‘It’s not fair,’ Quilley said, banging his fist on the chair arm. ‘It’s just not bloody fair.’

‘Life rarely is. But the police aren’t to know how stupid and unimaginative my husband was. They’ll just look at the note, read the books, and assume he was blackmailing you.’ She laughed. ‘Even if Frank had read the Trotton book, I’m sure he’d have only noticed an “influence”, at the most. But you and I know what really went on, don’t we? It happens more often than people think. A few years ago I read in the newspaper about similarities between a book by Colleen McCullough and The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery. I’d say that was a bit obvious, wouldn’t you? It was much easier in your case, much less dangerous. You were very clever, Mr Quilley. You found an obscure novel and you didn’t only adapt the plot for your own first book, you even stole the character of your series detective. There was some risk involved, certainly, but not much. Your book is better, without a doubt. You have some writing talent, which X. J. Trotton completely lacked. But he did have the germ of an original idea, and it wasn’t lost on you, was it?’

Quilley groaned. Thirteen solid police procedurals, twelve of them all his own work, but the first, yes, a deliberate adaptation of a piece of ephemeral trash. He had seen what Trotton could have done and had done it himself. Serendipity, or so it had seemed when he found the dusty volume in a second-hand bookshop in Victoria years ago. All he had had to do was change the setting from London to Toronto, alter the names and set about improving upon the original. And now…? The hell of it was that he would have been perfectly safe without the damn book. He had simply given in to the urge to get his hands on Peplow’s copy and destroy it. It wouldn’t have mattered, really. Signed in Blood would have remained unread on Peplow’s shelf. If only the bloody fool hadn’t written that note…

‘Even if the police can’t make a murder charge stick,’ Mrs Peplow went on, ‘I think your reputation would suffer if this got out. Oh, the great reading public might not care. Perhaps a trial would even increase your sales – you know how ghoulish people are – but the plagiarism would at the very least lose you the respect of your peers. I don’t think your agent and publisher would be very happy either. Am I making myself clear?’

Pale and sweating, Quilley nodded. ‘How much?’ he whispered.

‘Pardon?’

‘I said how much. How much do you want to keep quiet?’

‘Oh, it’s not your money I’m after, Mr Quilley, or may I call you Dennis? Well, not only money, anyway. I’m a widow now. I’m all alone in the world.’

She looked around the room, her piggy eyes glittering, then gave Quilley one of the most disgusting looks he’d ever had in his life.

‘I’ve always fancied living near the lake,’ she said, reaching for another cigarette. ‘Live here alone, do you?’

Francis must be late, surely, Reed thought as he stood waiting on the bridge by the railway station. He was beginning to feel restless and uncomfortable; the handles of his holdall bit into his palm, and he noticed that the rain promised in the forecast that morning was already starting to fall.

Wonderful! Here he was, over two hundred miles away from home, and Francis hadn’t turned up. But Reed couldn’t be sure about that. Perhaps he was early. They had made the same arrangement three or four times over the past five years, but for the life of him Reed couldn’t remember the exact time they’d met.

Reed turned and noticed a plump woman in a threadbare blue overcoat come struggling against the wind over the bridge towards him. She pushed a large pram, in which two infants fought and squealed.

‘Excuse me,’ he called out as she neared him, ‘could you tell me what time school gets out?’

The woman gave him a funny look – either puzzlement or irritation, he couldn’t decide which – and answered in the clipped, nasal accent peculiar to the Midlands, ‘Half past three.’ Then she hurried by, giving Reed a wide berth.

He was wrong. For some reason he had got it into his mind that Francis finished teaching at three o’clock. It was only twenty-five past now, so there would be at least another fifteen minutes to wait before the familiar red Escort came into sight.

The rain was getting heavier and the wind lashed it hard against Reed’s face. A few yards up the road from the bridge was the bus station, which was attached to a large modern shopping centre, all glass and escalators. Reed could stand in the entrance there just beyond the doors, where it was warm and dry, and still watch for Francis.

At about twenty-five to four, the first schoolchildren came dashing over the bridge and into the bus station, satchels swinging, voices shrill and loud with freedom. The rain didn’t seem to bother them, Reed noticed: hair lay plastered to skulls; beads of rain hung on the tips of noses. Most of the boys’ ties were askew, their socks hung loose around their ankles and their shoelaces snaked along the ground. It was a wonder they didn’t trip over themselves. Reed smiled, remembering his own schooldays.

And how alluring the girls looked as they ran smiling and laughing out of the rain into the shelter of the mall. Not the really young ones, the unformed ones, but the older, long-limbed girls, newly aware of their breasts and the swelling of their hips. They wore their clothes carelessly: blouses hanging out, black woolly tights twisted or torn at the knees. To Reed, there was something wanton in their disarray.

These days, of course, they probably all knew what was what, but Reed couldn’t help but feel that there was also a certain innocence about them: a naive, carefree grace in the way they moved and a casual freedom in their laughter and gestures. Life hadn’t got to them yet; they hadn’t felt its weight and seen the darkness at its core.

Mustn’t get carried away, Reed told himself, with a smile. It was all very well to joke with Bill in the office about how sexy the schoolgirls who passed the window each day were, but it was positively unhealthy to mean it, or (God forbid!) attempt to do anything about it. He couldn’t be turning into a dirty old man at thirty-five, could he? Sometimes the power and violence of his fantasies worried him, but perhaps everyone else had them too. It wasn’t something you could talk about at work. He didn’t really think he was abnormal; after all, he hadn’t acted them out, and you couldn’t be arrested for your fantasies, could you?

Where the hell was Francis? Reed peered out through the glass. Wind-blown rain lashed across the huge plate windows and distorted the outside world. All detail was obliterated in favour of the overall mood: grey-glum and dream-like.

Reed glanced at his watch again. After four o’clock. The only schoolchildren left now were the stragglers, the ones who lived nearby and didn’t have to hurry for a bus. They sauntered over the bridge, shoving each other, playing tag, hopping and skipping over the cracks in the pavement, oblivious to the rain and the wind that drove it.

Francis ought to be here by now. Worried, Reed went over the arrangements again in his mind. He knew that he’d got the date right because he’d written it down in his appointment book. Reed had tried to call the previous evening to confirm, but no one had answered. If Francis had been trying to get in touch with him at work or at home, he would have been out of luck. Reed had been visiting another old friend – this one in Exeter – and Elsie, the office receptionist, could hardly be trusted to get her own name right.

When five o’clock came and there was still no sign of Francis, Reed picked up his holdall again and walked back down to the station. It was still raining, but not so fast, and the wind had dropped. The only train back home that night left Birmingham at nine-forty and didn’t get to Carlisle until well after midnight. By then the local buses would have stopped running and he would have to get a taxi. Was it worth it?