“I know,” was all Lindsay could manage. They held on to each other until the urgent spluttering of the coffee pot forced them apart. Then, sitting with Meredith in the stuffy gloom of the flat, Lindsay reviewed what she had done in the previous couple of days. “I’ve hit a dead end,” Lindsay confessed finally. “I really don’t have any idea what to pursue.”

Meredith nodded sadly. “I guess it was a long shot, bringing you over here. But don’t think I don’t appreciate it. There is one other thing you could do for me, though,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

“Sure, if I can.”

“Leave me a copy of Heart of Glass. I think it would be good for me to see the last thing she was working on. I also need to decide if it’s possible for another person to finish what she’d started.”

Lindsay rooted in her backpack and came up with the floppy disks on which she’d made back-up copies of the files Sophie had e-mailed to her. “There you go,” she said, passing them across. “I’ve not got the final draft yet, but I should have it some time this evening. Are you on-line here?”

Meredith gestured with her thumb towards a repro Regency table where a laptop sat incongruously. “Sure. Did you want to e-mail it to me? You’ve got my address, yeah?”

“Soon as I’ve got it, I’ll shunt it on to you.”

“Who knows?” Meredith said wistfully. “There might be something there that’ll give us a clue. Maybe even point you in a fresh direction.”

Lindsay shrugged. “I wouldn’t hold out too much hope. But if there is anything there, you can rest assured I’ll be on to it like a rat up a drain.” She finished her coffee and got to her feet. “I’ve got to go now, Meredith. I’ve got a bit of business to sort out for Helen. But I’ll be in touch.”

Out in the sunshine again, Lindsay sought out the shade of the plane trees that lined the street. She could escape the merciless heat, but there was no escaping the overwhelming guilt she felt at her failure to exonerate Meredith. She’d blown any attempt to place the blame for Penny’s death at someone else’s door; she hadn’t even managed to come up with any concrete evidence that would clear her friend. And her ridiculous antics with Derek Knight meant she didn’t dare to return to Islington to question the neighbors on the off chance that someone had seen something that would cast doubt on the police’s seeming conviction that in Meredith they had found the killer.