Kevin glanced at Hawthorne as if asking his permission to reply. Hawthorne nodded. ‘We had to buy you time,’ he explained. ‘So I hacked into the system and installed a bot. The bot made all the computers come together in a botnet, which then flooded the servers with, like, millions of connection requests: spam, porn, the complete works of Shakespeare … that sort of thing. It’s called a DDoS attack. It’s crude but effective.’

‘You brought down the police computer!’

‘They’ll get it sorted eventually. They’ve already called in a DDoS mitigation company and they’ll be scrubbing all the inbound traffic, sorting out the load balancers, firewalls and routers—’

‘How long?’ Hawthorne repeated.

‘Twenty-four hours, definitely. Probably forty-eight.’

‘Thank you, Kevin.’

‘A pleasure, Mr Hawthorne.’ Before Kevin left, he turned to me. ‘I really liked The Word is Murder,’ he said. ‘Am I going to be in the next one?’

‘Not unless you want to end up in jail,’ I replied.

‘Maybe best not, then.’ He pushed the electronic control and, with a gentle whirring sound, propelled himself out of the room.

‘I hope you realise he’s stuck his neck out for you,’ Hawthorne said, once he’d gone.

‘I’m very grateful,’ I replied. And I was.

‘So we’d better get moving then.’ Hawthorne was already on his feet, reaching for his cigarettes and front-door keys.

‘Where are we going?’

‘You heard what Kevin said. He’s bought you forty-eight hours maximum before Cara rearrests you. If you didn’t murder Harriet Throsby, that’s how long we’ve got to find out who did.’

8

Palgrove Gardens

Little Venice is one of the more secretive corners of London, tucked away between Paddington Station and Regent’s Park and unknown to almost everyone except the people who live there – and who wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. The traffic roars past along the Marylebone Road, heading for Heathrow Airport and the west, unaware that there’s this quiet enclave of handsome, expensive houses, eclectic shops and attractive cafés, almost a village in its own right, lurking just out of sight. The Regent’s Canal skirts round Lord’s Cricket Ground and London Zoo, then continues through the middle of it before passing through the Maida Hill Tunnel. The closer you are to the water’s edge, the more you are likely to pay. Harriet Throsby had lived a few minutes away from the canal. If I had killed her, I could have followed the canal path virtually from my flat to hers. It wouldn’t have taken me much more than an hour.

And here I was, supposedly returning to the scene of the crime. For some reason, Hawthorne hadn’t given the driver the house number and we were cruising slowly along an elegant crescent, looking for the right address. The houses were very similar, Victorian, tall and narrow, with bay windows looking out over private parking bays, and expensive loft conversions above. Japanese cherry trees sprouted out of the pavement, one for every two or three houses, looking a little sad in the damp April weather.