As I climbed out of the car I had to grab the edge of its roof for support, having seen more of her state. The back of her head looked flattened, as if it had been deflated by emptying out a considerable crimson stain. I felt as if I’d returned not just to the scene of my aunt’s death but to that time as well. This wasn’t why the dead woman looked familiar, but I had to venture closer to be sure that she was indeed Hattie Dennison.

Her swollen eyes stared at the height of the tower until a man who’d just joined the gathering went down on one knee to finger them shut. Her jaw stayed fallen in a silent scream. As I approached I looked away, fixing my attention on faces in the crowd. When several people stared at me I demanded “What happened to her?”

More of the crowd turned to eye me, but everybody appeared to be delegating someone else to respond. Eventually a longhaired scrawny teenager in torn jeans and a singlet did. “Fell,” he said and raised a fist to point a thumb up the tower block.

Surely the gesture couldn’t signify approval, and I was about to enquire further when his companion – an equally undernourished girl whose jeans came to a ragged end an inch above her knees – said “Are you her son or something?”

“No, I’m just,” I said and felt driven to think swiftly, “just a friend.”

“We saw you round at hers before.”

More than one listener stared hard at me, and I thought it wise to say “When?”

“The other week.”

Hoping this had absolved me of suspicion, I said “Did anybody see what happened here?”

“We did,” the girl said. “We were coming home.”

“What did you see?”

“She doesn’t live in our block,” the boy said or complained, “but she went up on our roof.”

“Someone chased her in,” the girl said.

“Don’t know who they were. Didn’t really see them.”

This sounded blunt enough to be designed to end the conversation, until the girl said “She didn’t let them in the lift but they were waiting for her on the roof.”

“No way they were. The other lift’s still fucked.”

“You never believe anything I tell you. I saw them. I said.”

“You were stoned, that’s all. Still are.”

“No more than you are, so you should of seen them too.”

I had to interrupt for fear the argument would deny me any further information. “You keep saying they,” I said. “How many are we talking about?”

They gave me identical unfavourable looks. “One,” the girl said as though it was too obvious for words.

“Don’t know if it was a her or a him.”

“And what do you say happened on the roof?”