As soon as the police had arrived that October evening to arrest Jackie, Claire had been on the phone to one of Glasgow’s top criminal lawyers, who had responded to the call of a fellow solicitor with a speed astonishing to anyone familiar with the procrastinations of his breed. Jim Carstairs had actually been waiting at the Maryhill Police Station when they’d brought her in to charge her with the murder of Alison Maxwell. Although Claire Ogilvie’s flourishing commercial law practice never dealt with criminal law, she always sent any of her clients who needed a good trial lawyer to Macari, Stevenson and Carstairs, so Jim had pulled out all the stops for Jackie. But it had made little difference. Because of the gravity of the charge, bail had been refused, and she’d spent the last eight weeks on remand in the women’s prison near Stirling. In spite of the demands of her clients, Claire had somehow contrived to visit her almost every day. It had been the only thing that had kept Jackie going when she felt the walls closing in and heard the voices of madness in her head. There had been times when she’d even begun to wonder herself if she’d killed Alison in a moment of insanity that she could no longer recall.

But through it all, Claire had been there, practical, indomitable, supportive. Although Claire concentrated on commercial and contract law herself, she had many friends with criminal practices, and she knew only too well the costs of mounting a first-class defense. So, the morning after the bail hearing, she’d put their fashionable three-bedroomed first-floor flat on the market. Because of its size and its position on a sunny corner near the University it had been sold within days, thanks to the efficient processes of the Scottish property laws. Claire had dutifully paid all the proceeds into Jackie’s bank account to fund her lover’s defense. She had promptly bought herself a new home, free from all past associations, in a newly renovated block in the heart of the Merchant City, the yuppified district in the city center where property developers were busily cashing in on the aspirations of the suddenly rich. Claire told herself she had no doubts about Jackie’s innocence; but she was nobody’s fool when it came to the law. She’d had enough discussion with Jim Carstairs to realize that Jackie’s chances of walking away from this murder indictment were so slim as to be negligible. Although Jackie was unaware of it, the ever-practical Claire Ogilvie had already started to rebuild her life.