‘She goes right up to him, yelling and screaming, like she’s trying to rile up a dog. Finally she pushes him and slaps him hard across the face and – God, it was dark, and we’re drunk – all I know is, I thought Mary thought Archie was gonna grab the gun off my hip, so she lunges for it, and Archie’s scared by the movement, and Mary Anne’s on top of him, and Roxy’s not actually runnin’ away, she’s getting closer, and someone pulls the trigger.’

‘Someone?’ I ask.

‘One of ’em.’ He spits this, like those words were inevitable, required to exist at this time and this moment and he had to force them out.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Archie says it’s him. An accident. I don’t know,’ he says finally. ‘I don’t know.’

‘How don’t you know?’

‘At one point he had a pistol in his hand … there was a tussle, and I couldn’t see anything, I was trying to get him off her, and then there’s a shot. Pierces the night like the end of the world. All I know is it hit Roxy, not Archie. Cos he scrambles up, shaking, convulsing, practically, and he looks me in the eye and says, “We gotta get out of here.”’

‘So then what?’ Silence. My heart thuds so powerfully I’m sure I’m feeling the vibrations of it in my skull.

Booker doesn’t speak.

I’m putting it together when it occurs to me. I’m not sure I can even say the words. They’re too despicable. They’re too cowardly. ‘Then what, Booker?’

‘There was so much blood,’ he says, barely choking out the words. ‘At least, it seemed like there was, but it was dark.’

‘You left her there,’ I breathe.

‘Mona, understand –’

‘You left her there? How could you?’ I say it again, because I can’t fathom it, the cowardice, the selfishness. ‘How could you?’

‘Archie was my friend and I didn’t understand how this could’ve happened. I was looking right at it – at her – and I didn’t know. I remember Roxy lying there, all crumpled up all wrong –’

‘You’re a cop. You had a duty to –’

‘I was a boy before I was a cop. Barely older than you. I’d barely broken up bar fights – this is a quiet town, kid. And to a twenty-year-old boy from a quiet town, God, any blood like that is a lot of blood.’

‘So what happened? You left her there, then –’

‘It was Mary’s idea to chuck the guitar into the sea.’

‘Then Frank found it on Sunday.’