I read from my notes. ‘I’m going to kill you. I’m going to hunt you down and fucking kill you.’ I looked at the man. ‘Did you make those threats?’

‘Yes.’

Mrs Wilder came across the room. She had tried to cover the smell of cigarettes with smells that I knew – Jimmy Choo and Juicy Fruit chewing gum.

‘Do you have children?’ she asked me.

‘This is not about me, ma’am.’

‘Why are you scared to tell me the truth?’

‘I have a daughter,’ I said.

‘How old?’

‘She’s five.’

‘She’ll grow up,’ Jean Wilder said. ‘They always do. You can’t imagine it now but she’ll grow up so fast that it will make your head spin. And you should get down on your knees and pray to God that she – your daughter, who I am sure you love like you love nothing else in this world – never has a man like Mahmud Irani and his friends catch her scent. Because what we have been through in this family is worse than hell and it is worse than death and it could happen to anyone with a daughter in this country today. And the people who are meant to protect children? The policemen and the social workers and all the professional do-gooders? They look the other way when children are tortured and raped.’ A breath escaped her mouth, and she shook her head in wonder. ‘They look the other way.’

‘I do appreciate how much you’ve suffered,’ I said. ‘But this is a murder investigation and we are obliged to make enquiries.’

I turned to her husband.

‘Did you have any contact with Mahmud Irani after he was sentenced?’ I said.

But Jean Wilder spoke for him.

‘Barry didn’t do it,’ she said. ‘When was it? He was here. He’s here every night. We all are. The three of us. Where would we go? Why would we want the neighbours and people we don’t even know staring at us – pointing at us – looking at Sofi as if she was less than human. Yes, my husband said those things. Screamed those things at the top of his voice. No doubt he meant it at the time. Because when they were in the dock, they were laughing at us. Those stinking Paki bastards who wrecked our lives.’

‘Please,’ I said.

But she would not let it go.

‘You say you have a daughter,’ she said, as if there was the possibility that I might be lying. ‘What would you say if they treated your daughter like a sex toy and then they laughed at you?’

She was very close to me now. I could smell the unfiltered Camels and the Jimmy Choo and the Juicy Fruit.