"No," said Maureen, emphatically, defensive at the implied slight on Douglas's honor. "Never."

"Well," he said, a petulant edge to his voice, "your mother said you have received psychiatric treatment in the past."

"Urn, yeah," said Maureen, uncomfortably. She knew he was launching straight into the psychiatric questions to disarm her and it was working. Most people with no experience of mental illness don't see it as part of a continuum, it's them and us, the nutters and the whole people. "I was in the Northern for five months in nineteen ninety-six," she said, "and I've seen a psychiatrist. Not for anything special, really, just in case."

McEwan wouldn't speak or break eye contact. He was much better at it than Inness. Maureen focused on the bridge of his nose.

"In case what?" asked McEwan finally.

"I had a breakdown. That's why I was in the Northern. The psychiatrist was just a follow-up thing, in case it happened again. Not that it's likely… just in case… you know."

"No, I don't know," said McEwan unpleasantly. "What were you being treated for?"

Maureen looked at them. Something McMummb seemed impressionable, probably just out of training. He watched McEwan intently, his face reacting to Maureen's answers as if he were conducting the interview himself, glancing at McEwan every so often, desperate for some sign of approval. And McEwan sat there between them, his hands clasped together, his face smug and confident, a fight looking for a venue. Fuck him, she thought, if he's so fucking smart he can find out for himself. "Depression," she said. It wasn't a lie, exactly, it was more of a half-truth, and holding information back from him made her feel empowered and confident, as if it was still her life even if McEwan was legally entitled to rake through it. She put her hands on the table, playing with an old bus ticket she had found in the pocket of Jim Maliano's jogging trousers.

"And who is your current psychiatrist?"

"I don't have one," she said, enjoying the sense of control.

McMummb looked surprised.

"Your mother said you had a psychiatrist," said McEwan.

"My mother drinks too much too often. She's in tune with the moon a lot of the time."

A hint of a smile floated across McEwan's face. "How would you know if you were having a breakdown?"

"I'm not having one, if that's what you meant. When depressives have a breakdown it's pretty obvious. We can't function or get ourselves out of the house. If I was having a breakdown you'd be able to tell."

McEwan looked at McMummb, who must have done a two-day course in psychology. He nodded his confirmation and McEwan turned back to her. McMummb sat back and blushed with delight at McEwan's deference.

"So," said McEwan, oblivious to his protégé's glee, "you said Douglas worked at the Rainbow Clinic?"

"Yes."

"And you've never been there?"

"I went a couple of times to meet him but never as a patient."

She had been to the Rainbow to see Angus, Douglas's colleague, for two sessions before being referred on to Louisa at the Albert but she knew the lie would hold up. When she first came out of the Northern they had referred her to an arse of a psychiatrist at a small clinic in the Great Western Road. He sat across a desk from her, looking unhappy and bored as he asked her leading questions about the most painful events in her life. He took the pause-and-prompt technique too far, refusing to accept that it wouldn't work with Maureen. They spent most of their sessions staring at each other in a gloomy, adversarial silence. Maureen began to phone other clinics, looking for someone else.

She found the Rainbow's number in the Yellow Pages. The clinic ran an outreach scheme for victims of sexual abuse and they let the patients use an assumed name if they wanted to. Maureen had called herself Helen and no one but Douglas knew her real name. The only way Joe McEwan could find out she had been to the Rainbow was from Louisa Wishart at the Albert.

Maureen got talking to Shirley, the receptionist at the Rainbow, the first time she went there, and Shirley introduced Douglas to her when he came into the waiting room to check his appointment times. Maureen didn't give it a second thought. She was four months out of hospital and was afraid she was losing it again. Her mind was full of other stuff. After her last session with Angus Farrell she was standing at a bus stop across the road from the clinic when Douglas stopped his car and offered her a lift back to town. She was upset, stuck in the middle of nowhere with an hour to wait for the next bus. They got talking in the car and went for a drink. She topped herself up with triples while he was in the toilet. She woke up at ten past four in the morning, her face in a puddle of hot moonlight, just in time to see Douglas struggling into his trousers at the end of her bed.

"Now," said McEwan, reaching down to a brown cardboard file box at the side of his chair and lifting a clear polyethylene bag onto the table. "Is this yours?"

The yellow plastic cagoul was folded neatly inside the open-ended bag. Most of the blood had been washed off but the white drawstring on the hood was stained an uneven pink. A long number was typed onto an envelope address label and stuck on the corner of the bag. McEwan muttered something into the tape recorder.

She didn't want to touch it-she didn't even want to touch the bag. She took her hands off the table, resting them on her lap. "Not mine," she said.

McEwan sensed her discomfort. He pushed the bag across the table to her with his fingertips. "Sure?"

"Certain," she said.

"Have you ever seen it before this morning?"

"No."

He put the cagoul back into the box at his side, pulled out a smaller bag and dropped it on the table. Four strands of bloody rope were tucked inside. "Any idea where these came from?"

Maureen looked at them. The rope was made of a shimmering nylon material and was stained pink like the drawstring on the cagoul. It was far too thick to come from the clothes pulley in the kitchen. She thought her way through the flat. "No," she said finally, "I can't think where they might have come from. Are they from the house?"

"It's not a trick question," said McEwan. "We want to know if you can identify them before we start tracing them. Have you ever seen them before?"

"No."

He put the bag away and pulled out another one. "Are these your slippers?"

Maureen looked at the bag. Her slippers were tagged and sealed inside. She turned the bag over. The soles still showed traces of dried blood. "Yeah, they're my slippers, but I don't see how they could be covered in blood. I left them in the cupboard, I haven't worn them for days."

"But they are your slippers?"

"Yeah, they're mine."

McEwan dropped the bag back in the box and fitted a cardboard lid on it. She put Benny's packet of cigarettes on the table, took one out and lit it.

McEwan watched resentfully as she inhaled. "I want to ask you again," he said. "Did you go into the living room when you saw the body?"

"No. I definitely didn't go in there."

"Did you go into the hall cupboard?"

McMummb looked excitedly from Maureen to McEwan and back again. The question was clearly significant.

"No. I didn't go in there either."

"Okay," he said slowly, and jotted something in his notebook, stabbing a full stop at the end of the sentence. "Right, next thing, do you have any idea where Douglas's key to your house might be?"

She thought for a moment. "He had it, I dunno, wasn't it in his pocket?"

"No. Was he in the habit of putting it down somewhere in the house when he came in, say, on the hall table, somewhere like that?"

"No, he kept his keys in his pocket. Are you sure it wasn't on him?"