She was edging her way through The Man I Love, struggling as always to reproduce the sounds of her The Incomparable Billie Holiday compact disc, digitally re-mastered as its liner notes bragged from the classic 1965 Verve recording that itself went back to a 1946 Jazz At The Philharmonic session, ancient history to her.

Because the notes quoted it, she knew Eddie Condon's basic question: "As it enters the ear, does it come in like broken glass or does it come in like honey?" With Lady Day, both applied.

All those songs that meant so depressingly much to her: Gloomy Sunday, Loveless Love, You Let Me Down and, of course, I Must Have That Man. She'd got some of the details down pat, her party piece being the catch in the throat behind the words We'll Build A Little Home...

If she copied Billie, so what? She'd read in Stuart Nicholson's biography that Lady Day herself had lifted whole phrases note for note from Satchmo's 1931 Them There Eyes when she waxed it in 1939. And Ella in 1936 was copying Billie's All My Life entry as well as her vocal inflections on the tenth bar of the second chorus of Melancholy Baby. So, she was in good company.

Imitation was the sincerest form of flattery, wasn't it? And she did draw the line at wearing those trademark white gardenias in the hair. Just as well, they weren't always easy to find in the local florists and not cheap when you did.

What eluded her, being beyond any copyist, was what the critics, themselves all churning out the same old quote, called Billie's technique of using her voice like an instrument, a horn. Had she possessed this gift, it might have gone some way towards making up for the deficiencies of her backing group, the Blak Kat Klub's resident quintet of hacks who'd never have been allowed past the door at Ronnie Scott's up in Soho at 47 Frith Street.

Not that it mattered a toss with this lot. You couldn't call a crowd that was making more noise than the performer an audience. Her eyes, watering a little as they always did, despite the protection of the best contact lenses somebody else's money could buy, roamed the low-lit smoky room, while her mind re-registered the one who was there and the one who wasn't.

Most of the racket was coming from her left. The usual gang, the pints of special bitter with whisky chasers outfit, the ones the bouncers, muscles straining inside cheap management-provided suits, itched to wade into and sort out instead of having to stand there sullenly watching because no club in its right mind would send in its heavy mob or any mob at all against a bunch of regular free-spenders who happened to be police officers and their mates from the local nick.

A few people did actually clap, no doubt out of habit, their hands couldn't possibly have been cold in that sweaty room. It was the kind of applause that in no way implied any desire for encores. Her limp as possible arm of acknowledgement to the group and its response via the alto sax player's raising of his instrument to what looked far more like an Up Yours than a Thank You angle suggested tactful understanding of this message.

She noticed a past-her-sell-by-date Sloane Ranger type shoot her a quick look without seeming to have looked at her at all. The guy drinking beer from a bottle which, now that the lights had come back up to indicate a break and encourage fresh safaris to the bars and fruit machines, she could recognise as the kind that housed Newcastle Brown Ale, almost counting as an import down here in the metropolis, all street-cred clothes and stubble no one would have dared call designer, was very obviously her bit of rough for the night. She recollected a verse from that Rolling Stones song - Play With Fire, wasn't it? - Now She Gets Her Kicks In Stepney, Not In Knightsbridge Any More. Not that she could talk.

Mannie, owner-operator of the club, bearing down on her was not something to relish on a bad night. Mannie by name, Mannie by nature, as he liked to describe himself, whatever that meant. She'd once heard one of the older bouncers compare him to Herbert Lom. Herbert who? But he had a glass in each hand and his personal as opposed to his professional smile on his face, though you could have found some very damaged people who'd had that smile aimed at them the moment before their pain began.

Better get her retaliation in first. "Sorry, Mannie. I know I was crap tonight. It was the row they were making, you know who I mean, and I felt rotten to start with, that time of the month, and..."

"Don't worry about it, poppet." He was the only person she'd ever heard use that endearment, except men in old back-and-white programmes on UK Gold, and she always double-clicked the remote whenever they intruded on the screen. "Don't worry about it, I say. You've been bad before, you'll be bad again. And you've been good before and you'll be good again. You know what Carmen MacRae said about Billie?"

She knew, but Mannie didn't need or want any second party punctuation. "Some nights she sounds as though she's through; then the next night she sings her ass off."

"I'll have to remember that one."

"You do, poppet, you do. It applies to us all. By the way, you still getting the aggravation on the home front?"

"More and more. I really don't know what his problem is. Well, I know what it is, but not why it is."

"You want me to have something done about it?"

She was tempted, but it would only solve one difficulty, and she didn't want to give Mannie that sort of hold over her for the future. "No. I mean, thanks, but no. It's something I've got to get sorted myself, one way or the other. Me, Myself, And I, as Billie would say."

"Whatever you say, poppet, whatever you say. Let me know if you change your mind. What's bad for you is bad for me, and I don't like that. So, do you still want for me to set up an audition with that recording studio geezer?"

Her attempt to play it cool failed by a wide margin. "Yes, yes, please, Mannie. I promise I'll be on top form. What's he like, apart from the music. What do I need to know?"

"You'll get one hand on your very sumptuous bottom and maybe another one on your knee and points north, but don't worry, he won't follow through, he only wants to reassure himself he's still alive, and anyway he's married to a hag whom he daren't divorce, she'd take him to Sketchleys and back, and even if he could outlawyer her, she's got too much on him to risk the tabloids. All right, poppet, let's hypothesise that I let you know the minute it's organised." This "hypothesise" was a pure Mannie compliment, meant to make her believe that he credited her with some class; it wasn't a word in any of the bouncers' or barmen's vocabularies.

Taking her glass, though it was far from empty, Mannie drifted off in the direction of the police table. She paid an overdue visit to the Ladies, made a phone call, retrieved her coat, and left the club by the side door that led straight out to the car park, ignoring the ambiguous smile on the mug of the alto sax player who was very obviously hurrying off for his own relief. One night, when she was safely established, she would publicly dedicate her version of Ain't Got Rhythm to the band and see how they liked that.

She stood for a moment to pull on and button up her coat, taking in a deep breath of the outside air, never a good idea in that district. This was the bit she liked least. Of course, she'd only to say the word and Mannie would have one of the bouncers walk her, even offer to do it himself, but she didn't want to dent her image with that kind of wimpiness.

She gave the car park a good once-over - at least it was well lit, but you never could be sure - before heading across it at a brisk pace that just stopped short of a run, the automatic door-opener in her hand long before she reached the red Mazda MVP that she used on the club run despite its temptations for the local vandals and joy-riders.

All these precautions and she still didn't see the owner of the hand before it fell on her shoulder just as she was stooping to get in. The low chuckle and waft of after-shave that accompanied it saved her from the wet knickers of panic. Stupid bastard, even so.

"Christ, I wish you wouldn't do that." Relief and a ration of pleasure took some of the sting from her complaint. "Why are you lurking out here? Collecting car numbers, or having a crafty crap?"

"Waiting for you, of course. It's been at least a week. Every inch of me wants every inch of you."

She almost broke into Body And Soul. "Hark at Pierce Brosnan." Her tone and expression were calibrated to encourage him to carry on as long as he understood that he might have to work a little harder for it. "Your burning desire didn't extend to you hearing me sing. Again."

"You know why not. He was in. Again. Why does he keep coming down here, anyway?"

"Maybe there's someone he wants to see. So what? I keep telling you, it's been two years. Is he really going to recognise you? No offence, but you can't have been the biggest moment in his life. And, if he does, big deal; there's nothing to connect you with me."

"He'd recognise me, no danger. Got a memory like an elephant, that one. And, when he puts two and two together, it always makes four. He'd clock me clocking you, and that'd be that."

"Well, in that case, you'd better get yourself in here and let me take you away from all this before he comes out and spots us with that X-Ray vision of his and back to your place for the usual."

"What about him indoors? Won't he be expecting you?"

"Already sorted, on the off-chance. Rang him up, told him Mannie twisted my arm to do a second set. That'll really get up his nose."

"Won't he check?"

"Not him. He likes to pretend the Blak Kat Klub doesn't exist."

"And what if I hadn't turned up?"

Her not answering him was his answer.

After the usual - better than on home turf though better was to be had elsewhere, they separately lit up Silk Cuts and lay there, more edgy than companionable, not touching, glancing more than was needed at the white enamel alarm clock on the flimsy bedside table.

"We can't go on like this."

"I know. It's doing my head in as well."

"So?"

"So?"

"So, what are we going to do about it?"

"I have, loads of times."

"I can't."

"Can't or won't?"

There was a lull in the verbal tennis while final puffs were taken and cigarettes stubbed out on the chipped saucers that did ashtray service.

"I can't get him on anything. He's never hit me. I suppose he must be seeing somebody, but he must suppose the same about me. Materially, he gives me everything I could ask for. And, frankly, I've no desire to trade in the swimming pool and the winter holidays and all the rest of it for paradise alley here. These things rate with a girl from Brick Lane. No way am I going to choose between that and anyone."

Deuce.

"There's only one thing for it."

"Meaning?"

"He'll have to go."

Whose advantage? It had only needed to be said. The rest unfolded with a naturalness that might have been frightening, had they allowed themselves to think about it.

"How?"

"If you look at it logically, killing someone's a snip. And, as long as it's not a domestic or done in the course of another crime, the police have virtually no chance of solving it."

"When?"

"The sooner the better. Before we have a chance to bottle out."

Silk Cut time again. He cursed when he found he'd run out of matches. "Hang on," she said, reaching down for her designer handbag, from which she hauled out a small gift-wrapped package. "Here. It was meant to be for your birthday, but I think this is going to be more of a night to remember."

The wrapping came off to betray an expensive-looking lighter inside a plain white box. "That's great. Thanks. Thanks a lot. I know what they cost, I've seen them in Dunhill's window." He switched his attention from gift to gifter. "Wait a minute. I hope that didn't go on one of his credit cards..."

"Do you think I'm stupid, or what? Strictly cash. I've got an account he knows nothing about."

"Right. Sorry." He baptised the lighter with the flick of a thumb, impressed by, though not saying so, the power of its flame.

Back to business. "When?"

"You'll be on the night shift next week, won't you?"

"Yeah. So?"

"So, next Monday night he's booked on one of his late flights to Amsterdam. It's a business thing. He does it several times a year. Saves on the fare by using their Non-Social Times as they call them. Always the same drill. He takes his car into work, instead of going on the Tube, then drives himself to Heathrow."

If he'd known it, he might have whistled You Show Me The Way. "So, I slip out when he leaves, follow him up to his car, do him there, make it look like a mugging. We've had a couple of those recently. The parkade goes public in the evenings, makes a nice little earner for the company..."

The three in the morning "It's about your husband, madam..." phone call was followed later that Tuesday by a visit from two detectives. One of each sex, though she looked almost as masculine as he. She also did most of the talking, clearly enjoying the bad cop role, woman on woman.

"Nice place you've got here. Very nice. And no children to share the proceeds with. Husband's business doing very nicely, too, frorm all accounts. Make a packet if you decide to sell, as I dare say you will..."

Mr Good Cop intervened, his clipped police college vowels counterpointing her shameless Scouse ones. "Are you aware of any enemies your husband might have had?"

"Men like him always do. I can't name any, though. But what has that got to do with anything? Surely this was a mugging like the others...?"

"This was no mugging. Somebody had covered the security camera with tape. It's a well-concealed one on the executive parkade level. So, that somebody knew where it was, and where there was a very tall ladder to climb up to it. All points to an inside job..."

"Yes, in our experience, muggers very rarely walk around with twenty-foot ladders over their shoulders. Bit of a giveaway, don't you agree?"

"Why didn't he remove the tape afterwards, then?"

"Either he, or she, got interrupted, or panicked in case they might be, or were just stupid. Probably the last. Crims usually are. And talking of stupid, how come you know about the other muggings there?"

"I suppose it was in the papers."

"We talked with the chief of security about them. They were never reported. Didn't want to scare off the punters. So, how do you know?"

"He must have told me. My husband, I mean."

"But he didn't know anything about them, either. Security admits they kept him in the dark, they reckoned he'd go ballistic and fire the lot of them, most likely..."

"Never mind about that, now. I think we've done enough for the moment."

Back in their car, she said, "I enjoyed that."

He had, too, but only nodded.

The new widow took care to make her call from a public box. "How stupid can you get?"

"I take it the filth have been around already. Listen, it wasn't my fault. When I went for the ladder, it wasn't there. I couldn't hang around looking for it, I had to get back to my desk before I was missed. Anyway, does it matter? What counts is, I won't be on film, and all the maintenance and building staff obviously know about the ladder, so there's lots of places the finger can point."

"We'll have to see. There's something else, though."

"What's that?"

"You're right. The filfth have been around. And they'll be back. Two of them. She was a right cow, I can tell you. Had the frame made for me before she arrived. But it's the other one. It's him."

"Him? Christ, you don't mean HIM?"

"The same. What were the odds against that?"

"Never mind the fucking odds. The minute he knows I work there, he'll have a cell booked in my name."

"Just keep your head down and stay calm. Act normal. Don't ring in sick or anything. And don't call me. If I'm not mistaken, that cow is already telling British Telecom to put a trace on my line. Remember the Billie song, Do Nothn' Till You Hear From Me. I'll call you from a public phone like this, but not for a bit. It'll be fine. The cow can rant and rave as much as she likes, and he can lick his chops over you, but at the end of the day there's nothing to connect me with you or you with him."

"Except that I work - worked - for him."

"You work there, you didn't work directly for him. So do thousands of others. Are they going to arrest you all?"

She hung up. It would only have made him sweat in his Y-fronts, had she told him that they already knew about that. "By the way," he'd said, just before they left the house, "did your husband know one of his security men has a record?"

"Come to that," the Scouser butted in, "did you know?"

"Why would I know? Or care, come to that," deliberately throwing these words back at her. "He might have, he might not. He never talked about the business at home. Anyway, how do YOU know?"

"One of our beat officers happened to spot him going into the building the other day in security uniform, and reported it. They sent a memo over to me, since I'm the one who originally felt his collar."

"Well, that's all news to me. I only go to his office once in a blue moon, certainly I don't run spot-checks on all his staff, I am very much not the jealous type who worries about husband falling for busty secretary or anything like that."

"Your husband did know, as a matter of fact. I sent him an official For Your Eyes Only registered letter as soon as I knew. Be failing in my duty, if I hadn't."

"Talking about busty secretaries," interposed the woman, who could never have qualified for that description and sounded as though she realised that all too well, "one of the girls in the building did come up with something quite interesting about the two of them. Your husband and this dodgy security bloke. She mentioned a cigarette lighter he'd been flashing around."

"What about it?"

"She said it was an expensive-looking one, sort of the Rolex of lighters, if you can imagine, not what she'd expect someone like him to have. More to the point, she said it looked a lot like the one your husband has, or had, though there was no sign of it in his pockets when they were checking his body."

"How did she know what kind of lighter he had? He wouldn't smoke in the office, he always went outside the house to do it, even though I'm a forty a day person; he was like that."

"Exactly. The building's got a strict no-smoking policy, and he couldn't be seen breaking it, not good for the company image. No, she'd seen him using it outside the front lobby where the hard-core smokers go for a drag. When did you last see him with it?"

"I've no idea. Not the kind of thing you pay much attention to. And, like I said, he didn't smoke in the house."

"That's enough about lighters, for now," the man interrupted. "You say your husband never talked about work. But did he do much at home? Paperwork and such?"

"A fair amount, I suppose. At least, he made out he did. He certainly spent enough time on the computer in his study. I teased him about it, sometimes, said I wondered if he wasn't slavering over Internet porn..."

"I think we'd better take that computer on a visit to the station. If you've no objections. If you have, a search warrant can soon take care of them."

"Take whatever you like."

They did. She didn't ring lover man about this. What he didn't know wouldn't panic him. Last thing she wanted was him doing a runner. Which he would have done, had she been any less quiet about the next and final interview with the dynamic duo.

"It's not looking good for him. One of the cleaners on duty Monday night told our people she noticed him leave his desk at about the time your hubbie would have been on his way up."

"What does he say? Wouldn't security men do regular checks around the building, or something like that?"

"A few might do, when they're not drinking tea or reading the Sun or having forty winks. He says he was feeling a bit queer and needed some fresh air."

"Can you prove he wasn't?"

"Not any less than he can prove he can."

"But," changing tack, "has either of you thought up a reason yet why he would want to murder my husband?"

"We don't need to think any up." The police woman wasn't bothering to try and conceal her grin. "His computer provided a very good one. There's a letter on it to him, giving him notice, effective at the end of this month, for keeping quiet about his record when he was taken on. It also promises to circulate this information to all security personnel officers in the Greater London area. We quite fancy all that for a motive."

"Does he admit receiving this letter? Maybe it was never sent. My husband might have banged it out in a paddy when he got your billet doux and then had a change of heart. He could be like that, sometimes."

"We haven't faced him with it yet. Otherwise, he might not have agreed to going back to his place with us and let us turn it over. That way, we don't need a warrant."

That was the last smirk she would see on the Scouse face. When they'd gone, she produced a far more Mona Lisa-like one of her own. She knew the letter would be there, convincingly crumpled in the rubbish under his unappetising sink, because that was where she had planted it a few hours earlier, letting herself in with the key he'd given her soon after their trysts had begun. She'd written the letter on her own computer, which she'd switched to the study, hiding his. Forging his scrawl of a signature was child's play.

She was looking her glossy best when he came.

"All done and dusted. I made sure she found the letter."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing. Stood there looking gob-smacked for a minute, then made a dash for it."

"He didn't get away, did he?"

"No. We had a bit of a wrestle and somehow he managed to fall all the way down some very hard and uncarpeted stairs and break his neck."

"So, what will the Bride of Dracula have to say about that?"

"Not a lot. I've told her I'll handle all the paper work, give her the kudos. She won't actually be with us very much longer. I've pulled strings, called in favours, and got her a promotion-transfer back up to Liverpool. She's been itching to go back, didn't like the Met. She's eternally grateful, won't say a dickey-bird about anything beyond what'll go in my report, least of all her unkind thoughts about you."

They looked at each other evenly.

"I don't know how we kept our faces straight through those interviews."

"Me neither. Well, so much for her."

"And so much for him. I don't get what you saw in him, beyond the obvious."

"That's what it mainly was. The obvious. No need to be clever and trick-cyclist about it. He came into the Blak Kat one night. Before you started coming down, of course. Gave me the eye, actually seemed to listen to me singing. That makes a nice change, I can tell you. Except that he was just putting it on to impress me. I sussed that when I bought him Billy Holiday On Verve, that Japanese box set with Akira Yamato's discography, then spotted it in his flat a week later still unopened. He didn't care enough to care. And he turned out to be as thick as two planks behind the chocolate box looks, except where it counted, so I was in the transfer market when you came on the scene and, bingo, I thought, two birds here with one stone if I play my cards right."

"And you played them beautifully. He didn't stand a chance. Mind you, he was unlucky with that ladder, not that it would have made much difference in the long run. Turns out that one of the maintenance staff took it inside the building to fix something high up, and couldn't be bothered to take it back where it's kept."

"Tell Me More And More, And Then Some."

"What? Oh, another one of those ditties. As a matter of fact, I can. Not sure how you'll take this. We did some digging into those Amsterdam jaunts and it seems that his main business there was with Euro-rent boys. Did you ever suspect he was into that sort of thing?"

She shrugged, not giving him the high-drama reaction he might have been angling for. "Well, it does explain more about more..."

He took the same tack. "Talking about cards, we'll have to play ours right as well. There's no law against a detective falling for a crime victim, and the top brass won't be interested beyond getting the result, what with an official figure of thirty-nine percent clear-up rate and the tabloids on their backs. But, given that I'm going to profit by association, we'd better play it cool for a while. We can talk on the phone and meet on the sly, but I'll not be hanging my hat up here, and I won't know you in public."

"Suits me. I'm going to be flat out, anyway. Meetings with the lawyers, authorising the sale of the company, and what not. AND getting ready for my recording session."

"Your what?"

"My recording session. I told you it was in the works. And Mannie called while I was waiting for you. It's all fixed."

"Well, you can get it unfixed, then."

"What are you on about?"

"You heard. Your husband may have been a complete prat in every other respect, but he was quite right about you and that fleapit of a club. No woman of mine is doing that. You can tell them to stuff it and take early retirement and stop in here where you belong and enjoy your ill-gotten gains. Understand?"

Bombshell dropped, he went. She poured herself a large drink, one suited to Riffin' The Scotch, which she clicked on to her CD player. The lyrics Johnnie Mercer had knocked out for Billie in 1933: "I jumped out of the frying pan right into the fire, Lord, right into the fire..."

She'd miscalculated again. Maybe she would get Mannie to take care of this one for her. He'd jump at the chance to off a copper, especially the leader of that blue rabble at the club. Her previous reservations about giving him a hold over her no longer applied, since the Herbert Lom-loving bouncer had passed on the whisper that Mannie, who had recently seemed to be losing a lot of weight and shrinking into himself, though the two smiles were still there, wasn't long for this world, the Big C.

All this and more lurked under her surface as she faced the Blak Kat philistines again, gave her now fast-passing fancy a defiant look which he then couldn't do anything about and launched into You Ain't Gonna Bother Me No More.

The End