Stride shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket. Rain plinked on the metallic roof, and drops leaked inside. A gust of wind rocked the corrugated metal. ‘She says you were in love with her.’

Nathan snorted. ‘Are you kidding? No, I wasn’t.’

‘Why would she say that?’ Stride asked.

‘Why do you think? To make it look like I had another reason to blow her husband away. I wanted her for myself. Real nice. I guess there’s no honor among cheaters.’

‘You said another reason to kill Jay,’ Stride pointed out.

‘Oh, come on, Lieutenant. You don’t need to play gotcha games with me. We both know I hated Jay Ferris. He cost me my job. He made it his business to ruin my life. So I made it my business to fuck his wife. Which I did. I already had my revenge against Jay.’

‘You don’t have much of an alibi for that night.’

‘Maybe not, but I was sick. The pizza girl will tell you that. Besides, you tested my gun. It’s clean.’

‘Is that your only handgun?’ Stride asked. ‘Archie Gale seems to think you have more.’

Nathan shrugged. ‘Okay, I’ve got others. You want to test all of them? You want to search my place? Go for it. Look, it doesn’t matter. I’m not an idiot. If I killed him – which I didn’t – I would have dropped the gun through this hole in the ice. You’d never find it. That’s probably what Janine did, too.’

‘You think she killed him?’

‘Of course she did.’

‘Did you know that Jay Ferris owned a gun?’ Stride asked.

‘Yeah, Jay waved it at me when I went after him at the Saratoga.’

‘Did you ever tell Janine about Jay’s gun?’

Nathan didn’t answer right away. He rubbed his bare arms against the cold. Stride thought he was deciding whether to lie, and he realized he couldn’t trust anything that came out of Nathan’s mouth. That was true of Janine, too. It would be a he said/she said between them all the way to the courtroom.

‘Yeah, sure, I told her about it,’ Nathan said.

‘Just to be clear,’ Stride reiterated. ‘You’re saying that you told Janine that Jay carried a gun. She knew about it.’

‘I did. I joked about it once. I said we’d better be careful if Jay found out about us, in case he decided to blow us away.’

‘When was this?’

‘I don’t remember. Months ago.’

‘What did Janine say?’

‘She didn’t look surprised.’