It was seriously scary, raising her voice to her mother-in-law, but Michelle couldn’t help herself. Some people had the kinds of faces that, if you punched them once, you wouldn’t be able to stop, and she guessed it was a bit like that. Once she’d started to shout, it was as if the floodgates had opened.

  ‘Why don’t you move? You need to move.’

  ‘And you need to calm down.’

  ‘I was perfectly calm until you interfered. Now, please . . .’ Michelle took a breath and tried to sound more reasonable than she felt. It wasn’t easy because she actually felt like kicking the old cow to death. ‘. . . get out of my way.’

  ‘There’s really no need to talk to me like that,’ Jacqui said. ‘I’m only thinking about you.’

  ‘Good, well, you’ll understand then.’

  Jacqui was standing between Michelle and the front door, having moved into position as soon as she’d seen Michelle putting on her coat.

  ‘You should be here,’ Jacqui said. ‘With the family.’

  ‘I have been,’ Michelle said. ‘Apart from a lovely hour down at the mortuary, I’ve been here all the time, and now I just need to get out of the house for a while. Why is there a problem with that?’

  ‘There’s no problem, love. No problem at all.’ The woman was all set to turn on the waterworks, Michelle could see that. A trick she’d seen many times. The quivering chin and the crinkly eyes, like it was all just too emotional to bear. ‘I’m only thinking about what’s best for you . . . and you’re grieving, so maybe someone else needs to do that.’

  ‘A couple of hours, that’s all. Why is that such a big deal?’

  ‘A couple of hours doing what?’

  ‘Well, I’d quite like to go and see my kids. If that’s OK.’

  Jacqui smiled and cocked her head. ‘That’s a smashing idea . . . why don’t we go together? Or get your mum to bring them here. I’m sure they’re missing their grandma.’

  The whole idea suddenly felt a lot less smashing. ‘I don’t know . . . maybe I’ll just do some shopping or something.’

  ‘Shopping?’ Mysteriously, those tears weren’t coming after all. Now, Jacqui’s voice dropped to something barely above a whisper, like it always did when she had something poisonous to say. ‘What, get yourself a nice new handbag, while Adrian isn’t even cold yet?’

  ‘No, I don’t mean—’

  ‘Some of those lovely smellies you’re so fond of?’

  Michelle could feel the fight draining out of her, and she started to wonder if it was even worth it. There’d be a price to pay, whatever she ended up doing. ‘Look, I might just grab a quick coffee or something. I just need a bit of air, Jacqui . . .’

  Michelle stopped, because she could see that Jacqui’s attention was no longer on her. She turned to see Wayne coming slowly down the stairs. He’d been asleep and had obviously been woken by all the shouting, so now he’d probably be steaming. Michelle thought she might as well just take off her coat and offer to make everyone a drink, but instead of shouting even louder than she had, Wayne stepped across and began to gently stroke her arm. He looked at his wife and shook his head.

  ‘Let her go out, love . . . it’ll do her good. She’s just a bit over emotional and why shouldn’t she be?’ He turned to Michelle. ‘All over the place, aren’t you, lass?’

  Michelle lowered her head and nodded.

  ‘Course, same as we all are. I mean, grief hits people in different ways, and if you need to get out of the house and be somewhere on your own for a while, that doesn’t sound . . . unreasonable to me.’ He turned back to his wife and winked. ‘So, come on, Jac, let’s not have a silly row, eh?’

  Michelle said, ‘Cheers, Wayne,’ and moved towards the front door the moment she saw her mother-in-law step grudgingly aside. ‘I mean, I said a couple of hours, but I probably won’t even be that long.’

  Jacqui Cutler was able to make even the simple act of quietly closing the front door seem like an act of war, but Michelle was beyond caring. Hearing it close behind her was enough. Being . . . out.

  Had she not presumed she was being spied on from one of the windows, she might even have skipped to the Range Rover, and as soon as she was safely inside she screamed with relief. Sod it, she might buy herself that handbag anyway, because, aside from winding Jacqui up, it would probably make her feel better. It was called retail therapy, after all.

  Pulling away as fast as she could without actually throwing up gravel, Michelle was already thinking about a purse to match the bag. Taking her time over the coffee afterwards. She was already in a more carefree headspace and, just as she hadn’t clocked the long scratch that had been gouged into one side of the car, she failed to notice the figure watching her from beneath the trees.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Cleaning out a ridiculously big rodents’ cage (the cage, not the actual rodents) wasn’t many people’s idea of a good night in. It wasn’t Miller’s either. Given the choice, he’d rather have been washing a corpse, but it had to be done, so Miller spent twenty minutes sweeping their tiny turds into a dustpan, fishing out wet, smelly straw and wondering, as he always did on these occasions, why he and Alex hadn’t just bought themselves a goldfish.

  While he was getting busy with the rubber gloves and the Cif, he wondered if it was true that goldfish had no short-term memory. More to the point, if it was, how the hell anybody had discovered it?

  ‘Hey, Splashy . . . how are you enjoying your sunken boat?’

  Goldfish looks blankly.

  ‘The sunken boat I put in your bowl like thirty seconds ago . . . ?’

  Goldfish opens and closes mouth, swims around a bit.

  ‘Aha!’ Writes scientific paper immediately.

  Miller thought that remembering things was overrated anyway.

  He tried listening to a phone-in on the radio as he washed out the bowls and water bottles. He was bang up for an argument. It was difficult to concentrate though, while Fred and Ginger were happily rolling around the living room in plastic globes, bouncing off the skirting board, bumping into furniture or engaging in what looked like a concerted effort to knock his guitar over.

  ‘I’m sorry for the animal, obviously . . . but what about my Mondeo?’

  This particular genius had rung in after hitting a badger on a country road and writing his car off.

  ‘So, there are these signs, right? I know, because I passed one right before I hit the bloody thing. They actually put up these signs with pictures of badgers on them . . . like a badger-crossing area or whatever. My point is, why are they doing that? Why are they encouraging badgers to cross busy roads like that? I mean, it’s asking for trouble, isn’t it?’

  It was not perhaps Miller’s cleverest or best-articulated response.

  ‘You . . . brain dead ringpiece!’

  By the time he’d returned Fred and Ginger to the cage (with two tiny turds strategically replaced in the litter to remind them where their toilet was) Miller decided that he couldn’t be bothered to make himself anything to eat. He called Gemelli’s and ordered a pizza for home delivery. Guessing that Pippa Shepherd had not yet managed to put a word in, he requested several extra toppings.

  ‘Oh, and you might as well chuck in some garlic bread.’

  Then Miller asked to speak to the manager because he had a few more questions that were not related to the menu.

  As soon as he’d ended the call, he dialled another number.

  ‘Hey, Finn . . .’

  ‘Hey, Miller . . .’

  Miller could hear music and chatter, the noise of traffic. ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘Just walking around,’ Finn said. ‘On the front.’

  ‘OK.’ Miller knew that by now she would be looking for somewhere to bed down for the night, and something to help her sleep. ‘I was just wondering if you’d heard anything about the county lines boys. The shooting at the hotel, you remember?’ Finn was a largely reliable source of information, but Miller understood that sometimes those things she took to help her sleep, on top of whatever else she took to get her through the day, could mess with her focus a little. It wasn’t just goldfish that forgot stuff.

  ‘Yeah, I talked to a couple of the local dealers.’

  ‘Right.’ Miller had guessed they would be her first port of call. He knew that most of them trusted her. Even the ones that didn’t were usually happy to chat about stuff with a regular customer. The weather, the football, the recent double murder at a local hotel.

  ‘So . . . it’s highly unlikely that any of the boys you’re thinking of had anything to do with what happened at that hotel.’

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ Miller said. ‘Worth checking, though.’

  ‘I’m not saying they aren’t happy about it, mind you. It’s another little inroad, yeah? Anything that makes certain other parties fall out with each other is good for them.’

  Miller knew exactly which parties Finn was talking about. His recent conversations with each of them were still fresh in his mind.

  ‘They probably will make a move at some point, but I don’t think they’ll want to draw quite so much attention to themselves.’

  Miller laughed. ‘Yeah, say what you like about the new breed of organised criminal, but they’re not showy.’

  Now Finn laughed, which was a sound Miller very much enjoyed hearing.

  ‘What about the other thing?’ he asked.

  ‘What other thing?’

  ‘Chesshead.’

  ‘Like I told you, he’s in London.’

  ‘It’s a big place,’ Miller said. ‘I was hoping you might be able to dig up something a bit more specific.’

  ‘Well, I can’t give you an actual address.’

  ‘I should definitely have given you more than a tenner.’

  ‘But I asked around and a couple of people mentioned somewhere called Hendon. Is there a place in London called Hendon?’

  Miller knew there was. ‘It’s where Met Police cadets used to train. Might still be, for all I know.’

  ‘Maybe Chesshead’s turned over a new leaf and joined up,’ Finn said.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Stranger things have happened.’

  Miller couldn’t think of any off the top of his head. ‘OK, well, that should be enough to get me started,’ he said.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Finn said. ‘And if you fancy bunging a little bonus my way, you know where I am.’

  ‘Well, actually I don’t. That’s kind of what happens when someone’s homeless.’

  ‘You can always find me.’

  Miller listened to the background noise for a few seconds. The chink of coins and the tinny melodies from arcade machines. ‘So, how’s it all . . . going? I mean—’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said, quickly. ‘Listen, Miller, I need to crack on, all right?’

  ‘No worries. Yeah, so . . . thanks. I was just—’

  Finn had hung up.

  ‘Sometimes she’s just not in the mood to talk.’ Miller looked up to see Alex standing at the window and she spoke without turning round. ‘Not about herself, anyway and that’s up to her, right? You shouldn’t let it bother you.’

  ‘I was only trying to find out how she was,’ Miller said.

  ‘She knows you care about her,’ Alex said.

  ‘That isn’t what I’m worried about.’

  ‘She seems to be doing OK.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Miller said. ‘It’s relative though, isn’t it?’

  Alex watched Miller eat without comment, and he reckoned he was lucky. He guessed that others in the – admittedly odd – situation of scoffing home delivery pizza next to an imaginary dead wife might well find themselves on the receiving end of some . . . snarky remarks. Something about standards having dropped now that their better halves were no longer around. The truth was that, as far as Miller and Alex were concerned, those standards hadn’t exactly been sky-high to begin with. Alex had been no great shakes in the kitchen herself, so, despite his own limited skill set, Miller had always done the lion’s share of the cooking anyway. They’d both liked a takeaway and less-than-regular working hours had meant they’d enjoyed them more often than most, but she’d been the one with Taste of the Raj and the Jade Garden on speed-dial.

  The loyalty card from Nando’s tucked in her purse.

  ‘You did well with Ralph Massey today,’ she said, when he’d finished eating.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Well, no . . . you probably didn’t make much headway as far as your case is concerned. I meant you did well not to smack him over the head with that stuffed weasel.’

  ‘It wasn’t easy.’

  Alex followed Miller into the kitchen and watched him dump the pizza box in the recycling. She tutted when he threw most of the garlic bread away. ‘Still over-ordering, then?’

  Miller made himself tea, carried it back into the living room and flopped down on the sofa. ‘So, you think Massey might have been involved?’

  ‘With the killings at the hotel, you mean?’

  ‘Well, there’s at least one more I fancy him for, but yeah, let’s start with those.’

  ‘He’s the obvious candidate, isn’t he? Considering the bad blood. Not that he’d have killed Adrian Cutler himself.’

  ‘Right, but he knows a man who can. As does the victim’s widow.’

  ‘You really think Michelle would hire a hitman?’ Alex seemed dubious. ‘She strikes me as the type who’d just have used those scissors on her old man herself.’

  ‘. . . and the rest of his family, now I come to think about it.’ Miller suddenly found himself wondering just how close Justin Cutler had been to his younger brother and how ambitious he was. Presumably, as far as the family firm went, the first son would now be due a promotion.

  He’d talk to Xiu, get her take on it.

  ‘Like I said before, you got lucky with her.’

  ‘I’m not arguing,’ Miller said. ‘That Carry On routine, though? Wasted on her.’

  ‘You should tell her the whole story, by the way. The night of the semi-final. Not telling her about your history with Massey might well compromise your case.’

  ‘I know,’ Miller said. ‘I will. I just need to find the right time.’ He looked at her. ‘So, go on then. You think Massey was involved with what happened to you that night?’

  Alex said nothing.

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ Miller lifted his feet up, cradled the mug of tea on his chest. ‘Stupid question. Well, even if he wasn’t, he seems to get a major kick out of letting me think that he was. That smug expression he had on his face today . . . same one he had up on the balcony that night.’

  ‘You couldn’t even see his face from that far away,’ Alex said.

  ‘I didn’t need to see it.’ Miller could feel himself starting to get angry. ‘I mean, what was he even doing there?’

  ‘It’s his ballroom, he likes dancing . . . I don’t know.’

  ‘And when is Forgeham’s joke investigation actually going to come up with anything? Or share what little they have got with me? They seem perfectly happy to talk to your friend Dominic Baxter.’

  ‘Dom was a colleague,’ Alex said. ‘He wasn’t my friend.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘I think you need some sleep.’

  ‘Of course I bloody do.’ Miller sat up. ‘And maybe I’d be able to get some if you were being a bit more helpful. If you didn’t just lurk about having a go at me for not eating garlic bread. Hanging around and being . . . inscrutable.’

  Alex turned away from him. ‘Arguing with strangers on the radio who can’t hear you is one thing, Miller.’

  Miller closed his eyes and took a slurp of lukewarm tea.

  ‘Arguing with someone who’s not actually there – you know, because they’re dead – is properly bonkers.’

  Miller stood up in a huff and wandered towards the bedroom, muttering to himself. He stopped to pick up the cardboard 37, deciding that it probably was bonkers to keep it lying around like some kind of fetish. He carried it over to the dresser, to a drawer containing a disordered arrangement of takeaway menus, cards for local garages, taxis and decorating companies, old remotes, assorted batteries and yellowing receipts. The repository for all the stuff that didn’t really belong anywhere else.

  The ‘drawer of all nonsense’, that’s what Alex had called it.

  The bloody thing could live in there for a while . . .

  Miller opened the drawer, saw the photograph and immediately forgot about putting the cardboard sign away. Instead, he reached in and lifted out an order of service.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘I didn’t know Alex as long as many of you . . .’

  Miller looked up from his notes and out at the congregation. Alex’s mum and dad – Janet and Mike – sat stony-faced. They were wearing black, of course, as were most of the others, but Miller was pleased to see that several had come in bright colours, or were sporting a loud accessory or two, because that’s what he’d requested. He couldn’t swear that’s what Alex would have wanted, because they’d never discussed it, but it was what his gut had told him. Miller had chosen a grey suit and a green spotted tie and he couldn’t help thinking that Alex’s mother was looking up at him as though he was delivering his eulogy in a clown costume.

  ‘I never knew her during the “wild” years.’ There was muffled laughter from a few of Alex’s friends. ‘I’ve seen the pictures, though.’ He looked across to the photo of Alex that lay propped on an easel in front of the dais. It wasn’t one of the ones he was referring to, though he’d been sorely tempted. ‘The serious goth phase, the grunge years . . . when I know she did quite a few things she never mentioned when she applied to join the police force.’ A bit more laughter, from old friends and colleagues. ‘I didn’t know her when she was a geography student who could never find her way to lectures, or during her short-lived stint as a womenswear assistant. Short-lived because, by all accounts, she insisted on telling customers exactly what she thought of their outfits. I believe her use of the phrase “mutton dressed as mutton” was the final straw.’ He smiled and looked up to see most of the mourners smiling back at him. Alex’s mother and father were not smiling and Miller couldn’t decide if it was grief or disapproval. He decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and to press on quickly before he fell to pieces altogether.