Simultaneous ‘shit’s exploded into the air and Paul dropped to his knees in a mad scramble to rescue the cup before too much spilled on to the carpet. Thank God, the lid had stayed on. He grabbed the offending container and plonked it back on to the desk beside me. ‘There’s gratitude for you. A simple “no thanks” would have sufficed.’

‘God, Paul, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. Shit.’ My mind groped at the mental images running through my head. Replays of Rose-Marie’s body in the Leith, the photos I’d been poring over, the scene that had just played out in this room. ‘He knew her, that’s how he … he must have, oh my God … he did it.’

Paul, still on his knees, placed his hands on mine and said, ‘Slow down, Sam. What? Who?’ The transient look of anger on his face was replaced by confusion.

‘The killer. That’s how he could have got the tie around her wrists with no struggle.’ I thrust my hands out towards him again, palms uppermost, cupped side by side, like they had been, obediently waiting for my surprise.

Paul looked from my face, to my hands and back to my face again, and the sight of him on his knees before me, hands resting on my legs, eyes burning into mine, brought another awful realisation.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ I uttered in a whisper. He leaned forward, even closer. ‘It was a proposal, I bet it was a proposal. She wouldn’t have had a chance. She was with someone she trusted, someone she loved. We’d all said she probably knew him, but she knew him, Paul. He would have asked her to close her eyes, just like you did, hold out her hands and she would have, holding her hands together, expecting a gift, a ring, anything – not betrayal, not death.’

My brain tried to comprehend what Rose-Marie would have gone through, her emotions leaping from exquisite joy to utter terror in one mind-blowing moment, and my heart couldn’t cope. I shook my head to try and ward off the tears, but they came all the same.

‘That bastard, that utter, utter bastard,’ I said, voice hoarse.

‘Bloody hell.’ Paul’s voice echoed my disbelief. ‘The boyfriend. He’s had everyone fooled all along with his grief-stricken act.’

Something else clicked into place as another mental image vied for attention. ‘No, not that boyfriend. There was someone else.’ I stood up from the chair and reached over to grab one of the photographs I’d been studying. ‘Check this out.’ By now, Paul was back on his feet and beside me. ‘Look at her personal belongings.’ I pointed to a tell-tale sheet of tablets.

‘Oral contraceptives, which you’d expect, since she had the boyfriend.’