he light in the seatbelt sign died with an electronic bong. Lindsay waggled her fingers at the window and said, "Goodbye and good riddance."

"You didn't enjoy your holiday?" Sophie asked.

"Two trips to hospital? Scarred for life in two separate places? Temperatures higher than California and not a room that has air-conditioning from London to Loch Fyne? All the guns in America and I have to come to London to get shot?" Lindsay demanded, her voice rising to a squeak.

"We had a nice time in Scotland," Sophie reminded her.

"You had a nice time in Scotland," Lindsay said darkly, shifting in her seat to make her bandaged shoulder more comfortable. "I had my mother acting like I'd been brought home to die, and my father taking the piss out of me every night. And then when we did get up to Torridon, you wouldn't let me up any decent hills in case I wasn't recovered enough."

Sophie shook her head, grinning. "I don't think I was unreasonable to put my foot down about a Monroe that involved an eight-mile hike just to get to the bottom of the mountain, followed by a 3000-foot climb and another eight-mile hike back to the car."

"Well," Lindsay grumbled. I've never done Maol Chean Dearg. And now I probably never will."

"Maybe we could have a trip up there when the taxpayers pay for us to come back and testify against Danny King."

Lindsay brightened up at the thought. It was the least she felt they deserved after the long hours - in her case, excruciatingly painful hours - of police interviews and making statements. After all that, King still hadn't been charged with Penny's murder. As a holding measure, they'd kept him in on attempted murder against Lindsay, conspiracy to murder, and illegal possession of firearms. It was fortunate that the police had arrived when they did, alerted by a supermarket security guard who'd heard gunshots, still a rare enough occurrence in London to bring the police within minutes. Any later and King's sidekicks would have got in to destroy the evidence.

Lindsay had hit it off with the officer in charge of the murder inquiry, who had instinctively recognized a kindred pig-headed spirit. Privately, she had told them that they were never going to have more than a purely circumstantial case against King on Penny's murder and that it was up to the Crown Prosecution Service to decide whether they should go for it.

"Spineless tossers," she'd confided over a cup of tea in the police canteen. "I've tried to argue that the attempt on you only makes sense if you allow the previous murder, but they want more. They always bloody want more. Even against a toerag like Danny King. Trouble is, you put a toerag in an Armani suit, and he looks like the frigging lawyers. It's the same as hostages starting to identify with their kidnappers. Suddenly all the briefs forget they're supposed to be on the side of the scruffy coppers, and they come out in sympathy with the scrote in the suit."

She'd sounded a lot more cheerful a few days later when she'd tracked them down by phone at Lindsay's parents' house. "Your friend's neighbour. I think you met him? A Mr. Knight?"

Lindsay cleared her throat. "Might have done," she said cautiously.

"I thought, what about putting Danny Boy in a line-up? Last resort, you know? His brief starts screaming, which makes us think it's definitely going to be a good idea. So we bring in Mr. Knight and bugger me if he doesn't pick him out straight away. He remembers him because of his car. A Mercedes convertible. He noticed it because the arrogant little shit had parked it right outside our Mr. Knight's house, and he was just pulling away when our witness arrived home from work. Can you believe the conceit of the man? He thinks he's come so far from the East End that he's invincible. And our Mr. Knight never thought to mention it because he didn't look like he was in a hurry, and he didn't have any blood on him that he could see. Well, of course he didn't, did he? He's a professional. He knew he was going there to take part in a very bloody murder - he'd either have stripped or worn disposable overalls.

"Then our prize witness says, well, we can't blame him, can we? I mean, murderers don't drive around in top of the range Mercs like hospital consultants, do they?

"Soon as Danny Boy realizes he's been fingered, he starts shitting it. He knows he's in the frame for murder. So, he decides it's time to get out from under. He does nothing more than give us his sidekick, the thug who actually did the killing. King was just there to get him in and give the instructions about the stage setting. Can you believe it?

"Once he started talking, we couldn't get him to stop. His brief was practically in tears. We even found out you had a second lucky escape. You was attacked the night before, wasn't you? It wasn't some accidental trip over a wall that sliced your face up, was it? It was one of Danny King's little thugs, hired to scare you off."

Lindsay couldn't prevent a dry laugh spiking down the line. "Is that what he told you? Somebody's been winding him up. Yes, somebody tried to put my lights out with a baseball bat, but he didn't connect, so I legged it. That's when I really did trip over a wall. So if Danny got told I'd been cut, somebody ripped him off."

"Couldn't happen to a nicer bloke," the policewoman had said. "Arrogant, vain, stupid as well. He doesn't even realise that he still gets charged with murder even though it wasn't him who did the actual killing. Joint enterprise, it's called. We've got him, nailed down at all four corners. Not even the CPS can walk away from it now."

They'd celebrated that night, a double celebration since Helen had also called to announce that Guy and Stella would be facing charges of fraud and false accounting. "I owe you," she'd said. "You gave me my professional life back."

"You mean that?" Lindsay said.

"Of course I mean it. Why? What do you want?" Instant nervousness at the other end of the phone.

Lindsay let her stew for a few moments, then said, "I can't think of anything off the top of my head..." Helen had exploded with laugher. It was a sound that cheered Lindsay even more than putting Penny's murderer behind bars. She wondered if she'd ever hear Meredith laugh like that again.

Meredith had left for San Francisco a few days before, her life in pieces. If it had been hard to contemplate life without Penny as a lover, it was impossible to imagine it without her very existence. Losing her job had been the final blow, a knockback whose impact had only really hit in the days since King's arrest, when the impertive of finding Penny's killer had been answered. The night before she'd left, she'd told Lindsay she wasn't going to make any decisions about her life for at least six months, displaying a strength and good sense that Lindsay envied.

The cabin steward's inquiry about drinks roused Lindsay from her preoccupation. "To hell with sensible," she said. "I'll have a Scotch."

When she'd taken her first sip, Sophie said gingerly, "There's something we need to talk about."

Lindsay turned her head and stared, a worm of worried fear stirring in her gut. Had she finally pushed Sophie too far? Was this the kind of trouble that altered lives beyond recognition? "No more murders? That's not a problem, I promise."

Recognising her apprehension, Sophie reached out and squeezed her hand. "That would be nice, but that's not it. After we came back to London, while you were giving the cops the statement about your attack, I had coffee with somebody I used to work with in Glasgow. She's doing similar work to what I've been doing in San Francisco, and their consultant is leaving in the New Year to go to Australia. She's been asked to sound me out to see if I'd consider applying. What do you think?"

Lindsay looked aghast. "British winters?"

"Proper curries."

"No air conditioning?"

"Decent TV."

"No sea?"

"Great theatre."

Lindsay frowned. There had to be something that would clinch the argument against leaving California. Then her face cleared, and she smiled triumphantly. "Quarantine," she said firmly. "Six months behind bars. You couldn't do that to Mutton."

It was Sophie's turn to look horrified. Then she nodded slowly, conceding defeat. "I am reminded," she said, "of the joke about Jesus and the woman taken in adultery."

"The joke about... ?"

"Jesus stops the crowd stoning her and says, 'Let the person among you who is without sin throw the first stone.' And this little old lady pushes her way through the mob, picks up this massive boulder and throws it at the adulterous woman. Crash, bang, wallop, she's dead. And Jesus turns to the old dear and says, 'Sometimes, mother, you really piss me off.' "