“Enough to make you come out of the hall to talk to me, evidently,” Lindsay said. “Look, Andy. Jed’s told me the whole story. How you met, what happened last night, and the bits in between. Conference Chronicle’s chosen you as suspect of the day. I don’t know what if anything you’ve told the police, but sooner or later, they’re going to be kicking your door in and shining the spotlight in your bonny blue eyes.”

“You’re fu’ o’ shite,” Andy said disgustedly. But his eyes had grown wary, and his body had unconsciously shifted into “fight or flight” mode, balanced on the balls of his feet, hands bunched loosely at his sides, shoulders slightly hunched forward.

“Am I? Please yourself, then. But Jed’s too scared to do the sensible thing, which is to persuade you to go to the cops with him, now, before they come to you. You need to get in first, and tell them what you were really up to when somebody shoved Union Jack through my window. Face it, Andy, chances are they might just believe you, and the pair of you can walk away and nobody else will have to know the truth. Whereas, if they do take you in and you try to pull your nuts out of the fire with what looks like a pretty crap alibi, the whole world and its dog will know within the hour, the way the tabloids have got the cop shop staked out. And if there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to lose you any credibility you’ve got in this union, it isn’t that you’re gay. It’s that you’re a liar who was scared to tell people you’re gay.”

His eyebrows dropped into a heavy frown. “You’re no’ real, you,” he growled.

“I’m real, all right. Don’t forget, Andy, I’ve been in the frame for this too. And I can’t go home till the police have cleared all this mess up. It would be hellish easy for me to tell them that now I’ve had time to think, I remember Andy Spence being on the scene before anyone else. Almost as if he’d been waiting for something to happen.”

“Jesus Christ, that is all I need. Painted into a corner by the fucking gay activists. Come out or we’ll fit you up for murder.” He shook his head, looking strangely vulnerable in his baffled anger.

“I always knew you printers were past masters at twisting the truth, but that takes the biscuit. Don’t you understand? I’m trying to help you, not threaten you. I’m trying to show you what could happen, not what I’m going to make happen,” Lindsay was almost shouting in her exasperation.