‘You couldn’t have done it,’ said Strike, ‘because if you’d been the one who threw Landry off the balcony two floors above, you wouldn’t have been able to let Tansy back inside within seconds of the body falling. I think you shut your wife outside, headed off into the bedroom, got into bed, got comfy – the police said the bed looked disarranged and slept in – and kept an eye on the clock. I don’t think you wanted to fall asleep. If you’d left her too long on that balcony, you’d have been up for manslaughter. No wonder Wilson said she was shaking like a whippet. Probably in the early stages of hypothermia.’

Another silence, except for Bestigui’s fat fingers drumming lightly on the edge of the desk. Strike took out his notebook.

‘Are you ready to answer a few questions now?’

‘Fuck you!’

The producer was suddenly consumed by the rage he had so far suppressed, his jaw jutting and his shoulders hunched, level with his ears. Strike could imagine him looking thus as he bore down on his emaciated, coked-up wife, hands outstretched.

‘You’re in the shit here,’ said Strike calmly, ‘but it’s entirely up to you how deep you sink. You can deny everything, battle it out with your wife in the court and the papers, end up in jail for perjury and obstructing the police. Or you can start cooperating, right now, and earn Lula’s family’s gratitude and good will. That’d go a long way to demonstrating remorse, and it’ll help when it comes to pleas for clemency. If your information helps catch Lula’s killer, I can’t see you getting much worse than a reprimand from the bench. It’s going to be the police who’ll get the real going-over from the public and the press.’

Bestigui was breathing noisily, but seemed to be pondering Strike’s words. At last he snarled:

‘There wasn’t any fucking killer. Wilson never found anyone up there. Landry jumped,’ he said, with a small, dismissive jerk of his head. ‘She was a fucked-up little druggie, like my fucking wife.’

‘There was a killer,’ said Strike simply, ‘and you helped him get away with it.’

Something in Strike’s expression stifled Bestigui’s clear urge to jeer. His eyes were slits of onyx as he mulled over what Strike had said.

‘I’ve heard you were keen to put Lula in a film?’

Bestigui seemed disconcerted by the change of subject.

‘It was just an idea,’ he muttered. ‘She was a flake but she was fucking gorgeous.’

‘You fancied getting her and Deeby Macc into a film together?’

‘Licence to print money, those two together.’

‘What about this film you’ve been thinking of making since she died – what do they call it, a biopic? I hear Tony Landry wasn’t happy about it?’