“She didn’t have her car with her. She turned up, uninvited, and that was the first thing I noticed: a set of car keys in her hand that didn’t belong to her. She said her car was missing a mirror and the trains were messed up, so she’d rented a car. Then she told me Damon Blundy had been murdered, without sounding particularly shocked or upset about it. She sounded as if that were a minor detail and not what she’d really come to talk to me about. Then she asked me to lie.”

“About?”

“Two Sundays ago, she and I went to an auction together in Grantham. She said detectives investigating Damon Blundy’s murder might contact me, and she asked me not to tell them that her passenger-side mirror was missing that day.”

“She asked you not to tell the police that the mirror was missing?” Gibbs straightened up in his chair. Nicki had told Sam and Simon it had been missing when she and Melissa had gone to Grantham, and that Melissa would verify this.

“Nicki thought she was being clever. She wanted the exact opposite of what she asked me for. I was supposed to object to the proposed dishonesty and insist that, if questioned by the police, I’d tell the truth. Only one problem: it wasn’t the truth. Her side mirror wasn’t missing that day. It was definitely there. It was a warm day and I had my window down most of the way to Grantham. I looked at my reflection in the side mirror, several times.”

“You’re sure?” Gibbs asked.

“A hundred percent. The car was a dump, as always, and so full of crumbs you could have stuffed a cushion with them, but all the mirrors that should have been there were there.”

As Gibbs was writing down this new information, Melissa said in an aggrieved voice, “Damon Blundy wasn’t the first time Nicki had cheated on Adam, and Tuesday wasn’t her first encounter with the police.”

“What do you mean?” asked Gibbs. “About the police,” he clarified. “I don’t care if Nicki’s slept with four men or forty.” He was still annoyed about Melissa’s casual categorizing of him as someone who wouldn’t habitually lie, when he lied to his wife, Debbie, every single day of his life.

“A few weeks ago, Nicki turned up at my house—again, unannounced—and said something terrible had happened; this was the worst day of her life; it was something to do with the police—”

“When?” Gibbs interrupted. “Do you know the date?”

“Yes. I looked at my diary yesterday and worked it out. It was Wednesday, June fifth, about two o’clock. The bell rang; I answered the door. Nicki barged in and said she had to talk to me, it was an emergency, and I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone, not even Lee. She was pretty hysterical. I think she thought it was big enough and serious enough to sweep aside my reservations about hiding things from my husband.”