‘I don’t agree with Kingston on this. You need to lead the police to Monika’s lover,’ I tell Tony.
‘You know better than a distinguished barrister, darling?’ Jeremy slurs. He struggles with the assonance of distinguished and it sounds like dish-gwings-dished… It has too many syllables for him.
‘Right, look. Let’s work with what we’ve got. There’s no point worrying about what the police might find. More importantly, you need to get your story straight about Tuesday night. What happened after Monika told you about her affair?’
They look at me as if I’m Inspector Morse. Tony gets up and paces up and down.
‘The kitchen guy came round; he actually turned up at my house,’ Tony says, as if he still can’t believe it himself. I try to ignore an echo of recognition, and it puts me off track.
‘Who?’ Jeremy asks.
‘She was fucking the kitchen fitter. I actually think she was going to leave me for him. He’s got Nelson’s Column on his van. I thought it was funny at the time, and quite clever. Nothing so solid, right? The best erection in town. Until he started screwing my wife. Henry Nelson, he’s called.’
‘Jesus,’ Jeremy recoils in horror. I assess uncharitably that Jeremy is so indignant because it’s not him that Monika decided to fuck. However, my more pressing dilemma is what Tony has just dumped on my already fraught nerves. Henry. This is news. I realise that Monika is the married woman he told me about and I feel the colour drain from my face. I know also that if there’s anybody who can help us, it isn’t Jesus. I keep my face straight, but my insides are turning over. I recover my faculties quickly.
‘Let’s start there. It won’t be long before the police piece together the link between him and Monika, and you’ll be in the clear. They’ll have his van on CCTV somewhere, and that will be that,’ Jeremy says. It’s the most intelligent thing he’s said all year. Or it would be if I didn’t know that Henry has expert knowledge of the locations of all the CCTV cameras in Cambridge. I know this because he’s told me that he actively avoids them, due to his criminal past. It’s amazing what people reveal when they think their secrets are safe.
‘What happened when he turned up?’ I ask.
‘I was upstairs. I heard them talking and he threatened to come and find me, she stopped him, then she left.’
‘She left?’
Tony nods.
‘With him?’
‘No, on her own.’
‘Where was he?’
‘He came to the door, neither of us noticed her gone. He was doing his chivalry bit, and I found it amusing, but then we realised she was gone. He left then. Oh, God, it’s a mess.’ Tony sits back down heavily and spills his drink. Jeremy fusses around him and goes to the house to get cloths. I turn to Tony.
‘Who was the woman in your house last night, Tony?’
‘Oh God, don’t look at me like that Alex. She’s a train buddy I’ve known for forever. She works in the city like me. I have no idea why I did it. We were high as kites, I suppose I just wanted a blow out.’
‘Or blow job,’ I say acidly.
He looks suitably contrite.
I say nothing. It’s a problem we need to overcome if Tony isn’t to be banged up for what happened to Monika.
‘What’s the copper like?’
‘Who, Hunt? He’s old school.’ He sniffs. He’s struggling with the gravity of it all, I haven’t seen Tony this serious since…
‘Do you think he believes you?’
‘How the hell do I know that?’
‘Come on, Tony. Think. That look between men, what’s your instinct?’ He looks at me and the penny drops. ‘What did Kingston think?’
He recovers somewhat. ‘He reckons they haven’t got a shred of evidence and they know it.’
‘So, you’re allowed your panic attack, and your moment of loss of faith. Now, where’s the Tony I know? Let’s think this through rationally and give Hunt something to divert him.’
Jeremy comes back in and flaps over the spilt JD. He tops up Tony’s glass.
‘Everything is going to be all right, isn’t it, Alex?’ Jeremy asks me for help. I look at him curiously. I smile at both of them and am reminded that my two boys upstairs in the house, with all their immature fancies and habits, are more put together than these two.
‘She was a mess.’
Jeremy and I freeze. I know what’s coming, but he needs to get it off his chest. It will help him remove the emotion, and keep him sharp for the coming investigation, which will inevitably get rough, and so I encourage him.
‘They let you see her?’ I ask.
He nods.
‘She was green and bloated, and the smell, dear God, the smell.’ A sob escapes from his throat. ‘Her face was still perfect, but the side of her head… well they tried to clean her up, but I could see how she died. She was like a broken doll. Oh God.’
We let him cry and we wait. Jeremy looks at me and I warn him with my eyes that we need to support him through this particular horror, it’s the least we can do.
‘Let it out. You’re with people who love you,’ I say.
‘The smell…’
Jeremy covers his mouth as if he were in the room with her. I’m reminded of an abandoned cottage I found close to my house when I was eight years old. The walls crumbled and echoed with the sounds of children playing hide and seek. I trod on what I thought was a pile of twigs, but it was actually the fur of a rabbit, which melted away beneath the pressure of my foot, revealing a rotting corpse, alive with insects. It’s a smell I’ll never forget. The rabbit reeked of death.
Tony is still talking.
‘I didn’t see all of her, they wouldn’t let me, just her face.’
I glance over at Jeremy, who has turned pale.
‘They’ll catch whoever did this,’ I say. ‘Forensic techniques are so precise now. They’ll make sure every tiny scrap of evidence is collected. I work with the police occasionally, Tony, they have to be absolutely thorough to secure a conviction, you’ll see.’
Jeremy nods.
‘You need to ride this storm until the police get their real suspect. It was always going to start with you because you’re the closest to her,’ I tell him. ‘We’re going to get through this. Have your blow out tonight. Stay here, and in the morning, we’ll put our heads together and, piece by piece, we’ll work out where she went on Tuesday night.’