“I’d have thought that the evening you heard the news of her death would be printed indelibly on your mind. Come on, Ian, you can do better than that. Maybe the diary would help to jog your memory? After all, you can probably remember the occasion you had a bonk in the Western Infirmary?”

His eyes narrowed. “I’ll get you for this,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” Lindsay said. “I’m like Alison. I take out insurance for dangerous situations. What were you doing that afternoon?”

He scowled and said, “Not that it’s anything to do with you, but I was in theater till about five o’clock. Then I went up to the University Library to do some reading. I got home about seven o’clock.”

“And can anybody verify that you were in the library?” Lindsay continued relentlessly. Now she had him on the run, she was determined to press home her advantage. If she didn’t nail him now, she knew she wouldn’t get another chance.

“What? Three, four months later? You must be joking!”

“Interesting, Ian. You have motive, and opportunity. And as a doctor, you’d know exactly how to strangle someone most efficiently.”

He looked angrily at Lindsay, speechless for once. His face was white with fear or rage. She couldn’t decide which was the stronger emotion. Recovering himself, he spluttered. “You’re off your rocker. Look, even supposing I had a fling with Alison Maxwell, it was long after she stopped seeing me as a doctor. I had no reason to kill her. Besides, the police got the murderer. Another one of your journalist pals. Is that what all this is about? Frame me to let your pal go scot free? Well, it won’t work. I never went near her flat that day, and you can’t prove I did.” He spoke with the childish defiance of a small boy who’s been caught stealing sweets from the local newsagent.

Before Lindsay could reply, Sophie walked back across the bar. As she came into McIntosh’s sight, he pushed himself to his feet. “You bitch!” he hissed. “You fucking set me up. You haven’t heard the last of this!”

Sophie stared open-mouthed at her colleague as he stumbled unsteadily away from the table and out of the bar. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “You really rattled his cage.”

Lindsay gazed out of the window at the disappearing form of Ian McIntosh. “Tell me, Sophie. Did he look to you like a man with nothing to hide?”

14