The display on the oven was blurry but he was fairly sure it read ‘07:12’. The Elias case was listed for ten but Okoro would want to meet at least an hour beforehand and the clients would be nervous. He needed to be out in an hour at the most and he had papers to get ready and phone calls to make. He’d lost most of the previous evening and time was now alarmingly short.

‘Actually, I’m not that hungry,’ he heard himself say.

She turned around and leant back against the kitchen worktop. ‘Something else you’d rather be doing than eating?’ she asked, nodding at the table suggestively.

‘The Elias case,’ he replied.

‘Of course. How silly of me.’ She turned back abruptly to the frying pan and threw the half-cooked bacon in the bin. It seemed a pointless act but one which apparently gave her a great deal of satisfaction. ‘There. All gone.’

Priest turned his hands up in a confused gesture. ‘Thanks for doing that.’

‘How did Alexia Elias die?’ Fox asked suddenly.

‘How do you know she’s dead.’

She frowned, genuinely perplexed. ‘You told me last night. You remember last night, right?’

Priest closed his eyes. Shit, what else happened that I can’t remember?

‘She was shot,’ Priest said. He watched her closely but she didn’t flinch. If she knew the truth, she didn’t let on.

‘What?’ she gasped convincingly. ‘Is it connected with Simeon’s murder?’

‘I don’t know. Could be coincidence.’

She didn’t seem persuaded by that one. ‘I doubt that.’

Priest had run out of things to say. He usually felt comfortable with silence but Elinor Fox’s penetrating stare was starting to have an effect – he felt deconstructed by it.

‘I’d better be getting ready for court,’ he said, pointing vaguely in the direction of the bedroom.

‘Sure thing,’ Fox said brightly and before Priest could say anything she slipped off his shirt and stood with her back arched slightly over the work surface, her naked, model-worthy body was like a marble statue as she offered him the shirt.

‘You’ll be needing this, then.’

*

Priest fought his way through the throng of people that had assembled outside the entrance to the Royal Courts of Justice. From what he could gather most of them were reporters from various news agencies but, whereas day one of the Elias trial had attracted only a modest interest, most of the nationals were now represented.

He had received a text from Georgie warning him that Simeon’s death had hit the headlines. It didn’t surprise him. The ‘head start’ Elinor had promised him had lasted longer than he had anticipated anyway.