31

‘It looked guilty,’ Izzy says to her father now. ‘That stuff you did.’

He blinks, looking at her in surprise.

He has three empty plates in front of him, all in a row, and he awkwardly arranges his elbows around them to rest his face in his hands. Yes, that’s right, that’s so right; he used to sit in exactly this way.

‘The washing?’

‘Yes.’

‘But I was always in charge of the washing. And, anyway,’ he says with a wave of his hand, ‘you’re looking at it all wrong.’ He says it nastily, his lip curling up slightly in distaste.

Izzy steps back from him instinctively. ‘Am I?’

‘She was missing. Then. But I didn’t know she was dead. Murdered. It was just washing then. Just washing.’

‘But you cleaned so thoroughly.’

‘I’ve explained,’ he says. ‘Haven’t I? Forget it,’ he adds. ‘Just forget it, if you’re going to give me the fucking third degree.’

‘Aren’t I entitled to?’

‘Forget it,’ he says again.

She tries to breathe deeply. Of course he will be defensive. Look at what’s happened to him. Rather than rising to it, she removes the plates from in front of him. She will go home in a few minutes: it’s late. She needs to write to more David Smiths, though she doesn’t want to tell Gabe that now. Doesn’t want him to know of her doubts, that her research is concentrated on investigating any possibility of his innocence rather than considering who else could have done it.

‘I can run you home,’ she says, thinking of the walk he took the other day, to her house and back, all alone.

‘No. I like the walk – the fresh air. The space,’ he says, giving her a smile she can’t read.

He produces his pack of cards from his coat again, and they play on the bar. They share another entire cheesecake – ‘I’ll get so fat,’ Izzy says – and some wine. She beats him ten to five.

‘You must be cheating,’ he says, throwing his head back and finally laughing, the old him, his lips smeared with balsamic vinegar.

When it’s time, she watches him go. For a brief moment, the form of her old father appears before her. Lolloping into the sunlight, tennis racket in hand. Marching off to his shipping container with his burgundy art supplies bag slung over his muscular shoulder.

But just as quickly as he appeared, her new father is back. Her eyes mist over and obscure him from view. White hair, frail form, £12.99 Matalan coat. He eats one meal per day, this father, she is pretty sure. He has only one contact in the mobile phone he doesn’t remember to charge – for twenty years, he has been taken care of, hasn’t had to organize himself whatsoever – and will likely never work again.

It is after one o’clock in the morning by the time Izzy has finished cleaning. She stands, hands on the bar, thinking that she ought to lock up and go home. She sometimes extends these moments alone in the restaurant. The food sold, eaten, binned. The punters gone home. When it’s just an empty building, she can almost convince herself that it’s somewhere else.

She’s picking up her handbag when she hears it. The soft closing of a door. She freezes, her heart thundering in her ears. Please be imaginary, she is thinking. Please be an animal. The wind. Something and nothing.

She stands, feeling her heart calm down. Nothing. It was nothing.

And then she hears the second sound. A footstep. Somebody being deliberately quiet. She acts without thinking, ducking down behind the bar, her handbag clutched to her.

A second footstep. A third. This is it. All her foolishness. He’s come for her. She will end up like her mother, found days later. He knows that she ruined his alibi. He’s angry about that. Or maybe he is just psychotic. Enjoys murdering women. Wants to control them and kill them. Her mind is her enemy, trying to reason it through, and scaring herself even more in the process.

Four steps. Five. Whoever it is, they are not coming towards her, but heading across the restaurant.

Six steps. Seven.

They’ve reached the basement. She hears the sound of their footsteps change as they reach the stone. Fear thrums through her. The basement. Oh God, oh God. She hears the squeak of the old door handle. The slow drawing back of the door. He’s going to put her in the basement. The door shuts softly behind him and she stands up, her palms cold and slick with sweat. She reaches into her bag for her phone and gets it out, poised to dial 999. To dial Nick.

But first, she crosses quickly to the basement door and turns the key. It clicks. Air escapes her lungs: she’s safe. For just a few minutes, while she works out what to do. She hears movement downstairs. She’s poised to call Nick. But what if it’s something benign? And then, for nothing, she’d have to tell Nick that Gabe had been here tonight. And then what would happen? Her father would be taken away from her. Again. That warm, safe, hopeful feeling she gets, deep inside, would be destroyed. She stands, frozen with indecision.

‘Izzy?’ a voice says on the other side of the door.

It’s him. She’s so sure it’s him. It’s Gabe.

‘Izzy?’ it says again, and relief moves through her, just like stepping into a warm room. It’s not Gabe. It’s Tony.

‘Why are you in the basement?’ she says.

‘I forgot to take the wine out of my car,’ he explains.

She unlocks the door. He’s standing halfway up the stairs, his hands on his hips, a puzzled smile on his face. He gestures to the wine rack where several bottles are sitting on the floor. ‘I was up when I remembered – rather do it at one in the morning than get up early to come round.’

That’s right. He’s a night owl.

‘God,’ she says, relief making her unburden herself, forget her reservations. ‘I thought you were him. I thought you’d come for me.’ She leans forward, placing her hands on her thighs like a runner just finishing a race.

Tony comes for her, his arms open. ‘No, Izzy – no,’ he says softly.

She stands, enfolded in her uncle’s arms, feeling sick, her legs shaking.

She can’t resist looking in the cellar the next morning. She doesn’t know what possesses her. Something about Tony’s body language. His tone had been relaxed. His words, too. But there was just something … something in the set of his jaw. Something a little too practised about his confused expression.

She hates going down into the cellar. It’s one of the reasons Tony sorts the wine. It’s half the size of the restaurant, with low ceilings and a damp smell, like sour washing. She hardly knows what’s down here. She has made many discoveries over the years – that is often the way, when you inherit a working organism like a restaurant. She took it on passively, reluctantly. She has reworked it piecemeal, over the years, altering the menus, the prices, the wages, the layout of the main room. But she’s never really overhauled it fully. She hardly goes into some areas – the little store cupboard off the kitchen, which is still full of plates from the 1990s, and the basement.

She can see immediately that the wine rack has been fully stocked. Red at the bottom, white up top. The surplus is left standing along the wall.

She walks upstairs, leaving it be. She’s almost at the top when she looks back and notices. The wine rack is at an angle. Just slightly. You’d never be able to tell if you weren’t looking for it.

She crosses the basement again and approaches the side, which is sitting a couple of inches out from the wall. She peers down behind it, but the wine rack has a solid back, and so it’s completely dark. She gets her phone out and finds the torch, then shines it behind the rack. It glints off something. A small door?

Izzy blinks, then drags the wine rack out further. She stares at what it reveals: a safe.