“Excuse me,” I mumbled as I jumped to my feet and shot through the door. “Have you cracked it?” I asked eagerly.

“Just a matter of time now. I’ve hacked into the accounts section, and it’s just a case of working out how the files are organized and searching them,” Bill said triumphantly.

I hugged him. People need hugs, especially when they’ve just saved your life then made your day. Then, aware of David Berman’s gaze, I returned to the outer office, this time closing the door behind me. “Sorry about that,” I said. “Bill’s just cracked something we’ve been working on for a while now. If I can just go back to what you were saying. Has Kevin given you any account of what he said to whom?”

Berman compressed his lips, then said, “I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Then it seems to me we’re at an impasse. You can’t tell me what he said, and I can’t tell you who’s making the claim.”

“It’ll all come out eventually,” he said persuasively. “You must be aware that if my client is charged, we will have to be told the names of the witnesses against him. It would surely be in everyone’s interest to clear the name of an innocent man so that the search for the guilty party can go on. If my client is charged, this thing will drag on for months, and people’s memories will start to fade. When he is eventually cleared, it may be too late to trap the real killer.”

It was a good argument. As I picked up my bag and told Bill I was going to Bootle Street with Berman, I tried to convince myself that it was the strength of his case that had persuaded me. After all, I thought sanctimoniously, even though Kevin was Mr. Sleaze in my eyes, if I had wrongly accused him, I owed it to him to sort it out. Deep down, I knew otherwise. I had a theory, and I wanted to prove it to my own satisfaction.

It was nearly three when I got back to the office. After a lot of verbal ping-pong, with David Berman as the ball, I had obtained some very interesting material. As a result, I’d spent half an hour persuading Cliff Jackson that what I had to say to him was worth listening to. Credit where it’s due, once he’d explained to me

I found Bill leaning back in his chair, a look of deep satisfaction on his face as he puffed away on a Sherlock Holmes pipe filled with some noxious continental tobacco. “Any news?” he asked me.

I told him where we were up to, and he smiled. He looked just like the Big Bad Wolf, his lips pulled back over teeth that gripped the pipe stem. Then he showed me what he’d dug up.