and Paul deserved to know he was still part of their lives.
The distant sound of the doorbell interrupted his devotions. Alex gave his sleeping daughter the lightest of touches, then walked backward out of the room. He reached the front door seconds behind Lynn, who looked thunderstruck to see Jackie standing on the doorstep. "What are you doing here?" she demanded.
"Didn't Alex tell you?" Jackie drawled.
"Tell me what?" Lynn rounded on Alex.
"I asked Jackie to help me," Alex said.
"That's right." Jackie seemed more amused than offended.
"You asked her?" Lynn made no attempt to disguise her contempt. "A woman who had a motive for murdering my brother and the kind of contacts to get it done? Alex, how could you?"
"Because she's got something to gain, too. Which means I could trust her not to rat us out for the sake of a page lead," he said, trying to calm Lynn down before Jackie took the huff and marched off into the night without revealing what she'd learned.
"I'm not having her in my house," Lynn said categorically.
Alex held his hands up. "Fine. Just let me get my coat. We'll go to the pub, if that's all right with you, Jackie?"
She shrugged. "Whatever. But you're buying."
They walked down the gentle slope to the pub in silence. Alex didn't feel inclined to apologize for Lynn's hostility and Jackie couldn't be bothered to make an issue of it. When they were settled with a couple of glasses of red wine, Alex raised his eyebrows interrogatively. "Well? Any joy?"
Jackie looked smug. "I have the name of the forensic scientist who carried out the work on the Rosie Duff case. And the beauty of it is that he's still in the game. He's a professor at Dundee. His name is David Soanes, and apparently he's shit hot."
"So when can you go and see him?" Alex asked.
"I'm not going to go and see him, Alex. That's your job."
"My job? I'm not a journalist. Why would he talk to me?"
"You're the one with something at stake here. You throw yourself on his mercy and ask for any information he can give you that might help move the case forward."
"I don't know how to conduct an interview," Alex protested. "And why would Soanes tell me anything? He's not going to want it to look as if there were things he overlooked before."
"Alex, you talked me into going out on a limb for you, and frankly I don't like you or your offensive, small-minded wife. So I think you can probably talk David Soanes into telling you what you want to know. Especially since you're not asking about things he overlooked. You'll be asking about things that might not have been susceptible to analysis, things he justifiably didn't include in his report. If he cares about his work, then he should want to help. He's also a lot less likely to talk to a journalist who could make him look incompetent." Jackie swallowed some wine, made a face and got to her feet. "Let me know when you've got something that gets me off the hook."
Lynn sat in the conservatory, watching the lights on the estuary. They were faintly haloed with damp air, investing them with more mysteriousness than they merited. She heard the front door close and Alex's cry of, "I'm back." But before he could join her, the doorbell pealed out again. Whoever it was, she wasn't in the mood.
Mumbled voices grew more distinct as they approached, but still she couldn't tell who their latest visitor was. Then the door opened and Weird strode in. "Lynn," he cried. "I hear you have a beautiful daughter to show me."
"Weird," Lynn exclaimed, astonishment on her face. "You're the last person I expected to see."
"Good," he said. "Let's hope that's how everybody else is thinking." He looked down at her with concern. "How are you holding up?"
Lynn leaned into his hug. "I know it sounds stupid, given how little we saw of Mondo, but I miss him."
"Of course you do. We all do. And we always will. He was part of us, and now he isn't anymore. Knowing he's with the Lord is a small consolation for what we've lost." They were quiet for a moment, then Lynn moved away.
"But what are you doing here?" she asked. "I thought you went straight back to America after the funeral?"
"I did. I packed my wife and kids off to the mountains, somewhere they'll be safe from anybody who has an issue with me. And