So Judith had rung Suzie and Becks and asked them to follow a specific set of instructions. She’d not told them about any of her theories, or about her phone call with Elliot and Andy’s secretary earlier in the afternoon. This was only partly because she wanted to make sure their lives weren’t put in danger. It was also because Judith was still smarting from what she felt was their betrayal when they’d confronted her with the newspaper article that reported Philippos’s death. So she’d told them the bare minimum that would nonetheless allow them to do what she needed them to do.

And keeping them at arm’s length also satisfied an atavistic part of Judith. If she’d learned one lesson in life, it was that you should never let people get too close. Things always worked out better if you did everything on your own.

As she sat at her card table, Judith looked up from her notes at the driving rain outside. Lightning split the sky with a fearsome crack and Judith jumped. Why now? she thought to herself. And after so many weeks of sunshine!

She had to find something to do to calm her nerves while she waited. Starting a crossword or jigsaw was out of the question, so she got out an old pack of playing cards, shuffled them, and started to play clock patience. It wasn’t a very good solitaire game, but it was the one her great aunt Betty had taught her, so it was the one she’d play now.

While she waited.

Judith sat with her back to the room, which she knew was brave to say the least, but it allowed her to keep looking out of the window at the raging storm. Inside, the only sound was the steady slap, slap, slap of the cards on the table, as Judith continued to wait. And wait.

It was just before nine o’clock when Judith saw a flash of torchlight on the other side of the river.

And then another flash.

Fear clutched at her heart.

Two flashes, a brief break, and then another two further flashes of light. Judith raised her arms above her head as though she were yawning and the flashing light stopped.

But this was it. It really was happening.

Judith looked down at the cards on the table and found that she couldn’t focus properly, the numbers and pictures were all swimming in front of her eyes. She was losing her grip, she knew, even as her limbs seemed increasingly so heavy that she feared she wouldn’t be able to move at all.

Tanika will get here, she said to herself. Ten minutes and all this will be over. Tanika will be here.

There was the sound of glass smashing somewhere in the house.

Judith’s fear sharpened.

Her killer was inside.