Charlie considered watching Nikhil’s best man speech again in case she’d missed something: a subtle but vital clue. Unlikely. She’d watched it more than ten times already.

Don’t be crazy, Zailer. She had to be at a multi-agency Spotlight on Domestic Violence forum in Combingham in … Charlie looked at her watch. Shit. Ten minutes ago.

By the time she got to the meeting they’d be forty minutes into it. That was unacceptable. It was better to fake a migraine, better to go somewhere else altogether, where she couldn’t be late because she had no appointment and no one was expecting her.

Somewhere like the McElwee winery in Linton, Cambridgeshire, where Nikhil Gulati worked.

‘I don’t know why you’re looking so aghast. Hmm. It’s interesting.’ Sondra Halliday tilted her head to look at Sellers from another angle. Either that or she thought he’d hidden the explanation for his behaviour up his nose. ‘Are you really so disappointed to find I have an alibi? Four alibis, to be precise.’

The news of Marion Hopwood’s murder hadn’t yet been made public, so Sellers had only asked to know Halliday’s whereabouts on the other four relevant days.

‘I wonder which of my attributes has you itching to lock me away forever. I’m sure it can’t be because I’m a woman with a strong opinion that differs from yours, so I’d love to hear what it is.’

They were at the Langham Hotel again, sharing a pot of English Breakfast tea this time; no frog-bollock dim sum in sight. On the phone, Halliday had said something about needing a long spoon before she could eat in Sellers’ presence again. He’d had to look it up.

‘I’m not disappointed, but I think I must have misheard you,’ he said. ‘Would you mind repeating what you’ve told me?’

‘My alibis? Which one?’

‘All of them.’ If he narrowed it down for her, she’d be better able to second-guess him. She had to be lying … but then, why offer a false alibi that was so improbable? And for Josh Norbury’s murder, too: the one man, the one victim of Billy Dead Mates that she preferred to ignore.

It probably meant nothing.

‘You seriously want me to repeat where I was on four separate occasions?’

‘Sorry. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.’