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motive?’
    Simon considered her question. ‘Either it was, and you’re pretending it wasn’t, or it wasn’t and you’re not willing to pretend it was to avoid jail time. In either case, why?’
    Charlie smiled. ‘Or . . .’ she said. Simon stared at her expectantly. ‘You’re not going to like it,’ she warned him. ‘It’s as devious as it is unlikely.’
    ‘Tell me. You know how I feel about Occam’s Razor. The simplest answer
isn’t
usually the right one. Devious and unlikely is everywhere.’
    ‘You ought to launch your own theory: Occam’s Beard, you could call it. Okay, let’s say your killer could halve the time he spends behind bars by confessing his true motive, the one you suggested to him. If he’s desperate or a pessimist he might go for that. But if he’s confident and a good liar, he might deny his real motive and insist as unconvincingly as he can that the crime he committed was full-on murder. Part of that implausibility might include pretending he has no idea why he did it.’
    Simon was nodding. ‘If he keeps saying he doesn’t know why, and I suspect him of lying, I start to think he’s not the killer, he’s covering for someone. Exactly what I’ve been thinking. If I find someone else to pin it on, then he doesn’t go to jail at all: he gets to be innocent of the greater crime rather than guilty of the lesser one.’
    ‘Simon, it’s so unlikely – that it’d occur to him, that he’d have the nerve to carry it through. He’d have to know there was someone else who could have done it, someone with motive and opportunity. Even then, he’d assume you wouldn’t be able to prove it, wouldn’t he? Any proof there is will point to him, the real killer.’
    The doorbell rang, then rang again straight away, more insistently. ‘Granted, it’s a top idea,’ Charlie called over her shoulder as she went to answer it. ‘Sadly, it’s my idea, not your suspect’s.’
    ‘Don’t let her in!’ Simon bellowed.
    ‘Shout a bit louder and you might drive her away before I get there.’
    More ringing of the bell. Charlie swore under her breath as she opened the door. ‘Sorry, you’ve missed your slot. You’ll have to make another . . .’
Appointment.
The last word didn’t make it.
    The woman standing on the doorstep in the driving horizontal rain wasn’t Liv. Charlie didn’t know who she was, though there was something familiar about her. Yet this was a face she had never seen before, Charlie would have sworn to it.
    ‘Are you Sergeant Charlie Zailer?’
    ‘Yes. Who are you?’
    ‘My name’s Regan Murray.’
    Don’t know the name, don’t know the face. And yet . . .
    ‘I’m looking for DC Simon Waterhouse. I know he lives here.’
    As if Charlie was about to deny it. ‘Simon,’ she called, without taking her eyes off their visitor. ‘Regan Murray’s here to see you.’ At least she didn’t need to worry about what she normally worried about. Regan Murray wasn’t attractive; no one could think she was. She had a severe face, especially for a woman. Her eyes were too small, her forehead too dome-like.
    She was bound to be something to do with the Don’t Know Why Killer. Charlie realised she’d been assuming this hypothetical person was a man. Could Regan Murray
be
the Don’t Know Why Killer? If she hadn’t yet been arrested or charged . . .
    ‘Who?’ said Simon.
    Not wreckage washed up on the doorstep by the latest case, then. Come to think of it, how did Ms Murray know Charlie’s name too, and that she and Simon lived together? There was also the coincidence of the timing: Liv, who’d said she was coming, hadn’t turned up, and this stranger had. ‘Has my sister sent you?’ Charlie asked. Was that why she looked familiar? One of Liv’s old school friends?
    Simon appeared by her side. ‘I don’t know any Regan Murrays,’ he said to the one in front of him.
    ‘This is a little bit awkward. Can I come in?’
    ‘Not unless you give us a good