Thank God Drew’s not here. Thank God.

‘Why? Why would a shooter of best friends kill a dying old woman with no friends? Why? There’s no reason. It wouldn’t happen. I don’t believe you.’

Fiona believes it. That’s why she was crying.

Waterhouse pulls a notebook and pen out of his jacket pocket. ‘I need to ask you some questions.’

‘I suppose, on the upside, it’s one in the eye for cancer,’ I say. ‘Right? Poisonous substance one, cancer nil on this occasion. Ha!’

‘Before you arrived, we spoke to Marion’s oncologist,’ Gibbs says. ‘He explained how Marion would have died, if her disease had taken its natural course. She’d have slept more and more, with her breathing becoming increasingly shallow until she stopped waking up, stopped breathing altogether. But the nurses report her having a substantial wakeful interval shortly before she died.’

‘That’s true.’

‘They were all surprised she went so fast, but they didn’t question it because … well, she was dying. They expected her to die, and she did. Until we asked if there was any chance she could have been killed by something or someone other than her illness, no one thought of it.’

‘They weren’t suspicious when they found a creepy book in her deathbed, with the words “Death devours all lovely things” inside it?’

‘No.’ The way Waterhouse says it makes me suspect he asked somebody the same question in the same incredulous tone. ‘People behave strangely when their loved ones are dying. The nurse who found it assumed that either you or your brother left the book there, or else it was a sort of … present, tribute, whatever, from someone else. A token. Normally she’d have passed it on to the relatives but she was afraid you’d find it upsetting so she pinned it on the noticeboard instead. Kim, I want you to think hard: while you and your brother were here, in the last few days before Marion died, did you see anyone go into her room who wasn’t a member of hospital staff, or who might not have been?’

‘No. That doesn’t mean they didn’t. They could have, easily.’

‘The nurses told us that either you or Drew was with Marion the whole time.’

‘Drew was with her, sitting next to her bed, nearly the whole time – apart from when he nipped to the loo or down to the food court to get food and coffee. And once or twice he fell asleep in the chair next to Marion’s bed, he told me. I’ve no idea how long for. And obviously at night he slept on the camp bed the nurses put in the room for him. I suppose someone could have gone in while he was asleep.’

‘What about you?’ Waterhouse asks. ‘While Drew was taking a bathroom break or eating, weren’t you here?’

‘I was here in the ward, but not in the room with Marion. The day she died and the day before – Monday and Tuesday – I didn’t go into her room at all.’