‘On the surface, Drew was keen to welcome me to the Hopwood family,’ I tell Waterhouse. ‘He’d just lost his mum. As a bloke who doesn’t like to be short-changed, he knew he was down to the tune of one close relative and he was happy to be able to fill that gap. Marion and Trevor went along with the “Of course you’re one of us” routine – probably to please Drew – but there was a silent, non-negotiable condition attached to all of this: nobody was allowed to mention the backstory.’

‘You mean—’

‘Everything I’ve just told you: my adoption, Drew’s planned adoption, Marion not being able to go through with it, Elaine hating her and Trevor as a result, my miserable childhood with the Tribbecks. We all had to pretend nothing out of the ordinary had happened, that Drew and I were equal members of the family who’d never been treated at all differently … I went along with it at first, but it soon started to rankle. I didn’t have the guts to walk away, so I rebelled covertly, hinting whenever I could at the traumatic experience I’d had that my brother hadn’t. That’s what really set them against me: I was a troublemaker, determined to rake up horrible things from the past. I didn’t want to be like that but the enforced silence got too much for me. Marion never apologised, or acknowledged any aspect of what happened to me. Instead, she behaved as if I’d chosen to go on a very long holiday, then reappeared with the sole intention of putting a dampener on everyone else’s happiness.’

‘I have to ask, because I know you could have; you had plenty of opportunity … Did you kill Marion?’

‘No. Cancer and Billy Dead Mates did, between them.’

‘Did you know, or know of, any of the four other victims: Linzi Birrell, Rhian Douglas, Angela—’

‘I know the names. No. Never heard of any of them until they were in the paper after they were killed.’

Waterhouse pulls a small lined piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and hands it to me. ‘These are the dates they were killed. I’ll need to know what you were doing on the afternoons of those days.’

‘For most of them I was probably being driven from one gig to another. Look up Kim Tribbeck autumn tour 2014 – you can also talk to my driver, Dmitri Pescov. I’ll give you his number.’

I reach for one of the pens on the shelf above my head, write Dmitri’s number on the back of the lined paper and pass it back to Waterhouse.

‘Thanks. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe you killed anyone.’

‘I’m more worried about being killed, to be honest,’ I say. Worried. Still not scared. It seems too unreal, all of it. And confusing. An hour before Waterhouse arrived, a uniformed police officer was sitting where he’s sitting now, scraping the inside of my mouth with a wooden stick to get a DNA sample.