With a sigh of satisfaction, Lindsay surveyed Alison’s secret dossier. There were about ten sheets of paper, all except the final page completely covered in the tiny neat handwriting that Lindsay recognized immediately. She turned straight to the last page. The final entry, dated the day before her death, began “Ocz kjgdodxvg kjovoj: rdoc rcvo d xvi kmjqz do rjio ws gjib ijr!” and continued for another couple of lines. Lindsay crossed her fingers and prayed that Alison was still using the same simple alphabetic cypher that she’d used when they’d been lovers.

Lindsay turned back to the first page, which dated from six years previously. She’d be in this dossier somewhere, she knew. When she’d first found the document, she’d hastily photocopied it and taken it home to study at her leisure. The code Alison used hadn’t taken much working out. It had been obvious to Lindsay that Alison’s secret file was some kind of record of her sexual adventuring. It had seemed a strangely childish game to Lindsay. It was almost as if by committing it to paper in this way, Alison was proving something to herself about her desirability. Although Lindsay hadn’t fully understood the reasons for it at the time, she now saw it as an expression of a deep-rooted personal insecurity, an emotional stunting that had left Alison trapped in adolescence.

But merely cracking the code hadn’t been the answer. Translating the jumble of letters into proper English words had simply provided Lindsay with another problem. For Alison was too shrewd to leave an incriminating record of proper names. Instead, she referred to her lovers by nicknames, or where they were part of an established couple, in relation to their partners. It was often snide, seldom flattering to her conquests. Often, there were references to people before they actually became her lovers, showing each step in her campaign to include them among the notches on her bedhead. Each nickname was preceded by a date, and sometimes by a time and place. It was often followed by a comment on their performance or personality, and each neat entry ended with the ultimate childishness in Lindsay’s eyes—a mark out of ten. Even the fact that Alison had given her 8.8 didn’t vindicate the system for Lindsay.

She rubbed her tired eyes and put the papers to one side. She was too weary tonight for the close work involved in translating the dossier. Tomorrow, she’d get up bright and early and go down to the local print shop to make photostats of the sheets. That would save the originals from more handling than was strictly necessary. Then she could work her way through the list, and see where that took her.