We left them in there for half an hour while we – me, Stephanopoulos and Seawoll – discussed interview strategy. ‘Go in there and be your usual charming self,’ said Stephanopoulos.

‘We want the dad to stay nice and smug,’ said Seawoll.

So I made a point of carrying in a stack of papers and faffing with them for a bit before introducing myself and shaking their hands.

I was beginning to think that there must be a factory somewhere stamping out dangerously skinny white girls with good deportment and a nervous disposition. Albertina Pryce had long blonde hair framing a narrow face with a pointed chin. She wore a pink sweat shirt that was too big for her and skinny blue jeans. Her handshake was limp and I could feel the small bones in her hand under my fingers.

Mr Pryce was surprisingly short, but broad-shouldered. He had the same fair hair as his daughter but with a square, blunt face. He wore a well-tailored suit jacket over a crisply ironed white shirt but no tie, and his top two buttons were undone to reveal a centimetre of greying chest hair. When he stood to shake my hand I saw he was wearing pre-faded jeans. His shake was firm but the skin of his hand was soft. I knew from my notes that he was sixty-three, but he looked as if he were desperately clinging to fifty with both hands.

‘Grant, eh?’ he said as we settled. ‘Dad from the Caribbean, yes?’

He waited impatiently while I gave his daughter the caution plus two, and interrupted me before I had a chance to ask my first question.

‘Can’t we just get on with this?’ he asked.

‘I’m sorry sir. Legally we have to do these things,’ I said.

Albertina glanced nervously at my pile of papers and then off to the left – away from her father – as he gave me a sympathetic nod.

‘Bureaucracy,’ he said sagely.

‘Sir,’ I said, because Stephanopoulos wanted me to encourage him but not too much.

‘I know it’s hard, Peter,’ she’d said. ‘But if you could contain your erudition and ready wit for just a little while we’d be most grateful.’

‘Am I allowed to be cheeky?’ I’d asked.

‘No you’re fucking not,’ said Seawoll.

‘I’m afraid it has to be done, sir,’ I said to Albert Pryce.

‘Does it? Or do we just think it does?’ he asked. ‘Did you join the police to do paperwork? Of course you didn’t.’

I made a show of straightening my papers and looked at Albertina, who was resolutely staring at the point on the table where her phone would have been if we hadn’t asked her to leave it in her bag.

‘Would you say you were Christina’s best friend?’ I asked.

‘Maybe,’ she said.

‘Oh, come on,’ said her father, ‘you practically lived in each other’s pockets.’