“I don’t think you’d have any grounds,” I said sweetly. “But let’s leave that aside for a minute,” I continued. “Cast your mind back to the evening of Moira’s death.”

He butted in eagerly. “I suppose you want to know what I was doing when Moira bought it?”

I nodded. He nodded. We were like a pair of toy dogs on a car’s parcel shelf. “No problem,” he said. “I’d been over to Liverpool for a business meeting and I got back around nine. I stuck my head round the TV room door and said hi to Jett and Tamar. Then I nipped up to my office to make a few phone calls. Around ten, I went downstairs and made myself a steak sandwich, then I popped down to the studio for a word with Micky. That must have been getting on for eleven. He was up to his eyes in it, so I left him to it and went back up to the TV room. Gloria was watching Dead Babies on The Late Show, and I sat in for a while. I went back down to the studio about quarter to twelve, and listened to a couple of tracks with Micky, then I hit the sack. Next thing I knew, all hell was breaking loose.”

It was just detailed enough to be credible, if a bit glib. “You don’t have any problem with your memory, do you? Not like Micky?”

Kevin pulled a face. “Nose like mine, Kate, you don’t mess about with it, if you catch my drift. Anything other than music goes out of Micky’s head like water down a drain. Besides, I’ve already been through it once for the boys in blue. I was there twice, and he can’t deny it.”

“Did you see anyone near the rehearsal room?” I asked.

“Afraid not. The whole thing’s a mystery to me. I can’t accept it

I ignored the pathetic attempt at a red herring. “You say you went up to bed after you’d spoken to Micky?”

“That’s right. You saw me come downstairs yourself,” he pointed out, his tone grievance incarnate.

“Precisely. And do you normally go to bed in a suit and tie?”

His eyes widened, and the fingers of one hand started to beat a nervous tattoo on his knee. “Just because I hadn’t actually gone to bed yet doesn’t mean a thing.”

“You’d been upstairs nearly two hours. And you hadn’t even loosened your tie, Kevin. That’s not normal behavior. And in a murder investigation, anything that’s not normal behavior is automatically suspicious. So what was going on?”