52

There was a disturbance in the hall.

‘Shut it, will you?’ Eddy called out, ‘I’m trying to watch the telly here.’

‘Guinness?’ a man’s voice said softly, as the bottle of beer was lifted out of Eddy’s hand. ‘There won’t be much of that where you’re going.’

Eddy spun round. Seeing the police inspector, he leapt to his feet. ‘What the fuck? Give that back!’

He struggled to hide his apprehension as the detective approached him.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘We’d like to ask you a few questions concerning the murder of your stepmother on Friday evening –’

‘That’s nothing to do with me. I told you, I was here, with my wife, all evening. You tell them!’

Luciana began to gabble her way through the story, but the detective held up his hand to silence her.

‘Unfortunately for you, we know that’s not true,’ he said.

‘We have evidence you were away from home on Friday evening, at the pub and then out for a Chinese meal,’ his female colleague added.

‘What are you talking about?’ Eddy asked.

‘That bitch Jill,’ Luciana burst out. ‘She’s the one who’s lying. I came straight home on Friday –’

‘Who’s Jill?’ Eddy shouted. ‘Shut up, Luciana! Don’t say anything! Me and my wife were here all evening.’

‘Not according to the CCTV footage we have,’ the detective replied.

She listed details of Luciana’s movements on Friday evening, with the exact times she entered and left the pub and restaurant and boarded the bus.

While she was speaking, Luciana’s shoulders dropped, and she looked helplessly at Eddy.

‘Tell them they’re wrong,’ he called out in panic, ‘tell them I was with you. Tell them, Luciana! I was here, with you, all evening!’

Ignoring his protests, the detective repeated they wanted to ask him some questions.

‘Before we go,’ the female detective said, ‘there’s something we think your wife might like to know.’ She turned to Luciana. ‘Are you aware of the extent of your husband’s gambling debts?’

Luciana’s eyes narrowed. ‘What?’

‘Don’t listen to her,’ Eddy cried out. ‘They’re lying. They’re trying to turn you against me. It’s not true. I haven’t placed a single bet since I promised you I wouldn’t.’

The policewoman shrugged and gave him a pitying look. ‘Your husband currently owes over fifteen thousand pounds in gambling debts. He’s maxed out on several credit cards. And of course the loans are all accruing interest.’

‘It’s lies,’ Eddy cried out. ‘It’s all lies.’

In a panic, he attempted to push his way past the policeman who promptly slapped him in handcuffs and led him out of the house, resisting all the way. He fell silent as the car drove them to the police station. Although he wanted to bawl and struggle, locked in a car and handcuffed, there was no point in trying to escape. The next few hours passed in a blur. His shoes were taken away, while a cheery officer in uniform removed his handcuffs and his wallet and phone, and asked him a host of questions before leading him along a corridor.

‘This is all wrong,’ Eddy insisted. He was nearly in tears. ‘You’ve got this all wrong. I had nothing to do with any of it.’

‘Come along, sir, and don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to prove your innocence. This way, and be careful not to touch the walls as you go or you’ll set off the alarm.’

After that, Eddy seemed to be sitting for hours on a hard bunk in a cramped cell, fretting and worrying. At last, just when he thought he couldn’t bear the solitude any longer, the door swung open to admit a thin man with a face that resembled a weasel. In a whining voice he introduced himself as Jonathan Randall, the duty solicitor, and explained that it was his job to protect Eddy’s interests.

‘If you really want to help me, get me out of here,’ Eddy said. ‘This is all a mistake. You have to make them understand, I had nothing to do with my stepmother’s death. You have to believe me. She was like a mother to me. Why would I want her dead?’

The lawyer stood perfectly still, his head on one side, listening.

‘The point is,’ he replied at last when Eddy fell silent, ‘your stepmother left a considerable estate, which you are due to inherit. In fact, you’re her sole heir. You do know that, don’t you? And it’s not helping your cause that you’ve incurred such a substantial debt. Since you have a motive, the police are investigating whether it’s possible you could have been responsible for her death. But they haven’t arrested you, and as long as you stay quiet, I’ll have you out of here in no time. Just leave it to me, and don’t worry. It’s my job to get you out of here, and I will. There’s no need to make a fuss. They can’t hold you.’

He led Eddy along a maze of corridors to an interview room where the two detectives who had brought him there sat facing him across a small table. With a nod at Eddy, the lawyer dropped into a chair beside him. The detective asked Eddy again what he had been doing on Friday evening. Muttering curses under his breath, Eddy repeated that he had been at home with his wife.

‘How many times do I have to tell you, for fuck’s sake?’

‘You’re going to have to do better than that,’ the female detective said.

She repeated what she had already told him about Luciana’s movements on the evening of his stepmother’s murder.

‘What do you mean?’ he blustered.

‘It means you can stop telling us you were with your wife on Friday evening, because we all know that’s not true. We have proof, so you’re not helping yourself by lying.’

When he tried to bluff his way out of it, the lawyer leaned over and warned him to stop talking, then requested a break.

‘They have evidence your wife was out with a friend on Friday evening,’ he explained when he was alone with Eddy once more. ‘We’ll have to come up with another line of defence.’

Eddy shook his head. ‘What can I do?’

‘I think the only approach now is to confess, and then we can take steps to convince the jury you weren’t in your right mind when it happened.’ He frowned, thinking. ‘Were you drunk at the time? Certainly you were in a rage. It wasn’t a straightforward killing, was it? She must have –’

‘No,’ Eddy cried out in a panic. ‘No, that’s not true. You’re supposed to be on my side.’

‘I am. But the problem now is that you lied to give yourself an alibi. That’s not going to sit well with a jury –’

‘Never mind that, the point is, I didn’t do it. I’ve never killed anyone.’

‘So you say, but you can’t prove it, and now you’ve lied to the police –’

‘I can prove I didn’t do it, because I wasn’t on my own on Friday evening. I was –’ he broke off, uncertain whether to trust the lawyer.

‘Go on.’

Eddy bit his lip. If he said anything about his movements on Friday evening, the police would want to speak to Abe to confirm Eddy’s alibi. Even if Abe agreed to cover for Eddy, which was highly unlikely, the police would easily discover that Eddy hadn’t been in the pub with Abe at all, and they might unearth what the two of them had been doing on Friday evening. Not only would he still have no alibi, but once Abe knew his name had been given to the police, Eddy’s life would hang by a thread. The worst the police could do to him would be to lock him up. Abe would kill him.

‘Nothing,’ he muttered. ‘It’s nothing. I didn’t do it, that’s all.’

‘You said you were with someone else on Friday evening. Who was it?’

Eddy shook his head. ‘No one,’ he mumbled. ‘It was no one.’

The lawyer gave him a quizzical look but said nothing.