What if . . .? She tried to cast the idea from her mind but it wouldn’t shift. Punching the air in triumph, she imagined herself proved right already. God, she was clever! Time for a celebratory cocktail while she waited for Dom to arrive. No, not yet. First the important stuff. Let no one accuse Olivia Zailer of putting an urgent need for a pink drink before a selfless crusade for the truth. She emailed Senga asking to see the whole of the feature. It was worth a try. If she turned out to be wrong, Charlie didn’t need to know anything about it.

‘You’ve had your turn in the limelight,’ Milward told Simon coolly, from which he inferred that she hadn’t thought to look for anything that tied Gemma Crowther to Mary Trelease. Stupid. She hadn’t liked it when he’d called her that. Tough. ‘Sergeant Zailer, did you ask DS Kombothekra to check up on Ruth Bussey and Mary Trelease?’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Charlie. ‘If you tell DI Proust, make sure you blame me and not Sam. I didn’t give him much choice. I led him to believe he’d find each of them with Aidan Seed holding a knife to her throat.’

‘Your maverick methods are legendary,’ Milward told her. ‘I’ve heard they include having sex with murder suspects.’

‘Then you heard wrong,’ said Charlie. ‘I believe you’re referring to a serial rapist I dated for a while. No one ever thought he was a murderer. Anyway, we weren’t serious. Just a bit of fun, you know.’

Simon tensed. Why couldn’t she ever stop?

‘I see,’ said Milward, smiling. ‘My mistake.’

‘You mentioned a photograph,’ said Charlie. ‘Where is it? I want to see it.’

‘You will.’

‘What are you waiting for? Has it occurred to you that if you were straight with us instead of playing games, we might actually get somewhere?’

‘What time did you leave Ruth Bussey’s house on Monday evening?’

‘Here we go again. Half past ten.’

‘After which you drove home.’ Milward was reading from notes. ‘DC Waterhouse joined you at your house shortly after eleven, and the two of you spent the night there.’

‘Yes.’

Milward and Dunning were bound to be wondering how Simon felt about sharing a bed—sharing a life—with the ex-lover of one of the sickest psychos in the UK prison system. He wondered himself.

‘And then, on Tuesday morning, you phoned work and pretended to be ill. Why?’

‘I didn’t pretend. I felt ill, then I felt better.’

‘Better enough to fancy a day-trip to London,’ said Milward caustically.

‘Yes. I thought I’d go shopping. We don’t have real shops in Spilling, only mud huts selling painted masks.’

‘How did you travel?’

‘By train, as I said last night. My answers aren’t going to change.’

‘You caught the slow train—the 9.05 from Rawndesley to King’s Cross?’