Her bag was efficiently searched, then she was led through another door, down a cream-painted corridor lined with amateurish watercolors of the Stirlingshire hills, and finally through another door into a tiny interview room. The room had one large, barred window overlooking the lawns and a distant stand of mixed conifers. Its only furnishings were a small deal table and two plastic chairs. The vinyl floor was pocked with cigarette burns, doubtless as a result of the inadequate little tinfoil ashtray on the table. “Sit there,” the officer said, pointing to the chair nearest the door. “You must not touch the prisoner,” the officer said. “If you want to offer her a cigarette, you should place the packet and the lighter on the table and let her pick it up. Is that clear?”

Lindsay nodded and immediately lit up, leaving the packet on the table beside her lighter. She had smoked less than half the cigarette before the door opened and another officer brought Jackie in. If she hadn’t been expecting her, Lindsay would never have recognized the woman she used to know. When Lindsay had first met Jackie, she had been cheerful and vivacious. Her shapely figure, bordering on the voluptuous, had always been immaculately turned out in the height of fashion. Her copper hair had been cut and styled regularly. She could never have been described as beautiful, but her milk-white skin and her pale green eyes, which had always reminded Lindsay disconcertingly of gooseberries, had been carefully made up to show her to her best advantage.

The woman who was moving across the room toward Lindsay looked like a grotesque caricature of that Jackie Mitchell. She had put on weight, and her pasty face looked bloated and puffy. Her hair had lost its shine and was tied back untidily with an elastic band. The prison issue denim overalls made her figure look lumpy, with hips out of proportion to the rest of her. Her eyes looked dull and there were dark bruises underneath them. She barely seemed to notice Lindsay’s presence as she slumped into the chair and reached for the cigarettes.

“Hello, Jackie,” Lindsay said quietly.

“Thanks for coming,” Jackie said, not sounding particularly grateful. “Claire said she’d try to find you. I wish she’d been able to get you sooner.”

“I’m sorry too,” Lindsay said. “But at least I’m here now. I don’t know what exactly I can achieve, but I’ll do everything I can to get you out of here.” There was an awkward pause.

“You do know I didn’t do it, don’t you?” Jackie suddenly demanded fiercely, challenging Lindsay with a defiant glare.

“If you’d been going to kill Alison, I don’t think that’s the way you’d have chosen,” said Lindsay.