‘So why are you here?’

She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. ‘I told you. Paula feels the need to save you and she can’t do it the straight way.’

He let himself consider whether she might be speaking the truth. He wanted not to believe her, but he had to concede it made more sense to accept what she was saying. ‘But you agree with her, that I’m innocent?’

‘I can imagine situations where you might kill. But I don’t believe you’re this kind of killer. And I think if you were pissed off enough with me to want to kill me, you’d get on with it. Not fuck about with surrogates.’ There was a grim twist to her mouth that might almost have been a smile.

‘You think somebody’s really killing women who look like you?’ Tony was genuinely curious. He thought he knew her well enough to predict the answer but he wanted to hear what she had to say.

She shrugged one shoulder. ‘Other people seem to. Senior detectives with years of experience, some of them.’

‘But you,’ he persisted. ‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t think they look that much like me.’

‘There’s a generic similarity. Same blonde hair, blue eyes. Same haircut. Similar build. Professional women who go to work suited up. Has it occurred to you that it’s not them that look like you – it’s you that looks like them?’

Carol frowned. This was how it had always played out between them. He said something impenetrable that she couldn’t resist and she was hooked. It had been like that since the very first case they’d worked together, all those years ago. And here he was, doing it to her again. She wanted to get to her feet and walk out, but more than that she needed to understand what he was driving at. ‘What do you mean – it’s me that looks like them?’

‘That’s not quite right.’ He spoke absently, as if thinking aloud. ‘It’s more that you all look like her.’

‘Like who?’ She almost howled in frustration.

‘The one he wanted to kill.’

‘Don’t you mean “wants” to kill?’

Tony ran a hand through his hair. ‘No. He’s clever, he’s organised and he’s resourceful. If she was available to be killed, he’d have killed her and that would be an end to it.’ He spread his arms wide as if trying to draw her in to embrace the idea. ‘I think she’s already dead. I think he was planning to kill her, working up to it. But somehow she thwarted him.’

‘She killed herself?’ Carol was intrigued now in spite of herself. She leaned forward, forearms on the table. He noticed the changes in her hands – scars, bruises, broken nails. What on earth had she been doing, this woman who he remembered barely being able to manage flat-pack furniture?