The basket of roses on Valentine’s Day – that he could have dismissed as the silly expression of an over-the-top infatuation. He’d known those before. Even the gift which she’d left with Mrs Gresham yesterday, tiresome though it was, could be dealt with somehow. Throw into the equation the fact that the woman had lain in wait for him late at night in an unbalanced, emotional state … well, the whole thing became more sinister. Apart from anything else, what seemed to Leo most unsettling was the fact that Melissa Angelicos, far from having any grounds for showering him with gifts and protestations of affection, had every reason to dislike him intensely. He had rebuffed every advance she’d made – apart from that drunken evening when he’d inadvertently humiliated her – and had been positively rude to her. If, as seemed to be the case, she had developed some kind of obsession with him, there was every chance that it could manifest itself in unpleasant ways, too. He strode from Temple station and up through Fountain Court, wondering how best to deal with it.
