The Depths of Solitude by Jo Bannister

What happened?”
    Brodie realised she was about to incur his wrath. “Jack, I can’t tell you anything except that I doubt if any of them are involved. Yes, there were harsh words. But none of them threatened me, and none of them made me feel threatened without actually saying the words.”
    Deacon nodded. “Do me a print-out, I’ll see if we’ve got anything on them.”
    Brodie reached for the keyboard and the screen went blank. “I can’t. Whatever the circumstances, I can’t open my files to the police. Not without consulting the clients first – which would rather defeat the object, wouldn’t it? You know as well as I do that some of them come to me because it would be difficult to go to you. They pay me rather than take your help for free because I promise confidentiality. I’m not going to break that promise.”
    Deacon couldn’t have looked more surprised if she’d slapped him in the face with a kipper. “Brodie, this isn’t a game! You’ve had property damaged and stolen, and you could have been seriously hurt. Last time we talked you thought someone was stalking you. That’s a serious crime, and if I didn’t know you from Eve I’d still expect you to co-operate in finding the criminal.”
    “Well, no,” she corrected him mildly, “that’s what you’d want but not necessarily what you’d expect. You’d expect that a professional with a duty of confidentiality towards her clients would require you to produce a search warrant before she’d surrender her files. I can’t put my own interests ahead of the paying customers’ without one.”
    Airships could have hangared in his mouth. His eyes were incredulous. “Someone is terrorising you,” he said, very distinctly. “He knows where you live, where you work, what kind of a car you drive – drove – and when
you stop for coffee. Since he started by dropping a brick on you from an overpass it’s safe to assume he’s prepared to inflict serious injury. So you’ve gone through your records and put together a shortlist of people who could be doing this – but you won’t show it to me unless I get a search warrant?”
    “No, I won’t.” The ethics of the situation seemed clear enough to Brodie. So did the financial implications. “If I did I’d be doing his job for him. If he’s trying to put me out of business, making me turn my files over to the police would do it. Try to understand, Jack. My clients are mostly decent people because I try not to work for those who aren’t. But some are people who need an alternative to the police, not because they’re involved in something illegal but because their situation is sensitive. I can’t put their private business into the public domain simply because someone’s leaning on me. I owe them better.”
    “One of them torched your car!”
    “I’m not convinced. In all my files I’ve found about a handful of cases that could have left someone nursing a grudge against me. But not on this scale! If someone had painted rude words on my window, maybe. But attempted murder? Honestly, Jack, I can’t see it.”
    “So give me the names and let me see what I’ve got on them. People who behave like this don’t do it just once. If one of them’s done something like it before, I bet you’d find that pretty convincing. Those who check out need never know.”
    Brodie breathed heavily. These days – unmarried, self-employed, head of her household with her only child just five – she didn’t often have to justify her decisions. “Jack, I know you mean well. I know you’re looking out for me. I’d do as you ask if I could. Maybe no harm would come of it. Maybe one of these names would ring a bell with
you, and you’d pull him off the street before he was able to do any more harm, and I’d be eternally grateful and no one else would know.
    “But you might not be able to keep it secret. If you couldn’t find a prime suspect you’d want to interview them all, and you’d have to tell them