‘I never knew Alex’s grandparents, who she loved to bits and always missed, or the great many pets she adored as a kid – aside from Muffy the flatulent Jack Russell, who everyone I’ve spoken to seems to agree was a very unpleasant dog – and obviously I never knew her first husband . . . the late and largely unlamented Trevor.’ There was a bark of laughter at that, or it might have been a gasp, as Miller looked down again and turned the page.

  ‘Sometimes, I wished I had known Alex back when she was getting to know herself, but she always told me that the past was the past and most of the time we should let it stay there, because she and I had found each other and that was all that mattered . . .’

  Miller faltered a little and reached for the plastic bottle of water that he really should have poured into a glass. He took a quick swig, aware of the bottle crackling loudly beneath his fingers.

  ‘For anyone who doesn’t know, we actually “found each other” one wet weekend at a Premier Inn just outside Preston, during a particularly tedious force-wide seminar on kidnapping. Seeing some of our fellow Strictly wannabes here, I should probably confess that, had I known then that she would one day drag me along to ballroom dancing classes, I might well have had second thoughts.’ He glanced down to see Howard giving him a thumbs-up from the second row, Mary clinging to his arm. ‘I should probably have paid a bit more attention in that kidnapping seminar, put it that way.

  ‘What I can tell you, despite all the things I missed out on by not meeting her sooner, is that the ten years Alex and me had together were the best of my life by a country mile and I know she felt the same way.’ He sniffed, leaving a beat. ‘That they were the best years of my life, I mean. She told me that quite a lot . . .’

  He almost laughed, remembering it. Then he remembered him and Alex dancing to ‘You’re the Best Thing’ by the Style Council at their wedding, and the laugh became a sob, and he couldn’t say a great deal that made sense after that.

  Miller had expected the post-cremation get-together (which he thought of as a ‘wake’ but which everyone else called the ‘do afterwards’) to be a curling-ham-sandwich-and-quiche fest. As it was, the gathering – at a country pub near Alex’s parents’ house – turned out to be a somewhat swankier affair. He stood near the doorway accepting handshakes and muttered condolences, wondering if you could ever describe an event such as this as swanky and whether it was acceptable for the husband of the deceased to slope away and drink himself into oblivion before anyone so much as got a whiff of the coronation chicken.

  Alex’s mum and dad were on hand to ensure that didn’t happen.

  ‘I need to pop round at some point,’ Janet said. ‘To pick up a few of Alex’s things. If that’s OK with you.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Miller said. ‘What things?’

  ‘Just some of her jewellery, a few bits and pieces. I think she’d want her sister to have them.’

  ‘Yeah, of course. But can’t she come round?’

  ‘I enjoyed the eulogy,’ Mike said, quickly.

  ‘Oh good,’ Miller said, thinking, enjoyed? ‘I wasn’t sure. It’s so hard to get the tone right. Alex always said that lowering the tone was a speciality of mine, so . . .’

  ‘It was fine.’ Janet was staring at his tie. ‘It was very you.’

  Miller was rescued by Alex’s sister Laura and, once her mum and dad had drifted away towards the buffet, she leaned close and said, ‘I loved your speech.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’m not sure your parents did.’

  ‘Oh, they’re just a bit all over the place. More to the point, Al would have loved it, too.’

  Miller looked across and saw Janet picking out cutlery then cleaning each piece thoroughly with a napkin. ‘Why don’t they like me more?’

  ‘They don’t dislike you.’

  ‘You know your dad stopped the car on the way to the wedding? Told the driver to pull over and asked Alex if she was sure she wanted to go through with it.’

  Laura certainly did know and clearly still found it funny. ‘Well, to be fair, Alex could be impulsive. I mean, that tattoo . . .’

  Miller watched Mike ladling couscous on to his plate. ‘Seriously, I know they always thought Alex could have done better, but I’ll never quite understand it. I mean, the one before me was a premier league heroin addict and a full-on alcoholic who nicked her money on a regular basis and knocked her around when he was off his face. OK, so I wasn’t in the top ten of the world’s most eligible bachelors, but I was a step up, surely?’

  ‘Shane MacGowan would have been a step up.’ Laura downed a mouthful of beer. ‘Oh wait, he’s got money. But you do have better teeth.’

  Miller grinned and touched his bottle to hers. ‘It’s generally frowned upon, right? To marry your dead wife’s sister . . . ?’

  When Laura was waylaid by a pair of cousins she clearly didn’t recognise, Miller thought he’d better do the rounds. He got the vicar out of the way first, telling him how much his words of comfort in the church had meant to everyone, even if the by-the-numbers remarks had sounded to Miller like a passage from Funeral Sermons For Dummies. It hadn’t felt like he was talking about Alex at all. Certainly not any version of Alex that Miller recognised. He’d half expected the vicar to slip up and say, ‘Today we gather together to remember name of deceased and to celebrate name of deceased’s life with those who loved him/her/them.’

  Miller thanked the man anyway.

  He was on his way to talk to the ballroom gang (the two older couples sitting together, while Nathan gamely schmoozed Ruth at the bar) but he was collared by one of Alex’s oldest friends; a flash-suited homunculus who was proof that Alex hadn’t always been a good judge of character. Dave, who Miller always called ‘the cock’, made comforting noises while Miller looked for an escape route. He chose not to remind the man that they had not seen each other since his and Alex’s wedding, when Dave had pushed Miller against a wall and said, ‘You’d better look after her.’ Miller wanted to slap him as much now as he did then, but contented himself with telling the cock how good his hair-weave was looking and urging him to try the coronation chicken.

  He talked to Susan Akers and her girlfriend who were both gently sozzled and weepy, then to a couple of women who had known Alex in her student days. They shared several stories Miller hadn’t heard before: the pub-crawl/bubble-wrap incident; the unconscious rugby player and the electric razor; the business with the kiwi fruit and the trouser-press.

  Then, still reeling from the revelations about an Alex he certainly hadn’t known, Miller spotted a familiar figure smoking in the beer garden and went out to try and cadge a cigarette.

  ‘Hey, Finn . . .’

  ‘Hey, Miller . . .’

  She grudgingly gave him a roll-up and he leaned in for a light. ‘I didn’t see you in the church.’

  ‘I was lurking at the back,’ she said.

  ‘OK . . .’

  ‘I thought lurking would be best.’

  He looked at her and it was clear that she’d been crying. She wore a dark brown hoodie over black jeans. There was a cross around her neck he’d never noticed before. ‘I didn’t know if you’d come.’

  ‘To be fair, I wasn’t invited.’

  ‘Well, it is quite tricky to send an invitation to someone who doesn’t actually live anywhere,’ Miller said. ‘Where do you address it to? Care of the Doorway Opposite Argos?’

  Finn shrugged and tossed what was left of her roll-up away.

  ‘Anyway, I’m glad you came.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure you’d want me to.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘In case I robbed the collection plate or something.’

  ‘Just try and be subtle about it,’ Miller said.

  They turned and stared back through the window at the people moving around inside. The friends and relatives Miller had met for the first time today and would almost certainly never see again. Alex’s old student pals were laughing at another half-remembered story, while her mum and dad sat alone at a table in the corner, Mike pulling his wife close to him, their food untouched.

  ‘Is it a free bar?’ Finn asked.

  ‘Well, there’s a few hundred quid behind it,’ Miller said. ‘So we’re good for a while. Or at least until my Auntie Bridget gets stuck in.’

  She leaned in to him. ‘Do you fancy getting absolutely battered?’

  Miller looked down at her. ‘Oh, I fancy that very much indeed.’

  He opened the door for her, but before she stepped back inside, Finn turned and pulled Miller into a hug. He had been on the receiving end of a good few hugs already. They had been fierce or feeble, from friends and strangers alike, and there would certainly be plenty more before the day was out, but holding tight to this scrawny, stray girl – the bones of her shoulders sharp beneath her hoodie – Miller knew already that this one would mean the most.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Miller and Xiu pulled up outside the station within a few seconds of each other. Miller looked down at his moped, then across at Xiu’s bike. Then he looked at Xiu, who was smirking when she took her helmet off.

  ‘You’re welcome to have a go,’ she said. ‘If you think you can handle it.’

  ‘No, thanks. It’s a bit flashy for my taste.’ Miller took off his own helmet. ‘Like men driving sports cars to compensate for their shortcomings elsewhere.’

  ‘That’s interesting. So, what am I compensating for?’

  Miller thought about it. ‘Have you got a really small penis?’

  ‘I don’t have any kind of penis.’

  ‘OK, well, I’m sure I’ll work it out.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ Xiu said. ‘The offer’s there, though, if you want to take it for a spin.’

  Miller shook his head and patted the moped’s saddle. The grimy plastic had been patched up in several places with gaffer tape. ‘This’ll do me,’ he said. ‘Cheap and cheerful, like I am.’

  Xiu nodded. ‘It’s also unreliable and makes strange noises.’

  ‘Was that you making a joke?’

  Xiu looked a little alarmed. ‘It certainly wasn’t intentional,’ she said.

  They swiped in with their warrant cards and Xiu turned towards the office. She stopped when she saw Miller heading the other way towards the stairs. ‘The briefing starts in a few minutes,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’ Miller kept going. He took the stairs two at a time, shouting down to her as he went. ‘Make some excuse for me. Tell Sullivan I was savaged by a rat.’

  ‘A rat . . . ?’

  ‘Whatever. Use your imagination.’

  Miller carried on up two flights and along a corridor until he came to a suite of offices laid out identically to the one in which his own team was based. He marched in, ignoring the apprehensive looks from fellow officers and firing out a volley of breezy greetings as he passed.

  ‘Morning all, lovely day for it . . . cheer up, mate, it might never happen . . . mind you, looking at him it already has . . . but there you go, life’s a bitch and then you die . . . and if you’re really unlucky it’ll be a team like this one that’s trying to find out who was responsible, et cetera, et cetera . . .’

  One youngish officer, clearly a candidate for the team’s top kisser of senior backsides, stood up and moved to stand, a little awkwardly, in front of the door that Miller was barrelling towards. He raised a hand and cleared his throat.

  Miller didn’t break stride. ‘Seriously?’

  The officer finally got a good look at Miller’s face and, at the last minute, stepped to one side, as though he hadn’t actually meant to be standing in the way at all.

  Miller patted him on the arm, said ‘Good lad’ and opened the door.

  The woman seated behind the desk looked up and smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile, but that would probably have been a little odd given the circumstances. ‘Well, I’d say come in, but there doesn’t seem much point now.’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ Miller said.

  ‘It’s not a problem.’

  If this particular visitor dropping in unannounced was making DCI Lindsey Forgeham anything like as uneasy as the rest of her team, she showed no signs of it.

  ‘Thing is, I’m late for a briefing and my DI’s ever so strict,’ Miller said. ‘I mean, that’s probably fair enough, don’t you think? When you’re investigating a murder, every second counts, right?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Forgeham said. She stood up and walked around to lean on the front of her desk. She was younger than Miller and dressed like she was a lot keener. She’d arrived a year or so before, with a reputation for not suffering fools – gladly or otherwise – and for getting the job done.

  ‘Happy to hear that.’ Miller could only assume that someone had seriously misunderstood the meaning of the word job. Their grasp of the word fools was iffy as well, as DCI Forgeham seemed to have surrounded herself with a team of officers who couldn’t find their own backsides with a room full of mirrors and a sniffer dog.

  ‘So, how are you, Declan?’

  ‘I can’t complain, ma’am.’ Well, actually, I can and you’re about to find out that I’m spectacularly good at it.

  ‘That’s good . . . but you should probably have called if there’s something you want to discuss. Or I’m always happy to do this via email.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all such a faff,’ Miller said. ‘We’re in the same building, aren’t we? So, I thought it would be much easier if I just popped up, and anyway, I’m here now.’

  Forgeham waited.

  ‘So how’s it going?’

  ‘Yeah, all right, thanks. I’m—’

  ‘The case,’ Miller said. ‘How’s the case going?’

  The DCI stiffened. ‘You know you shouldn’t even be here, right?’

  ‘I do know that, but I am.’

  ‘You can’t have any part of this investigation. The regulations are quite clear about this. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.’

  ‘You’re talking to other people though, aren’t you?’

  ‘We’re asking questions, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ Miller said. ‘How come some of the people my wife worked with know more about your progress on this than I do? I’m not asking to be part of it, I’m just asking to be kept informed.’

  ‘Well—’

  Miller laughed and clapped a hand to his mouth.

  Forgeham stared at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry, I just realised I used the word progress. It tickled me.’

  Miller could see that the woman was irritated, but that she was keeping herself in check. If the simple fact that he’d barged into her office wasn’t making his desire for answers obvious enough, the look on his face almost certainly was. The DCI might have been a bit fuzzy on job and fools, but she understood desperation well enough.

  She knew it when she saw it.

  ‘Look . . . we’re working as hard as we can on this, I promise you. The fact remains that, as of now, we have no idea who Alex was going to meet that night. We’ve got a call that we’re unable to trace, we’ve got a singular lack of witnesses and nobody seems very keen to talk to us. You know how it works with something like this . . . the kind of officer your wife was.’ She took a step towards him, nodding, as though she’d recently attended a ‘reassurance of relatives’ seminar. ‘I can tell you that we’re looking for fresh leads.’

  ‘So, look harder.’

  ‘Now, hang on.’ Forgeham stepped back. ‘You can’t talk to me like that, Detective Sergeant—’

  ‘Look harder . . .’

  On his way out, Miller stopped at the desk of the young officer who’d tried and failed to stand sentinel.

  ‘A quick tip for you, you know, if you’re still struggling to find it . . .’

  The young officer looked up at him, but Miller loudly addressed himself to all the officers who appeared to have momentarily stopped what little they were doing.

  ‘It’s right here.’ He reached behind himself and pointed. ‘See? That big squidgy bit between the top of your legs and the bottom of your back?’

  The officer stared at him, shaking his head.

  ‘Your arse.’ Miller marched towards the door, waving. ‘You’re welcome.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  In a perfect world, Miller would have been able to sneak into the briefing without drawing attention to himself. As it was, the things that tasted best were still bad for you, there continued to be far too many TV shows about people doing up houses and Sullivan looked up the moment Miller put his head around the door.

  ‘Glad you could join us.’

  Miller had no idea if Xiu had manufactured an excuse, so he simply grimaced and pointed to his nether regions. ‘Sorry. Prostate . . .’

  Nodding seriously, he walked gingerly to the table and sat down next to Xiu. He pulled across an information pack, well aware that she was staring at him, clearly desperate to know where he’d been. Miller nodded towards Sullivan. It was time to pay attention.

  ‘Right, well, as I was saying . . . the good news is that we’ve now identified our mystery visitor to the Sands Hotel on the night of the murders.’ Sullivan touched the screen of his iPad and the CCTV picture of the man they’d been looking for appeared on the Bluetooth-connected screen behind him. He swiped to show the appeal that had run in the local paper for the last two days.