‘All right, let’s hear what these alleged photographs show,’ he said, squinting through clouds of pungent smoke, the picture of a film mafioso.

‘The silhouette,’ said Strike, ‘of a woman crouching on the balcony outside your sitting-room windows. She looks naked, but as you and I know, she was in her underwear.’

Bestigui puffed hard for a few seconds, then removed the cigarillo and said:

‘Bullshit. You couldn’t see that from the street. Solid stone bottom of the balcony; from that angle you wouldn’t see anything. You’re taking a punt.’

‘The lights were on in your sitting room. You can see her outline through the gaps in the stone. There was room then, of course, because the shrubs weren’t there, were they? People can’t resist fiddling with the scene afterwards, even when they’ve got away with it,’ Strike added, conversationally. ‘You were trying to pretend that there was never any room for anyone to squat on that balcony, weren’t you? But you can’t go back and Photoshop reality. Your wife was perfectly positioned to hear what happened up on the third-floor balcony just before Lula Landry died.

‘Here’s what I think happened,’ Strike went on, while Bestigui continued to squint through the smoke rising from his cigarillo. ‘You and your wife had a row while she was undressing for bed. Perhaps you found her stash in the bathroom, or you interrupted her doing a couple of lines. So you decided an appropriate punishment would be to shut her outside on the sub-zero balcony.

‘People might ask how a street full of paps didn’t notice a part-naked woman being shoved out on a balcony over their heads, but the snow was falling very thickly, and they’ll have been stamping their feet trying to keep the circulation going, and their attention was focused on the ends of the street, while they were waiting for Lula and Deeby Macc. And Tansy didn’t make any noise, did she? She ducked down and hid; she didn’t want to show herself, half naked, in front of thirty photographers. You might even have shoved her out there at the same time that Lula’s car came round the corner. Nobody would have been looking at your windows if Lula Landry had just appeared in a skimpy little dress.’

‘You’re full of shit,’ said Bestigui. ‘You haven’t got any photographs.’

‘I never said I had them. I said I’d been shown them.’

Bestigui took the cigarillo from his lips, changed his mind about talking, and replaced it. Strike allowed several moments to elapse, but when it became clear that Bestigui was not going to avail himself of the opportunity to speak, he continued: