“Well,” Lindsay grumbled. “I’ve never done Maol Chean Dearg. And now I probably never will.”

“Maybe we could have a trip up there when the taxpayers pay for us to come back and testify against Danny King.”

Lindsay brightened up at the thought. It was the least she felt they deserved after the long hours—in her case, excruciatingly painful hours—of police interviews and making statements. After all that, King still hadn’t been charged with Penny’s murder. As a holding measure, they’d kept him in on attempted murder against Lindsay, conspiracy to murder and illegal possession of firearms. It was fortunate that the police had arrived when they did, alerted by a supermarket security guard who’d heard gunshots, still a rare enough occurrence in London to bring the police within minutes. Any later and King’s sidekicks would have got in to destroy the evidence.

Lindsay had hit it off with the officer in charge of the murder inquiry, who had instinctively recognized a kindred pig-headed spirit. Privately, she had told them that they were never going to have more than a purely circumstantial case against King on Penny’s murder and that it was up to the Crown Prosecution Service to decide whether they should go for it.

“Spineless tossers,” she’d confided over a cup of tea in the police canteen. “I’ve tried to argue that the attempt on you only makes sense if you allow the previous murder, but they want more. They always bloody want more. Even against a toerag like Danny King. Trouble is, you put a toerag in an Armani suit and he looks like the frigging lawyers. It’s the same as hostages starting to identify with their kidnappers. Suddenly all the briefs forget they’re supposed to be on the side of the scruffy coppers and they come out in sympathy with the scrote in the suit.”

She’d sounded a lot more cheerful a few days later when she’d tracked them down by phone at Lindsay’s parents’ house. “Your friend’s neighbor. I think you met him? A Mr. Knight?”

Lindsay cleared her throat. “Might have done,” she said cautiously.