“Ten to twelve? As in lunchtime? It can’t be! You mean I slept through Helen greeting the world with Radio Four?”

“I made her leave the radio off,” Sophie shouted from the stairs.

“I have died and gone to heaven,” Lindsay said faintly. Kirsten could only get the radio turned off in the kitchen, but Sophie could still pitch Helen into starting the day without it altogether. If she’d had a suspicious mind, Lindsay would have wondered if there was still unfinished business between them. But six years with someone as dependable as Sophie had restored Lindsay’s fractured trust in human nature. Helen’s radio silence, she felt sure, was more to do with concern for her health than a desire to creep into Sophie’s good books.

While she waited for Sophie to return, Lindsay shifted across the bed so she could see herself in the wardrobe mirror. Her right cheek was a patchwork of purple and blue-black bruising and brownish scabbed grazes, with her stitched scar running like a line of black thread up her jaw from the angle under her ear to a point level with the corner of her mouth. The bruising continued on her shoulder and down her right arm as far as the elbow, which sported an ugly scrape that still looked red and raw. As Sophie came back, Lindsay said, “Really, you have to wonder if I’d have been better off with the baseball bat.”

“Not if you’ve ever worked a shift in casualty, you don’t,” Sophie said drily, depositing a mug of coffee on the bedside table and handing Lindsay two paracetamols and a glass of water. “Believe me, if that bat had connected, you wouldn’t be lying here. You’d still be in the Royal Free. Either that or in a drawer in the mortuary.”

“I don’t think he was trying to kill me,” Lindsay objected. “He gave up too easily. I think it was a warning.”

“So you think Helen’s right? That it was Guy?” Sophie asked.

“Who else? I’ve dead-ended on the murder inquiry, so I’m no threat to Penny’s killer.”

“But does the killer know that?” Sophie mused.

“If the killer is anybody I’ve met over the last few days, then they’ve seen me floundering around making an complete arse of myself,” Lindsay said bitterly, then winced at the effort of swallowing the painkillers. “They’re not going to feel threatened, they’re going to be laughing their socks off. I’ve accused one person whose motive crumbled faster than an Oxo cube and another who had an alibi with thousands of witnesses. Well, hundreds. It was local radio, after all.”

Sophie gave a conciliatory shrug. “Just a thought. So that leaves Guy. Funny, he never seemed like the violent type.”

“People do ridiculous things when they feel threatened.”