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flats were regarded as upmarket housing in Lavenstock, with prices to match. Mayo had once thought he would have liked to have owned one of them and been disappointed to find them beyond his means – or at any rate beyond what he was prepared to pay.
    Now, in the long living room of this one, he turned away from the big blank expanse of the uncurtained window – the second-floor flat was on the side of the river and wasn’t overlooked – realizing with a feeling of having escaped that this sort of place would never have suited him, much less Alex. It was too impersonal, it had no sense of ever having seen years of life lived in it, despite what the architects called “retention of distinguishing features.” Translated, this meant, he supposed, an excuse for keeping the intrinsic parts of the old warehouse it had once been, interesting when it came to the pointed arch shape of the window, but not necessarily in the exposed central heating pipes and the two enormous metal structural supports which ran floor to ceiling through the middle of the room.
    Perhaps it was also the way in which it was furnished, no expense spared but in total contrast to the warm, comfortable, lamplit room they had just left. Severe modern lighting, a polished parquet floor with one or two Persian-type rugs, and the rest of it all chrome and glass, in monochrome black and white except for the leather seating, which was a bright shocking pink. A tall square glass vase containing three silk lilies stood on the black glass coffee table and there was a collection of white Lalique on a bookcase. Blown-up surrealist black and white Man Ray photographs decorated the walls, the one called “Glass Tears” over a fireplace into which was set an unlit modern functional electric fire – no flickering flames, real or imitation, here.
    All very tasteful, no doubt, but equally uncompromising. The central heating was switched on and the room was warm, but there was a chill pervading it that had nothing to do with the temperature, that surely emanated from the cool, brisk Mrs. Fleming herself.
    â€œYou’d better sit down.”
    Her tone was pretty chilly too. She made no indication where they might sit and Kite chose an upright C. R. Mackintosh-type ladder-back chair with an exaggerated length of back which looked, and was, extremely uncomfortable. Mayo sank inescapably into the sighing embrace of pink leather, opposite Mrs. Fleming. Curly-haired Jenny Platt, wiser than her superiors, chose a camel-saddle stool at the end of the room to perch on.
    The fact that Kite had warned Georgina Fleming there was serious news about her husband didn’t seem to have shaken her unduly. In fact it was a long time since Mayo had seen anyone so self-possessed in any circumstances. Perhaps the meaning hadn’t penetrated, or he hadn’t been specific enough. Or perhaps she didn’t care.
    Maybe she knew already.
    Mayo kept a close, careful watch on her as he spoke. She was a good-looking young woman, around thirty, palely made up, her mouth painted poppy-red, not beautiful in the way Susan Salisbury had been, but her looks were the sort which would serve her well into old age. There was no softness about her to crumple or blur the fine edges. In profile her face was sharp, her eyebrows were shapely and well defined above curiously clear eyes, tawny-coloured, with a dark rim around the iris and thick, dark lashes.
    Not wanting there to be any mistake this time, Mayo told her in plain words that her husband had been found shot dead in his car, where he had apparently been since the previous evening. There followed a long silence. She still showed no visible emotion. If she hadn’t indeed been prepared, Mayo reflected, she was the coldest fish this side of the Antarctic.
    â€œWhere?” she asked finally. “Where did you find him?”
    Where? The question was unexpected. Most people reacted with disbelief, or horror, or