‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ she said, too quickly. Oh, God, what she had feared would happen, had happened.

‘May I ask why not?’

‘You know very well.’

‘No, I don’t. Tell me, please. Explain to me the reasons why I shouldn’t go to Spain with you and your detective.’

‘He’s not my detective.’ Something tightened in the air between them, as if a wooden peg had been given a sharp twist, making a stretched string quiver. She gave a sigh of exasperation. ‘Look, we both know how much you disapprove of my father.’

‘It is not your father I disapprove of.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘you are too much like him. For your own good. For our good.’

They looked at each other steadily, then Phoebe turned and walked out of the room. In the little hallway outside the kitchen she took down her coat from its hook and struggled into it and opened the door on to the landing. Paul appeared behind her. She noticed he had taken the time to light a fresh cigarette.

‘Where are you going, may I ask?’

‘Out.’

‘Out where?’

She turned from him and hurried down the stairs. On the return, she paused and glanced back up. Paul was still standing in the doorway, the fingers of one hand holding his  cigar ette and the other thrust into the side pocket of his buttoned-up suit jacket.

‘When will you be back?’ he asked.

She didn’t answer, but went on down, seeming to feel that big poised mechanism, that clock or weather thing or whatever it was, rock from side to side, its innards making an ominous cacophony of clicks and rattles and chimes.

Chapter 31

Terry Tice stopped in a pub for a drink. After all, he was on his holidays, or sort of. He sat on a high stool at the bar, turning a cork beer mat over and over on its edges, like a square wheel. He was thinking of nothing much. It was pleasant, being adrift like this. He wondered if Percy Antrobus’s body had stayed down in the water or if it had bobbed up again, buoyant with corpse gas. He didn’t care, really. Sooner or later someone would raise the alarm. Percy was a popular chap, knew a lot of people, frequented a lot of places. He would be missed. Someone would take it into his head to alert the rozzers.

‘Another half of Smithwick’s, here.’

It still tasted of soap, but he hadn’t found anything more palatable. Bass he had never liked, and the new Scandinavian stuff that was all over the place these days, advertised on every billboard, that was pure piss.

‘A glass, we say here,’ the barman said, setting down the drink in front of him.

‘What’s that?’ Terry asked.