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meeters and greeters. Out of the corner of her eye, she was aware of Sandra Bloom conferring with a woman in a dark trouser suit, a mac thrown with stylish lack of care over her shoulders. Where Lindsay and Meredith moved, they followed.
    Lindsay steered Meredith into a chair in a quiet corner away from the crowds. “Okay?” she asked anxiously, watching Meredith blow her already red nose and dab at puffy eyes with a crumpled tissue.
    The woman in the suit stepped forward. “I’m Geri Cusack,” she said, the soft blur of an Irish accent still evident enough almost to swallow the vowel on the end of her first name. “Meredith’s solicitor.”
    More sexily slurred vowels, Lindsay couldn’t help noticing. She’d also taken in the straight shoulders and the gentler curves below, the reddish hair and hazel eyes set in a face shaped like a Pre-Raphaelite maiden. The features, though, were far too strong to appeal to any painter whose idea of womanhood fell on the submissive side of the
fence. Geri Cusack, Lindsay decided, was not a woman to mess with. Wherever Meredith had found her, it hadn’t been first pick in the Yellow Pages . “It was good of you to bring Meredith to meet me,” she said. “We’ll manage now.”
    â€œI don’t think you appreciate the gravity . . .” Sandra Bloom started. Geri Cusack raised her hand in a warning gesture and the detective’s words trailed off.
    â€œSandra, would you wait with Meredith a minute? Me and Ms. Gordon need to have a word.”
    Lindsay, half in love with the lawyer’s voice, followed her meekly for a few yards. “I meant it,” she said. “We’ll manage now.”
    â€œThat’s fine. I understand you need to ask her things it would be as well I didn’t know the answers to. That’s the way it goes in difficult cases like these. I don’t have a problem with it. I just wanted to fill you in on where we’re up to. Saturday evening, she was arrested and taken in for questioning. They were concentrating on establishing that she knew about the murder method in the book, and on where she was at the time they think Penny was killed. She doesn’t have anything approaching an alibi. But they’ve got nothing on her except the thinnest of circumstantial evidence so they’ve released her on police bail.”
    â€œThey wouldn’t want the custody time to run out without enough evidence to charge her,” Lindsay said sourly.
    â€œYou know how the Police and Criminal Evidence Act works? That might come in handy. Anyway, she’s been advised not to attempt to leave the country and to report back to the police station on Friday morning. Just so’s you know.”
    â€œAnd you want what, exactly?”
    Her wide mouth twitched in what looked like a half smile, half grimace. “My client’s instructions were to get you here so you could establish her innocence. I think I’d settle for that.”
    â€œNothing too difficult, then,” Lindsay muttered.
    â€œNot for you, according to Meredith.” Her eyebrows rose momentarily. If it hadn’t been a wildly inappropriate moment, Lindsay would have been convinced she was flirting. As it was, she decided, it was simply part of a formidable armory Geri Cusack dedicated to the greater good of her clients. “I’ll let you get on,” the lawyer said.

    Lindsay stayed where she was for a moment, watching Geri Cusack say farewell to her client and scoop Sandra Bloom up in her wake. Then she moved across to Meredith and sat down beside her, taking her hand and squeezing it gently. Meredith stared bleakly at Lindsay with the red-rimmed eyes of a sick and bewildered child. “I didn’t kill her,” she said. “God knows, I felt like it, but I didn’t do it.”

Chapter 3
    T he service flat in St. John’s Wood was a reminder to Lindsay that Meredith and Penny