As she passed the reception desk, Lauren glanced up. Seeing who it was, she leaned forward and said, “You got a minute?”

Lindsay stopped. “Of course.”

“That was really cool, earlier, when you dived in like that with Baz.”

“No sweat. She’s obviously got a lot on her mind.”

A sly smile spread across Lauren’s face. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“You going to tell me?”

“Might do. You a private eye?”

“Sort of.”

“That means you get expenses, right?”

Lindsay snorted with laughter. “You watch too much telly.” Lauren looked disappointed. Lindsay relented. “I can probably run to a few quid.”

“Okay, you know Riverside Studios?”

Lindsay dredged her memory. “Other side of the Hammersmith gyratory?”

“That’s right. None of this lot can be bothered to walk that far at lunchtime. I’ll see you in the café there about quarter to one. Okay?”

“You’re not taking the piss?”

Lauren repeated her sly smile. “Believe me, you won’t be wasting your time or your money.”

Before Lindsay could say any more, the phone rang. As she left, she could hear Lauren saying, “You want to leave a message for Paddy Brown? Yes . . .”

With the best part of two hours to kill, Lindsay consulted her A-Z, then headed down through the artificially bright shopping mall on the traffic island at the heart of Hammersmith towards the river. She turned right under the bridge, where she found a sudden splash of color against the relentless urban grime. Settling down on a bench in a patch of shade in the lush rose garden, Lindsay took her laptop from her backpack, opened it up and switched it on. With plenty of pauses to contemplate the faded houseboats straggling along the river bank, she typed in all the information she’d gathered so far on Penny Varnavides’ murder.

It didn’t take long.

Lauren was right on time. Lindsay bought them both salads and bottles of mineral water and they settled at a table in a quiet, gloomy corner of the café. Lindsay poked at her salad with a fork. “Pretty bloody dreary,” she muttered. “Amazing how quickly you forget.”

“Forget what?” Lauren asked, shovelling tuna into her mouth like an apprentice bulimic.

“Forget the sorry mess of tired vegetation that passes for salad in this country. When I rule the world, the person who developed iceberg lettuce will be first up against the wall. No wonder when I come home I live off junk food. No shocks that way. It’s the one thing that I actually expect to be as bad as it is.”

“What d’you mean, when you come home? Where else do you go?”

“For some strange reason, I still think of Britain as home, even though I’ve lived in California for the last six years.”

Lauren’s eyes opened wide. “You live in California? Excellent! How did you manage that?”

“My partner got offered a job over there, so it was go with or split up. I was having a pretty shitty time over here, apart from our relationship, so I went with. Got a job, got a doctorate and stayed.”