‘This is my home.’ Scarlett reached down for the handbag at the side of her chair. She took out make-up and a compact. ‘I never entertain clients at home. It’s strictly outcall only.’

  ‘Very sensible,’ Miller said. ‘On top of which, I’m guessing that the average bloke in the market for no-strings sex doesn’t make an ideal houseguest. No, you definitely don’t want some randy herbert in here, messing the place up, leaving their pants lying around . . . and I bet they never use a coaster . . .’

  Xiu raised a hand to cut the chit-chat short. ‘Why did you lie to us, Scarlett?’

  Scarlett began to apply foundation. ‘I didn’t lie.’

  ‘All right then, why didn’t you tell us what your real name was? Why did you fail to mention your conviction for a serious violent crime?’

  ‘You never asked.’ She glanced up. ‘Is that too flippant?’

  ‘Yeah, a bit,’ Miller said.

  ‘Fair enough, but you didn’t . . . plus I knew that if you looked hard enough you’d find out eventually.’

  ‘Which we did.’

  ‘Which is why we’re here.’ Miller walked across and sat down next to Xiu. ‘Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to catch up anyway, but knowing slightly more about you than we did before does prompt a few more questions.’

  ‘Well, could you hurry up and ask them? I’m seeing a doctor in forty-five minutes.’

  ‘Oh . . .’

  Scarlett smiled as she popped her foundation back in the bag and took out a mascara pencil. ‘Seeing as in “a good seeing to”.’

  ‘Thank you for that information,’ Xiu said. ‘Now, why don’t you start by telling us about the offence you were convicted for?’

  Scarlett shrugged. ‘I was fifteen and I wasn’t working and this bloke got a bit handsy. So, I got handsy back.’ She pointed with the pencil. ‘Only I had a kitchen knife.’

  ‘Sounds fair enough,’ Miller said.

  Xiu shot him a look. ‘Well, whatever the circumstances, I hope you can understand, in the light of your criminal record, why we might want to re-examine the events at the Sands Hotel. Your visit to Adrian Cutler’s room.’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘Because we can now place, at the crime scene, an individual with a known history of violence.’

  ‘I think she means you,’ Miller said, pointing. ‘Very nice eyebrow work by the way.’

  ‘Fine . . . whatever.’ Scarlett put down the make-up and looked at them. ‘I went to Adrian’s room, I did what I was there for and I left. That’s it.’

  ‘How long were you in the room for?’ Xiu asked.

  ‘Half an hour, maybe. Adrian was usually pretty quick.’

  ‘And he was definitely alive and well when you left?’ Miller waited. ‘I know you told us he was last time, but you know . . . just in case you’ve since remembered that you shot him in the head right before you packed your spanking paddles away. I swear, you wouldn’t believe what can suddenly come back to people.’

  ‘Why the hell would I want to kill Adrian?’

  ‘Maybe he got too handsy,’ Xiu said.

  ‘Well, first off, he was paying me to be handsy . . . among other things.’ She lifted up the handbag. ‘On top of which, I don’t normally carry a gun in my bag. I’ve got mace, because I’m not an idiot, but he wasn’t maced to death, was he?’

  Miller’s look to Xiu was enough to let her know that, in his opinion, this particular avenue of enquiry had turned out to be a cul-de-sac. ‘OK, let’s go crazy and assume you didn’t actually kill him,’ he said. ‘Did anyone else come into the room when you left?’

  ‘Not that I saw.’

  ‘Did you open the door to let anyone in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did anybody, other than Adrian himself, pay you to be there that night?’

  Scarlett considered the question. ‘Was I in on it, you mean? Like . . . a distraction?’

  ‘A sex-decoy, if you will.’

  ‘So, what . . . my job was to go to that hotel room and soften the intended victim up doing you-know-what?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure soften is the right word.’

  ‘To keep his mind on other things, so that when the actual killer turned up poor old Adrian would be lying there helpless in his boxer shorts with no chance of defending himself. Is that what you mean?’

  ‘That’s broadly what I’m driving at, yes,’ Miller said.

  ‘What do you think?’

  Miller thought it was an unlikely but nonetheless conceivable scenario and that this woman might well be playing him and Xiu like copper-shaped fiddles. Stranger things had happened, plenty of them. What he knew was that they didn’t have a shred of evidence to prove anything beyond the plain and probably irrelevant fact that she’d been in that hotel room.

  Arresting her for that would definitely be a tad over-zealous.

  ‘So, is there anything else?’ Scarlett held up her make-up bag and rattled it. ‘I’ve still got a lot of slap to get on.’

  ‘Oh yes, don’t miss your doctor’s appointment.’ Miller stood up, belched quietly and swallowed down the taste of burnt lasagne. ‘If you do, it’s a bugger to get another one.’

  Walking back to the car, Xiu shook her head. ‘A sex-decoy?’

  ‘It’s a perfectly acceptable description,’ Miller said. ‘Does exactly what it says on the tin—’

  Xiu snatched at her phone when it rang, then stepped away to take the call.

  Miller heard her say ‘Sir’ before she moved out of earshot.

  The sir in question could, he knew, be any number of officers senior to Xiu. A boss from another team perhaps, or the Chief Constable calling for a chinwag. It might be an old teacher she was still too scared to address by name. There was always the remote possibility that Sir Tom Jones was calling, though Miller couldn’t immediately come up with an explanation for why that might be.

  Seeing Xiu’s somewhat pained expression and having weighed it up, he guessed that, for whatever reason, she was getting an earful from the wankspangle.

  Miller knew whose voice he’d rather be listening to, so instead of standing about waiting, he got into the car, took out his phone and gave his dead wife a quick bell.

  THIRTY-THREE

  His powers of deduction nicely oiled by Lancashire Bitter and with the Bull’s Head as his own personal incident room, Howard was keen to share his take on the case. ‘I reckon the prostitute was definitely in on it.’

  ‘You can’t say “prostitute” anymore,’ Mary said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know. Because you can’t.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a possibility we’ve been considering,’ Miller said. He’d told Howard as much only an hour or so earlier, before there’d been too much . . . oiling. ‘I think it’s unlikely, though.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t rule it out,’ Howard said. ‘However big and clever a bloke thinks he is, he can always get caught off-guard when there’s nookie involved. So, this woman, who for reasons I still don’t understand I can’t call a prostitute, is very much the ideal candidate, I reckon.’

  ‘I think Declan’s considered all that,’ Mary said.

  ‘A sex-decoy!’

  Miller smiled. ‘Thanks, Howard.’

  ‘Maybe that’s not what she’s lying about.’ Mary had not drunk nearly as much as her husband, but she was equally keen to help. ‘I mean she wasn’t exactly honest the first time you interviewed her, was she? So what if she was lying about being there to see Adrian Cutler? I know you showed her a photo and everything, but what if she was there to see the other bloke? The computer man . . .’

  ‘Barry Shepherd,’ Miller said.

  ‘Right. Him.’

  ‘What’s her motive for killing the computer bloke?’ Ruth asked.

  ‘Well, that’s for Declan to find out, isn’t it? I’m retired. Anyway, I never said she killed him, did I?’

  ‘Again, it’s a nice idea, Mary.’ Miller had spent most of his time since the dance class had finished pointing out the enormous holes in whatever theory was being offered. He was trying to be as gentle as possible. ‘But we only found Scarlett’s DNA in Cutler’s room. So we can be fairly certain she was never in Barry Shepherd’s room.’

  ‘Oh,’ Mary said. ‘Well, that’s sorted then.’

  ‘She was lucky when you think about it,’ Nathan said.

  Everyone turned to the youngest member of the group, who was happily necking a bottle of lager. He laid the bottle down and nodded.

  ‘Scarlett was. I mean, presuming she’s telling the truth, she could have come out of that hotel room and walked smack into the killer. He’d probably have killed her as well.’

  Miller thought about that.

  ‘Maybe the killer was there all the time,’ Gloria said. ‘Waiting for this young woman to finish her business and leave.’

  ‘Waiting where?’ Miller asked.

  ‘In the room next door. In Mr Shepherd’s room. I might not have been listening properly, but I don’t think you know for certain that Mr Cutler was shot before Mr Shepherd or if it was the other way round . . . or have I got that wrong?’

  ‘No.’ Miller put his own beer down. ‘You haven’t.’

  Miller knew that, whether or not Gloria was right about the killer hiding, she had inadvertently highlighted something important. All Prisha Acharya had been able to say for certain was that the victims had died within a few minutes of each other, but it had so far been impossible to establish the order in which that had happened. As far as this case went, Miller did not know very much. If he was being strictly accurate, he knew next to bugger all, but he was becoming convinced that knowing which of the victims was killed first would prove to be very important.

  Would be the key to finding out why either of them had been killed at all.

  ‘All right,’ Mary said. ‘I think we’ve talked about murder for long enough and we should let Declan have some time off.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Miller said. ‘I asked, didn’t I?’ He thought Mary was slightly miffed that someone else’s suggestion had gone down better than hers, but he knew it would all be forgotten in a gin or two. As it was, he genuinely didn’t mind these boozy brainstorming sessions after class. The contributions being made by many of his esteemed colleagues – Xiu not included – were of the chocolate teapot variety, so he remained grateful for input from anywhere, not least a group that included two retired coppers.

  ‘I tell you what, though,’ Howard said. ‘You were jiving like a professional in there tonight.’

  ‘Like a professional darts player, maybe.’ Miller tore open a bag of Mr Porky’s finest. ‘I’m still feeling a bit . . . clunky.’

  ‘It’ll all come back soon enough,’ Mary said.

  ‘Bang on, love.’ Howard leaned over and helped himself to a scratching. ‘Class is temporary but form is permanent.’

  ‘Other way round,’ Nathan said.

  ‘Samba next week, I think,’ Mary said. ‘We haven’t done that one in a while.’ She looked round the table, waiting for nods of approval, then wriggled in her chair. ‘Get those hips rolling a bit.’

  ‘Fine with me,’ Ruth said. ‘I think that’s actually my favourite.’

  ‘I’ll be your partner if you like.’ Nathan was trying to sound casual, staring at his beer bottle. Miller could not fault the lad for trying, though he had a hunch that, romancewise, Ruth had other fish to fry.

  ‘And we will have to give the paso doble a go at some point.’ Mary looked at Miller. ‘I know you might find that hard.’

  ‘It’s only a bloody dance, right?’ Miller blinked away the memory; an empty spotlight and a band stuttering to a halt. ‘Bring it on.’

  Nobody said very much for a while after that, though Miller sensed that Howard, at least, had something he very much wanted to say. Eventually, the old ex-copper couldn’t help himself.

  ‘No news, I suppose? Alex . . .’

  ‘I’ve been doing my best,’ Miller said. ‘Asking awkward questions, telling them they need to sort their ideas out. I’ll probably get a spanking from the brass for sticking my nose in, and not the sort that Scarlett dishes out.’

  ‘They can’t blame you for wanting to know what’s going on,’ Mary said.

  ‘It chuffing stinks if you ask me,’ Howard said. ‘This is one of their own we’re talking about. Alex was a fellow officer and we know how that works, don’t we?’

  Mary nodded. ‘How it’s supposed to, certainly.’

  ‘So, why does it feel like they’re kicking the can down the road?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ Miller said.

  ‘You should let us help.’ Howard was nodding, as though it was already a done deal. ‘Me and Mary haven’t been out of the game that long. We still know plenty of people and nobody can stop us asking awkward questions.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ Miller said.

  ‘It can’t hurt, can it?’ Mary looked at the others. ‘I’m sure we’ll all chip in to help however we can.’

  There was a good deal of enthusiastic nodding. Miller smiled and took another handful of scratchings.

  ‘I’m not sure I can be quite as useful as some of the others,’ Ruth said. ‘But if you need a place to meet up . . . that isn’t here, I mean . . . like an HQ, you’re welcome to use my house. I’ll happily be the one who writes everything down, too. A plan of action or whatever.’

  ‘You know I’m good with computers, right?’ Nathan leaned forward. ‘I can break into their system, check out all the files or whatever.’

  Miller looked at him. ‘You’re going to hack the Police National Computer?’

  ‘I’ll give it a damn good go, mate.’

  Ransford cleared his throat. ‘Well, Gloria and I are just florists, as you know . . .’

  Miller smiled again and nodded at him. The couple had provided a glorious floral display for Alex’s funeral and he still wasn’t sure he’d ever really thanked them properly.

  ‘. . . and I very much doubt that’s remotely useful to you, but if anyone around this table comes up with anything that helps catch the person responsible for Alexandra’s death, I can promise that they will never have to pay for flowers again.’ Ransford was not a natural speechmaker and he looked a little embarrassed. He reached over and took his wife’s hand. ‘So, there you go.’

  It wasn’t that Miller had any issue with shedding a tear. How could he, when in the last few weeks he’d shed enough to fill . . . a shed. He just didn’t want to, not at that moment . . . not sitting where he was and doing what he was doing.

  He could shed a bucketful later on, when he got home.

  He knew by the look on her face that Mary could see the effort he was making. It was the same expression she’d worn that first night back, after that first dance, when she’d told him that tears were nothing to be ashamed of.

  Miller smiled at her and shook his head. Not this time . . .

  Of course tears were nothing to be ashamed of, but nobody in their right mind wanted to eat soggy scratchings.

  Climbing off his moped, Miller noticed that the security light had come on outside his front door. He took off his helmet and watched a figure move in and out of the shadows, like someone was pacing up and down.

  Waiting for him.

  A fearless, gung-ho kind of copper might have armed himself with the nearest big stick or gone looking for something even more useful. A sensible one would have reached for a phone and quietly called for back-up. Being neither of those, Miller walked towards his house until the figure revealed itself – much to his relief – to be a skinny-looking she.

  Michelle Cutler was sweaty and out of breath.

  ‘I’ve been running,’ she said.

  ‘Right.’ It didn’t quite explain what Adrian Cutler’s wife was doing on his doorstep, but he guessed she would get to that in her own time. ‘Do you want some water?’

  ‘Have you got anything else?’

  Miller walked past her and put his key in the front door. ‘Fanta?’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  When Miller walked back into the living room with the wine, Michelle was on her haunches in front of Fred and Ginger’s cage.

  ‘Rats?’

  He couldn’t fault her powers of observation. ‘They’re relatively low maintenance, they’re cleverer than a lot of the people I have to deal with on a daily basis and they almost never get sick. They’re not smelly because they’re incredibly clean and they love a cuddle. Oh, and they can actually giggle.’

  Michelle leaned away as Fred and Ginger began to tart about, standing on their hind legs and pushing their noses through the bars of the cage. ‘Yeah, but . . . rats?’

  ‘They could probably do with a PR push,’ Miller said. ‘But, to be fair, that whole plague thing was a long time ago.’

  ‘What are their names?’

  Miller told her and saw that she didn’t get the reference, but he felt no desire to explain.

  ‘Don’t they . . . breed? I thought rats were at it like rabbits.’

  ‘Well, they probably would if they weren’t both female,’ Miller said. ‘Fred’s short for Frederica.’ He held up her glass and waited until she stood and moved across to join him. They sat down at opposite ends of the sofa. ‘Should I be shocked that you know where I live?’

  ‘Depends how easily shocked you are.’ Michelle leaned across and touched her glass to Miller’s.

  ‘Cheers,’ Miller said.

  ‘Up your bum.’ She took a drink then began to stretch; leaning back while pushing her lycra-clad legs out in front of her and flexing her feet. Her training shoes looked like they’d never been worn before.

  ‘That some kind of warm-down?’

  She looked at him, still stretching.

  ‘If you’ve been doing exercise it’s meant to be a good idea to warm down afterwards. Something to do with acid in the muscles? I mean, it’s not really an issue with me as I never get warmed up, so . . .’