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was with Patrick, all sense of what was right fled out of the window and she was left with only that deep and hungry need which was as new as it was basically unwelcome.
    She’d been attracted to him from the start, at his and Sonia's engagement party, but only in a cursory way, as one sizes up the partners of one's friends. Since their wedding, she'd hardly seen them. Sonia was, after all, Gilly's friend rather than hers, and their paths seldom crossed.
    Then, at the Country Club New Year party, when everyone was kissing everyone else, Patrick had suddenly said behind her, 'Happy New Year, Alex!' and pulled her against him. She closed her eyes on the memory, recalling the instant desire that had flared between them. Perhaps if she and Roy had not been having problems things might have been different, she might have drawn back, laughed it off. But in her uncertain and vulnerable state, her willpower evaporated and she was lost.
    She leant forward slowly and put her head in her hands, feeling the hot sun on the back of her neck. Next Thursday. A week tomorrow. It would be all right, she assured herself; no one suspected anything, no one would be watching them. All she had to do was behave naturally, and all would be well. It had to be.
    Good's teams, Webb discovered, had been working diligently but without much success. On the plus side, house-to-house inquiries in Judd's own street had produced two witnesses who'd seen him set off for the fatal meeting. One man, watering his garden, had even had a word with him as he passed, but Judd had volunteered no information as to where he was going or whom he was meeting. They'd merely discussed the drought and the continuing heatwave.
    His arrival at the rendezvous was, unfortunately, less well chronicled, though one of the Jester’s clientele thought he remembered a man waiting on the corner as he went into the pub; his description was vague enough to fit Judd or a dozen other people.
    Someone else, driving from the green, had had to swerve to avoid a car which stopped suddenly outside the pub, but had not noticed the driver nor anyone on the pavement who might have been waiting to climb inside. The car was described as a dark-blue Honda with a fairly recent registration. This was now being sought on the PNC.
    A couple of DCs had spent the previous evening at the Jester, asking questions and listening to the general conversation, to the resentment of the landlord, who accused them of putting off his customers. Several of them knew Judd, who occasionally had a bar lunch there, and all were adamant he'd not been in on Monday evening.
    Finally, and not surprisingly, none of the offices in the same road as Social Services had anyone by the name of Mrs Fairlie working for them.
    As a matter of routine, Webb had glanced through the list of Judd's most recent clients, though Steve Parker was convinced none of them was involved.
    'You say he didn't recognize the voice,' Webb said, 'but suppose it was disguised?'
    'It didn't strike him as being, just on edge.'
    'On edge,' Webb repeated thoughtfully. He didn't press the point, but he still thought a client was the most likely bet. You heard of cases where normally sane people suddenly flipped, and after all, who else would have wanted to kill a man like Simon Judd?
    And yet, he thought in exasperation, the same question had applied to Trevor Philpott. Was it the same perpetrator in each case? They were uncannily alike – the decoy phone call, the pub meeting, the body left at another pub. Unless, of course, this latest was a copycat of the first one.
    Before he left Ashmartin, news came through that the owner of the Honda had been traced. It belonged to a Mrs Castle, who admitted being in the vicinity of the green on Monday evening, and explained that she had braked suddenly to avoid a dog. She'd had a friend in the car with her, who verified her statement and confirmed that they had returned to the friend's house, where they'd