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‘It was an American voice. He told me his name, and I didn’t hear it. I just thought he was a friend of Doug’s or someone from the site. His foreman or something. But then he said he wanted to talk to me, about Doug’s case.

‘“Your husband didn’t do it”, he said. “He’s innocent. You may even be able to prove it.”’

‘Well, I was sitting up straight now, but I still thought he might be, you know, some sort of crank. Like that nutcase who made the Ripper phone calls. One of these people who gets off on being close to a juicy murder, even if it’s at second- or third-hand.

I asked him who he was, and he told me his name again. It was Paul Sumner. Paul Sumner Junior.’

I’d vaguely heard the name, but I didn’t place it until Jan went on.

‘He writes books. True crime. He wrote that history of the Mob that they made into a TV series. And a biography of John Wayne Gacy. Stuff like that. I’d never read any of it, but I sort of knew who he was. And he said he’d read about Paul’s case on the Net. He’s got all these news feeds on his desktop that link to weird crime Co w217stories from all around the world.

Because that’s how he makes his living. And he read about Paul’s case, and it just made his radar go off. He said he was waiting for something like this to happen, so he knew what it was as soon as he heard. Do you remember Myriam Seaforth Kale? She was a lady gangster, back in the 1960s. Sort of like Bonnie Parker was in the 1930s.’

I gave an eyebrow shrug. Of course I’d heard of her: she was one of those bad girls like Belle Starr or Beulah Baird who go into folklore because of their connection with violent men, or because they do some of the things that violent men do routinely.

I was nearly certain she’d turned up in a crappy movie that Roger Corman or someone had directed. Daughters of Blood? Children of Blood? The Blood Family Robinson? ‘Chicago Mob scene,’ I said. ‘She was Jackie Cerone’s girlfriend, or something, and then he used her on a job.’"

"Jan was nodding vigorously.

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘That’s absolutely right. She came from somewhere a long way down in the South. Brokenshire, Alabama. But she was already a killer before she ever got to Chicago. The first man she killed was a man who stopped and picked her up on the road, after she left home. The story is that he tried to rape her and she killed him with a wheel wrench.

‘Then later on, when she worked for the mobs, she only killed men. That was one of her rules.