‘After which you drove home.’ Milward was reading from notes. ‘DC Waterhouse joined you at your house shortly after eleven, and the two of you spent the night there.’

‘Yes.’

Milward and Dunning were bound to be wondering how Simon felt about sharing a bed—sharing a life—with the ex-lover of one of the sickest psychos in the UK prison system. He wondered himself.

‘And then, on Tuesday morning, you phoned work and pretended to be ill. Why?’

‘I didn’t pretend. I felt ill, then I felt better.’

‘Better enough to fancy a day-trip to London,’ said Milward caustically.

‘Yes. I thought I’d go shopping. We don’t have real shops in Spilling, only mud huts selling painted masks.’

‘How did you travel?’

‘By train, as I said last night. My answers aren’t going to change.’

‘You caught the slow train—the 9.05 from Rawndesley to King’s Cross?’

‘And got in at 10.55. Yes.’

‘What did you do in London?’

‘For the third time, I looked round art galleries in the morning and went to see my sister in the afternoon. Then Simon rang me and told me about all this shit, and I came here.’

‘All this shit being Gemma Crowther’s murder?’ Milward leaned forward. ‘Are you always this flippant about the deaths of young women?’

‘No. Only on Wednesdays.’

‘The trouble I’m having, Sergeant Zailer, is that I haven’t spoken to Ruth Bussey. You might be lying about what time you left her house. How do I know you didn’t drive to London on Monday evening?’

‘And kill Gemma Crowther, you mean? Why would I want to kill a woman I hadn’t heard of until yesterday afternoon? Oh, and I don’t kill people. Though I endlessly long to.’

‘DC Waterhouse, your fiancé, was seen prowling round Gemma’s house, looking in her window, only hours before she died. Let’s say you did drive from Spilling to London on the Monday night . . .’

‘Say it if you want, but I didn’t.’

‘You’d be unable to provide an alibi for DC Waterhouse, wouldn’t you? If you weren’t at home, you don’t know he got back at eleven. If he didn’t get back at eleven, that means he didn’t set off from Muswell Hill at nine thirty. We’ve got a pathologist’s report telling us Gemma Crowther died no earlier than ten p.m. Do you see what I’m saying?’

‘Let me check: I’m lying to protect Simon, because I know he murdered Gemma Crowther. Is that it? Or I left Ruth’s before ten thirty, went to London and murdered Crowther myself?’

‘This is bullshit,’ said Simon. ‘I’ll collate the CCTV footage for you if you like, since I’m exiled from my job indefinitely. I’ll find you lots of black and white pictures to prove we were both where we say we were at all the right times.’

‘Don’t show them the one of me smoking next to the “No Smoking” sign outside Rawndesley station,’ Charlie chipped in. ‘They might tell.’