‘I don’t know what happened,’ he squeaked again.

‘Well you’ll know soon enough,’ mumbled Clive.

The door was on the latch. I pulled it open. The door fought back, forcing me to use both hands. I planted an elbow against its over-sprung resistance so Clive could follow me in.

‘Try not to touch anything,’ hissed Clive, and I thought about letting the door slam into his thick head.

I floated up the stairs towards the first floor flat, adrenaline numbing my feet to the carpet beneath.

She lay on the landing, on her side, an untamed red mane of hair sprawled almost ceremonially across the carpet. Her moon-white face lay awkwardly on her outstretched arm; her bloodshot blue eyes staring into nothingness. She looked no more than twenty-five, probably younger.

Her sad mouth had cried blood. One trail made it all the way down to her slender white throat. Her flowery summer dress was laddered with stab wounds – still fresh. My head swooned. I leaned back against the wall of the landing, exhaled hard.

Clive bent down and placed a reluctant finger to her porcelain neck.

‘She put up a hell of a fight,’ he said flatly, ‘but she’s dead.’

He backed away apologetically. My eyes fastened upon her limp hand, focusing upon the nail hanging from her little finger which had almost been completely ripped off. Sadness flooded me. My stinging eyes blinked and shifted to the floor next to her: a set of keys, a handbag, her jacket, some post.

‘She must have let her killer in,’ I squeaked, sounding every bit as shocked as I felt.

‘Looks like it,’ said Clive, reassuringly unmoved.

‘Right,’ he added brightly, ‘best get back downstairs. We don’t want to contaminate the crime scene.’

A cold breath chilled the right side of my face. I turned to see a small window on the landing, slightly open. ‘Fuck,’ I said. All this time, I’d been standing between her newly dead body and an open window. Where I came from, this spelt doom. I shivered, then snapped myself out of it. There was work to be done.

I’d never understood officers who said that, in really stressful situations, ‘your training kicks in’. I did now. Clive started questioning Chiselled Ginge and taking notes. His name was Peter Ryan. He was twenty-eight. The dead woman was his wife of thirteen months, Marion, aged twenty-three. She usually got home before six. He and Karen – a colleague from work – got back just after nine and found her like that on the landing. Police officers and forensics were wandering in, so I went outside to find Karen.

In the darkening, humming summer night, Sangora Road flashed blue and red, a grotesque carnival of morbid curiosity. Neighbours who’d never shared a word before chatted intently: lots of ‘apparently’ and ‘oh my God’. The petite, curly-haired brunette I assumed to be Karen was being comforted by a group of middle-aged men. One edgy-looking sleaze ball in a wife-beater vest and school-shooter combats rubbed her upper arm vigorously. He looked like a man who spent his life hunting down any kind of a leg-over whatsoever.

‘Karen?’ I asked. She looked up sharply, surprised by the sound of her own name. ‘PC Donal Lynch. Sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you a few questions.’ Her arm rubber – a Poster Boy for Families Need Fathers – glared at me, ready to back up his potential new squeeze against the filth.

Karen took a long deep breath and nodded. Instead of structured questions, I let her ramble. In a quivering, child-like, barely audible voice, she told me the following: her name was Karen Foster, twenty-five, from Lee in South East London, a colleague of Pete’s at the Pines old people’s home in Lambeth. She told me Pete was the gardener there. She’d given him a lift back to his flat tonight to pick up some heavy pots to take back to the home, where she lived in staff accommodation. They’d got here just after nine. He had unlocked the front door, then the door to their flat and went in first. Pete had stopped suddenly on the stairs and screamed, ‘Marion, Marion!’ He went to her. Karen had followed and saw Marion lying there. She checked for signs of life.

She shivered. Arm Rubber gave me a look that said: ‘C’mon mate, I think she’s had enough’, but I hadn’t. I may have been new to murder, but I understood the value of first-hand, untainted, lawyer-free testimony.

‘Go on,’ I demanded.

‘I got her blood on my hands, so I washed them. Then I had to get out of there.’

A shiver rattled her entire frame.

‘Did Pete definitely unlock both doors?’ I asked. She nodded and bowed her head. Her centre parting wobbled and so did I.

‘Look, Karen, I’m sorry, I have to ask … we need to find whoever did this.’

She sniffed hard at the pavement, and I lamented yet another failure to channel my inner bad cop. I fought the urge to place a comforting hand on her quivering shoulder and walked away.

I joined Clive inside the front door just as three hotshot detectives swaggered in. The senior of the trio wore the hangdog expression of a man put out by life. ‘Detective Superintendent Glenn,’ he barked. Clive unloaded the basic detail while DS Glenn nodded impatiently. As I took up the slack, he fixed me with a scowl. Clearly, I was way too excited for his deadpan taste.

They made what seemed to me a cursory inspection of the crime scene: skirting around it as you might a dead bird on the pavement, or a splatter of puke. Then DS Glenn stomped off outside.

‘Is that it?’ I asked Clive.

‘It’s not Magnum P.I.,’ he laughed, ‘they’ll wait for forensics and statements, then they’ll decide what lines of enquiry to take.’

One of Hangdog Glenn’s bitches stopped by on his way out to treat us to a condescending glare: ‘What time do you go off duty, lads?’

‘We finished almost an hour ago at nine,’ said Clive, all chipper, just so he’d know we didn’t mind the inconvenience one bit.

‘Okay, call Clapham. Get them to send an officer to guard the door overnight and an unmarked car to take the husband and woman in to make a statement.’

‘Right now?’ I asked.

‘Of course right now,’ he spat, ‘and we’ll need statements from you two before you start your shifts tomorrow.’ He scuttled off down the garden steps, his gumshoe mac flapping in the summer breeze. At the gate, he turned. ‘Make sure you get the front door keys off the husband,’ he shouted, not realising that said husband was stood right there.

As Peter fished around for his keys, Clive and I descended the steps towards him. A sickening dread tugged at my guts. What could I possibly say to him now? I thought back to all those funerals in Ireland, how we always spouted the same stock phrases to mourners. ‘Doesn’t he look peaceful?’ was a classic. I mean what did we expect? Signs of a struggle? Fingernail scratch marks down the side of the coffin?

Then I remembered the one cover-all stock phrase, used by everyone when coming face-to-face with the principal mourners: ‘I’m sorry for your trouble.’ That line always seemed so anodyne, so emotionally detached, so generic. My brother Fintan and I used to dream up equivalents. ‘Oh dear,’ was his favourite. I liked: ‘Sure, it could be worse.’

Clive took Peter’s keys and spoke first. ‘Who else has a set?’

‘Just me and … Marion,’ said Peter, his voice cracking at the mention of her name.

‘We’re fetching a car for you and your colleague. I’m afraid we need statements from both of you tonight.’

Peter just stared into space.

‘Where can you go after the police station?’ asked Clive. ‘Have you got family near here?’

Peter shook his pale face mournfully. ‘The only place I can go is to Marion’s mum and dad up in Enfield.’

Clive and I exchanged frowns.

‘Do you think that’s wise, son?’ asked Clive. Peter looked at him blankly.

‘Okay,’ said Clive, ‘first I’ve got to get officers round there to tell them the news.’