A week ago, after I agreed to take Chris Hardcastle’s case, I employed one of my company’s best investigators, Pete. No doubt he has prepared a thick, hard-copy file on my client and his family. He is old-school, this investigator, and always refuses to just email the damn information.

“It’s a bit early,” I say as I open the door and usher him, and the huge file he’s carrying, inside.

He laughs as he follows me down the hallway toward the kitchen. I am in desperate need of coffee; the half-bottle of single malt I drank last night is knotted beneath my left eyeball, pounding away like an excited toddler with a new drumkit.

Pete immediately opens my fridge and riffles through the meager contents. “You don’t have any food.” It is part accusation, part disappointment. My heart sinks a little. No doubt he will pass this nugget of detail on to my mother. Pete is my mother’s sister’s stepson. My Aunt Lara only married his dad five years ago though, so it’s not as if we’ve grown up together. I don’t know if my mother has asked him to, or if he has done it off his own bat, but he keeps tabs on me and reports back on what I’m up to. I have no choice but to tolerate this interference. Partly because I don’t want to rock the boat. Partly because he is a damn good investigator and has helped me to maintain my one hundred percent success rate with my clients. That kind of track record is invaluable, and well worth the price of a little more of my mother’s disapproval.

“Working too much to go shopping,” I say, trying to keep my tone neutral, to avoid the desperate need to explain myself.

“You need to look after yourself. What would happen to your poor mother, eh?” He doesn’t finish the sentence, doesn’t add if she lost you too.

“I’ll go to the supermarket this afternoon.” I don’t finish my sentence either, don’t add please don’t tell her.

“Coffee.” He flaps his hand at me. I slide a small mug toward him, full of steaming hot black sludge, so strong you could almost stand a spoon in it. He picks it up and grins over the rim at me. The smile shaves decades off his face, leaving him looking like an excited teenager instead of the haggard fifty-something ex-police officer he really is.

“What did you find?” The brief I gave him was to find something that pointed to Chris being the kind of man whose wife would want to frame for murder. As opposed to the kind of man who would murder his wife and kidnap his sister-in-law.

“Mr. Hardcastle was a terrible husband.”

“What are we talking?”

Pete takes a deep breath and holds up his right hand, just his index finger pointing in the air. “Number one, he was fucking her twin.” He raises his middle finger to meet the index. “Two, he was squirreling money from their joint account.” He raises another finger, “three, he was jealous and over-possessive.”