I’ve already read everything that was leaked to the papers – strangled, necklace missing, blunt force trauma to the back of the head, and damage to her wrist believed to have been caused by some sort of restraint – but Stan seems to think of himself as having the inside scoop. Maybe he knows something the papers don’t and the Murderino in me is curious. Also, this seems like solid neutral ground. And Stan is the sort of person who needs to feel clever – so why not just give him what he needs?

‘She worked as a secretary in a law firm,’ he starts and then his eyes flicker and he grins. ‘She looked a bit like you, actually.’

‘Yes, you said,’ I quip back. ‘So what happened?’

‘One night she left work and never returned. There was no sign of foul play so the police didn’t follow it up. Everyone in France has the right to disappear, you know,’ he says with a scoff, using his fingers to air-quote ‘right to disappear’.

And he’s right. I read that exact term in one of the articles about Matilde Beaumont, and googled it immediately. It spoke to some deep part of my imagination that, on a whim, you could leave everyone and everything and start anew without consequence. A few clicked hyperlinks later, I’d learned that, yes, it was true: in France, the police won’t search for you unless there are clear signs of foul play or you’re a minor. Which means that approximately one thousand unidentified bodies are found in France each year, compared with around sixty-six in Britain, which has a similar population. Most of the time the DNA from those bodies isn’t recorded either.

Now, I know I’ve listened to a lot of true crime podcasts so my worldview might be skewed but all I thought when I read that was: what a perfect place to be a murderer.

‘They’re just fucking lazy,’ Stan continues. ‘It took finding her body for them to jump to attention. It always does. But nothing changes.’

‘No CCTV footage?’ I ask, like I don’t already know the answer.

He shakes his head and I swear to god there’s a flash of pain behind his eyes. A glint of humanity. And for a brief second I think maybe, just maybe, I’ve misjudged him. He clearly cares about female safety. But then he speaks.

‘Look, if the police haven’t solved it, I doubt you’re going to.’ His eyes narrow. ‘Did you even study journalism?’

And, just like that, I’m back to hating him.

‘Yes,’ I say just a millisecond too quickly. It comes out defensive. Fake. Shit.

He noticed. He smells weakness. ‘So where were you working before this, Harper Brown?’

Even the way he says my name is patronising.

‘I was freelance.’

He exhales loudly as if to say: for fuck’s sake.

‘So, what, you had a blog?’ He scoffs. ‘Journalism was a noble profession back when I was starting out. It was all about truth. That’s the problem with your generation – everyone wants a short cut. But there’s no short cut to excellence. The only way to become truly great at this job is to do whatever it takes.’