They lead me through the streets back towards the heart of the city, as sunrise slowly continues to peel the layers of darkness away. When we park, me tucking in behind their dark sedan, I’m looking up at what could be Orwell’s Ministry of Love. A Tetris block of a building, too banal to be considered ‘architectural’ but the word ‘brutalist’ leaps to my mind. Ten storeys of concrete, featureless but for the evenly spaced small square windows, sitting in their own recesses.

‘This way,’ the younger one says when I climb out of the car. He leads, and the other one, Rata, walks beside me. Everything about this situation feels off. They’ve got control. Giving me the feeling that it would hurt more to defy their commands than it would to simply acquiesce. These two are well versed. They wield silence like a blowtorch, they know how to get people to do and say what they want. Or maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe it’s me, my own guilt gnawing at my subconscious. Maybe I’m afraid they’ll be able to unpick the thread and my secrets will all tumble out.

He stops, opens the door for me. ‘Come on through.’

I don’t acknowledge the gesture, I just stride past. Cain said the media are like vampires, but I feel that way about these two: never invite them into your house, never accept a gift from them or do them a favour.

‘Kia ora, Tabitha,’ Rata says as we pass a plate-glassed booth.

The uniformed woman glances up. ‘Morning, Detective.’

A buzzing sound and a door opens.

He leads me through corridors of unblemished beige walls. This is not the police station we had visited to give our statements. This is something else. We reach what feels like the heart of the ground level, a small interview room. If you’ve been in one, you’ve been in them all: a table mounted to the wall, a voice recorder and camera in the corner. I remember the first time I came to a place like this. Grandpa was with me because I was too young to go alone. We both had to give statements about that night, when Mum had turned up at the lake house, drunk again.

‘She’s coming with me. She’s my bloody daughter.’

‘She’s not getting in that car. We’re her guardians, not you. You can come back and visit her when you’re sober.’

The argument growing, Mum rushing at him, a skinny thing with her hands raised like claws, grabbing at her own father.