‘Blurred images,’ DI Ure said, stifling a yawn. ‘Black screens. Horizontal lines. Faulty cables. Erratic infrared sensors playing havoc at night. Tapes getting wiped because of storage problems. Sometimes they forget to turn it on. And sometimes bad people have the wit to change clothes and cover their face.’

‘So you see, Mrs Carver – CCTV is not the eye of God. CCTV rarely works quite as flawlessly as it does in the movies. But that said, with all those cameras surrounding that world-class hotel, we are cautiously confident that if you entered that hotel earlier than your visit in the evening with your friend Mrs Sallis, then sooner or later we will find CCTV footage of you doing so.’

He grinned at me.

‘Fingers crossed, eh?’ he said. ‘And so I must ask you to think very carefully before you reply – when we have finally looked at all the CCTV, am I going to see you going into that hotel either alone, or with your husband, or with some third party?’

‘No,’ I said without hesitation, holding the big detective’s mocking gaze, suddenly getting that old familiar feeling.

I seemed to feel it all the time these days.

I wanted to kill the bastard.

32

Christian

Late in the evening, Tara’s parents came to the house.

We stared at each other on the doorstep, struck dumb by the turn our lives had taken. This fit old man with a kitbag thrown over his shoulder and his wife, the Debbie Harry of the Home Counties. Leo and Jen. I didn’t know what to say to them.

‘She didn’t do it,’ I said. ‘It’s not her fault.’

Tara’s mother snorted with derision.

‘It’s never Tara’s fault,’ Jen said. ‘I’ve been hearing the same thing long before you arrived on the scene, young man. I have been hearing it for thirty years about innocent little butter-wouldn’t-melt Tara!’ She shot a ferocious look at her husband. ‘And I’m sick of it.’

Then Marlon was there with his new book, Buddy padding behind him, and Jen was expressing wonder and delight, her loving hands in her grandson’s golden mop. She took his hand and they went off to the living room, but Leo lingered on the doorstep.

‘Marlon all right?’

I glanced back into the house.

‘He’s five years old, Leo. He doesn’t understand any of it. He will be all right until his mum doesn’t come home. And then he’s not going to be all right.’

‘How about you?’ A beat. ‘Any luck?’

‘What?’

‘Any luck with finding a job?’

I saw that the old man was in a state of shock. He was on autopilot now.

‘Leo, I was a music journalist. It’s like being a milkman. That job doesn’t really exist any more.’

‘Oh, yeah, right.’

And I suddenly realised that Leo was not coming inside.

‘I’m going to the police station,’ he said, and I almost told him that it was pointless, and a waste of time, and he was just banging his bald head against a brick wall. But I didn’t say any of it because I knew that nothing would stop Leo from going to the police station.