Lindsay looked to Jennifer for guidance. They had already agreed how Lindsay should respond, depending on who asked the question and how. Jennifer nodded twice. Lindsay took a deep breath and went for Plan B. “I didn’t realize it was Laura till afterwards,” she said, aiming as close to bimbo as she could realistically bring herself to try. “After all, I was completely exhausted, and I really wasn’t feeling great. I mean, you’d had me locked up so long I’d gone straight from drunk to sober to hung-over without a proper sleep. I did say to you that I had the vaguest impression of having seen someone. It was only after I’d slept that my head put all the pieces of the jigsaw together. Then, the next day, I saw Laura again, and I smelled her perfume really clearly. That confirmed it for me.” She almost batted her eyelids, but stopped herself in time. Over the top was the wrong place to be right now.

The policeman who hadn’t been trying to get Lindsay’s words down on paper leaned forward belligerently. “So why didn’t you tell us the next day, when you’d had the chance to think it over and sleep on it? You’d still have saved us a lot of time.”

Lindsay tried her best to look vulnerable. If Sophie could see me now, she thought wryly. “I didn’t think you’d believe me,” she said plaintively. “I thought you’d think it was all amazingly convenient, that I was just trying to get myself off the hook. Besides, everyone knows I don’t like Laura, and she’d have just said I was lying out of spite. I thought I’d better get some more evidence before I came to you.”

Her interrogator shook his head in weary disbelief. “Your client better take some acting lessons before this gets to court, Ms. Okido,” he said.

“I hope your budget runs to bringing her back for the trial, Sergeant Timpson,” Jennifer Okido replied with a sweet smile.

He scowled. “Perhaps your client could expand on exactly what she did see?”

Lindsay gave them a version of events that was only very slightly exaggerated, but credible. The two policemen looked slightly skeptical, but finally grudgingly accepted that a glimpse of the back of a head, a dark shape and a pair of legs, coupled with identification of the exclusive scent of Le Must de Cartier was enough to place Laura Craig firmly in the frame.

As she walked back with Jennifer Okido to her car, Lindsay said, “What do you think? Will they charge her?”