But as each gasp re-inflated Robin’s lungs, the illusion that she was watching from afar dissolved. She was here, now, on this dingy boat, breathing in its fusty smell, trapped within its wooden walls, with the dilated pupil of the revolver staring at her, and Raphael’s eyes above it.

Her fear was a real, solid presence in the galley, but it must stand apart from her, because it couldn’t help, and would only hinder. She must stay calm, and concentrate. She chose not to speak. It would give her back some of the power he had just taken from her if she refused to fill the silence. This was the trick of the therapist: let the pause unspool; let the more vulnerable person fill it.

“You’re very cool,” Raphael said finally. “I thought you might get hysterical and scream. That’s why I had to punch you. I wouldn’t have done that otherwise. For what it’s worth, I like you, Venetia.”

She knew that he was trying to re-impersonate the man who had charmed her against her will at the Commons. Clearly, he thought the old mixture of ruefulness and remorse would make her forgive, and soften, even with her burning scalp, and her bruised ribs, and the gun in her face. She said nothing. His faint, imploring smile disappeared and he said bluntly:

“I need to know how much the police know. If I can still blag my way out of what they’ve got, then I’m afraid you,” he raised the gun a fraction to point directly at Robin’s forehead (and she thought of vets and the one clean shot that the horse in the dell had been denied) “are done for. I’ll muffle the shot in a cushion and put you overboard once it’s dark. But if they already know everything, then I’ll end it, here, tonight, because I’m never going back to prison. So you can see how it’s in your best interests to be honest, can’t you? Only one of us is getting off this boat.”

And when she didn’t speak, he said fiercely:

“Answer me!”

“Yes,” she said. “I understand.”

“So,” he said quietly, “were you really just at Scotland Yard?”

“Yes.”

“Is Kinvara there?”

“Yes.”

“Under arrest?”

“I think so. She’s in an interrogation room with her solicitor.”

“Why have they arrested her?”

“They think the two of you are having an affair. That you were behind everything.”

“What’s ‘everything’?”

“The blackmail,” said Robin, “and the murder.”

He advanced the gun so that it was pressing against her forehead. Robin felt the small, cold ring of metal pressing into her skin.

“Sounds like a crock of shit to me. How’re we supposed to have had an affair? She hated me. We were never alone together for two minutes.”

“Yes, you were,” said Robin. “Your father invited you down to Chiswell House, right after you got out of jail. The night he was detained in London. You and she were alone together, then. That’s when we think it started.”

“Proof?”

“None,” said Robin, “but I think you could seduce anyone if you really put your—”

“Don’t try flattery, it won’t work. Seriously, ‘that’s when we think it started’? Is that all you’ve got?”

“No. There were other signs of something going on.”

“Tell me the signs. All of them.”

“I’d be able to remember better,” said Robin steadily, “without you pressing a gun into my forehead.”

He withdrew it, but still pointing the revolver at her face, he said:

“Go on. Quickly.”

Part of Robin wanted to succumb to her body’s desire to dissolve, to carry her off into blissful unconsciousness. Her hands were numb, her muscles felt like soft wax. The place where Raphael had pressed the gun into her skin felt cold, a ring of white fire for a third eye. He hadn’t turned on the lights in the boat. They were facing each other in the deepening darkness and perhaps, by the time he shot her, she would no longer be able to see him clearly…

Focus, said a small, clear voice through the panic. Focus. The longer you keep him talking, the more time they’ll have to find you. Strike knows you were tricked.

She suddenly remembered the police car speeding across the top of Blomfield Road and wondered whether it had been circling, looking for her, whether the police, knowing that Raphael had lured her to the area, had already dispatched officers to search for them. The fake address had been some distance away along the canal bank, reached, so Raphael’s texts had said, through the black gates. Would Strike guess that Raphael was armed?

She took a deep breath.

“Kinvara broke down in Della Winn’s office last summer and said that someone had told her she’d never been loved, that she was used as part of a game.”

She must speak slowly. Don’t rush it. Every second might count, every second that she could keep Raphael hanging on her words, was another second in which somebody might come to her aid.

“Della assumed she was talking about your father, but we checked and Della can’t remember Kinvara actually saying his name. We think you seduced Kinvara as an act of revenge towards your father, kept the affair going for a couple of months, but when she got clingy and possessive, you ditched her.”

“All supposition,” said Raphael harshly, “and therefore bullshit. What else?”

“Why did Kinvara go up to town on the day her beloved mare was likely to be put down?”

“Maybe she couldn’t face seeing the horse shot. Maybe she was in denial about how sick it was.”

“Or,” said Robin, “maybe she was suspicious about what you and Francesca were up to in Drummond’s gallery.”

“No proof. Next.”

“She had a kind of breakdown when she got back to Oxfordshire. She attacked your father and was hospitalized.”

“Still grieving her stillborn, excessively attached to her horses, generally depressed,” Raphael rattled off. “Izzy and Fizzy will fight to take the stand and explain how unstable she is. What else?”

“Tegan told us that one day Kinvara was manically happy again, and she lied when asked why. She said your father had agreed to put her other mare in foal to Totilas. We think the real reason was that you’d resumed the affair with her, and we don’t think the timing was coincidental. You’d just driven the latest batch of paintings up to Drummond’s gallery for valuation.”

Raphael’s face became suddenly slack, as though his essential self had temporarily vacated it. The gun twitched in his hand and the fine hairs on Robin’s arms lifted gently as though a breeze had rippled over them. She waited for Raphael to speak, but he didn’t. After a minute, she continued:

“We think that when you loaded up the paintings for valuation, you saw ‘Mare Mourning’ close up for the first time and realized that it might be a Stubbs. You decided to substitute a different painting of a mare and foal for valuation.”

“Evidence?”

“Henry Drummond’s now seen the photograph I took of ‘Mare Mourning’ on the spare bed at Chiswell House. He’s ready to testify that it wasn’t among the pictures he valued for your father. The painting he valued at five to eight thousand pounds was by John Frederick Herring, and it showed a black and white mare and foal. Drummond’s also ready to testify that you’re sufficiently knowledgable about art to have spotted that ‘Mare Mourning’ might be a Stubbs.”