‘She was found out here, next to the entrance?’ Hawthorne asked.

Arthur nodded. ‘The police were in the flat all day and much of the evening. They took samples and covered the whole place in fingerprint powder. They asked me a lot of questions – and my daughter too, as if she had anything to do with it. Neither of us were even here! And now, I suppose, you want me to go over it all again.’

‘That would be helpful,’ Hawthorne said. ‘I know it may seem like a waste of time, but when you repeat things, you can often remember details you might have forgotten the first time round. Anyway, I prefer to hear it straight from you, if you don’t mind.’

‘Let’s go into the kitchen. Do you want a coffee?’

‘No, thank you.’ Hawthorne answered for both of us.

We walked down the corridor, passing a half-open door that gave me a glimpse of an untidy room with an unmade bed, clothes everywhere, a Lord of the Rings poster on the wall.

‘That’s Olivia’s room,’ Arthur said. He had noticed me staring in and pulled the door shut.

We went into the kitchen. There was a pine table and a breakfast bar. Between the scattered coffee mugs, the unpaid bills, the theatre programmes, the day’s newspapers still open at the obituary columns and the unwashed plates piled up in the sink, it gave me a pretty good insight into life before and after Harriet Throsby. She hadn’t been gone forty-eight hours and her memories were everywhere. But the mess, I suspected, was Arthur’s. I glanced through the windows at a small, well-tended garden and I wondered how long it would be before it went to seed.

We sat down.

‘Nice place,’ I said, breaking the silence.

‘Do you think so?’ Arthur Throsby didn’t look so sure. ‘Harriet wanted to move. She’d been talking about it for a while, but I suppose I’ll stay here now that she’s—’ He broke off. ‘Where do you want me to start?’

He was exactly the sort of man I’d expected to be married to someone like Harriet. She had been dominating, assertive. He was softly spoken, downtrodden, with thinning hair and a face that was mournful now for good reason but which might have been the same since the day he got married. He hadn’t shaved and the clothes he was wearing looked old and unironed. He made himself a coffee without once looking at his hands, almost robotically. He didn’t want the coffee. It was just something to do.

‘Why don’t you tell us your movements on the morning of your wife’s death?’ Hawthorne suggested.

‘All right.’ He stirred his coffee and brought it over to us. It sat there, steaming gently in front of him. ‘Harriet was still in bed when I got up. That was at seven fifteen. I don’t set the alarm because she didn’t like being disturbed, but I always wake up on the dot. I made myself breakfast and squeezed some fresh orange juice for her to have later. She wouldn’t drink it if it wasn’t fresh. I tiptoed in and left it by the bed, then I set off for work shortly after eight.’