Ramsay leaned forward and switched off the machine. “I can honestly tell you there’s a bit of me that would like to toss you into a cell right now for fucking us around the way you have. I can tell you that judges do not like people who get in the way of inquiries. If we charged you now, you’d be facing six months inside, a year if you pulled the wrong judge—and that’s just for not coming forward sooner. I don’t need to tell you there are more serious considerations at stake here. Murder, Ms. Falkner. Murder.”

At that moment I thought suddenly that it would be an immense relief to be arrested and charged, convicted and sent to prison. It would halt my endless, hopeless, undirected need to do something. Clearly I had done the wrong thing. I had lied to so many people. Above all—below all—I had lied to Frances. I had betrayed her trust and now she was dead. If I had stayed at home and grieved, as everybody had told me to, and in the end gone back to my work, this probably wouldn’t have happened and maybe, just maybe, Frances would still be alive. I cared about the crimes I had committed. It was possible that my lies and cowardice had stopped Frances’s murder being solved quickly. Maybe I had destroyed an essential clue. But what seemed even more painful was that Frances had thought of me as her friend, as someone she could trust, and everything she had thought she knew about me was a lie.

“You’re right,” I said. “I deserve to be punished. I’m not going to defend myself.”

“You bet you fucking deserve it,” said Ramsay. “And don’t pull that pathetic act with us because it won’t work. Maybe we will charge you, and not just for behaving like an idiot either. I’ll need to talk to some people about that. We’re going to think about it. In the meantime, you’re going to supply any physical evidence you have. The clothes you were wearing would be a help.”

“I’ve probably washed them.”

“Why was I expecting you to say that?” said Ramsay.

“Were you wearing a jacket or a coat?” said DI Bosworth, speaking for the first time.

“A jacket,” I said. “I haven’t washed that.”

“And shoes?” she continued.

“Yes, and I haven’t washed them.”

“When you return home,” said Ramsay, “an officer will accompany you in order to collect any items that may be relevant to the investigation.”

“So I’m going home?” I said.

“Until we decide differently,” said Ramsay. “But before that, you’re going to give us the mother of all statements.”

“Isn’t that what I’ve done?”

Ramsay shook his head. “You’ve only just started,” he said.