‘Anyway, we proved beyond doubt she couldn’t have heard it. The Bestiguis moved into a friend’s house the next day to get away from the press, so we put a few blokes in their flat, and a guy up on Landry’s balcony, shouting his head off. The lot on the first floor couldn’t hear a word he was saying, and they were stone-cold sober, and making an effort.

‘But while we were proving she was talking shit, Mrs Bestigui was phoning half of London to tell them she was the sole witness to the murder of Lula Landry. The press were already on to it, because some of the neighbours had heard her screaming about an intruder. Papers had tried and convicted Evan Duffield before we even got back to Mrs Bestigui.

‘We put it to her that we’d now proven she couldn’t have heard what she said she’d heard. Well, she wasn’t ready to admit it had all been in her own head. She’d got a lot riding on it now, with the press swarming outside her front door like she was Lula Landry reborn. So she came back with “Oh, didn’t I say? I opened them. Yeah, I opened the windows for a breath of fresh air.”’

Wardle gave a scathing laugh.

‘Sub-zero outside, and snowing.’

‘And she was in her underwear, right?’

‘Looking like a rake with two plastic tangerines tied to it,’ said Wardle, and the simile came out so easily that Strike was sure he was far from the first to have heard it. ‘We went ahead and double-checked the new story; we dusted for prints, and right enough, she hadn’t opened the windows. No prints on the latches or anywhere else; the cleaner had done them the morning before Landry died, and hadn’t been in since. As the windows were locked and bolted when we arrived, there’s only one conclusion to be drawn, isn’t there? Mrs Tansy Bestigui is a fucking liar.’

Wardle drained his glass.

‘Have another one,’ said Strike, and he headed for the bar without waiting for an answer.

He noticed Wardle’s curious gaze roaming over his lower legs as he returned to the table. Under different circumstances, he might have banged the prosthesis hard against the table leg, and said ‘It’s this one.’ Instead, he set down two fresh pints and some pork scratchings, which to his irritation were served in a small white ramekin, and continued where they had left off.

‘Tansy Bestigui definitely witnessed Landry falling past the window, though, didn’t she? Because Wilson reckons he heard the body fall right before Mrs Bestigui started screaming.’

‘Maybe she saw it, but she wasn’t having a pee. She was doing a couple of lines of charlie in the bathroom. We found it there, cut and ready for her.’

‘Left some, had she?’