“The facts are that DDI Colthorne owed Thaddeus Knight a fortune and lied about it when he investigated the man’s murder. That when Gerald Marks found evidence to that effect and told DDI Colthorne about it, he mysteriously died, and that DDI Colthorne didn’t mention any of that to the investigating officer,” Joel said. “Those are the facts. Not my facts, just facts, because I’m only the messenger here. Frankly, you can leave me out of all this and I’ll be happy.”

“You don’t want press?”

“Well, if the story says Handsome, Talented Graphologist Offers Reasonable Rates...” Joel said, and got a reluctant grin. “No, I don’t want press, because this isn’t about me, it’s about three dead men. And DDI Colthorne, of course. I hope some of your mates are asking him questions too?”

“We’re pursuing the story,” the journalist said, a little defensively.

“Someone else gets to talk to Colthorne while you’re stuck trying to make two paragraphs out of me? Did you piss off your editor?”

The journalist glowered. “About your conviction—”

“You’re swimming against the tide, mate.” Joel could feel sweat springing round his neck, but he was digging his heels in now. “You don’t want to be the one repeating Colthorne’s lines of defence when everyone else is exposing his wrongdoing. Some people are going to look pretty stupid for believing him.” He paused, inspiration striking. “Actually, I could name you one.”

“Who’s that?”

“Someone a lot more interesting than me,” Joel said, making very direct eye contact. “It depends if you’d rather write scandal about a graphologist nobody’s heard of, or a Bright Young Person who’s made a complete tit of himself.”

The journalist weighed that up, and grinned. “Go on.”

***

THE NEXT DAY ALL THE papers ran the story on the front pages. The Daily Mail had managed to reach Sammy Beech’s family by telegraph; The Times had dug up some old friends of Thaddeus Knight; the Mirror had an immensely frank interview with Marks’s landlady.

The Express had the Paul Napier-Fox story as an exclusive. The journalist had gone straight to him and extracted a full admission that Colthorne had dictated the threatening letter. Paul tried to claim he’d gone along with it because Joel had unfairly maligned his integrity, but the journalist had also contacted Barbara Wilson, who did a gleeful job of eviscerating his character and morals. That would teach the swine to bully Aaron as a child.

The news had also had the effect of putting Joel’s profession in the public eye, and the letters begging for appointments started coming by the second post. Joel refrained from replying quite yet. The last thing he wanted was to be accused of profiteering from murder. He did, however, open them all just in case Aaron had written.