nce the emotional storm had abated, Lindsay found herself ravenous. Cursing Cordelia, she fixed herself a bacon sandwich. "Damned if I'm going to let her interfere with this job," she muttered as she slung her dirty plate into the sink. Fired with anger and energy, she grabbed the phone and rang Ruth Menzies at her gallery. "It's Lindsay Gordon, Ruth," she announced. "I'd really like to get together with you and Antonis. Are you free tomorrow evening for dinner?"

Ruth was instantly flustered by the positive approach, which was what Lindsay had banked on. "Well, I... em... there's nothing in the diary, and Antonis hasn't said anything about..."

"That's great. I'm really looking forward to seeing you both again. Half past seven suit you? I'll expect you then. 21 Halbeath Drive. First floor, right hand flat. The name on the bell is Hartley. Got that?"

"Yes, I think so," Ruth stammered, repeating the address.

"See you then," Lindsay said cheerfully. "Bye." She put the phone down with a grin. It had been a pushover. Ruth was far too polite and diffident to ask her what the hell she was playing at. They were hardly friends, after all. If it hadn't been for Alison, they'd have been little more than nodding acquaintances.

The adrenalin surge that had carried her through the phone call to Ruth soon abated, however, leaving her feeling worn out and confused. What exactly had Cordelia been playing at? Had it been because of genuine feelings for Lindsay? Or was it about protecting Claire, either by distracting Lindsay or by making sure that she was privy to Lindsay's every move? Whatever her motives, Cordelia had defeated herself by her appalling sense of timing. She knew only too well that the way to Lindsay's heart was via her body, and she'd gone straight for her weak point. She'd have stood a good chance of success if she'd made her move anywhere other than her lover's flat.

Lindsay shrugged and looked at her watch. Half past four. The next burning item on her agenda was to confront Barry Ostler. But she felt too drained even to plan their encounter, let alone carry it out. It would have to wait till morning. That left her with a couple of hours to kill before she could reasonably expect Sophie, so Lindsay decided to cook something for dinner. She was half-way through an inventory of the store cupboard when the phone rang.

"Hello?" she said wearily as she picked it up.

"Well, love certainly knocked the ginger out of you," Sophie's familiar voice teased her. "You sound like you've got the weight of the world on your shoulders."

"Sorry. It's nothing to do with you, I promise. I've just had a particularly difficult afternoon."

"Will it keep, or do you want to tell me all about it now?" Sophie asked kindly.

"It'll keep. What can I do for you? I mean, I take it you didn't just ring up to whisper sweet nothings down the phone?"

Sophie laughed. "I think we're both a bit too long in the tooth for that. Though I must admit it's been kind of difficult to concentrate today. However, that isn't why I rang. As you correctly deduced, I do actually have something to say."

"Mclntosh?" Lindsay asked eagerly.

"I looked up the records. He did a routine D&C on Alison just over a year ago, in December 1988. She had a follow-up appointment three months later, at the beginning of March 1989, then nothing."

"I see..." Lindsay mused.

"I thought you'd be interested. He's just written a fairly pedestrian paper on combating post-partum infection, which is actually very relevant to my work, so I rang him up and suggested we meet for a drink," Sophie continued.

"Well done! When?"

"This evening. Half past six in The Cricketers. If I can make a suggestion?" Sophie asked tentatively.

"Please do. I need all the help I can get."

"Why don't you arrive about five to seven? Then I can introduce you. You can give me some spurious phone message, from Helen or someone, asking me to call her between seven and half past. Then I can slope off to the phone, and you can do your Perry Mason bit with him. How does that sound to you?"

"Sophie, you are a star. I couldn't have plotted it better myself. I owe you one."

"I'll collect later," Sophie replied, her voice heavy with innuendo.

"It'll be my pleasure."

"Mine too, I hope. See you in The Cricketers."

"Yes. And Sophie - thanks." Lindsay switched the phone off and grinned, delighted that Sophie had so swiftly proved Cordelia wrong. So much for her insistence that Sophie would be of no use in a murder enquiry! She checked with her copy of Alison's list and found the dates referring to the man they believed to be Ian Mclntosh. Interestingly, Alison had made a passing reference to him around the time of her operation. But they hadn't actually become lovers till a few weeks after her follow-up appointment. So technically, she had no longer been a patient when she had started sleeping with him. Lindsay wondered fleetingly how the General Medical Council would view that. When did a patient stop being a patient, as far as disciplinary matters are concerned? Could he have been struck off for his affair with Alison?

No point in cooking a meal now, Lindsay thought. She'd treat Sophie to a takeaway after they'd seen Mclntosh. Then they could switch off the phones and forget about Alison Maxwell for a while. She'd tell Sophie about Cordelia's futile seduction attempt and show her that last night had been more than a desperate search for comfort. Feeling pleased with herself, Lindsay ran a hot bath and soaked in it for an hour while she read a new crime novel she'd found on Sophie's shelves. As she skimmed forward to check the ending, it amused her that she had spotted the murderer eighty pages before the detective did. If only real life were so simple!

After her bath, she put on a clean pair of Levis and her Aran sweater, pulling a face at her limited wardrobe. When she'd come back from Italy, she'd gone back to Cordelia's to drop off her lightweight clothes and pick up some winter outfits. But she hadn't anticipated being away for more than a couple of weeks. She was going to have to go down to London with a van soon and clear her possessions out of Cordelia's house. And she'd have to find somewhere to live in Glasgow till her own flat became vacant in July. Whatever was in the cards for her and Sophie, she felt wary about moving in on a semi-permanent basis, even supposing Sophie wanted her to. After Cordelia, Lindsay needed a place to call her own, a place she couldn't lose on the whim of her lover.

At twenty to seven, she left the flat and drove to The Cricketers, the pub attached to the local cricket club. Instead of planning her encounter with Ian Mclntosh, she was too busy with the rosy glow of memories. When she'd lived in Glasgow three years before, she and Sophie had often met here after work in the long, warm summer evenings, sitting out in the garden, drinking cool lagers, putting the world to rights. Cordelia Brown had only been a name on a book jacket to her then.

Impatiently, Lindsay shook off the past and took a deep breath. She walked into the bar and immediately saw Sophie sitting at a window table with a slim man in his thirties. Ian Mclntosh had straight, light brown hair cut like Robert Redford's. As Lindsay approached, however, she noticed that the youthful image presented by his fashionable casual clothes was tarnished by the network of fine lines round his eyes and mouth.

As Lindsay reached the table, he leapt to his feet and turned a poor imitation of Redford's engaging boyish grin on her. "Hi," he said effusively. "Sophie mentioned you'd be joining us. You must be Lindsay. Nice to meet you. Any friend of Soph is a friend of mine. Let me get you a drink. Same again, Soph?"

"Thanks. I'll have a pint of lager," Lindsay said as Sophie nodded. Lindsay's eyebrows rose as he headed for the bar. "I thought you said you only knew him slightly."

"I do. This is the longest I've ever spent in his company. I told you he was full of shit."

Before they could say more, Mclntosh returned with a round of drinks. "Aren't I the lucky man, surrounded by two lovely ladies," he said, preening himself.

There was nothing one could say to that and remain within the realms of social politeness, Lindsay thought.

Ignoring him, she turned to Sophie and said, "By the way before I forget. Helen rang just as I was leaving the flat. She asked if you could ring her between seven and half past. She said it was urgent."

Sophie nodded. "Thanks." She glanced at her watch, "I'll give her a ring in a minute."

"Don't let me interrupt your professional conclave," Lindsay said. "Just ignore me if you've still got business to discuss."

"Ignore you? Impossible," Mclntosh said archly. He smoothed his light-brown hair in what was clearly a habitual gesture.

"It's all right, we've finished. Ian's given me a couple of ideas about procedures we can implement that should reduce our infection rate."

"Think nothing of it, Soph," he said magnanimously, turning his calculated smile on her. "But let's not bore your friend talking shop. Soph tells me you're a journalist. What sort of stuff do you do?"

Lindsay shrugged. "This and that. Anything that comes along, really. I'm a freelance, you see, so I have to pick up every little titbit I can. You live by your wits, and what you can winkle out of people."

"Fascinating," he said. "It must be very interesting."

"People always think so," Lindsay replied ruefully. "But it's not always glamorous or exciting. A lot of the time it's excruciatingly boring. You can spend a whole day waiting for the one phone call that you need before you can get an inch further on a story. Or you can sit and freeze in your car outside someone's house waiting for them to come home' And you have to be just as polite to the creeps as the nice guys. It's not a bit like All the President's Men."

Sophie got to her feet. "If you'll excuse me, I'll just make that phone call," she said.

"Don't leave us alone too long," Mclntosh replied with an exaggerated wink. "We might not be able to control our basic animal urges, you know!"

Lindsay watched Sophie cross the room, wondering how she put up with men like McIntosn with such equanimity. Collecting herself, she turned back to the gynaecologist and said casually, "I used to work at the Clarion here in Glasgow. I believe we had a mutual... how shall I put it? Acquaintance?"

He looked slightly disconcerted and flashed the grin at her. Lindsay looked forward to wiping it off his self-satisfied face. "Really?" he said casually. "I don't think I know anyone who works there."

"She doesn't work there any more. She's dead now. Alison Maxwell?"

McIntosh refused to meet Lindsay's eyes and nervously ran a hand over his light-brown hair. "Maxwell... Maxwell? Oh yes, I remember now. She was a patient of mine for a short time about a year ago."

"A bit more than a patient, I think." Lindsay let her comment hang in the air.

"I think you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick, Lindsay," he said sincerely. "I can assure you that my relationship with her was purely professional."

"Alison and I were very close, you know," Lindsay said. "She told me everything. I think I was a kind of insurance policy for her, you know? If anything were to happen. Which of course, it did."

"I don't know what you're getting at, but I don't like your tone one little bit," he blustered, all traces of the irritating grin gone.

"You must have been very relieved when she was killed. Especially when the police arrested Jackie Mitchell so quickly that they didn't have to bother investigating Alison's other relationships," Lindsay stated coldly, abandoning all efforts at finesse. They'd be wasted on McIntosh, she decided.

"That's an outrageous and scurrilous suggestion. I barely knew the woman," he parried weakly, looking round desperately, clearly wishing Sophie would return and rescue him from Lindsay's attentions.

" 'Barely' being the operative word," Lindsay remarked drily.

"What the hell has all of this got to do with you?" he said angrily. "You'd better be very careful what you say. There's such a thing as the law of slander."

"I just wondered what you were doing on the afternoon Alison was killed," Lindsay said coolly.

Mclntosh jumped to his feet. "I'm not sitting here listening to this one minute longer!" he exploded.

"I wouldn't do anything rash if I were you, Ian. You see, Alison kept a diary. Names, times, dates, places. It could be dynamite in the wrong hands. Like the General Medical Council. Or your wife, perhaps. Like I said, I was Alison's insurance policy. Now why don't you just sit down and discuss this reasonably?"

The strength seemed to disappear from Mclntosh's legs, and he crumpled back into his seat. "You blackmailing bitch," he spat. "Two of a kind, you and Maxwell. Well, she got what she deserved."

"What do you mean? Was Alison blackmailing you?" Lindsay blurted out. She was no stranger to Alison's emotional blackmail, but Mclntosh's tone indicated more than that.

"I never said that," he objected. "You're the one doing the blackmailing."

"I don't see you running to the police. Though I must say I'm seriously thinking about doing just that. You might as well tell me, doc. What were you doing on the afternoon she was killed?" Lindsay demanded.

"How the hell should I know?" he hissed through lips drawn tight over his even white teeth.

"I'd have thought that the evening you heard the news of her death would be printed indelibly on your mind. Come on, Ian, you can do better than that. Maybe the diary would help to jog your memory? After all, you can probably remember the occasion you had a bonk in the Western Infirmary?"

His eyes narrowed. "I'll get you for this," he said.

"I don't think so," Lindsay said. "I'm like Alison. I take out insurance for dangerous situations. What were you doing that afternoon?"

He scowled and said, "Not that it's anything to do with you, but I was in theatre till about five o'clock. Then I went up to the University Library to do some reading. I got home about seven o'clock."

"And can anybody verify that you were in the library?" Lindsay continued relentlessly. Now she had him on the run, she was determined to press home her advantage. If she didn't nail him now, she knew she wouldn't get another chance.

"What? Three, four months later? You must be joking!"

"Interesting, Ian. You have motive, and opportunity. And as a doctor, you'd know exactly how to strangle someone most efficiently."

He looked angrily at Lindsay, speechless for once. His face was white with fear or rage. She couldn't decide which was the stronger emotion. Recovering himself, he spluttered. "You're off your rocker. Look, even supposing I had a fling with Alison Maxwell, it was long after she stopped seeing me as a doctor. I had no reason to kill her. Besides, the police got the murderer. Another one of your journalist pals. Is that what all this is about? Frame me to let your pal go scot free? Well, it won't work. I never went near her flat that day, and you can't prove I did." He spoke with the childish defiance of a small boy who's been caught stealing sweets from the local news agent.

Before Lindsay could reply, Sophie walked back across the bar. As she came into Mclntosh's sight, he pushed himself to his feet. "You bitch!" he hissed. "You fucking set me up. You haven't heard the last of this!"

Sophie stared open-mouthed at her colleague as he stumbled unsteadily away from the table and out of the bar. "Jesus Christ," she said. "You really rattled his cage."

Lindsay gazed out of the window at the disappearing form of Ian Mclntosh. "Tell me, Sophie. Did he look to you like a man with nothing to hide?"