glad to leave, to tell you the truth. To get away from all the fucking news coverage.’

The pub buzzed around them, crowded with lunchtime customers.

‘I think the reason she wanted to meet you so badly was because of what her mother had just told her,’ Strike said. ‘Lady Bristow had taken a lot of Valium. I’m guessing she wanted to make the girl feel too bad to leave her, so she told Lula what Tony had said about John all those years before: that he pushed his younger brother Charlie into that quarry, and killed him.