Lindsay sighed. “Look, Chief Inspector. A year ago, I had a very bad time with the forces of law and order. So bad that I ended up leaving the country till the fuss died down. I’m sure your extensive inquiries will have already told you that. I’ve only just come home. Believe me, I’m looking for a quiet life these days. Do you really think I’d want to put myself in the same position all over again just to drop some junior Tory minister in it?”

Fraser pulled out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to Lindsay, who accepted gratefully, having smoked the last of hers twenty minutes before. He lit up, puffed for a few moments, then said, “I’m not a psychologist. I don’t pretend to understand what goes on in the minds of people like you. I’m a policeman, and what I’m trained to do is investigate crime. That means acquiring as many facts as possible and then making logical deductions. Now, the facts I have before me are these. A story based on a report stolen in a burglary yesterday has surfaced in a newspaper. A journalist who has a track record of writing this sort of anti-establishment story, who used to work for the very paper which carried the story, was on the spot. Not only in the building itself, but carrying a set of keys to the very flat that was burgled. Do you not think that I’d be failing in my duty to the taxpayers who pay my wages if I didn’t pull that journalist in for questioning?”

Lindsay cursed silently. She’d been praying that Rosalind hadn’t told the police that she had the spare keys to the flat. She’d have to try something else if she was ever going to get out of there. “Come on, get serious,” she mocked. “Rosalind Campbell’s a friend of mine. Do you really think I’d stage a break-in and reduce her flat to a shambles just so’s I could get a story? If that’s how you think friends behave, you must have a bizarre personal life.”

Fraser shrugged, his beefy shoulders straining his suit seams. “I’ve only got your say-so for this bosom friendship. You might have been stringing this woman along all the time. And besides, if you hadn’t made a shambles of the place, we’d have been all the more certain it was you, wouldn’t we? On the other hand, maybe you and Miss Campbell were in it together.”

Lindsay shook her head incredulously. “I just don’t believe you guys. Byzantine doesn’t begin to describe your thought processes. For God’s sake, why would Rosalind conspire with me to wreck her own flat?”