I’ve had plenty of drunken late-night phone calls from Tony but this one takes me completely by surprise. He’s deep breathing down the phone and I hold it under my chin, rolling my eyes, pausing the Netflix series I’m watching. I’m following a true crime documentary because I’m a cheery soul, as if I don’t have enough misdemeanour in my life. But it interests me. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of people who think they can get away with murder. They make basic mistakes and I love working them out before the big reveal. I’ve microwaved a huge packet of popcorn and I’m enjoying the luxury of solitude. Lydia came down earlier and she ate some strawberries, Cambridge Favourites, which are plump and juicy in season.
‘Tony, slow down. I can’t hear you properly. Are you drunk or high?’ I give him the option because I’m an understanding friend.
‘Monika’s dead,’ he breathes.
‘What?’
The words finally break through the airwaves and I comprehend what he’s saying to me but I don’t fully take in the order of the words.
‘She was murdered and they think I did it.’
The bowl of popcorn gently slides off my knee and it spills all over the floor.
‘Who thinks you did it?’
‘The police. They’re here in my house. They’re searching everywhere.’
His voice cracks and he sounds desperately alone. I’ve never known him like this but then I guess one of his wives hasn’t been murdered before.
‘Jesus. What happened? Where is she?’ It’s a stupid question but I can’t seem to think of anything else to say. The enormity of it is overwhelming. My TV screen is paused on the face of a young woman who has was brutally stabbed and dumped in a storm drain in Texas, but it is appropriately distanced from me, on the other side of the world.
‘She was found by the river, near Grantchester.’
‘How do they know it’s her? How can they inform you if they don’t know?’ I’m scrabbling around trying to fill in gaps because my head hurts with his pain and my own lack of understanding.
‘Her tattoo. It’s so distinctive. I told them about it when I reported her missing. They ask for that sort of information. It’s got to be her. They want me to identify the body.’
The body. Now, Monika is sexless.
‘I’m coming over,’ I say as my body leaps into action after a delay of disbelief.
‘No, there’s no point. I’m going to the hospital.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No. I need to go alone. I don’t want you to see her. She’s…’
I fill in the gaps in my head and it remains unspoken. I’ve watched enough true crime programmes to know what he alludes to.
‘What did you mean when you said they think you did it?’
‘They haven’t said it, but they’re asking me all sorts of questions about our marriage and why I had somebody here when she was missing.’
‘You did what? Who?’
‘A woman I know. It was nothing, I swear, but we were…’
Tony’s unfinished sentences irritate me but I know him well enough not to be left without possibilities. He means he was shagging somebody else, and likely getting high too. He never learns.
‘You need to call Kingston,’ I tell him.
Kingston is his barrister and if anyone is capable of getting Tony out of a scrape it’s him. A sliver of doubt enters my mind and I question if Tony is capable of violence. It’s not something I can stomach easily, but the truth, once planted, is hard to dig up and root out.
‘I have, he’s meeting me first thing in the morning. He’s in Paris. He’s on the next flight.’
‘Good. Don’t say anything. You have rights,’ I tell him.
‘It looks so bad.’
For Tony to admit this tells me only one thing. That Kingston is about to face the fight of his life. But Tony can afford it. He’s paid for problems to disappear before.
‘I have to go,’ he says lifelessly.
We hang up.
I get up and pace the room, then clear up the popcorn and shove it roughly into the bowl, taking it to the kitchen. Jeremy is drunk in the pool house and sound asleep on a sofa in there. I’ve already turned off the lights and the TV and covered him with a sheet, not that he’ll need it in this heat. The details of the autopsy of the woman who’d been murdered in Texas creep into my mind. England at the moment is about as hot as the Lone Star State and any decomposing body left on the banks of a river, vulnerable to the elements, would be reduced to a gruesome mess. I run to the kitchen sink and it catches my sick, which tastes of burnt corn. I run the tap and wash my mouth out. The puke burns my throat.
Just ten minutes ago, I was nodding off on the sofa, revelling in my seclusion. Now I desperately need somebody to talk to. James and Ewan are still out, not that I would seek counsel from either of my sons in a situation like this. Christ, I’ll have to tell the kids.