‘I need you to run a check on someone called Danni-Jo Nichols, female,’ I tell Harding. I give her the address and tell her to get back to me as soon as she can.

‘She’s not answering the door, Gov… she’s not in.’ Delaney looks at me.

‘We’ll come back later,’ I say. We need to talk to Danni-Jo, urgently. I’m inclined to kick her door in and worry about the consequences later, but I can’t afford a mistake at this point.

Simon Johns tells me his story with a mix of acute embarrassment coupled with an intuitive nag that something is definitely amiss. He needs to get it off his chest. Danni-Jo, he tells me, is a real looker. So the fact she had showed an interest, a sexual interest no less, in a middle-aged, aesthetically challenged no-mark like him naturally set off some alarm bells. He doesn’t say this of course, because he doesn’t need to. Poor bloke has faced enough humiliation and upset. He’s cringing as he tells me what happened, and I can see he’s inwardly berating himself for being stupid enough to have allowed his ego – and dick – to fall for what was quite clearly one of the oldest ploys in the book.

He tells me he woke up some hours later from what felt like the deepest sleep of his life, ‘almost like a coma’ as he puts it. And his penis is hanging out of his trousers, exposed. He says there was a porn film playing on repeat on his screen, but he has no recollection of owning it or ever having seen it before. He feels the need to express most vehemently that he isn’t into schoolgirls and never has been, except for when he was a schoolboy himself. I nod. I believe him. He says he can’t remember too much – what time of the day it was even, but that it was dark when he came round. He didn’t know how long he’d been out for, or much about what had happened before, only that the girl from apartment six, the fit one, had come to see him to ask about CCTV footage. Something about her brother and missing items… he can’t quite remember and I watch him struggle with frustration as he attempts to recall more details. They must’ve eaten pizza because when he woke up there was a half-eaten pepperoni in a box on his desk and a pack of Budweiser, two of which were empty. He assumes he drank them, or they drank one each. Simon tells me he knows it’s stupid and that most men would’ve counted their lucky stars that a girl like that wanted to, well, you know, but he doesn’t know what took place and he feels violated and used, like he’s been set up, which tells me he’s a fairly normal person with normal reactions. He explains that there was nothing missing from the room when he woke up, aside from Danni-Jo of course. But the CCTV footage had all been wiped. I ask him what was on it, if he can remember seeing anything unusual, anything different, or if this Danni-Jo’s ‘brother’ could be spotted on the footage? He shakes his head. He can’t remember.

‘I feel like such a twat,’ Simon says, ‘like this bitch has really taken the piss, tried to set me up, make me look like some kind of nonce or something…’

I nod sympathetically. It could’ve been worse I think: she might’ve slit your wrists. But I don’t say that.

My phone rings and I hold a finger up to Simon to excuse myself. He stops talking, but not pacing or running his fingers through his thinning hair.

It’s Harding.

‘There is no Danni-Jo, Gov, it’s a bogus ID, another one. The apartment actually belongs to someone called Rebecca Harper. She’s thirty-one years old, from London, no previous…’

I rub my temples and tell Harding to hold on while I ask Simon if he would recognise this woman, this femme fatale who allegedly drugged and violated him. He nods without hesitation and tell me he knows exactly what the bitch looks like and that, in fact, he’s got her on CCTV. I tell Harding to get some photo identification of this Miss Harper and that I’ll be back at the nick soon before hanging up.

‘Can you look back through the footage, past footage, and see if you can get her up on screen?’

Simon nods. ‘Yeah, she’s in and out all the time you know… although I haven’t seen her all week.’ He looks at me sheepishly. ‘I’ve got a confession to make,’ he says and I brace myself as I nod encouragingly.

‘Okay—’

‘There was no couple complaining about any smell. The apartment below is vacant, has been for about six months… I went up to her apartment, Danni-Jo’s. I wanted to speak to her, have it out with her I suppose. I mean, she could’ve got me sacked, my reputation would’ve been in ruins if someone had found me like that. I was mad, you know… freaked out. But when I got up to the top floor… well, that’s when I noticed the smell. Fuck me,’ he pulls a face, ‘it was awful, the closer I got—’

‘It’s okay,’ I tell him.

‘I knocked on Danni-Jo’s door, rung the bell, even called out her name and said who it was, but there was no answer. It was silent, so I assumed she wasn’t in, guessed she was working or something. She told me she worked funny hours, was a student or something… can’t remember what she told me she was studying.’ He’s looking down at his cheap shoes. ‘Anyway, I put the smell down to the cat—’

‘The cat?’

‘Yeah, the dead lady’s… Karen’s cat. She wasn’t supposed to have one. You’re not allowed pets in the building. It’s an upmarket place, you know. But I knew she had one and turned a blind eye. Sort of felt sorry for the woman somehow. She always seemed a poor old soul, downtrodden, even though she lived in luxury… I thought maybe she’d not changed the litter or something and that was the reason for the hum.’

‘Some hum,’ I reply.

‘I knocked on Karen’s door and no one answered so I went back the next day, and the next until the stench really started kicking up and then… well, that’s when I sensed, when I knew, that something was really wrong. Danni-Jo hadn’t answered her door for ages and neither had Karen. Then some estate agent guy came round with some Japanese dude and he said something about the smell on the way out, asking me to get it sorted immediately or else he would complain to the management company. And so I went up there again, you know, with the spare key. She – Karen – had locked herself out of her apartment not so long ago and had to call the emergency locksmiths. I had a spare key she’d given me. So I go up there… and by the time I reach the second landing the smell is pretty fucking bad, like I’m gagging and everything and—’

‘Do you have a key to Danni-Jo’s apartment?’

Simon shakes his head.

‘The estate agent with the Japanese student, do you know which company he was from?’

He rubs his head, thinking hard. ‘He left a card, a business card.’

My phone rings. It’s Harding again.

‘Boss, something of interest’s come up…’

‘Go on.’

‘There’s a log on the system – seems like our victim reported a crime a couple of weeks back—’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah, apparently she claims… claimed, someone had killed her cat… reckoned it was the ex-husband.’

I ask Harding if they’ve located the ex and she says they’re bringing him in now.

‘What happened to the cat?’ I ask.

She pauses for a second. ‘According to the incident log, it was poisoned.’