Baggage reclaim, customs and immigration were swift and painless. The two women emerged into the main concourse, Lindsay apprehensive, Sandra relieved. Straight ahead, Meredith bent one arm at the elbow in a half-hearted wave. The forlorn gesture knocked Lindsay on her heels with its pathos. Then she surged forward, leaving Sandra to take charge of the abandoned luggage trolley, and swept Meredith into her arms.

For a long minute, the two women rocked each other back and forth wordlessly. For Lindsay, who knew the pain of losing a lover to death, it was as if Meredith’s agony was seeping into her by osmosis, taking her back to a place she thought she’d left far behind. All Meredith was aware of was the comfort of a familiar face, a familiar shape in her grasp.

It was Meredith who pulled back first. “You’ll never know how much this means,” she said, her voice cracking.

“Couldn’t just abandon you,” Lindsay said. As soon as the words were spoken, she knew they were the truth. There had never really been any chance of Sandra Bloom coming back empty-handed. “I’m so sorry,” she added.

Meredith nodded, biting her lip, clearly battling tears. Lindsay put her arm around her and they moved away from the incoming passengers and their meeters and greeters. Out of the corner of her eye, she was aware of Sandra Bloom conferring with a woman in a dark trouser suit, a mac thrown with stylish lack of care over her shoulders. Where Lindsay and Meredith moved, they followed.

Lindsay steered Meredith into a chair in a quiet corner away from the crowds. “Okay?” she asked anxiously, watching Meredith blow her already red nose and dab at puffy eyes with a crumpled tissue.

The woman in the suit stepped forward. “I’m Geri Cusack,” she said, the soft blur of an Irish accent still evident enough almost to swallow the vowel on the end of her first name. “Meredith’s solicitor.”

More sexily slurred vowels, Lindsay couldn’t help noticing. She’d also taken in the straight shoulders and the gentler curves below, the reddish hair and hazel eyes set in a face shaped like a Pre-Raphaelite maiden. The features, though, were far too strong to appeal to any painter whose idea of womanhood fell on the submissive side of the fence. Geri Cusack, Lindsay decided, was not a woman to mess with. Wherever Meredith had found her, it hadn’t been first pick in the Yellow Pages. “It was good of you to bring Meredith to meet me,” she said. “We’ll manage now.”

“I don’t think you appreciate the gravity . . .” Sandra Bloom started. Geri Cusack raised her hand in a warning gesture and the detective’s words trailed off.

“Sandra, would you wait with Meredith a minute? Me and Ms. Gordon need to have a word.”

Lindsay, half in love with the lawyer’s voice, followed her meekly for a few yards. “I meant it,” she said. “We’ll manage now.”

“That’s fine. I understand you need to ask her things it would be as well I didn’t know the answers to. That’s the way it goes in difficult cases like these. I don’t have a problem with it. I just wanted to fill you in on where we’re up to. Saturday evening, she was arrested and taken in for questioning. They were concentrating on establishing that she knew about the murder method in the book, and on where she was at the time they think Penny was killed. She doesn’t have anything approaching an alibi. But they’ve got nothing on her except the thinnest of circumstantial evidence so they’ve released her on police bail.”