He drew out the file on the murder, looking over the report on her belongings. Nothing unusual, but then they hadn’t bothered with an extensive inventory, given the circumstances of death. The apartment hadn’t appeared ransacked. He could go back there and hunt around, but wouldn’t a murderer have done the same?

If it was murder. The lab report leaned heavily toward accident.

If someone intended on killing her—if someone really wanted to do her in—why wait for several days after the others?

Maybe they didn’t know about her until then.

Gorrie went back through his notes to make sure that Christine Gibbon hadn’t given the name during their initial interview. It didn’t appear there—but DC Andrews had conducted the actual interview, and he had not as yet typed his notes for the file.

A week late at least. Nessa would not have been so tardy, even as one of the unwashed.

Gorrie picked up the phone and called the young detective constable at home. Andrews’s wife answered, giving a timid hello.

“Hello, Marge,” Gorrie told her. “I just need a word with your husband. I won’t keep him, I promise.”

“Inspector Gorrie, how are you,” she said loudly, undoubtedly intending her husband nearby to hear and decide whether he wanted to be bothered or not. Their two-year-old cried in the background.

“A quick question’s all,” promised Gorrie again.

“Here, Inspector,” she said as the babe’s cry crescendoed.

Andrews came on the phone with his husky voice. “Inspector?”

“When you spoke to Christine Gibbon, did she mention any of Mackay’s alleged girlfriends?”

“You mean the Duff tart?”

Gorrie didn’t answer.

“She may have,” said Andrews. “Timing blurs a bit.”

“Can you check your notes?”

“Haven’t got ’em, sir,” said Andrews, turning from the phone a moment as the baby continued to cry. “Can you shush ’em?” he asked his wife.

“Never mind, Andrews.”

“That’s it, sir?”

“Good night.”

Gorrie dialed Gibbon’s number, but got only her answering machine; he left a message asking her to call back. Finally he opened another of the files on his desk and fished out the news items on the case. Christine Gibbon had given more interviews after the murder than a movie star promoting a new film. He glanced through the stories, but none included Ms. Duff’s name, only hints that there was “another woman.”

One story declared that the interview had taken place in the “historic taproom of Brown Glen Hall, where the interviewee is a well-regarded raconteur.”

The phone on his desk rang. He picked it up, thinking it was Gibbon returning his call.

Instead, it was a man who identified himself as Phil Hernandez, an executive with UpLink International.

“What precisely is that?” Gorrie asked the man, who had an American accent.