34 LOUISE
Irina (Hamish’s Mum)
Philip Saunders, not Phil Creasy.
I ignored my phone; Irina could wait.
‘That’s horrible,’ I murmured, shocked at the coincidence. Two relatively young men named Philip, both killed on the same day. Two deaths that should not have happened. I was grateful that Mandy’s Philip wasn’t the man I’d found in the park, but I had the awful feeling that there could be another woman out there who’d had to find out what happened to her man on a news report asking for more information.
Had she already told the police whatever she knew? With access to more information, did they already have a suspect?
Was that what Irina was texting to tell me?
‘Do the police know who did it?’ The question sounded flat, even to me.
‘Not yet. Not as far as I know at least.’ Mandy shifted Amelia’s lead to her right wrist, gently pulling her corgi away from the road. She reached for another tissue and blew her nose again. ‘But I’m not officially his next of kin. That’s still his ex-wife.’
‘But they’re looking for the car, right?’
‘Yes. They think it was an accident. That the driver wasn’t paying attention and got spooked. Kept driving out of fear instead of doing the right thing and stopping, getting Philip help.’ Her voice had hardened.
‘He was a good man, Lou. A genuinely good guy. What right did that stupid driver have to kill him?’
‘Are they sure it was an accident?’ I reached for a now cold mozzarella stick, more for something to do with my hands than out of hunger.
She blinked. ‘Of course it was an accident. Why would anyone want to kill Philip?’ She straightened her back. ‘Whatever would they hope to gain?’
At the end of the lunch, the wine gone, the food mostly untouched, the pack of tissues empty and Mandy in a slightly better state, I dared to look at the ground.
Klaus was sitting next to Amelia. There were little white flakes of tissue, like paper snow, scattered around them, but not as much as there should have been.
The little furry monsters gave me near-identical smug looks.
They’d eaten the tissues.
One pale hand dropped beneath the table as Mandy slipped both dogs pieces of fish. They didn’t dither, probably figuring they were being rewarded for tidying up after her.
Between the tissues and the whitebait, Klaus would have a digestive issue on the walk home, but I wasn’t inclined to stop Mandy.
My phone buzzed with a third message from Irina:
Irina (Hamish’s Mum)
‘Work?’ Mandy asked, half hopefully.
‘No. A friend of mine who’s had a row with a guy she fancies.’
Mandy’s face turned ashen. ‘Well tell her that life is too short, too precious to hold a grudge over a little fight. It just isn’t worth it.’
‘Yeah, and I’m sure any rational person would agree.’ I smiled and shook my head. ‘My friend isn’t the most rational at the best of times, but I’ll remind her when I see her.’
Hoping that Irina hadn’t burned bridges with our only link to the police, I waved the waitress over and asked her to pack up the leftovers for Mandy and to bring the bill. She gave the dogs a side-eye and I looked at them under the table again.
‘You two are completely disgusting,’ I told them.
Mandy frowned and glanced down at Klaus and Amelia. ‘Why? What did they do?’
Who knew, maybe she’d see the funny side of it. ‘Remember how I said that Klaus likes tissues?’
She blinked owlishly at me and I pointed under the table.
She gagged as she stared at my little innocent-looking sausage dog, while her pretty corgi preened, licking her front paw.
We parted company outside the pub with a warm hug and well wishes. I slipped my phone out of my pocket as Klaus and I turned the first corner. Popped in my earbuds and phoned Irina. ‘What did you do?’
‘Read the message, Lou. HE betrayed ME.’
With Irina, everything had to be about Irina. An unfortunate trait which had earned her the nickname ‘Tsarina’.
‘Okay…’
‘He looked at my phone, Lou! He broke into my phone!’ Her voice rose with each word, ending on a near-shriek.
‘Why? I mean, how? You’re in the office. He’s a cop. You have a password on the phone, don’t you?’
‘Of course I have a password,’ she howled. ‘Do you think I’m bloody stupid?’
We paused under a plane tree that Klaus immediately weed on, before proceeding to walk in a circle around the black tarmac beneath the tree, until he found the perfect spot. I pulled out a green bag from the dispenser I kept clipped to his lead. ‘So? How’d he get in if you have a password? It’s not “Hamish”, is it?’
I picked up Klaus’s poo as Irina launched into an expletive-laced tirade. When she paused, I asked, ‘So if he doesn’t know the password and doesn’t have the tech skills to properly break in, how’d it happen? Maybe he was just looking at the phone?’
‘He 100 per cent was not!’
I tied the green bag closed, trying not to laugh, then I gave in and started to giggle.
‘It’s not funny!’
‘No, Irina, it’s not.’ The serious façade broke completely and, still laughing, I added, ‘It’s hilarious.’
I imagined her squaring her shoulders, eyes red and nose expelling puffs of fire. ‘How so? We have one friend dead. Another in hospital. And the police are breaking into my PHONE!’
‘One policeman. Not all of them.’
‘Seriously, Lou. Don’t they have anything better to do?’
‘I don’t know. I’d have thought you’d be keeping him too busy to infiltrate your phone.’
‘Jesus. You’re supposed to be on my side!’
‘Of course I’m on your side. Why do you think he did it?’
A strident patter of high heels on pavement echoed from the phone.
‘Where are you now?’
‘Walking Hamish. Even my dog betrayed me. He didn’t stop Andy!’
Poor Hamish wasn’t going to win this one. And neither was I.
‘Don’t blame poor Hamish. What did Andy see?’ Part of me held my breath, half hoping he’d seen a spicy text from Tim.
‘I don’t know all of it, but he gave me an earful about the work we were doing about Phil.’
‘About Phil? Good. I mean, it could have been worse.’ I lobbed the poo bag into a nearby bin and encouraged Klaus to start walking south. ‘Did he share any insights he might have?’
‘He did not! He gave me grief. “Leave detecting to the detectives”.’ Irina’s voice had dropped to a reasonable facsimile of Andy’s baritone. ‘And then he started going on about Tim!’
If he’d found out about Tim already, that was good detective work… But he didn’t seem the type to have a jealous fit. Certainly not over a woman he’d met less than a week ago and who was part of a case he was working on.
That said, if he had, I’d have paid good money to see it.
‘So, what’d you tell him?’ Maybe it was the wine, but I couldn’t keep from laughing. ‘Please tell me you didn’t go into gory details.’
After a few moments of silent fuming on the other end of the phone, Irina hissed, ‘That’s not funny, Lou.’
It was time to put things into perspective. ‘Look, you met him less than a week ago. If he’s asking about Tim, all you need to say is that he’s a guy you used to date. As Was, not As Is. Unless you want Andy out of your life, in which case tell him you’ve never had anyone better.’
I held up one finger, even while knowing she couldn’t see it. ‘That said, I hope you don’t do that. I like him for you. He seems like a good guy, who might not scare easily.’
And – as far as I knew – he wasn’t ‘dating’ half the neighbourhood.
‘He betrayed me. What part of that did you fail to understand?’
‘Look, whatever your password is, change it,’ I said, trying to take the situation seriously. ‘I doubt he infiltrated any of your banking or social media apps, but check those passwords too. And then calm down and tell me what he said. In full.’