As she drove slowly through the twisting narrow corridors of Wapping, she remembered the one and only time she had been here before. It had been a Saturday night, so cold her breath had puffed in clouds before her. She’d been on foot, one of hundreds of journalists and print workers who had come to demonstrate against the mass sackings of their colleagues by Rupert Murdoch’s News International to make way for cheap new technology and the de-skilling of their craft. They’d come to protest but had ended up fleeing through the streets, driven ahead of mounted police gung-ho as Cossacks and with as much concern for those they pursued. The clatter of hoofs, the swish of police batons through the air, the screams of terror and the plumes of steamy breath from the horses’ nostrils were still lodged in Lindsay’s brain, erupting occasionally as nightmares. Somewhere in the mêlée, Lindsay had become separated from her lover, Cordelia. They hadn’t found each other until they’d both arrived home in the middle of the night. Terrified of losing each other in a more permanent way, they’d never gone back on that particular picket line.

Cruising that same patch in broad daylight was a different experience, even though the sun failed to penetrate as far as the pavement in quite a few streets. There was nothing threatening on this warm summer afternoon. Lindsay sighed. It was hard to imagine she was going to get instant access to the skeletons in Stella’s cupboard by driving round Wapping in the sun. About to give up, Lindsay made one last turn into a street that was more of an alley, curving like a scimitar and dead-ending by the ornamental canal. Tucked in a vanway between warehouses was the green Punto.

Lindsay felt a mixture of irritation and satisfaction. If she’d lost Stella, she could have gone back to Helen empty-handed but virtuous. Now she was nailed to her tail for another sticky journey, more likely than not. She turned her car round and backed into a space right at the end of the cul-de-sac. It was on double yellows, but she couldn’t imagine a traffic warden coming all the way down there on the off chance in heat like this.