“No. Who said I did? I categorically did not.”

“Are you a fan of BBC4?” Sergeant Zailer asks.

“Yes. And people close to me know that about me.” I see a change in Sergeant Zailer’s eyes and know that I guessed right. The police didn’t find my ad at Damon Blundy’s house. “Melissa drew your attention to that advert, didn’t she? Told you I must have posted it? Or was it my brother, Lee? One of them, for sure.” Pretending to be thinking hard through my shock, I say, “Which means . . . But Lee wouldn’t have written that ad, no way. Melissa must have written it. She must have written it as if it was by me.”

“I don’t think she’d do that, Nicki,” says Adam.

“She’d do anything,” I snap at him. To Sergeant Zailer, I say, “Are you sure the ad was posted in 2010? She couldn’t have posted it since Damon Blundy died and backdated it?”

I know Melissa did no such thing. Her bringing my Intimate Links ad to the police could mean more than that she suspects me of killing Damon Blundy . . .

“You commented on Blundy’s columns a lot,” Sergeant Zailer pushes my thoughts off track. “Always to support his point of view most enthusiastically. I can’t find a single instance of you arguing against him.”

“I usually agreed with him.”

“It was more than usually,” said Charlie. “Between October 2011 and February this year, you agreed with nearly every column he published. You only missed two or three. Did you know him personally?”

“No. Never clapped eyes on him, never spoke to him. I just happen to think he was a very clever man, and right about most issues.”

“Why did you only start commenting in 2011? Damon Blundy’s had a column in the Daily Herald since 2009.”

“Surely Nicki’s allowed to—”

“I started when I started to read him. I don’t remember the exact date. I didn’t know how long he’d had his column for. I just discovered him one day, when I was wasting time online.”

“Why did you stop commenting in February this year?” Sergeant Zailer asks. “Didn’t you say that was when you answered Gavin’s advert?”

“Yes, it was,” I say as smoothly as possible. “And yes, the two are connected. I stopped commenting on Damon Blundy’s columns because I’d had enough of getting attacked by his many enemies every time I spoke up for him. Suddenly, there was a gaping hole in my online time-wasting, so I looked on Intimate Links and got . . . drawn in.”

“Do you still have your email correspondence with Gavin?”

“No. When I decided to tell Adam the truth, I deleted everything—from my deleted box too. I might have decided to come clean, but Gavin hasn’t, as far as I know. I thought it was only fair to protect him.”

“What was his email address?”