“Okay. And I’ll see what I can dig up about the Jedburgh affair.” He got to his feet. “I’d better be getting back. Some of us have got jobs to go to,” he teased.

Lindsay finished her drink and got to her feet. She’d been glad to see Blair, but she was equally glad to see him go. The envelope was burning a hole in her pocket, and she was desperate to explore its secrets. The key to Alison’s death was in her hands now, she felt certain.

9

Thank God for infatuation, Lindsay thought, as she sprawled across the bed in Sophie’s spare room. If it hadn’t been for her initial obsession with Alison, she’d never have known about the existence of the envelope and its contents. She sprawled across the bed in Sophie’s spare room and sipped a glass of whisky and water. Sophie had instantly understood when Lindsay told her she didn’t feel like discussing her Special Branch ordeal. She’d simply poured her a large drink and left her to herself.

Lindsay studied the envelope, tantalizing herself before she opened it. It looked just like the one she’d discovered years before when, on fire with lust for Alison, she’d spent half of one night shift avidly reading every word her new lover had ever had published in the Scottish Daily Clarion. The contents of the envelope had shocked Lindsay, then amused her. But it was from the moment she understood the implications of what Alison had written that Lindsay dated her ultimate disillusionment.

At the time, it had seemed a strange place to leave a document of this sort. Lindsay had eventually come to the conclusion that Alison had hidden it there to avoid accidental discovery by anyone who regularly visited her flat. Anyone routinely looking something up in her byline file would almost certainly have ignored it as journalists trawling through the files would only be looking for a specific story. It was only Lindsay’s obsession with Alison that had driven her to open the envelope.

She supposed she should have left it where it was. Tampering with the evidence, Ainslie would doubtless call it. But if Alison had stuck to her old habits, the contents would be in her handwriting. There could be no dispute about their author. Lindsay pulled on a pair of thin leather driving gloves and opened the envelope. Carefully, to avoid destroying any existing prints, she removed its contents with a pair of eyebrow tweezers, then unfolded the thin sheets of airmail paper.