‘We’re conscious, of course, of the fact that Corinna died on the day you moved back to Birmingham after – how many years in London?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘Can you think of a way in which the two things might be connected?’

She made eye contact again, held it steadily. ‘No. I’ve been over and over it. I’ve asked myself everything, even whether it’s Hinton. He’s still AWOL, isn’t he?’

‘I can’t say.’

Can’t or won’t? Thomas’s face was perfectly neutral, of course. Why was she a cop? She’d make a killing at poker.

‘For the sake of argument, then,’ said Robin, ‘let’s say he is. He could be here in Birmingham – nothing to stop him. And he has contacts here anyway, old gangland ties. But how would he know I was here? That wasn’t in the papers. And why would he come at me when I was the one who let him go? None of it makes sense.’

‘Were you ever threatened by anyone you did put away?’

‘Not seriously enough for something like this.’

Patel turned to a fresh page in his notebook.

‘Robin,’ Thomas said, ‘you were – are – obviously very fond of both of them, Corinna and Josh.’

‘Yes.’

‘Has the relationship between you and Mr Legge ever been anything other than platonic, a friendship between—’

Robin surged to her feet. ‘No. No. Absolutely not. Never.’

‘Just so we have it for our records, Ms Lyons,’ said Patel, ‘where were you two nights ago, February thirteenth, between the hours of twelve midnight and two a.m.?’

Chapter Nine

Maggie lived a couple of miles away in Yardley Wood, in the left side of a pair of red-brick semis built in the Eighties, when armies of identikit Barratt and Wimpey Homes had colonized the Midlands. This must have been one of the least successful designs, because Robin had never seen it anywhere else. Despite acres of on-street parking, a double garage had been built into the centre of each pair of houses, taking up a huge chunk of the ground floor and confining the front doors and small windows to narrow strips of frontage on the outer edges. It seemed a high price for staying dry while you brought the shopping in but Maggie seemed to like it, or at least she’d never been bothered to move; she’d been here since her divorce, as long as Robin could remember.

As she pulled up outside, the eight o’clock news was starting on the radio and Maggie was letting herself out, double-locking the door behind her. Full-length fitted black coat today, with a large collar that she’d turned up around her ears, ruff-style. Big hair, half a stick of eyeliner – Siouxsie Sioux gets a day job. ‘Hiya,’ she said, opening the door and swinging her bottom into the passenger seat. She looked at Robin’s face. ‘Jesus, are you okay to drive?’