Liza was suddenly very aware that Ruby still had her pistol. “You know, you’ve been such a good sport I’m almost inclined to play along.” Slowly, deliberately, Ruby got to her feet. “I’ll tell you what, how’s this?” Laughing, she pressed one hand to her breast and, when she spoke again, her voice was even more oldey-timey radio announcer than usual. “Yes, I did it,” she declaimed, “and I’d do it again. Curse you, curse you forever!”

“Are you quite finished being annoying?” asked DCI McManus.

“Sorry.” Ruby gave him a winsome smile. “She just seemed to want it so badly. But, well, thinking about it, I am one of the few people in this room who’s armed, so I might actually be toddling off now. The lovely Ms Blaine is quite right about the professor, by the way—we’ve never met, but he’s looking at me exactly the way you look at somebody who stole one and a half million pounds from you, and I should know—I’ve seen it before.” She blew him a kiss with her free hand. “Goodbye, James. I wish we’d met in person earlier—it could have been fun. Oh, and”—she turned back to DCI McManus—”if you look, you’ll find most of the money stashed in different places around the hotel. I’d barely had time to spend any of it. Consider what’s left a tip. Ciao.”

To Liza’s frank amazement, Ruby began to walk casually out of the room, her pistol trained on DCI McManus. Less to Liza’s amazement, nobody did a damned thing about it. Sir Richard, she suspected, had decided that letting a suspect go was a good way to muddy the waters of his own trial, while Mr Burgh had gone the whole week without taking decisive action and wasn’t starting now. Much more to Liza’s amazement, she found herself standing up, grabbing her pistol, and pointing it directly at Ruby.

“Freeze.”

“Oh, darling, are you going to shoot me?” Ruby sounded almost affectionate.

To Liza’s left, DCI McManus was getting very slowly to his feet. “How about we all put our guns away, and then, let’s be clear, you are both massively under arrest.”

Ruby’s eyes flicked to the DCI. “I’m afraid not, Detective. I don’t really do prison. So unless somebody is going to shoot me—”

And Liza shot her.

Epilogue

Rachael, in the Studio, with Questions

Six months later

“I can’t believe you shot her,” said Rachael.

Liza laughed into her microphone. “I more shot at her. Turns out I’m fucking awful with guns. And kids, guns are not cool, and they don’t help. Take it from your Auntie Liz.”

“So what happened next?”