‘Yes, he told me about this,’ said Madge. ‘And did I want to listen to the evidence?’

‘And you did want to listen?’

‘Well, I was just out of a correctional facility. You don’t see newspapers there. Television, yes, but no Tribune. It makes you feel how much behind you are, how much you’ve missed.’

‘Our divorce was hardly at all in the papers,’ said Amy. ‘This was why Jay grabbed the opportunity to play the tapes to anybody ready to listen. I wouldn’t say that it was revenge exclusively …’

‘How much it hurt him is understandable,’ Madge said. It was only mischief, nothing like arranging to have Bodo put down in the underground garage.

Madge added, ‘I suppose, in your social circle, it made you look bad – those cries and moans and raunchy talk.’

Amy could hear the rush of blood under her skull. When it descended to her face, she felt the roughness of it. Her mouth went dry. ‘So he watched your reactions while you listened on the headphones?’

‘About ten minutes of it, only,’ said Madge.

Amy thought: She now classes us together. We’re two of a kind, she and I, and both publicly exposed. My scandal; her trial lasting for weeks. Together we make a double bill.

Amy spelled this out for me, to the extent possible – all the immediate circumstances, down to the cushioned toilet-lid cover, the soaked lap of her skirt, and the fan-driven flood of tropical heat in the long bathroom.

‘According to the deal I made with Bodo, I get to keep the furniture money – whatever the old people pay for it … I can’t bear to look at those dressers anymore, and the love seats. These were my surroundings for ten terrible years. They maybe drove me to that stupid scheme. Just looking, day in, day out, at those fucking things made me not only heavyhearted and gut sick, but finally mental.’

‘Adletsky will never pay an extra million for your apartment,’ said Amy. ‘It’s not so easy to put the arm on a billionaire. Don’t expect him to hand out money. He’d sooner walk away from the sale altogether.’

‘If she wants to play at being young and starting out in life, he should let her. What’s money to him? The dough is not for me. It’s for Tommy Bales,’ Madge said.

‘Who?’ said Amy. But she quickly placed the name. Tommy Bales was the incompetent freak who agreed to do the hit on Bodo Heisinger …‘What about Tommy Bales?’

‘I have to do something of a practical nature to make it up to him for the three years he lost in the slammer, plus a year of waiting for trial. And he wasn’t going anywhere before that. So now I plan to set him up in business. That’s another thing I wanted your opinion on – your help, to be frank.’

This appeal for frankness will have to be set aside for the moment.