‘Well, it’s just possible. Just, assuming Bestigui can move a damn sight faster than most men of his age and weight, and that he started running the moment he pushed her over. But there’s still the fact that we didn’t find his DNA anywhere in the flat, the question of how he got out of the flat without his wife knowing he’d gone, and the small matter of why Landry would have let him in. All her friends agreed she didn’t like him. Anyway,’ Wardle finished the dregs of his pint, ‘Bestigui’s the kind of man who’d hire a killer if he wanted someone taken care of. He wouldn’t sully his own hands.’

‘Another one?’

Wardle checked his watch.

‘My shout,’ he said, and he ambled up to the bar. The three young women standing around the high table fell silent, watching him greedily. Wardle threw them a smirk as he walked back past with his drinks, and they glanced over at him as he resumed the bar stool beside Strike.

‘How d’you think Wilson shapes up as a possible killer?’ Strike asked the policeman.

‘Badly,’ said Wardle. ‘He couldn’t have got up and down quickly enough to meet Tansy Bestigui on the ground floor. Mind you, his CV’s a crock of shit. He was employed on the basis of being ex-police, and he was never in the force.’

‘Interesting. Where was he?’

‘He’s been knocking around the security world for years. He admitted he’d lied to get his first job, about ten years ago, and he’d just kept it on his CV.’

‘He seems to have liked Landry.’

‘Yeah. He’s older than he looks,’ said Wardle, inconsequentially. ‘He’s a grandfather. They don’t show age like us, do they, Afro-Caribbeans? I wouldn’t’ve put him as any older than you.’ Strike wondered idly how old Wardle thought he was.

‘You got forensics to check out her flat?’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Wardle, ‘but that was purely because the higher-ups wanted to put the thing beyond reasonable doubt. We knew within the first twenty-four hours it had to be suicide. We went the extra mile, though, with the whole fucking world watching.’

He spoke with poorly disguised pride.

‘The cleaner had been through the whole place that morning – sexy Polish girl, crap English, but bloody thorough with a duster – so the day’s prints stood out good and clear. Nothing unusual.’

‘Wilson’s prints were in there, presumably, because he searched the place after she fell?’

‘Yeah, but nowhere suspicious.’

‘So as far as you’re concerned, there were only three people in the whole building when she fell. Deeby Macc should have been there, but…’