‘You know I’m not saying that.’ Simon looked at Milward. ‘Does he know, or is he too dense to keep up? If a man pretends he’s killed one woman, then goes and kills another, the first question I’d ask is: what’s the connection between the two women?’

Nobody had ever asked Olivia Zailer to list her least favourite words, but if they had, ‘logic’ and ‘research’ might well have been among them, suggestive as they were of excessive amounts of time and effort. Yet here she was, immersed in both and even quite enjoying it. The dearth of decent telly programmes helped, as did the raspberry liqueur cocktails she’d been drinking. Olivia didn’t think they were scrambling her brain too much.

There was no Wikipedia entry on Martha Wyers; the online world seemed largely unaware she’d ever lived and died. Olivia could find nothing about Wyers’ suicide or murder, whichever it was. She’d phoned a few of her literary journalist friends but none of them knew anything. A couple said the name ‘rang a vague bell’, so noncommittally that Olivia wasn’t sure she believed them; more likely they didn’t want to admit to never having heard of an author who, for all they knew, had just won a prestigious award or secured the highest advance since the dawn of time for her latest book.

The Amazon website, at least, knew who Martha Wyers was. She’d published only one novel, Ice on the Sun, in 1998. It was unavailable, even from Amazon marketplace; out of print, and not a single used copy advertised. Must have failed quite spectacularly to make any impact at all, thought Liv. There was a short synopsis of the novel which was interesting, but not as interesting as the only customer review, dated 2 January 2000, contributed by one Senga McAllister: a four-paragraph five-star rave about the book’s bleak, searing beauty.

Liv knew Senga. They’d worked together briefly before Liv went freelance. Senga was still at The Times, and remembered both Liv and Martha Wyers. She’d known nothing about Wyers’ death but declared herself unsurprised. Her first question was, ‘Did she kill herself?’

Suicide, then, thought Liv, re-reading Ice on the Sun’s blurb. Definitely. Bleak, searing suicide. Not murder.

Now she was waiting for Senga to email her the text of a Times feature she’d written years ago that included an interview with Martha Wyers. Before reading her novel, Senga had met Wyers and interviewed her. Decided she was the sort of person who might one day take her own life. Olivia smiled to herself, feeling quite the detective.

The new message icon flashed on her screen and she clicked on it. She started to read what Senga had sent her and saw that it was incomplete: a headline, an introductory paragraph, then space, then a chunk of text about Martha Wyers.