‘I’m sorry about your daughter.’

‘All Amy’s classmates still have their fathers. Nothing like Jim, of course. All those podgy, balding middle-aged men. Nothing like my Jim. But they are still alive and he is gone and there is so much that he is going to miss, all those good years. That’s all gone now he’s dead. Did you ever think about my daughter when you were in bed with my husband? Did she ever cross your mind when Jim was fucking you blind? Are you really sorry for her loss? You’re glad. I know you. Don’t think I don’t know you.’

‘Look,’ I said. ‘I’m not glad your husband is dead because the police came and took my husband away last night. So how can I possibly be glad he is dead?’

‘But your husband didn’t kill Jim, did he?’

‘He didn’t know about me and your husband,’ I said.

Was that true? It must be true. Even having James Caine wandering around our home had not made Christian suspicious, had it? Because if Christian had known, he would have said something. Wouldn’t he?

Sandy Caine touched me across the table and it was like an electric shock. I cried out loud, pulling away from her, but she took my hands and she held them and she would not let them go.

‘I know who did it,’ she whispered. ‘I know who killed Jim. I know who went to that hotel room and beat out his brains.’

She was still holding my hands.

‘No,’ I said, struggling to pull away. I could smell the sweat on her. It was the smell of her sleepless night. The call at home in Brighton, the rush to the city, the body on the slab as they pulled back the single white sheet. And waiting for me to show my face this morning, standing at the end of the mews as if she was prepared to wait there forever.

Her mouth was a hard line now, almost smiling but with no trace of anything but loathing.

‘I know it was you,’ she said, a hiss as soft as a prayer.

My hands were still in her hands.

I stood up, abruptly pulling away, and someone’s coffee cup went flying across the desk as I backed away with her accusation ringing in my brain, and she stared at me as if I represented all the women who had ever turned up on the doorstep of her family home while her bewildered daughter grew up watching the scene from the top of the stairs, and I didn’t know if she spoke again or if it was only inside my head.

I know it was you!

19

Christian

DI Ure, I saw now, was only the support act. I had liked DI Ure. She was diligent in ensuring that, even in my shattered state, I understood my rights and obligations, her watery eyes dead serious behind her thick specs as she brushed a strand of copper hair from her face. DI Ure had seemed like someone who would listen to me, and even believe me.