‘What sort of issues?’

‘The usual problems you get in any long marriage,’ she says impatiently. ‘We were both working long hours. We were worried about money, obviously. No one else was involved, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ she adds.

‘We weren’t,’ DCI Hollander says mildly.

His colleague is less circumspect. ‘You’d moved out,’ he says bluntly. ‘You were staying at a hotel near your TV studio. Were you and your husband discussing divorce?’

‘No!’

DS Mehdi pulls something up on his phone, and shows it to her. ‘It seems your husband may have had different ideas.’

It’s a copy of a letter: Lyon Raymond & Lyon, Specialists in Family Law.

‘You didn’t know?’ DS Mehdi says, watching her closely.

‘No,’ she says tightly. ‘I didn’t know.’

A beat falls.

She watches DS Mehdi move restlessly around the living room, picking things up and putting them down. He seems particularly interested in the contents of the bookshelf, turning his head sideways so he can read the books’ spines.

‘When did you last speak to your husband?’ DCI Hollander asks.

‘He phoned me the day the news about Copper Beech broke. We agreed it was better I stayed out of the way: with my public profile, it’d only make things worse if I came home.’

‘Was that the last time you talked to him? Ten days ago?’

‘Yes.’

‘You haven’t had any contact with him since then? No phone calls, no texts, no emails?’

‘No,’ Stacey says awkwardly.

‘Nothing? Was it normal for you not to speak to your husband for long periods of time?’ DCI Hollander asks.

‘I told you, we were working through some issues.’

‘Did he tell you he was going away?’

‘No.’

‘Because the thing is,’ DS Mehdi adds, looking up from the bookshelf, ‘no one seems to have seen him since August twenty-eighth, five days before the news about Copper Beech broke on September second.’

This is a very practised double-act, Stacey realises. Not quite good-cop bad-cop, but a skilled and slick team nonetheless.

‘There were journalists camped outside our house for days,’ she says. ‘I’m sure Felix is just lying low for a bit, until it all blows over.’

‘You think, or you know?’

She hesitates. ‘I just assumed.’

‘So you don’t know where he is?’

‘No.’

‘According to you, you and your husband were working through a few marital issues, but the subject of divorce had never come up,’ DCI Hollander says. ‘You say it wasn’t usual to spend significant time apart, even though you’d recently moved into a hotel. Your husband was plunged into a major crisis at work, such that you had journalists camping outside your house. And he suddenly broke off all contact with you ten days ago, and you didn’t think that was odd?’

His tone is even, calm; he sounds genuinely interested in her answer.