He put the wedding picture back on the mantelpiece. Paula didn’t seem to notice. She was ogling her husband appreciatively. “You should hear Fergus on the subject of photographers,” she said. “He can’t bear them, so they’re banned from the house. Making my husband happy is my new full-time job. I take it very seriously—as seriously as I used to take my political career.”

“She does,” Fergus agreed enthusiastically. “She’s extremely conscientious.”

Paula giggled for several seconds longer than was necessary.

Mentally, Simon turned his back on the innuendo and the flirtatious laughter. He didn’t see why people couldn’t behave like grown-ups, especially when visited by the police. If Simon had owned an eight-bedroom farmhouse and 120 acres of Buckinghamshire, he would have conducted himself very differently. He hoped his straight face and lack of response had made it clear to Preece and Paula that he was here for a more serious purpose than to snigger at dirty jokes, though it was evident from their forthright, gregarious demeanor that they were used to setting the agenda, not having it set for them by a man whose only noticeable asset was half of a mortgaged row house.

“Being a devoted wife is so much less stressful than politics,” Paula said so loudly that Simon flinched. “God, I’m glad I’m out of all that! I escaped at exactly the right time. Life for MPs is only going to get harder. These days, people want to hate politicians. I’m sick of hearing about lack of trust, disillusionment, hand-wringing, what can be done about it, blah, blah, blah. The electorate doesn’t want politicians it can believe in—God forbid anyone should be forced to abandon their cynicism! What everyone wants is a group of convenient patsies, to be sneered at and blamed. They’d find a way to hate whoever was in charge at the first tiniest suggestion of a policy that didn’t read as if it was drafted solely with them in mind.”

“This is my wife’s idea of leaving all that nasty politics stuff behind.” Fergus chuckled. “You can see how detached she is, can’t you, DC Waterhouse? Oh, she couldn’t care less! That’s why she’s on Twitter all day long: Cameron this, Clegg that.”