His nose wrinkles in distaste at my sitting without being invited, but I’m not too worried about his sensibilities. What I have come to discuss is far worse than bad manners.

‘Have you heard Kira Niemeyer was murdered?’

He nods. ‘A terrible business. Whoever could do such a thing?’

Not bothering to answer his question, I lock eyes with him. My intention is to go straight for the jugular with a candid account of Kira’s death. Get him on the back foot by offending his genteel nature. Perhaps I’ll get a flash of a darker persona lurking underneath. ‘Did you also hear how she was slashed seventy-two times before her heart was pierced? That her body was dumped half under a bush on a popular walking trail where it was sure to be found?’

The blanching of his already pale skin is the only answer I’m given. His eyes cloud with sadness as he considers my words.

‘Every cut was on her chest and stomach. Can you imagine what a mess that many wounds would do in such a concentrated area?’

He shoots from his seat and darts towards a door at the back of the room. I am three paces behind him when I recognise the room he’s entered is a bathroom. Chalmers isn’t trying to escape. He’s more concerned with hitting the toilet bowl with the streams of vomit pulsing from his mouth.

I step back into the office and return to my seat. There is nothing to be gained from standing over him, he’ll be out when he’s finished. Having witnessed his upright-citizen behaviour, I guess he’ll be shamefaced about his less than stoic reaction.

When he does emerge from the bathroom, his pallor has dropped a couple of shades to a hue interior decorators call apple white.

‘I am sorry. That was rather embarrassing.’

I wave away his apologies. ‘Don’t worry about it, you’re not the first person I’ve known to be sick after being told something horrible.’

He gives a small nod of thanks as he pulls a bottle of sparkling water from a desk drawer. ‘All the same, it is not very gentlemanly.’

There’s a danger we’ll keep going round in circles if I don’t change the subject, so I get to the real point for my visit.

‘Kira mentioned in her journal you and she dated. How long were you together, and when was it?’

‘We dated for around two months. It would be the middle of last summer.’

I cast my memory back and remember dating a dental nurse who’d wanted to teach me how to swim. Her increasing insistence had brought a swift end to our relationship.

‘Why did you split?’

He shrugs. ‘Why does any couple separate? I guess we were not terribly well suited.’

‘In what way didn’t you suit each other?’

He delays his answer by emptying the bottle of water into a glass. ‘Did you know Kira before she died?’

I nod and wait for him to continue.

‘You are a private detective. I am sure you have assessed me as a person, looked into my background?’

It’s my turn to shrug. ‘A little.’

‘Tell me, Mr Boulder, why do you think Kira and I parted company?’

It’s a good question. One whose answer makes sense.

Chalmers is a prig at best. At worst he’s a prissy little mummy’s boy who’ll expect his wife to conform to the Stepford model.

Kira and he wouldn’t be suited to each other in any way. While opposites are meant to attract, she was an untamed spirit who lived life at a pace that suited the rhythms of mood and moment.

Chalmers, on the other hand, is the type of person for whom routine is everything. A real ‘fish on a Friday’ kind of guy. He’d worship and provide a decent life for her and any kids they produced while suffocating her free-spirited nature.

Sure, physical attraction may carry them so far together, but his sort are planners by nature and Chalmers is at that age where the getting of a wife has been moved from the ‘one day’ to the ‘imperative’ column in his life ledger.

This line of thought almost leads me to discount him as a suspect until I have a second thought.

What if he’d fallen for her and had his marital offer discarded? I’ve learned from many a fight, the quiet ones often prove the most dangerous.

Perhaps her rejection had been the straw that broke the dromedary’s spine, flipping him from prissy clerk into a crazed killer, intent on making sure that if he couldn’t have Kira, no one else could.

As plausible as this sounds at first, the theory doesn’t bear much scrutiny. They’d been together last year. Suppressed personalities can be very unpredictable, but there had been no current trigger. If she’d been listed in the Casperton Gazette’s weekly round-up of engagements, there would be more cause to consider him as a suspect.

It wasn’t outwith the realms of possibility he’d found out Kira was hooking, but I doubt he has. While his office and clothes speak of a decent business, I can’t see an accountant being able to justify spending money on a hooker. Certainly not ones charging ten grand a time. While there is no particular kind or type of person who’d hire a hooker, I just can’t picture him booking one.

Still, I’m not ready to strike a line through his name just yet.

‘Okay, so you were different people who hooked up for a while. Tell me what you two did have in common. Where you hung out together.’

‘We did not exactly have a lot in common. We would perhaps watch a movie or go for dinner and then go back to my place.’ He blushes as his eyes look at anything in the room except me. ‘Our relationship was more physical than cerebral.’

‘I get it. When you first got together who instigated it?’

‘Kira did. I was quite taken aback at her forwardness.’

I have a struggle to keep my reply to that statement unspoken.

Kira would have eaten Chalmers up and spat out a chewed skeleton without her extra-curricular activities. With them it was a complete mismatch, which made David versus Goliath seem like a fair fight.

‘And who was it who called it quits? You or her?’

‘That was her too.’ He looks me in the eye for the first time in minutes. ‘I did not let it bother me too much to be honest. The physical benefits may have been enjoyable but it was never true love for either of us. In fact, the night she told me it was over she as good as told me she was interested in someone else.’

‘Who? What did she say?’ My words come out in a hurried jumble. This was the kind of information that could point us towards her killer.

Again Chalmers delays by taking a drink of water before speaking. It’s as if he is searching his memory or is afraid what he says will disappoint me. ‘She told me that she thought a lot of me, but I would never be Jake Boulder.’

I guess I must have gasped as he asks if I am okay. Chalmers could have punched at me for an hour without doing a fraction of the damage his words had.

My skin develops a sheen of sweat. The thoughts and ideas in my head are tumbling around too fast to comprehend.

I haul myself together enough to focus my eyes onto his face. Staring hard at him I find no trace of deception or animosity. There is a tinge of empathy and embarrassment at the confession that has compared us in Kira’s eyes.

‘Would you like a glass of water?’

I nod, not trusting the desert that’s masquerading as my mouth. Taking the water from him, I gulp a mouthful and follow it with a steady drink.

‘Thanks.’ I hand the glass back.

‘I can see that threw you somewhat.’

‘Just a bit.’ I give a brief smile and try to make light of it. ‘It’s just a wee bit of a surprise, that’s all.’

‘I am sure it was. If it is any consolation, I was most perturbed when she said it to me.’

His use of perturbed jolts me back to a semblance of my regular self. I know what the word means, but I’ve never heard it used in conversation before.

‘Tell me, when you were together did she ever take you back to her place?’

‘No. I suggested it, but she always had a reason why we should go back to mine.’