Karen began her questions as delicately as she could, but Jennifer, a good decade and a half younger than Estelle Cooper by age, and several generations by attitude and experience, was largely unfazed.

'We quarrelled about it, yes, course we did. All that play-acting stuff. Don't know now why I went along with it as long as I did.' Pausing, she looked Karen in the eye. 'Except, well, it was exciting at first. You know? You know what I mean? It's only afterwards you think, God, what was going on there at all?'

'And when you fell out on holiday,' Karen said, 'is that really what it was about? More of the same?'

Averting her face, Jennifer slowly released a wavering line of smoke. 'Yes,' she said.

'We'd like you to come in and make a statement,' Karen said. 'I presume that's okay?'

'Now? You don't mean now?'

'Later this afternoon would be fine. When you finish work. We can give you a lift both ways if that would help.'

'All right.' She looked at them again, first one and then the other. 'He has done something this time, hasn't he? Something serious.'

'It's possible,' Elder said.

'Dear God,' Jennifer whispered and crossed herself.

'If it were necessary,' Karen said, 'you'd be prepared to give evidence in court?'

'Oh, yes.'

'You don't know the names of anyone Steven went out with before, do you?' Elder asked. 'We'd like to talk to as many as we can.'

Jennifer reached for her pack of cigarettes. 'I don't know, I might. If I think about it, you know. Names he's mentioned. Not above a bit of bragging, as you might imagine. But offhand there's only that -' The cigarettes slipped from her hand. 'Only that policewoman, the one who was killed. Oh, God. Oh, my good God!' A sudden shiver running through her, every vestige of colour bleached from her face.

In the end, Jennifer McLaughlin came up with three names, going back, she thought, a good few years. One might have been working in Waitrose, another a nurse. All were – or had been – north London-based.

'You and me then, Frank,' Karen said. 'Bit of old-fashioned legwork. What do you say?'

Elder picked up the CD box and glanced at the front: a round-faced black man with short cropped hair, saxophone balanced over one shoulder, hands together as though in prayer. 'Stanley Turrentine,' Elder called towards the kitchen. 'Should I have heard of him?'

No reply.

Saxophone and what? Organ?

'Sorry,' Karen said, carrying through two newly rinsed glasses and the bottle of Aberlour she'd spotted on special offer on their visit to Waitrose. 'You said something but I couldn't hear what.'

'Turrentine, is he famous? '

'Celebrity-famous or the jazz-cognoscente kind?'

'Either.'

'Maybe a little bit of the latter.' She poured two quite generous measures of Scotch, handed one to Elder, and raised her own. 'Cheers.'

'Cheers.'

'I saw him a few years back at the Jazz Cafe.' Karen smiled. 'Back in my clubbing days.'

'Now you sit around in the evenings knitting and doing crochet.'

'Something like that.'

The whisky was good, warm on the back of the throat. They'd eaten at a place on Upper Street, Turkish; had to stand in line twenty minutes or so for a table, but it had been worth it. Lamb kebabs and rice, hot sauce, a bottle of red wine.

'He played this,' Karen said, listening. 'You know it?'

Elder shook his head.

'"God Bless the Child".' She sang a few bars.

During the course of a long afternoon they'd managed to track down and talk to two of the three women whose names Jennifer McLaughlin had remembered.

Maria Upson, a nurse working in Orthopaedics at the Middlesex, had confirmed pretty much everything about Kennet they either knew or suspected; she'd gone out with him for nine months and now regretted almost every minute of the last six.

'Men,' she said, with a not totally disparaging glance towards Elder, 'get to know them, or think you do, let them slip under your guard and they either turn into five-year-olds who want cuddling and cosseting or else they're Fred West.' She didn't need to add which Kennet resembled most.

Lily Patrick was a trainee manager at Waitrose and the picture she painted was different: Kennet was kind, funny, considerate. Okay, he did once climb through her second-floor bedroom window in the middle of the night and scare the wits out of her, but that was to deliver a dozen red roses and some red balloons on her birthday. 'You know, like the Milk Tray man.'

'And sexually,' Karen said, 'he didn't ever suggest anything you felt uncomfortable with?'

'No.' Blushing, but just a little. 'What kind of thing?'

'Games, acting out fantasies. That kind of thing.'

'We did act out a bit of Romeo and Juliet once. You know, the balcony scene. After we'd seen the movie.'

'I was thinking of something a bit less romantic'

'I don't understand.'

'Rape fantasies, perhaps.'

'Rape?' Lily wiped her hands down the front of her Waitrose overall, as if they were suddenly sullied. 'You're joking, right? This is some kind of a joke?'

'No.'

'You've got to be.'

'It's something people do, Lily. Fantasies like that. Ordinary people.'

'Not people I know. Not Steve.'

Elder had been thinking about a song by Dire Straits Joanne had played over and over. He was trying to recall their fantasy life, his former wife and himself, if they ever had one.

'If it was so good,' he said, 'the relationship with Steve, how come you stopped seeing him?'

'He went away, didn't he? The Middle East somewhere. For work. This big project, rebuilding a hospital I think it was. Kuwait, maybe. Somewhere they couldn't drink, I know that. No alcohol. I remember Steve joking about it, how he'd have to be careful which airline he was flying with, in case, you know, it was dry. As much free booze as I can get, he said, before the drought.'

'He liked a drink then?' Karen said.

'No more than anyone.'

'And you haven't seen him since then? What was it? Eighteen months ago?'

'Two years nearly. No. He's still there, isn't he? Living there.'

'You've heard from him then?'

'No. Not really. Not since Christmas, Christmas before last.'

They'd thanked her for her time and left her looking wistful and not a little sad.

The third name – Jane Forest – they were still waiting to track down.

Karen was sitting on a low-backed two-seater settee, orange with purple and red cushions; Elder opposite in a grey wicker chair. The music was still playing over sounds of traffic and muffled voices from the street.

'Close on two years ago,' Karen said, 'according to Lily Patrick, Kennet went out to Kuwait.' She shook her head. 'I don't think so. Eighteen months ago, or not so long after, he started seeing Jennifer McLaughlin.'

'During which time he was also seeing Maddy Birch.'

'And, presumably, shopping at Tesco instead of Waitrose.'

'Seems to be a pattern,' Elder said.

'So what's the betting while he was going out with Miss Waitrose, he was seeing someone else then too?'

'Somebody whose fantasies ran on the rougher side of Cadbury's Milk Tray and Romeo and Juliet.'

'Most likely. Though even Juliet died in the end.'

'So did Romeo, remember?' Elder sipped his Scotch. 'If I knew my Shakespeare better, I could probably come up with someone more like Kennet than Romeo.'

'Othello,' Karen suggested. 'No, Iago.'