As we neared the school gates Scout fell into step with another little girl. The girl’s mother turned away to talk to another mother and I waited at the gates with Stan and soothed him as he whimpered to see Scout leave. We waited in case she turned round to wave but she was with her friend now and she had forgotten all about us.

Before she disappeared into her own world I reflected that her school uniform was too big and it would be too big for a long time.

Mrs Murphy was right. There was almost nothing of my daughter.

There was almost nothing of her, and she was my everything.

Hugo Buck’s home was in a portered apartment overlooking Regent’s Park.

The porter must have been on his tea break when I got there because the double glass doors were locked. I stood outside, leaning on the bell and watching the dogs in the park. They were all off lead. Big, good-looking dogs, Labradors and Retrievers and Airedales, and some small fry, Beagles and Westies, all of them panting and confident as they sniffed piles of leaves and each other, coming back when their owner called. I could not imagine a time when Stan would come when I called.

‘Detective?’

A young woman and man in their twenties were walking towards me. I had clocked the pair of them when I was parking, taken them for a couple of local rich kids. A pair of good-looking scruffs, carefully unkempt, passing a single cigarette between them as they sat on a low wall by the manicured gardens. Only the children of the wealthy can afford to be that laid back at that age.

On the driveway there was a chauffeur lounging in a big black Merc, squeezed in tight between a couple of Porsche 911s, and he eyed up the girl as he played with his peaked cap. I saw now the young guy had a camera slung around his neck. Press, then, I thought. It was the girl who did the talking.

‘You’re here to speak to Mrs Buck? Is she a suspect? Do you expect to make an arrest soon?’

I pressed my thumb on the buzzer and left it there.

‘Is this a hate crime, detective?’

I looked at her.

‘Every murder is a hate crime,’ I said. ‘Who did you say you write for?’

‘I didn’t,’ she said.

She dug a card out of her bag, and when she gave it to me I saw that there was a tiny digital voice recorder in her other hand. A red light was shining. Scarlet Bush, I read. The Daily Post. Then her mobile phone number, email address and four or five social network accounts. That seemed like a lot to me.

‘Scarlet Bush,’ she laughed. ‘Sounds like a porn star, right?’