‘Come with me to Villiers,’ she says. ‘If you want the truth about me, Martha and Aidan, there’s something you need to see.’

12 - 5/3/08

12

5/3/08

‘DC Dunning’s already heard everything I can tell you,’ Simon said to DS Coral Milward. Dunning sat beside her, clutching his own arms as if miming a strait-jacket. He reeked of the same acid-seaweed aftershave he’d had on yesterday—his version of a chemical weapon, thought Simon; all the better for being legal.

Dunning had interviewed Simon and Charlie last night, together and separately. Each time, the room they were in was dingier. This one wasn’t much bigger than a toilet cubicle, and had some kind of hard, woven substance on the floor that looked like the plaited bristles of a brush. It was decayed to a rusty colour around the edges, coarse hairs sprouting round one or two dark-rimmed holes in the middle. The room was too hot as well as ugly. They were all sweating, Simon most of all. He didn’t care. Stench-wise, as in every other respect, he was proud to give as good as he got.

‘You don’t need us to go over it again,’ he said. ‘We’ve both told you everything we know.’ He was acutely aware of the details Charlie hadn’t volunteered: Mary Trelease’s post-mortem portrait of a dead woman called Martha Wyers, Ruth Bussey’s bedroom wall. Simon knew her silence was down to embarrassment. There was probably no connection between Martha Wyers and the murder Dunning and Milward were investigating; Charlie didn’t want to look stupid, and she wanted even less to tell a pair of hostile strangers about Bussey’s collection of Charlie Zailer memorabilia.

Simon felt uneasy about his role in the lie. Even an arsehole like Neil Dunning had the right to do his job unimpeded. On the other hand, if Dunning ever got round to taking the interest in Bussey and Trelease that Simon had told him countless times he ought to, he could find out for himself about Martha Wyers and Bussey’s collection of cuttings, decide for himself if they were important.

Last night, all Dunning had seemed to want to talk about was Simon’s ‘irregular’ behaviour on Monday. He persisted in using this description, even after Simon had explained that taking things too far was something he did habitually. Funny, the situations you find yourself in. He’d never thought he would end up in someone else’s nick telling stories of his own recklessness to another DC, to prove that irregularity was something that had been with him for a long time and had never led to a violent death.