Ron didn’t seem as impressed with it as his daughter was, but the statement seemed to play into his plan and he didn’t miss the opportunity. ‘That’s right,’ he responded easily. ‘He’s here to see if he can help us out.’ A sideways glance, tacitly asking Hardy’s complicity at the outset, which Hardy couldn’t think fast enough to deny.

‘He’s trying to get us back home. It’s time you guys turned in, OK?’

A couple of minutes of small talk finally dwindled down before Hardy got strong handshakes from both of them as they were heading off to bed. And – the acid test – they both looked him in the eye.

It was a bit disorienting for Hardy to realize that these were well-adjusted children who appeared to love their father. If they were a bit reserved, Hardy had to remember that it was near their bedtime, they were in strange surroundings, and their stepmother had been murdered only three weeks before. He wouldn’t have expected giggling high spirits.

But he didn’t pick up any scent of people-fear, either of him or of their father, and that was always the inevitable companion to abuse.

It threw him off his stride. Whatever he’d been expecting, it hadn’t been this cozy domestic scene with father and loving children.

The gun rode heavily inside his belt, a stupid, clumsy, macho pretense. What had he been thinking? Shifting uncomfortably, pulling at his jacket to cover the gun, he felt a wave of disgust for himself.

Who was he kidding? He wasn’t some kind of gunslinger. It had been two decades since he’d been a cop. Now he was a lawyer, a paper pusher, a persuader. Words and strategy, the tools of old men like David Freeman.

And now Dismas Hardy.

All this was the thought of an instant, though. Ron was keeping things moving. ‘OK, you’ve told Mr Hardy goodnight enough times. Now march!’ Firm, good-natured, in control.

Amazingly, there was no argument. Chez Hardy, bedtimes were often the most difficult time of the day. Impatient, depleted parents struggling to get their exhausted children to admit that they were even remotely tired. The exercise would wind up turning into a war of wills that left all sides defeated.

But Max and Cassandra were up and moving. Another polite goodnight, stalling for that last precious second, both of them telling Hardy they were so glad he was here.

For the first time, Hardy noticed that they were in a suite, with a separate room for the kids, and Ron said he’d be back in five minutes, after he’d tucked them in and gotten them settled. But Hardy hadn’t come all the way down here only to have Ron and the kids slip out another door. So, feeling foolish, he nevertheless went and stood in the doorway to the bedroom, where he could watch in case the good father decided to bolt and run with his children.

But the bedtime rituals made it immediately obvious that this wasn’t on the night’s agenda. Apparently Ron had decided to accept Hardy’s unexpected presence and work within these new parameters.

Hardy finally went back to the other room, sat in the chair at the desk, and half listened to the familiar goodnight noises.

The gun remained an uneasy presence, the unyielding pressure in his side. His stomach roiled with the unspent rage, the tension and hunger. A rogue wave of fatigue washed over him so powerfully that for a moment, snapping out of it, he was disoriented.

Out over the Bay, the huge planes on their airport approach floated down out of the darkling, cloud-scudded sky.

‘So what do you intend to do?’ Ron had closed the door to the kids’ room and pulled over a wing chair. ‘You want some coffee? A beer? Anything? The room’s got everything.’

‘I don’t want anything except my wife out of jail.’

‘Yeah, I can see that.’ Ron sat. ‘Look, I don’t blame you for being mad. I can’t tell you how sorry I am, but nobody could have seen this coming.’

‘You saw it enough three days ago that you left your apartment and took your kids out of school.’

‘That was when I learned they were going to talk to Frannie.’ Hearing his wife’s name used with such familiarity rekindled some of the flame of anger. Hardy fought it – it wasn’t going to get him what he needed, not now. But Ron was going on, explaining, rationalizing how none of this was entirely his fault. ‘That’s when I realized the investigation was coming back to me. I couldn’t hang around and let that happen.’

‘No. It was better to let them come after Frannie.’

‘I didn’t foresee that.’

‘You just said you knew they were talking to her. What did you think was going to happen?’

‘I had no idea. I told them I had been drinking coffee with her. I thought they’d probably want to make sure.’ He leaned forward in the chair. ‘I don’t know if you realize it, but the grand jury had already questioned me. I answered everything they asked me.’

‘But obviously lied about fighting with your wife.’

Suddenly the floor seemed to hold a fascination for Ron. Finally, he raised his eyes. ‘What was I supposed to do, put myself on their A-list?’

‘The theory is you tell them nothing but the truth. That’s the one Frannie went with. You might have told her she could tell your little secret.’

‘I thought all they wanted was corroboration on the alibi. You’ve got to believe that. The other stuff, I never thought it would come up.’

‘Well, it did.’ But this was old news and Hardy was sick of it. ‘So why didn’t you just take off when you knew they’d started looking? You had three days. You could be in Australia by now.’

‘The kids uprooted again. No insurance income from Bree’s death. The police after me.’

‘They’re after you now.’

‘That’s not what I hear. Not yet.’

Macho or no, Hardy almost reached for the gun, to put an end to this stupidity. Take the man in and let the chips fall.

But then he remembered the three innocent, shackled children from Judge Li’s courtroom. An example of what could happen – something similarly terrible almost inevitably would happen – to Cassandra and Max. Furious as he was, he couldn’t be responsible for putting them into the criminal justice system. Not yet, anyway. Not if there were any other way.

Ron was leaning forward, tight-lipped and earnest. His elbows were on his knees and his hands were gripped, white-knuckled, together in front of him. ‘Look, I know this is bad for you. Horrible. But my first responsibility has to be to my guys in there. I know you understand that.’

Hardy couldn’t say anything. It galled him, but the fact was that it was true – he understood it completely.

Ron was going on. ‘And we’re not absolutely committed to running away either, not yet anyway. If this passes, the kids are back in school next week with a little unscheduled vacation and no one thinks a thing about it. The original plan was we’d take a few days off and see which way the wind was blowing.’ He let out a deep breath. ‘Maybe we wouldn’t have to go after all.’

‘Go where?’

‘Wherever. Anywhere.’

‘And do what?’

Ron hung his head again for an instant and brought it back up. ‘Start over. Again.’

If this was a not-so-subtle play for sympathy, it was misdirected. Hardy snapped out. ‘And meanwhile what happens to Frannie?’

‘I release her. She gets out.’

Hardy didn’t like the sound of that, either. ‘You release her?’

A nod. ‘From the promise.’

‘I got an idea, Ron. Why don’t you do it now? Like right now, this minute?’ Hardy’s voice had picked up some heat. He snatched up the pen and telephone pad from on the desk, held it out to him, once again considering the gun.

Ron was shaking his head no. ‘The minute she talks, we have to run, we have to relocate. Don’t you see that?’

Hardy looked around the suite. ‘What do you call this? This isn’t running?’

The pen was still out there in the air between them. Ron stood up slowly, took it, sat at the desk, and wrote for a minute.