'But what?'

Cindy twisted the damp tissue in her fingers. 'Maybe it didn't happen when I think it happened.'

'I don't understand.'

'What if I'd done it before?'

'You'll have to help me, Cindy, I can't follow what you're saying. How do you mean before?'

'Earlier.'

Lorraine sighed. 'You mean before you went to the balcony to sunbathe?'

'No. I mean the first shot. When I was sleeping. I mean, I could have done it half asleep. Like in an altered state of consciousness you know, the way people remember past lives, and sometimes they just act them out? I mean, I could have been a murderess or anything. Maybe I just couldn't help myself.'

Lorraine rolled her eyes as Cindy sprang to her feet, thinking that her client had been watching too many of her husband's killer-bimbo fantasies. She watched the girl dive at the punch-bag and hit it, her face a mask of anger. Lorraine let her go until she tired herself out and eventually put her arms around the punch-bag, hugging it tightly.

'Sometimes he didn't come home,' she said softly. Lorraine kept silent. 'Often he stayed out all night, and I knew about the other women. I knew he was never faithful, he always said that to me, said he could never be faithful to one woman and that I'd just have to accept that. The day before I found him, he'd been really mean to me. We argued at breakfast, and then he came down here. I came after him and he was furious, but I wouldn't go. I said to him that if he carried on this way I'd leave him, and he said he didn't care what I did and he laughed at me, kept on punching this thing, laughing and ignoring me. So I went and got the gun, and when I came back he was on that weight machine, and I went right up to him and I pointed it at his head, and I said that was the last time he was ever going to laugh at me.'

Lorraine still said nothing, but was interested to note that Cindy was calm now, her mind focused on what she was saying.

'He looked at me, then he reached out and pulled the gun over so it was almost in his mouth and he told me to fire it.'

'And?'

Cindy sighed. 'I did. I pulled the trigger, but it wasn't loaded.' She pushed away the punch-bag, which began to swing slowly. 'He got up from the bench and hit me in the stomach. I fell backwards onto the floor and he kept on coming towards me, but he stepped right over me and walked into the showers. I screamed at him that I would get him the next time. Next time the gun would be loaded.' She rubbed her belly. 'Punched me right in the baby, and it hurt so bad I was sick, but he made me get dressed and go out for dinner at Morton's, and he told everyone what I'd done, and they all laughed. He kept on fooling around at dinner with this baby zucchini as the gun, shoving it into his mouth, and everyone laughed, and I got so upset I was crying, but I wasn't going to stay and be made a fool of. So I got up and I shouted it out. I said the next time he wouldn't live to tell anybody anything because the next time I'd make sure I killed him.'

Cindy went to fetch another Diet Coke. This time she drank it from the can. 'He didn't come home. I waited and waited, and it was six o'clock in the morning when he came back. He was in his dressing room, taking his clothes off, when I went in to see him. He just told me to get out, but I wouldn't. I said he shouldn't make a fool of me in front of people like he had done, but he just kept on choosing which shirt he was going to wear, ignoring me again.'

Lorraine waited while Cindy sipped the Coke.

'I went into the bedroom to get the gun. I meant it, I was going to kill him, and I'd just figured out how to load it, but I couldn't remember where it was, or if I'd taken it from the gym. I was looking all over the room for it when he strolled in all dressed up and Jose knocked on the door.' Cindy frowned as she tried to recall the details.

'Jose said that the car needed to be serviced, and did Harry need it after his breakfast meeting at seven. Harry said he didn't. He'd had a long, hard night and he'd just sit by the pool reading scripts after his meeting. Then . . . he started laughing and he told Jose that I'd threatened to kill him again and that Jose was his witness that I was a real flake, a psychiatric case. He knows how upset I get about him saying things like that because I've had, you know, some problems.'

Lorraine shifted her weight. 'Problems?' she said gently.

'Mmmm, I have these . . . kind of bad days, you know. I get depressed, uptight about things, angry.'

'Can you go back to what you were saying about when your husband and Jose were talking in the bedroom? What happened then?'

'Oh, yeah. Well, Harry left. And I went back to bed. I'd had such a bad night I told Juana not to disturb me. I couldn't sleep, so I got up and went out on the balcony to lie in the sun, and I guess I must have gone to sleep there. I had a nightmare, me shooting Harry, like I'd threatened to do, and something woke me up well, I think it was me woke myself up because I pulled the trigger. I fired the gun. But I'm sure it was in my dream and then I'm not sure. That's what terrifies me. Did I do it or was I dreaming?'

'How long do you think there was between the two shots, or the one shot and what might have been a car backfiring?'

'Er . . . maybe ten minutes.'

'About how long does it take to get from the balcony to the pool, Cindy?'

Cindy drew open the sliding door. 'Oh, four, maybe five minutes, but it would depend on how fast you were moving.'

Lorraine picked up her purse and followed Cindy out. 'Do you think you're going to be all right here alone?'

'If I'm not there's Jose and Juana, but they don't like me.'

'When you said I had to pretend to be a masseuse you seemed worried someone would find out that I was investigating the case.'

'I am. I don't want Jose or that bitch Juana to know. I don't want anyone knowing my business because they all believe I killed Harry, and so they won't say nice things about me in the court. But if they saw this, maybe they would change their minds.' Cindy pulled up her top. There was a nightmare bruise across her belly, a virtual imprint of a fist. 'This is nothin'. He was always knocking me around, just not my face.'

'Does anyone know he did this to you?'

'Maybe his ex-wives or his girlfriends my mother always used to say once a wife-beater always one but they won't lift a finger for me, will they? Nor will my mother come to think of it.' Lorraine lit a cigarette. She asked Cindy for the names of the people who had been at the dinner the night before Nathan was killed, the addresses and names of girlfriends and ex-wives, business associates, anyone who would benefit from his death, anyone who had a grudge against him. Eventually she said, 'Let's leave it there for the present, Cindy,' and got up to go. 'I'll start checking some of this stuff out.'

'Sure.' Cindy shrugged. 'But I'll see you tomorrow anyway, won't I?'

'What?' Lorraine was surprised.

'Harry's funeral. The coroner's office released the body last night. I just called Forest Lawn and told them to take care of everything they said they'd put a notice in the papers and all that stuff. I'd kind of like it if you came. I mean, my folks aren't going to be there, and I never liked his that much.'

'I'd be glad to,' Lorraine said, thinking that a chance to get a closer look at Harry Nathan's friends and relatives would be welcome. 'What time?'

'Eleven,' Cindy said. 'It's in that fake New England church they have there. Match all his phoney friends.' She gave a wry smile, but Lorraine saw the flicker of pain in her eyes. She could see too that having become Mrs Nathan III at the age of nineteen hadn't landed this isolated, mixed-up girl in any bed of roses.

'Okay,' Lorraine said. 'Just one last thing. Can I have access to some of these recordings Harry made?'

Once again it was clear that Cindy was uncomfortable, but she said, 'Oh, sure. I'll have Jose send them over.'

'Couldn't I have them now?'

'It might take a while to find them. He kept them in weird places.'

She was evidently preparing the ground for some of the tapes to become conveniently untraceable, Lorraine noted. 'Didn't the police ask for them?' she asked.

'Well, I didn't tell them about them. I figured, I pay my taxes, let them do their job!' Cindy said with another touch of defiance. But then the fight went out of her. 'Besides, they're so fucking sure it's me that they aren't going to bother listening to ten million hours of Harry talking about all the ginseng he stuck up his ass.'

'I see,' Lorraine said evenly. 'Well, I'd be interested to hear about it, if you could send over any tapes you have. See you tomorrow.'

By the time Lorraine returned to the office, she felt drained and Decker looked at her with his head on one side. 'Go well, did it?'

Lorraine tossed her purse down. 'You try interviewing Cindy Nathan. The porch light's on, but there's nobody home. She's not sure that she didn't do it, because she dreamed that she'd just pulled the trigger when she heard a gunshot, or as she told me repeatedly, it might have been a car backfiring!'

'What's your gut feeling?'

Lorraine leaned back in her chair. 'I don't think she did it, but I'd better find something fast to prove that she didn't because, pushed by any decent prosecutor, she'll admit that she did. She's that dumb.'

'Why would someone like Harry Nathan marry such a flake?'

Lorraine sipped her coffee. 'Because she's twenty and he was a fifty-year-old guy dyeing his hair and having face-lifts, and she's got a body like a fourteen-year-old Venus, and an angel's face. He also had quite a line-up of women as well as Cindy, plus remained friendly with his ex-wife, who still, by the way, runs his art gallery. I'd say Cindy was the classic babe armpiece for a man with a small dick.'

'Oh, he had one of those, did he?' Decker said, camp.

'According to Little Miss Bimbo he did, but she's having his baby. Not that he seemed all that interested almost punched it through her backbone. I saw the bruise.'

'So,' Decker said, leaning on the doorframe, 'what's the next move?'

'I think she's hiding something about tapes Nathan made at the house phone conversations, security videos. She didn't tell the police and she kind of let it slip to me, but she said she'd send the tapes over. We'll just have to wait and see what we get.'

Cindy Nathan brought the boxes upstairs from the gym herself and stacked them in the hall. She had listened to some of the conversations again and again, just to hear his voice, but they had agreed a code and stuck to it and there was nothing to make Harry or anyone else suspicious: even the police could have listened to them, if they'd found them. She dialled a cab company, said she wanted some items delivered, and sat down to wait for the driver to come. It would have been easier, of course, to send Jose, but she was sick of Harry's housekeepers knowing all her comings and goings, the pair of them always watching her. They had been surprised when she had given them the rest of the day off, but within half an hour they had been on their way to Juana's sister.

When the cab driver showed up, Cindy gave him the boxes of tapes with Lorraine's address and twenty-five dollars. Good riddance, she thought. Mrs Page was welcome to listen to all the rambling rubbish Harry recorded. There was nothing to find.

The videos, though, they were something else but where the fuck were they? Harry had kept all the recordings together in the safe under the floor in his dressing room but the videotapes, both the ones from the security cameras and the . . . the other ones, were gone. Cindy tried to tell herself that if she couldn't find them, nobody else was likely to, but the possibility that they might be circulating somewhere out there tormented her.

It was more likely that the tapes had never left the house, she told herself. Harry had just moved them again, the mistrustful, suspicious-minded bastard. She set off for the stairs to have another look in the gym, where there was certainly no visible hiding place for the substantial stack of videos. She deduced he must have had a new cavity let into the floor or the wall.

The noise of Cindy's tapping on what she considered various likely spots on the walls masked the sound of the doors opening to the pool area. At first she didn't notice the man's presence, and for over a minute he watched her in silence before he spoke.

'Cindy,' he said, his voice curiously cold and flat.

She froze.

'Cindy,' he said again.

'Jesus, Raymond, you gave me such a fucking scare! Don't ever do that to me again! How did you get in here?'

In front of her was a tall man with thinning silver-grey hair, and an extraordinarily handsome face. When he began to speak, it became clear that behind the distinguished facade was a vapid, unstable personality. There was only one thing Raymond Vallance could ever have been, and that is what he was: an actor.

'Through the pool doors. I still have the key to this fairy bower, Rapunzel, remember?' He had the mannered and over-emphasized diction of the lifelong performer, and shook the key at Cindy before he put it back in his pocket.

'Well, long time, no see,' Cindy said, trying to ignore his apparent froideur and assuming a coquettish air as she moved across to him. She made to slide her arms round his waist, but Vallance stepped away immediately. Close to, she could see that he was grey in the face, haggard, as though he hadn't slept in days, and his clothes were creased and dirty. Not that that was necessarily anything new with Raymond, she thought, but he was clearly in no mood for fun and games.

'Cindy,' he said, 'we have to be very careful now, you know that.'

'For Chrissakes, Raymond. Harry's being pickled in brine at Forest Lawn right this minute!' Cindy cried. 'We don't have to hide anything.'

'Don't talk that way about him, you tacky little piece of trash,' Vallance snapped, and Cindy recoiled from the cold anger in his voice. For a moment she had the impression that he was genuinely in the grip of strong emotion, almost as though he were fighting back tears but if Raymond was so crazy about Harry, what had he been doing fucking the ass off Harry's wife every time his back was turned: 'Raymond, I haven't seen you in weeks. I'm, like, totally strung out and I'm pregnant, Raymond. Doesn't that mean anything to you?' she began, her voice trembling.

'Not particularly,' Vallance said, in the same odd, cold tone she had never heard from him before. 'Other people's children have never interested me much.'

'Raymond-' Cindy wailed.

Vallance cut her short. 'I came here to ask you only two things, Cindy,' he said. 'First, what happened to the tapes?'

'I don't know,' she said, her eyes sliding away from his.

'Did the police take them?'

'I can't find them I mean the videos. They were in the safe and now they're gone. I took the tapes from the phone out and-'

He interrupted her again. 'And where are they?'

Cindy squirmed. 'I . . . put 'em somewhere safe.'

'Cindy,' Vallance said, grabbing the girl by her upper arms, 'tell me where the fucking tapes are right now or I'll break your arm.' He shook her hard, and she saw a darkness in his eyes she had not seen before. It chilled her to the bone.

'I I hired a PI to, like, look after us,' Cindy stammered, beginning to cry. 'I gave them to her. I had to, Raymond, it would've looked worse if I hadn't, and I checked 'em all.'

Vallance thrust her violently away from him. She stumbled in the high, unwieldy shoes and fell backwards onto the floor. 'You sent those tapes to a private investigator?' he said, now white with rage. 'Tell me her name.'

'Page,' Cindy sobbed. 'Lorraine Page. On . . . West Pico.'

'Well, I'll take care of that,' he said. He stood looking at the girl's huddled body on the floor, listening to her cry. He turned to go, but then bent down beside her.

'Cindy?' His voice was oddly gentle. 'Just one last thing I need to know, Cindy.' She lifted her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing the blue eye-shadow in streaks across her face.

'You killed Harry, didn't you, Cindy?'

She sensed danger immediately and tried to roll away from him, but in one movement Vallance caught her by the hip, turned her onto her back and sat astride her. 'Did you kill him, Cindy?' he asked, as though they were exchanging pleasantries at a party.

'Raymond,' she wept, almost hysterical, 'you're hurting me! You'll hurt the baby!'

'Answer me, Cindy,' Vallance demanded, and banged her head hard on the floor. 'Did you kill him or not?'

'I didn't! I swear it! I swear it on my kid's life, Raymond it's Harry's kid.' She did not know what prompted her to add the last words, but she felt the high tension in Vallance's body slacken.

'Well,' he said, releasing her and giving her a look almost of disgust, 'maybe it is.'

He rocked back onto his heels with a peculiarly graceful movement, and got to his feet, looking down at her as dispassionately as though she were a drunk he had to step over in the street. 'See you at Forest Lawn,' he said, and was gone.

Decker's phone rang. It was the doorman: there had been a delivery, in three cardboard boxes. He'd bring them up.

The boxes were stiff-sided packing cases, thickly Sellotaped across the opening flaps, and numbered one to three. Decker and Lorraine ripped open case one.

'Harry Nathan's private recordings of phone calls and anyone who called at the house,' Lorraine said.

'Dear God, this'll take weeks to plough through.' Decker looked over the rows and rows of tapes, marked with dates.

Lorraine pointed to case three. 'Start with the most recent and work backwards. See you tomorrow after I've held Cindy's hand at Forest Lawn.' She bent down and clipped on Tiger's lead. The big dog immediately began to drag her towards the door.

Decker checked his watch almost six fifteen. He packed twenty of the tapes for the last three months into his car tape case, stuck it in his gym bag and decided that he would start playing them as he drove home.

Raymond Vallance sat in the downstairs lobby of Lorraine's building and observed Decker carefully through the iridescent blue lenses of his last season's Calvin Klein sunglasses. He had been just in time to see three packing cases go in, and one lady, a big dog and now quite a cute little fag come out. No boxes.

He gave the doorman a pleasant smile, folded his newspaper and walked out onto the street. He leaned back against the wall, as Decker went to the entrance to the motor court, and took a slim leather address book from an inside pocket.

No numbers were ever deleted from Raymond Vallance's little black book: you never knew when you might want to look up an old friend, perhaps for a favour or, even better, suggest something that might be mutually beneficial. Not that this party was a friend exactly, but he had been useful to both Harry and himself on a number of occasions in the past with respect to little matters of entertainment company or chemicals. But this was more serious. He dialled the number and the young man picked up almost at once.

'Yo, bro,' Vallance began in the slangy sing-song voice and Brooklyn accent he adopted when talking to black people. 'You busy tonight? Got a little job for you . . .'