"Don't give me it. You thought so when you left here; you were as sure as me. So what's made you change your mind? Did she flash her eyes at you? Did she say, "Hold me, Oz, I'm scared"? Was that it?"

"She tried that last Sunday and it didn't work. No, she swore to me, on her life, that she didn't do it. She's taking the plea, but she still maintains that she's innocent."

"Silly lass. She'd better shut up, or the crown office might hear her and call off the deal." He sighed. "Okay, if you're convinced, I'll give it a go. I owe her, I suppose. I feel a bit shitty about the way I set her up."

"Did you bug the bedroom as well?" I asked him, jokingly.

"Of course I did."

I'm not easily surprised any more, but that one made me gasp. "You're serious, aren't you? You were banging her, and all the time you were hoping she'd confess to murder." Ricky looked at the floor. "Go on."

I said, 'get the tape out and play it. I've got to hear this."

"I wiped it afterwards," he muttered.

"Very sanitary of you; now get the tape."

"Give it up, Blackstone. I feel guilty enough without you taking the piss. Especially now that I'm starting to like the girl."

"What? After she went for you with that knife? Mind you that's appropriate, I suppose; you bone her, she tries to bone you."

"I've told you, chuck it!" he shouted, but a smile crossed his face at the same time. "She's got spirit in her, has Alison; she can hide it well at times, but it's there. Right, I'm going to help her, and what's more, I'll do it for free. So where do we begin?"

"You're the detective."

"I know that. I was talking to myself, not you. We start with the murder weapon; she didn't kill him, so someone must have planted it at her place. We'll go there and look for signs of a break-in."

I shook my head. "No. You'll go there. I'm not involved in this. But you'll be wasting your time; there were no signs of a break-in, and there was no need for one either. David Capperauld still had a key to Alison's flat."

Ricky scratched his chin. "Had he now?" He was even starting to sound like a copper again. I know that chin trick; I worked for a lawyer once who did something similar. In his case, he used to light his pipe in the middle of a discussion. What he was actually doing was giving himself time to think.

"I'd better get into his place," Ross said, eventually. "If the key's missing, we need to know. That could be a bugger, though; I don't want Ronnie Morrow to hear I'm doing this, or it could put Alison's deal in jeopardy. But I can't break into the place."

I recalled that once, not that many years in the past, the same guy had broken into my flat, but I let that pass. I also let him off the hook.

"Not a problem," I told him. "She had a key to his place as well, remember. That was how we got in last Sunday.

"It was on the bunch of keys she gave me today, so I could pick up her stuff... although as it happened, I didn't need them." I took a brass Chubb key from my pocket, laid it on his kitchen work-surface, and slid it across to him. "It isn't there any more."

Ricky whistled, and smiled.

Twenty-Seven.

He was still smiling when he stepped out of the lift next morning. I wasn't, though; I had phoned Susie as I was having breakfast and told her how the Alison thing had developed; all of it. Not to put too fine a point on it she had done her nut.

"You're telling me that this woman, one of your many old flames, is about to plead guilty to killing her boyfriend, you've taken his place on the board of their company, and you're in the process of buying his shares in the business, at a knock-down price? How the hell do you think that's going to look to the police when they find out? Are you completely off your head?"

That aspect hadn't occurred to me for one second.

"Put it that way, and the answer's yes; I probably am. But I've made the offer, love. I can't back down now."

"Don't "love" me. You're a director of the Gantry Group; what's trouble for you is trouble for me. Tell me straight; are you still lusting after this woman?"

"No, I'm not; I never did, either."

"Just as well for you, or I'd cut your balls off. Now you must get out of this daft agreement, now."

"How am I going to do that, without leaving her in the lurch?"

"I'll put up the fifty grand, or whatever figure the boy's estate settles for eventually. I'll advance the money to her solicitor, in confidence, and he'll buy the shares on my behalf. She can repay me on the same basis you agreed. I'll protect myself by putting my own accountants in place to oversee the business."

"But..."

"No arguments, Oz; that's what's going to happen."

"But why would you do that for her?"

"I wouldn't. I'm doing it for you."

"Why?"

"Because you're the father of my daughter and I won't let you make such an arse of yourself."

"And that's all?"

An intake of breath so deep that it sounded like a wave winding up to crash on to a beach. "No. Because I love you, and I don't want you to get into any more trouble than you can help."

After that, I had to agree. I was still thinking about it when Miles phoned from the Caledonian Hotel, to say that he and Dawn had checked in, and when Ricky Ross rang the entry phone buzzer at ten minutes to ten. What I was thinking about, was being my own man.

"What's tickling you?" I asked him.

"I went to David Capperauld's place," he answered. "He had her key all right. He'd still have it, if he was alive. It was in his kitchen cupboard, hanging on a row of hooks with lots of other keys. Every one of them was on a ring with a plastic tag, with a label in it. Hers said "Alison". I took it up to her flat and tried it, to make sure, then I put it back where it was.

"His door key was hanging there too, labelled "spare". Whoever killed him must have taken a look around, or known where to look, found Alison's key there, and used it to get in to plant the awl at her place."

"And then put it back," I said. "That was bloody crafty. It doesn't really help her at all, does it?"

"Yes it does. Everything helps, Oz, everything that backs up an alternative solution to the one the police are going for. It doesn't prove anything, but it suggests something. If we can gather in more suggestions, enough of them, we can maybe ... okay, it's a big maybe ... we can undermine the prosecution case."

He smirked again. "There's another thing. I dusted the key with powder, and lifted a couple of prints from it. They might just be Capperauld's, but I don't think they are ..."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Because I took prints from the razor I found in his bathroom, and from his shaving gel canister; they don't match, none of them."

"Maybe they're Alison's."

"They're not."