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contented enough with that and her books for company and barely noticed the solitude any more.
    Mechanically she tidied her desk and took the keys to lock up. A newspaper lay beside them, neatly folded in the buff wrapper in which it had been posted. She picked it up with a sigh, looked at it as if the act of tearing off its covering would be an ordeal. With a paper-knife from the desk she slit it slowly, then unfolded it.
    It was a local newspaper with only half-a-dozen double sheets and it didn’t take long to scan. Nothing in particular caught her attention but when she put it down her mood had changed. The quiet evening at home didn’t seem so attractive now; perhaps she’d check if there was something she’d like to see at the cinema where she could sit in the warm dark surrounded by people instead of the ghosts of her past, and with the most highly paid entertainers in the world up there on the silver screen doing their best to take her mind off all the things she didn’t want to think about.
    Marjory Fleming wasn’t exactly dragging her feet over setting up an interview with Conrad Mason – not exactly. But when he turned out to have a couple of days off, and then she did, and then there was a conference she had to attend and the statistical return had to be completed before the deadline, she wasn’t particularly sorry to have an excuse for putting it off. It was only when she passed PC Langlands in the corridor a week later that her conscience pricked her into action.
    When Conrad Mason came into a room, you knew he was there. He had the sort of presence which is a professional asset for a policeman: he was tall and broad with it, possessed of an uncompromising cast of features which suggested hitting first and answering to the complaints panel afterwards. He’d been known to break up a brawl just by coming into the bar and looming.
    He was looming now. ‘Sit down, Conrad,’ Fleming ordered. ‘I always feel like a stick of forced rhubarb under a flowerpot when you’re standing over me.’ He obeyed, smiling.
    With her mother’s remarks about his uncle in mind she looked at him with fresh interest and was forced to acknowledge that he too was actually a bit of a hunk. His hair was short, very dark and curly, and he had the sort of craggy face which might no longer be fashionable in the age of the New Man and the sarong but which would certainly appeal to any woman whose favourite fantasy involved caves and clubs and a bit of chest-pounding.
    She only became aware that she was staring when he shifted uneasily and put a hand up to his face. ‘Have I a smut on my cheek, or something?’
    ‘No, no,’ she said hastily. ‘I was just in a dwam. OK, do you know what this is about?’
    He shook his head, puzzled but not troubled.
    ‘If I say the name “WPC Johnston” would it ring a bell?’
    ‘Jackie Johnston. Yes, she’s new, started a few weeks ago.’ He still looked perfectly relaxed.
    ‘Do you remember shouting at her ten days ago?’
    That was a shock. His face darkened. ‘Did she tell you that?’
    ‘No, she didn’t. It was reported by someone else, and let’s get this straight right now this minute,’ her tone was steely, ‘if I hear even a wee suggestion that you’re taking it out on her you’ll be in the sort of trouble that will make you wish you’d taken a job cleaning public toilets instead. You and I both know it’s not the first time we’ve had to have this sort of conversation and I’m trying to make up my mind where we go from here.’
    She expected him to apologise, make excuses as he always had before. Instead he said, tight-lipped, ‘Is the verdict in already before the trial? Or am I to be allowed to put my side of it?’
    A muscle at the corner of his mouth was twitching and his brows had drawn together; he was staring directly at her in a way which made Fleming wonder if he was daft enough to think he could intimidate her. She leaned back in her chair and met his