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suppose.’
    P iers protested vociferously about accompanying them to the station for a formal interview, until Geraldine pointed out that he had no choice.
    ‘We’ll leave him to stew overnight,’ Geraldine muttered to Sam as they left the custody sergeant going through the rigmarole of questions.
    ‘Why don’t we just arrest him? They had a row, it was his van, he knew where she was, and he knew there were no witnesses if he followed her. He had the means and the opportunity, and he had a motive, so somehow he stage managed a crash. Maybe he didn’t intend to actually kill her, but he did.’ Sam paused. ‘It was his van, for Christ’s sake,’ she added impatiently, when Geraldine didn’t say anything. ‘Surely you can see it had to be him?’
    ‘Tell me how he could have climbed out of that van without any injuries and I’ll accept he’s guilty.’
    ‘Someone must have managed it, so why not him?’
    ‘Let’s see what he has to say after he’s been kicking his heels in there for a night. Right now, I want to check if the taxi driver who found the body saw anything.’
    G eraldine found it hard to believe that Piers was responsible for Anna’s death. That kind of immature road rage didn’t seem in keeping with the debonair casting director.
    ‘He must be three times older than her,’ Sam said, as though his age made any difference.
    ‘Being so much older than her doesn’t make him a murderer!’ Geraldine replied. ‘We’ll need a lot more than that to make this stick.’
    ‘I can’t see the problem,’ Sam repeated.
    ‘A clever man like Piers,’ Geraldine mused, ‘he seems like a wily old bugger, and a selfish one at that. Do you really think he would have risked his own life in such a clumsy attack?’
    ‘I don’t see how you can know that about him, wily and all that. I can’t see the problem. It had to be him.’
    G eraldine remained adamant.
    ‘He would have to be an idiot to use his own van. They lived together. He would have had any number of opportunities to get rid of her, if that’s what he wanted to do, without making himself such an obvious suspect. I just think he’s cleverer than that. The whole thing points too clearly at him.’
    Geraldine frowned. Something didn’t add up about the car crash.
    ‘We’re missing something.’
    She didn’t think Piers would tell them what it was. But he wasn’t the only person who regularly drove the black van.

Chapter 6
    T HE DEAD WOMAN RESEMBLED someone wearing a half mask, one side of her face white and smooth, the other side criss-crossed with hundreds of small lacerations from the shattered glass of the car window. Individually insignificant, together they created a grotesque image, like a cracked egg shell. Geraldine wondered if the victim had been aware of their impact before she died. In a profession where looks were more important than skill, Geraldine hoped the dead girl had been spared the anguish of knowing she would be scarred for life if she had survived. She wondered if Anna’s character would be written out of the television series, or if the producers had a list of lookalikes ready to step in if one of the actors had to drop out. It was a depressing reminder that no one was indispensable. But none of that was of any consequence to Anna now.
    ‘T here’s more to this than meets the eye,’ the pathologist said as soon as they entered the morgue.
    Sam’s eyes widened above her mask and Geraldine gave her a sympathetic glance before turning her attention to the corpse. Sam found autopsies difficult, and was often tetchy when they visited the morgue. Geraldine had never been badly affected in that way, except when she had once been unexpectedly confronted by the cadaver of a victim she had known while he was alive.
    G eraldine had worked with Miles Fellowes on a previous case. Now, the young pathologist was almost rubbing his hands together with glee. His hazel eyes twinkled at her, making him look more like a