Wesley Wyndham-Price and Dr Melissa Hemmingway sat in the forensic officer on the ground floor of the LAPD Precinct 17. They were both perched on wooden stools favoured by forensic experts and sitting on the same side of the table that was in the middle of the room. A horseshoe of cabinets and scientific equipment lined the outside, complete with fancy names such as mass spectrometer and field ion microscope.

'You wanna see a movie tonight?' asked Melissa as she casually looked at Wesley.

'I have a feeling we'll be free tonight,' replied the suave Briton. He was quite confident the case would be solved and the offending villain put before justice.

'I have a newspaper in my office, we can see what's on while we wait for the two detectives.' She got up, brushed her red hair away from her face, and approached the double-door. As she got closer she saw two silhouettes approaching from the other side, through the frosted glass. She sighed and sat back down. 'We got company.'

Lockley pushed the door wide open, Hanley followed in her wake. Hanley was a big guy, six foot two at least and thick set, he looked like a perp. He looked unconfortable in his white shirt with rolled up sleeves and his tie, he was similar to Sipowitcz from NYPD Blue, without the bald head.

Lockley nodded curtly to the two of them and then pulled up a stool the other side of the desk, Hanley sat next to her, he deposited a brown file onto the matt-black surface.

Wesley felt the uncomfortable silence and spoke up. 'Did the doorman break?'

'Yes,' replied Lockley. 'Under Handley's questionable interview techniques he cracked in under fifteen minutes, admits to it all.'

'Doesn't want to loose his job,' added Hanley. 'I'm thinking about telling his bosses anyway, he was smug.'

'He told us there was one woman, payed him two hundred bucks to keep quiet, swears he had no idea she was gonna kill him. Kept it quiet because it would make him look guilty.'

'Mr Wyndham-Price,' said Hanley. 'Lockley informed me you said their may have been two women, looks like you were wrong.'

Wesley looked at Hanley, he could see a two-day growth of beard and a scratch over his eye. 'I don't think so. If the doorman only saw one woman, how did the second get into the room?'

'I don't know,' replied Lockley. 'he says he took three breaks over the course of the evening, she could've slipped in.'

'She did slip in,' said Wesley, 'via the roof. 'There are furrows running over the wall directly over Griffon's bathroom window, the one that opens. There are also marks over the balcony, which she was lowered down and had to get over, so it made the marks, rope burns or whatever. She then did a fancy swinging action,' Wesley demonstrated with his hands and a piece of cord, 'which allowed her to get into the bathroom via the window opened by the first woman.'

'So the first woman is a suspect?' asked Lockley.

'Yes,' responded Hemmingway. 'She must've organized it, or at least be privvy to it, which makes her an accesory.'

'We got a e-fit of her,' informed Hanley, 'but the doorman was payed to forget her, he did.'

'Carry on,' edged Lockley.

'Well, the woman comes in, she's the one currently taking up real estate in the morgue, and hears Griffon typing on his own Writemaster in his study. She had a light meal before, and any alcohol would make it harder than necessary, so her stomach contents are, what were they, doctor?'

'They were a nice healthy MacDonalds. She also had what looked like pasta in there. Pasta of course, is energy food, full of carbohydrates.'

'Her accomplis at this time, the one that lowered her, is now pulling in the rope and he leaves pretty sharpish. We can assume it was all set to a precise time, and any sunbathers on the roof would need to have left, so it was gonna have to be nightime. Which, of course, would be much greater because no-one would see her little repelling act down the Pasteur Buildings face.

'With her the woman has a knife, and a pistol, the one found in Griffon's drawer,' continued Wesley.

'Which would explain why he didn't use it,' surmised Lockley. 'Clever.'

'They were very smart, whoever planned it all, but they were at a disadvantage when it would be shown the intruder would have to be made of smoke to get out afterwards. A truly impossible crime. She opens the study door, maybe it's open already and points the gun at Griffon. He's ordered to throw whatever he's typing away, out of the window, more likely she does it afterwards. It may have been a divorce note, a suicide note, who knows, it's scattered somewhere in LA now, never to be found.'

'The dead woman did it?' asked a baffled Hanley.

'We think she was a contract killer,' said Hemmingway.

'Yeah, apart from one thing you forgot, maybe,' he covered his bases. 'Hitmen very rarely do suicide missions, they work for profit, now if she couldn't get the cash, why would she do it?'

Hemmingway coughed. 'She has had at least one child, and she was going to die of a brain tumour a few weeks away, the last while of it would leave her catactonic, she had to provide for her family. One last, impossible and high-paying hit.'

Wesley took back the narrative. 'She maneuvered behind Griffon and cut his throat. He screamed, which was a bit of a bugger for her, she had to move fast, probably assumed people would get a little inquisitive and find him in the morning had he not made a sound. She put the gun in his drawer, after putting his fingerprints all over it.'

'He never had a gun licence,' commented Lockley.

'He never owned a gun,' replied Wesley. 'She quickly went outside, careful not to step in the blood and closed the door. Here's where she magnets the lock to make it looked like he killed himself. But the knife, she needed that knife. Maybe it was expected to be some kind of mystery, push the sales of the book he'd just finished into the stratosphere, and suicide is never very good for business.

'She hid the magnet in the speaker of his hi-fi system, it already has one, so no-one would think it was out of place there, and goes into the next room. She screams, slashes her own throat and throws the knife away with the last of her strength. Which is the image that the officers who bust in ran into, right?'

'When you think about it, detective,' said Hemmingway, 'it all makes sense. All the forensic evidence falls into place. There were no prints on the knife or magnet, and only Griffon's on the gun. The hitwoman was smart enough to put herself about a bit. Touch the glass, grab a knife and fork, leave a few hairs about, clever on her part. It also leaves the entire house sealed, as she locks the window after she comes in. But it does have one flaw.'

'You seem to have everything covered,' said Lockley. 'Except a motive.'

'And the man who lowered her,' briefed Hemmingway. 'We found no traces, I'm thinking he may have been a resident, someone who who never had to leave the Building to get home.'

'Who?' queried Hanley.

'Don't know,' said Wesley, 'you're the detectives. But we do think we have a motive, one of the best. Greed. Who benefits if he dies, detective?'

'His wife, I guess,' said Lockely, 'I'm not sure.'

'Maybe he gives it all to a Cattery or something,' joked Hanley.

'I think his wife would make sure she gets it all. She's in Paris at the moment, a perfect alibi, not even in the country when it happened. Her husbands supposed infidelity and his cryptic death all in the same night, spooky.'

'Do you have any evidence to suggest it's her?' enquired Lockley.

'The hitwoman was Russian, right?'

'That's what the clerk at Klondike Fashion said.'

'Has she been to Eastern Europe recently, and has she accrued massive gambling debts, or needs a lot of cash quickly?'

'No idea, Wes,' said Lockley. 'But we can check it out.'

'You might get lucky,' said Hemmingway. 'In fact there's a good possibility of her breaking down and confessing. Her being in Paris was no coincidence, she wanted - needed - physical distance between her and her husband who was marked for death. She may not be able to handle seeing graphic photos, or hearing how he was murdered, and how he bled to death. You could even say you had a love letter to her, stir some emotional mess inside her. She's not a cold-blooded killer.'

'I hope you're right,' said Hanley. 'It really boils my blood when people get away with crimes.'

Lockley stood up. 'I'll have an arrest warrant waiting at the airport for when she comes back.'

'Do you have enough evidence?' asked Wesley.

'Frankly no,' replied Lockely. 'But I'm sure we can get something. Hanley, how much you think a contract taken out on something like this would be?'

The big detective got up, too. 'I dunno, it would have to be enough to make sure the killers family was taken care of, and she'd need a pretty big incentive to suicide herself for it. Two hundred thou, maybe more. Quarter of a mil of so.'

'That's what I thought,' said Lockley. 'A woman like the Russian wouldn't take a cheque, would she? No, right. She'd want it up front, which means Mrs Griffon would need a considerable sum on top of huge debts, where would she get it?'

'Is her family wealthy?' asked Hemmingway.

'Wealthy enough to give her a quater of a million US dollars for an unspecified reason? No way. If they were, why would she have debts?'

'Wait a second,' said Wesley, 'has she made any large purchases recently?'

'A boat,' interjected Lockley. 'A couple of months ago. Of course,' it hit her like a tonne of bricks, recognition, 'she skimmed two hundred large to pay for his own death, what a cold-hearted bitch. Hanley, I want you to check out how much the boat they bought was, I bet a sizeable chunk of change would be left over from what she withdrew.'

'If that's so,' said Hanley, 'why would she even need to kill her husband for cash? I mean, if she can skim a quarter of a mil on one purchase, chances are she wouldn't be in debt, she'd just skim again.'

'Maybe, but if her debts were quite large, say, more than any sum she could skim, she'd be in trouble.'

Wesley took the chance to show off some useless information he gleamed from the Internet last night. 'Griffon's last book - Granite - was a best- seller for ten weeks, it must've made him almost a million, or even over. He was one rich man.'

'So what's the betting he signed a prenup?' asked Hemmingway. 'He walks away from the marriage, he gets everything he's ever made, she get's nothing, not even the boat.'

'And there is evidence he trawled the bars of an evening looking for female companionship,' said Wesley, only he could put it quite like that. 'A divorce may well have been inevitable. She had everything to lose, now she has everything to gain.'

Lockley counted off her fingers as she did her checklist. 'We got motive, means and if we get the boat skim, then we got evidence too. How's she gonna explain serious cash dissapeared?'

***

'Mrs Gillian Griffon is now officailly wanted by the US for murder,' stated Lockley as she faced Wesley. She was over at Angel Investigations now, standing in the foyer with Wesley. She saw Angel in the background, looking in the fridge and said a casual 'hi' to him. It'd been three days since the revalations at Precinct 17.

'I heard,' said Wesley.

'How?'

'Doctor Hemmingway told me. We've been seeing each other since the case ended.'

'That explains why the duty coroner said his office was such a mess, eh?'

'Yes. Anyway, I heard she got some of his money anyway.'

'Yeah. Two million dollars from a numbered Swiss account we had no idea he even had,' explained Lockley. 'From there she dissapeared like a mist. Sources place her in Japan, but we don't really know. I mean, his assets were never even released to her, he had that Swiss account in case he needed to dash off, must've had some deal with the bankers to release it to his wife if he ever died.'

The boat skim was right, three hundred thousand dollars were missing from a one point two million cash withdrawal. She had done it, she knew they knew, and never set foot back on US soil since. Further investigation by Hanley had revealed debts of over a million dollars to various crime syndicates with which she liked to place bets. The kind of people she got into deep with knew no national boundaries, she had to pay them before dissapearing. They'd just hire someone to find her and put a bullet in her head. Apparently Hanley suggested they do the same. He'd even petitioned the LAPD to pay Wesley a small sum for his help, now that was a surprise.

'Money seems to make the worse of people,' mused Wesley.

'Yeah,' agreed Lockley. 'But the second she comes back we're nailing her for it, we're gonna throw her in stir and forget we ever aknowledged her existence.'

'Hey, Wes,' said Angel from behind him, Wesley turned round to see him. 'You ready? We got that case.'

Wesley turned back to Lockley. 'Thank you for the update, detective, I'm sure you'll catch her. If you ever need my services again, just call.' He flashed his hand and produced an Angel Investigations card, he handed it to Lockley.

'Yeah. Bye. Bye, Angel.' She went out into the sunlight of the LA day.

'See ya around,' shot back Angel as the door shut. 'So you solved it, eh?'

'Yes, taxing but quite satisfying.'

Angel sniffed his coat which was on the coat rack in the reception area. 'What's that, the case or the redhead?'

'Highly amusing. I see your two hundred odd years have only served to sharpen your wit, not dull it.'

'I do my best.'

'If only the real criminal was brought to justice.'

'Come on,' said Angel as he opened the basement door. 'We're burning daylight here.'

Wesley picked up an axe off the kitchen counter and followed Angel down into the abode of the damned, where he could really make a difference.