‘You’re welcome to try, as long as you’re picking up the tab.’

‘That seems fair.’

‘I just hope they don’t cut up your credit card when the bill comes.’

Pelham turned towards his old friend. ‘What do you see in her, James? I’m serious – there must be something.’

‘Not something,’ Fraser said, taking his wife’s hand in his and giving it a squeeze. ‘Everything …’

Pelham raised his champagne glass again. ‘Then here’s to those of us lucky enough to have everything.’

But when he went to drink, he found he was already down to the dregs.

Siobhan Clarke made the call from the comfort of her sofa. Laura Smith picked up after too many rings.

‘You’re busy,’ Clarke guessed.

‘I’m actually in the bath with a Maggie O’Farrell novel. That’s why I thought twice about answering. But then I decided you wouldn’t be phoning at this hour unless you’ve got something for me.’

‘Which you, though?’

‘To be honest, I’m not fussed. Either will do.’

Smith was the Scotsman newspaper’s crime correspondent, but as newsrooms had shrunk, so she had been given additional remits, which hadn’t stopped her considering other options in the freelance world. She had been well placed – in terms of contacts and experience – to start an Edinburgh blog. It had been slow to gain traction, but she had persevered, and now she could boast at least some income from advertising revenue. The Courant had been an eighteenth-century newspaper, which was why she’d chosen that name for her site. She’d also decided on anonymity, which left her free to publish stories a cautious editor might have spiked.

‘I was talking to Stephanie Pelham earlier,’ Clarke said. ‘She was telling me how grateful she was for the blogger who outed her sleazeball husband.’

She thought back to when she’d first realised that a couple of details from a Courant story could only have come from a conversation she’d had off the record with Laura Smith over drinks in a wine bar. ‘Don’t worry, Batman,’ she’d told Smith, ‘your secret’s safe with me …’

‘I was hoping,’ Smith said now, ‘that you were going to tell me who’s behind this string of attacks – acid and arson and now bullets. That can’t end well.’

‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

‘What about the Haggard case, then? You’ll have noticed I’ve been steering clear of it.’

‘I’m sure the victim would thank you for not naming names.’

‘You have to admit, though, there’s plenty of justification to do just that. This is a serving police officer abusing his wife. The public has a right to know.’

‘Come the trial, they will, but she needs all the help she can get right now.’

‘Why? Has something happened?’

Clarke closed her eyes. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I just meant in general.’