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L’Escala, at ten, in a café called El Centre, next to the church.’
    In the morning, I kept him waiting. I had some sleep to catch up on. My lovely son helped me do that; even at eleven, as he was then, he could be a self-starter, and he wakened me with a mug of tea and a bowl of cereal around eight, having fed himself properly, taken Charlie for a trot and got ready for school. Slut of a mother, you’re thinking, but it’s wonderfully liberating when your child gets to that stage. It gives you just a little extra freedom, and takes a little of the constant pressure away.
    I had another call to make before I met Culshaw, and that delayed me for a few minutes, and so it was pushing quarter past ten when I arrived at the café. He was seated at one of the outside tables, almost in the shade of the huge palm tree that stands between the church and the town hall, as if it’s keeping them apart.
    I’d hardly sat down before a waiter appeared. I ordered a
cortado
, a short coffee with milk, and a bottle of Vichy Catalan sparkling water.
    I put my bag on the table, and laid my phone beside it as I settled carefully into my plastic chair: sometimes their legs can be a little wobbly, and it would have spoiled the moment if I’d landed on my arse. I looked at Duncan; he was neatly dressed in white trousers, a pale blue T-shirt and a tan cotton jacket, but his eyes were a little baggy, and I guessed that he hadn’t slept too well after my call. First points to Primavera. That said, he didn’t seem nervous; the opposite, in fact. He had a faint smile on his face, and those baggy eyes said that he was rather pleased with himself.
    He gazed at me, as if he was waiting for me to open the batting, but I wasn’t going to play his game. I waited him out, until finally he said, ‘Well? What did you think of it?’
    ‘It’s not going to win the Booker Prize,’ I replied drily.
    ‘That won’t worry me,’ he laughed. ‘They’re famous for not selling. My book will be a blockbuster.’
    ‘It’s a heap of shit, Duncan. It’s a hatchet job on Oz, thinly disguised as a novel. Most of it’s fabricated into the bargain.’
    ‘Hey,’ he chuckled, ‘it’s a work of fiction, so by definition it’s fabricated. How big an advance do you reckon I’ll get for it?’
    ‘Fuck all,’ I snapped.
    ‘That’s not what my new literary agent says. He has three publishers fighting for it, and that’s just on the basis of a synopsis. We’re up to six figures and the bids are still rising.’
    ‘Then you’re going to have a major delivery problem,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s not finished.’
    ‘It could be if I wanted it to be. I could wrap it up where it is now, go straight to Al’s death and have Phyllis in the vicinity, only for Sheila to join all the dots, and kill her in a big bloody finale.’ He paused. ‘But you are right. It could be better than that, and that’s why I need your help.’
    ‘You what?’ I gasped. ‘You need my help? Are you completely out of your tree?’
    ‘No,’ he said smoothly. ‘There’s a gap in my knowledge, and only you can fill it. Susie certainly can’t.’
    ‘Susie doesn’t know about this travesty, does she?’
    ‘No, not at all.’
    ‘But you have been pumping her for information.’
    He had the nerve to wink at me. ‘I’ve been pumping her in all sorts of ways, my dear,’ he murmured. I wanted to punch his lights out, as I think I could have, given our relative sizes, but I mastered my anger as he continued. ‘But I haven’t been interrogating her, if that’s what you mean. I’ve simply encouraged her to talk about her past and made notes as she’s gone along.’
    ‘What about Mac and Ellie, and Ali Patel? Did you talk to them or was that pure imagination too?’
    ‘Oh yes, I spoke to them all, and to Oz’s school chum, one of the two he beat up. I told them I was a journalist researching a magazine feature about Oz. None of them were very helpful, apart from the victim