Kate sniffled and blew her nose. “Yes. It’s what she liked to be called. She hated Jenny. She just wasn’t a Jenny. Like I’m not a Katy or a Kathy, I suppose.”

And like I’m not Anne, thought Annie. Funny the way names, contractions, especially, tended to stick. She had been Annie all the time growing up on the artists’ colony, and only at school had people called her Anne. “The two of you must have talked,” Annie said. “What sort of things did she talk about?”

“The usual things.”

Christ, thought Annie, this was like trying to get water out of a stone. “Did you notice any change in her mood or behavior recently?” she asked.

“Yes. She seemed very nervous and jumpy lately. It wasn’t like her.”

“Nervous? Since when?”

“Just these past few days.”

“Did she tell you what it was about?”

“No. She was even more quiet than usual.”

“Do you think there’s any connection between that and her reaction to last night’s phone call, the late drive?”

“I don’t know,” said Kate. “There might have been.”

The problem was, Annie realized, that Jennifer’s mobile had been taken along with everything else. Still, the phone company records might help.

“Do you know which network she used?”

“Orange.”

Annie made a note to follow up, then asked, “Do you have anything with her handwriting on it?”

“What?”

“A note or something? Letter? Postcard?”

Kate turned to a corkboard on the wall by the door. A number of Far Side cartoons were pinned there, along with a few postcards. Kate went over and unpinned one of them, a view of the Eiffel Tower, and carried it over to Annie. “Jenn went to Paris for a weekend break in March,” Katie said. “She sent me this. We had a good laugh because she got back here before it did.”

“Did she go by herself?” Annie asked, taking a photocopy of the note found in Jennifer Clewes’s back pocket from her briefcase to compare the handwriting.

“Yes. She said she’d always wanted to go on the Eurostar and they had a special deal. She went around all the art galleries. She loved going to galleries and museums.”

To Annie’s untrained eye, the handwriting looked the same, but she would have to get an expert to examine it. “Can I keep this?” she asked.

“I suppose so.”

Annie put the photocopy and the postcard in her briefcase. “You said she went alone,” Annie went on, “but isn’t Paris supposed to be the city of romance?”

“Jenn wasn’t going out with anyone back then.”

“But she has been more recently?”

“I think so.”

“Just think so?”

“Well, Jenn could be very private. I mean, she didn’t kiss and tell, that sort of thing. But she’d been getting a lot of calls on her mobile lately, and making a lot. And she’d stayed out all night on a couple of occasions. She didn’t usually do that.”

“Since when?”

“A few weeks.”

“But this started before the odd behavior?”

“Yes.”

“Did she tell you his name? I assume it was a he?”

“Good Lord, yes, of course. But she didn’t mention any names. She didn’t even tell me that she was seeing someone. It was just a feeling I got from her behavior. Intuition. I put two and two together.”

“But you said she seemed nervous and jumpy. That’s hardly the way a new relationship is supposed to make you feel, is it? And why was she so secretive? Didn’t you ever talk about personal matters, say, if one of you split up with a boyfriend or something?”

“We’ve only been flatmates for six months,” said Kate. “And nothing like that’s happened to either of us in that time. There’s that one bloke keeps pestering her, but that’s all.”

“Who?”

“Her ex-boyfriend. His name’s Victor, but that’s all I know about him. He keeps ringing and hanging around. You don’t think…?”

“I don’t think anything yet,” said Annie. “Are you sure you don’t know his last name, where he lives?”

“Sorry,” said Kate. “It was over before we started sharing. Or Jenn thought it was.”

“What did she think about it? Was she frightened of him?”

“No. Just annoyed, that’s all.”

“How did you two become flatmates?”

Kate looked away. “I’d rather not say. It’s private.”

Annie leaned forward. “Look, Kate,” she said, “this is a murder investigation. Nothing’s private. What was it? An advertisement in the papers? The Internet? What?”

Kate remained silent and Annie became aware of the tap dripping in the sink. She heard water spraying from a hose in a garden beyond the open window, and a child squealed with delight.

“Kate?”

“Oh, all right, all right. I thought I was pregnant. I did one of those home tests, you know, but I didn’t trust it.”

“How does Jennifer come into this?”

“It was where she worked. She was an administrator at a private women’s health center. They specialize in family planning.”

“Like the British Pregnancy Advisory Service? Marie Stopes?” Annie remembered both of these from her own unexpected brush with pregnancy nearly three years ago, though in the end she had gone to a National Health Service clinic.

“It’s a new chain. There are only a few of them open yet, as far as I know.”

“What’s it called?”

“The Berger-Lennox Centre.”

“And they perform abortions?”

“Not at the center itself, no, but they have satellite clinics, and they arrange for abortions to be performed. That’s not all they do, though. They cover the whole range, really: do reliable pregnancy tests; give advice and counseling, physical exams; arrange for abortions or put you in touch with adoption agencies, social services, whatever. They take care of everything. And they’re very discreet. One of my friends at work told me about them. Why, do you think it’s important?”

“I don’t know,” said Annie. But the one thing she did know was that abortion was a red flag for a number of fringe groups, and that people who worked at such clinics had been killed before. “Do you have the address?”

“In my room. I’ll get it for you when I get Melanie’s.”

“Fine,” said Annie. “So how did the two of you meet? You said Jennifer worked in administration.”

“Yes, she ran the business side of things. We got talking in the office while I was filling out the paperwork, that’s all. She was explaining it to me, how the system worked, that sort of thing. We just sort hit it off. We’re about the same age and I think she felt a bit sorry for me. Anyway, it turned out I wasn’t pregnant, and she asked me if I fancied a drink to celebrate. When we got talking we found out that neither of us was happy living where we were, so we decided to pool our resources and share. We didn’t know each other well, but we got along all right.”

“Where did she live before?”

“Out Hammersmith way. She said it was a really tiny flat and the area wasn’t very nice. She didn’t like walking there by herself at night. Can I have another glass of water, please?”

Annie wondered why she was asking, why she just didn’t go and get it herself. It was her flat, after all. Shock, probably. The poor girl looked as if she was likely to faint again at any moment. Annie went over to the sink and filled the two glasses. A fat bluebottle had got itself stuck on the flypaper and was pushing frantically with its legs, trying to get away, only succeeding in miring itself deeper in the sticky stuff with each new effort it made. Annie thought she knew what that felt like.

“Where did you live then?” she asked, handing over the water.

“Thank you. In Richmond. With my parents.”

“Why did you leave? Was it because you thought you were pregnant?”

“Oh, no. It wasn’t anything to do with that. I never even told them. And the boy… well, he’s long gone now. Richmond is just too far out. I was spending all my time commuting. I work in Clapham. I’m a librarian. It’s only a couple of tube stops, and on a nice day I can walk if I’ve got enough time.”