Julia hesitated. The small noises all around were moving deeper into night: flurries in leaves said hunting, the laughter from the lawn was long gone. I wondered how little time we had. Didn’t look at my watch.

I said, ‘The interviews, earlier on. Did Selena come out of hers upset?’

After a moment: ‘I mean, she wouldn’t have looked upset to most people. Just spacy; well, spacier than usual. But that is upset, for Selena. That’s how she gets.’

I said, ‘You were afraid we’d shaken her up enough that she might let something slip, maybe even confess. You needed us looking in another direction, at least till you could get her settled down again. So you threw us Joanne’s key, to keep us occupied. And it worked. You’ve got a gift for this, you know that?’

‘Gee, thanks.’

Conway said, ‘And if you’re the one who texted us, that means you’ve got Chris Harper’s secret phone.’

Julia went still. Her face was a new kind of wary.

‘Ah, come on. Records say that text came from that phone. There’s not a lot of point in mucking about.’

A tilt of the head, acknowledging. Julia leaned back and wriggled a phone out of her jeans pocket, slim little thing in a snappy orange case. ‘Not his phone. Just his SIM card.’

She pulled the case away from the back of the phone and tapped a SIM card into her palm. Handed it to Conway.

Conway said, ‘We’re going to need to hear the story.’

‘There’s no story.’

‘Where’d you get it?’

‘Don’t I have the right to an attorney, or something? Before I start telling you where I got a dead guy’s SIM?’

I knew. I said, ‘You got his phone off Selena, after he died. She gave it to you, or you found it in her stuff. That’s why you think she killed Chris.’

Julia’s eyes flicked away from me. Conway said, ‘We still don’t. And it’s pretty obvious you didn’t do the job, or you wouldn’t be climbing the walls thinking she did.’ That got a faint one-sided grin. ‘So dial down the paranoia and talk to me.’

The night was turning that red jumper the colour of a banked fire, compressed and waiting. Julia said, ‘I was actually trying to get rid of Selena’s phone, the one we’d both used to text Chris. Imagine my surprise when this showed up.’

Conway said, ‘When was this?’

‘The day after Chris got killed.’

‘What time?’

An unconscious grimace, as she remembered. ‘Jesus. I started trying before noon – they had this big high-drama assembly to tell us about The Tragedy, we had to say a prayer or something . . . All I could think was I had to get Selena’s phone out of our room. Before you guys decided to search the place.’