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Chapters (62)
  1. Title
  2. Copyright
  3. Contents
  4. About the Author
  5. About the Book
  6. Dedication
  7. Your Worst Nightmare
  8. ONE
  9. TWO
  10. THREE
  11. FOUR
  12. FIVE
  13. SIX
  14. SEVEN
  15. EIGHT
  16. NINE
  17. The Answer to All Your Prayers
  18. TEN
  19. ELEVEN
  20. TWELVE
  21. THIRTEEN
  22. FOURTEEN
  23. FIFTEEN
  24. SIXTEEN
  25. SEVENTEEN
  26. EIGHTEEN
  27. NINETEEN
  28. TWENTY
  29. TWENTY-ONE
  30. TWENTY-TWO
  31. TWENTY-THREE
  32. TWENTY-FOUR
  33. TWENTY-FIVE
  34. TWENTY-SIX
  35. TWENTY-SEVEN
  36. TWENTY-EIGHT
  37. TWENTY-NINE
  38. THIRTY
  39. THIRTY-ONE
  40. Somebody Else’s Child
  41. THIRTY-TWO
  42. THIRTY-THREE
  43. THIRTY-FOUR
  44. THIRTY-FIVE
  45. THIRTY-SIX
  46. THIRTY-SEVEN
  47. THIRTY-EIGHT
  48. THIRTY-NINE
  49. FORTY
  50. FORTY-ONE
  51. FORTY-TWO
  52. FORTY-THREE
  53. FORTY-FOUR
  54. FORTY-FIVE
  55. FORTY-SIX
  56. FORTY-SEVEN
  57. FORTY-EIGHT
  58. FORTY-NINE
  59. Sunlight on Water
  60. July
  61. September
  62. Acknowledgements

‘It’s an offence to make a false statement,’ says Dallabrida. ‘Do you want to have a quick think about anything you might have forgotten? Let us give you a clue. It’s got something to do with a van.’

‘A van?’

‘A van that was outside your shop when Evan Ferrers and Stewart Wareham walked in.’

Jadoon drops his head.

‘OK,’ he says, ‘OK. This way.’ He leads them to the back of the shop and takes a bottle of white wine from the chiller. ‘I told my wife it was a terrible idea. She has a cousin in the cash-and-carry trade. I don’t know where they get it from, just that it’s very cheap. It says from France on the bottle but I don’t believe it comes from there.’

Hagen studies the label. It looks genuine, but many fake wines do.

‘How much did you pay for this stuff?’

‘One fifty a bottle. You see, it retails at seven, maybe eight ninety-nine.’

‘And who was driving the van?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Jadoon. ‘I didn’t know him and I didn’t ask. Why would I?’

Dallabrida looks at Hagen and shakes his head.

‘Do you want to tell your wife you’re going out, Mr Jadoon?’ asks Hagen. ‘If you’re going to revise your statement, there’s no time like the here and now.’

SEVEN

SEVEN

29 November

Matt comes into the bedroom quietly, his bare feet padding on the cream carpet, navigating around the bed by the light bleeding around the edge of the door. Since that first night, the landing light’s been left on, at first because there were always people in the house: investigators, liaison officers, uniformed officers to keep the press at bay, all well-meaning, all for Claire and Matt’s benefit, but all strangers who invaded the sanctity and privacy of their home and left only this bedroom as a refuge from the invasion.

The press were like an army laying siege, so the curtains and blinds remained permanently closed and time went by in a perpetual evening. Claire feels they became like cave dwellers, allergic to the lost daylight, and the first few times she left the house, even in the foggy gloom of autumn, she was bewildered by the abundance of colour, accustomed as she was to the chromatic distortions of fluorescent and energy-saving lightbulbs.

Everyone is gone now. The fickle media circus left first, lured away by other dramas and disasters, rushing away to homes more recently blighted, to fresher tragedies and heartbreaks. When the press struck camp, there was no need for the uniforms to remain, which Claire regretted, a little. Of all the people who were here, she had borne their company most easily, those world-weary men and women who handled pressure with laughter, uncovering rubies of dark humour in the rubble of once-ordinary lives.