‘But I told you I wouldn’t be able to make it before the end of my shift.’

‘Are you finished now?’

He looked up at the clock on the wall. ‘Not quite. Ten minutes to go.’

She smiled. ‘You’ve come to have breakfast with me?’

He shook his head. ‘No, Jean, I’ve come to take you downtown.’

‘Downtown?’ The smile was still there, but the eyes had frozen hard. ‘To Police Headquarters you mean?’

‘That’s right. I’m arresting you for the murder of Ben Garvald.’

And she didn’t try to deny it, that was the strange thing. She stood there looking at him, somehow completely detached, outside of all this, the sallow peasant face quite composed.

Nick stopped playing. He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, pushed one in his mouth and searched for matches. He found them, lit his cigarette and coughed as smoke caught at the back of his throat.

‘May I have one?’

He pushed the packet along the top of the piano and gave her a light. She inhaled deeply and looked down at him, quite calm.

‘Hadn’t you better get on with it?’

‘All right.’ He started to play again, his hands moving slowly over the keys, a progression of quiet, sad chords that were autumn and winter rolled into one. ‘One or two things about this business had been nagging away at me all night. The letter, for example. The one Ben was supposed to have sent to Bella.’

‘Supposed?’

‘He had to go and see Chuck Lazer to find out who she’d married, never mind where she lived. How in the hell could he have written to her? I suppose you helped yourself to a little prison notepaper when you last saw him? Easy enough. There’s always a supply on hand in the Visiting Room.’

‘You’d have difficulty in proving that.’

‘I don’t think so.’

He took a folded sheet of blue notepaper from his wallet and laid it down on top of the piano. Printed at the top was the legend:

In replying to this letter, please write on the envelope:

Number .......................................................................

Name ...........................................................................

........................................................................... Prison

This side of the sheet was blank. When he turned it over, Jean Fleming’s name and telephone number were written on the other side in her own hand. He produced Ben’s letter written on the same notepaper and placed it beside the other.

Jean sighed. ‘That was rather careless of me.’

It was the ease with which she accepted it, her ice-cold calm that horrified him. ‘This is all pretty circumstantial, Nick. I’d need a reason.’

‘You had one. Ben had to be stopped from ever returning here because once he found there was no money waiting for him, you couldn’t be sure how he would react. You checked on his release date, then forged the letter.’

‘To frighten Bella?’