Bestigui had smoked his cigarillo down to its last few millimetres. Slowly he ground it out in the black glass ashtray. Long seconds passed, and the noise in the outside office filtered through the glass wall beside them: voices, the ringing of a telephone.

Bestigui stood up and lowered Roman blinds of canvas down over the glass partition, so that none of the nervy girls in the office beyond could see in. He sat back down and ran thick fingers thoughtfully over the crumpled terrain of his lower face, glancing at Strike and away again, towards the blank cream canvas he had created. Strike could almost see options occurring to the producer, as though he was riffling a deck of cards.

‘The curtains were drawn,’ Bestigui said finally. ‘There wasn’t enough light coming out of the windows to make out a woman hiding on the balcony. Tansy’s not going to change her story.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on that,’ said Strike, stretching out his legs; the prosthesis was still uncomfortable. ‘When I put it to her that the legal term for what the pair of you have done is “conspiring to pervert the course of justice”, and that a belated show of conscience might keep her out of the nick; when I add in the public sympathy she’s bound to get as the victim of domestic abuse, and the amount of money she’s likely to be offered for exclusive rights to her story; when she realises she’s going to get her say in court, and that she’ll be believed, and that she’ll be able to bring about the conviction of the man she heard murdering her neighbour – Mr Bestigui, I don’t think even you’ve got enough money to keep her quiet.’

The coarse skin around Bestigui’s mouth flickered. He picked up his packet of cigarillos but did not extract one. There was a long silence during which he turned the packet between his fingers, round and round.

At last he said:

‘I’m admitting nothing. Get out.’

Strike did not move.

‘I know you’re keen to phone your lawyer,’ he said, ‘but I think you’re overlooking the silver lining here.’

‘I’ve had enough of you. I said, get out.’

‘However unpleasant it’s going to be, having to admit to what happened that night, it’s still preferable to becoming the prime suspect in a murder case. It’s going to be about the lesser of evils from here on in. If you cough to what really happened, you’re putting yourself in the clear for the actual murder.’

He had Bestigui’s attention now.