‘I’ve nothing more to ask your wife,’ Hawthorne said. ‘But if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to you.’ He paused. ‘Alone.’

Judith wasn’t having any of that. ‘Anything you want to say to my husband, you can say in front of me.’

‘That’s fine by me,’ Hawthorne said, not put out at all. He smiled at Matheson. ‘Shall I go ahead, then?’

But Matheson wasn’t stupid. He was, after all, a barrister and he must have sensed what was in the air. He turned to his wife. ‘Actually,’ he demurred, ‘if this has anything to do with States business, perhaps it might be best if you weren’t here, darling. I wouldn’t want you to be compromised.’

He was lying, of course. He knew that whatever Hawthorne had in mind had nothing to do with the island’s parliament. And Judith was equally disingenuous. She must have guessed that he was lying, but she went along with it. She stood up. ‘All right.’ She was still indignant. ‘I’ll be in the kitchen.’

She walked out of the room.

‘There’s something you have to understand about Judith,’ Matheson began as soon as the door had closed. ‘She loves this island. In fact, it’s very hard to get her to leave it . . . even for holidays. She’s always believed that everything is perfect here, so why would she want to go anywhere else? But as a result you could say that she is insular in the exact sense of that word. She was very upset by all the arguments about NAB, and as for what happened to le Mesurier . . . well, I hardly need tell you, there’s never been a murder on Alderney . . .’

‘You don’t,’ Hawthorne agreed.

‘But I’ve been married to her for twenty years. I love her very much and I wouldn’t want anything to harm her.’ He took a breath, waiting for the blow to fall. ‘So what do you want to ask me?’

‘I think you already know, Mr Matheson. Helen le Mesurier has gone missing, but we’ve managed to recover certain text messages from her phone that suggest the two of you were . . . how shall I put it . . . ?’

‘We were lovers. Briefly, stupidly, insanely.’ The collapse when it came was total. Colin Matheson buried his face in his hands and his whole body shuddered. ‘She was the one who drew me in. She was the one who started it. I wish I’d never met her!’

Hawthorne was unforgiving. ‘Why are you talking about her in the past tense, Mr Matheson? Do you know she’s dead?’

Matheson looked up. ‘I’m talking about her in the past tense because my relationship with her is over,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t even a relationship. It was sex. Twice. Never again. I hated myself at the time. I love Judith and I’ll never forgive myself for being so stupid.’