The jealous wife, the greedy wife, the wife who’d lost control.

  Pippa wasn’t any of those things, so she felt like looking the woman straight in the eye and telling her that she was wasting her time. That not only was she never going to get a confession, but that she wasn’t actually needed. Yes, for those first few hours it had been a comfort, Pippa supposed, but ever since they’d got back from the mortuary all Pippa had wanted to do was scream, maybe smash a few things, and there was no way she was going to do that with a police officer hanging about. She’d always been a bit . . . buttoned up, she knew that. Not as much as Barry, of course, not even close, and part of her desire to hold things in was knowing how much Barry would have disapproved were she to . . . lose it. She could picture the look on his face if she started wailing and throwing stuff around.

  Come on now, Pip . . .

  No, not disapproved, that was unfair of her, that was actually a horrible thing to think. Her husband hadn’t been a man who’d worn his heart on his sleeve, that was all. He’d bottled things up. Everyone was different, weren’t they?

  Everyone kept secrets, too . . .

  Barry hadn’t been where he’d told her he was going to be last night, and even though she knew that she shouldn’t be worried about that now – that she should be far more concerned about the fact that he was gone and how that made her feel dead and empty, like she would be falling through blackness for ever – she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  Why hadn’t he answered her calls?

  He always answered, always called her when he said he would.

  She tried to recall their last conversation, but couldn’t. Something terribly ordinary, probably, same as they usually were. She’d been doing other things while he’d been packing his bag, gathering up all his work stuff, then she’d watched him leave from an upstairs window. She remembered that he’d honked his horn as he’d eased out of the drive. That was him saying all the important things in his own strange way, wasn’t it?

  See you tomorrow, love. I’ll miss you.

  She hoped so, because Pippa knew that, watching him drive away, she hadn’t been thinking those things and that was what would torture her every day from now on as she tumbled through the dark.

  She bent double suddenly and there were sounds coming out of her mouth she’d never made before. Keening, was that what they called it?

  What had he been doing at that hotel?

  The Family Liaison Officer – Fiona was it? Or Phoebe? – stood up and asked her again if she wanted tea or something to eat. Pippa shook her head and raised it to stare at the ornaments arranged on the bookshelves above the television. Things they’d picked up over the years.

  That hideous china seahorse Barry had bought her in Malta one time.

  ‘It’s actually a piggy bank, Pip. See, there’s a rubber plug in the bottom? I knew you’d like it.’

  Now, Fiona or Phoebe was stepping across with the box of tissues and the smile that spread across Pippa’s face was wet and crooked as she thought, If and when I do lose it and start hurling stuff at the wall, that bloody seahorse will be the first thing to go.

  THIRTEEN

  Years before, when he and Alex had first started dancing, the trip to the Bull’s Head afterwards – knackered and footsore – had been pretty much the main reason for doing it at all. No, the only reason. In those few months after Alex had first dragged him along, stumbling his way through some bloody foxtrot and feeling like a pillock had been the price Miller would have to pay to earn himself a couple of pints and a bag of pork scratchings. They’d both got a lot better, of course. They’d begun to enjoy themselves and the evenings spent dancing had become the highlight of their week, but the hour or so in the pub once they’d finished was still very much part and parcel of their nights out.

  As was feeling like a pillock doing the foxtrot. However good he’d become, Miller had never quite got over that.

  While Gloria, Ransford and the others were seated together near the bar (Nathan and Ruth sitting very close together), Miller sat with Howard and Mary at their usual table in the corner. Where the four of them had used to sit. They touched glasses.

  ‘You’ve still got it, lad,’ Howard said. ‘Great to see.’

  Miller managed a smile, then sank a third of his beer in short order.

  ‘Alex would be very proud,’ Mary said.

  ‘You reckon?’ Miller tore open a bag of scratchings and got stuck in. As always, knowing how bad these crunchy slices of fried pigskin were for him and being well aware of the possibility that he might break a tooth at any moment only made the experience more enjoyable; gave it a salty frisson. It was basically Russian roulette with snacks. As far as the consumption of dangerous foods went, it wasn’t quite as exciting or potentially deadly as eating pufferfish sushi or even dodgy chicken, but it was about as far as Miller was prepared to go.

  ‘I know she would, love. It took a lot to come back and dance again.’

  Miller lifted his glass and drank some more. He had not forgotten that the moped was parked outside and told himself to take it easy, but decided that the drink was necessary as it would lessen the possibility of choking on a particularly large or hairy scratching.

  On top of which, he seriously needed it.

  Howard put his pint down and leaned across the table. ‘So, no news, then?’

  Mary smacked her husband on the arm. ‘Howard!’

  ‘It’s fine, Mary.’ Miller leaned over and gave Howard a smack of his own for good measure. ‘And no. There isn’t.’

  Howard shook his head. ‘It’s all gone to pot if you ask me.’

  ‘Nobody’s asking you,’ Mary said.

  ‘Since me and Mary were in the Job.’

  ‘That was a long time ago.’

  ‘Hang on, Mary, I think your old man’s got a point.’ Miller licked the salt off his fingers. ‘You certainly knew where you were back then.’

  ‘Too bloody right you did,’ Howard said.

  ‘When you only had to blow your whistle to see a villain carted off to the gibbet for stealing a loaf of bread. When you could happily set about ruffians and cutpurses with your wooden truncheon. Happy days.’

  Howard said, ‘Sod off,’ but he was smiling, well used to Miller’s ribbing.

  ‘I know you’re only being comical, Declan,’ Mary said. ‘But things are different now. Nastier.’

  Miller nodded. ‘Right, and Jack the Ripper was just a bit of a scamp.’

  ‘Basic policework is still basic bloody policework,’ Howard said. ‘I mean, they should have done more with Alex’s phone for starters.’

  Miller said nothing, thinking about what Dominic Baxter had told him.

  ‘Whoever called her that night—’

  ‘The number on her phone was withheld.’ Miller had begun methodically tearing up a beermat. ‘Carefully hidden, so there’s no way to trace it.’

  ‘There’s got to be something they can do.’

  ‘Leave it now, love.’ Mary had reached over to pat her husband on the arm. ‘Let’s just have a nice drink, shall we?’

  Howard sat back and shook his head. ‘That night, though. So bloody tragic.’ Mary nodded and Howard stared sadly down into his beer for a few seconds before looking over at Miller. ‘I mean . . . you two would have made the final, no danger!’

  ‘Howard!’ He got another smack.

  ‘That tango was bloody epic—’

  And another one.

  Miller smiled, because he’d missed this. When it came to saying something at the wrong time and without quite thinking it through, Howard was very nearly in his league. Watching the retired copper put his foot in it was almost as enjoyable as seeing the one he was married to berate him for it. Much as Miller couldn’t resist taking the mickey, Howard and Mary were people he was always happy to go to for advice.

  ‘I’m just saying. Pair of them were on bloody fire that night.’

  Mary held up her glass. ‘Why don’t you do something useful and get another round in?’

  Howard drained his glass and heaved himself out of his chair. Miller said he’d have the same again, thanks very much, scratchings included.

  ‘Those things’ll kill you.’

  Miller emptied what was left of the packet into his mouth. ‘There’s worse ways to go,’ he said.

  Sara Xiu didn’t even know the name of the band. They were almost certainly called The Screaming Bastards or Skullshag, but it didn’t much matter. As long as they were loud.

  Which they definitely were.

  The function room above the King’s Arms was not the most spacious in town and, as soon as the band had begun to assault their instruments, the few dozen local devotees of thrash metal willing to pay seven pounds fifty to risk permanent hearing loss had quickly coalesced into a frenzied, sweating mass of hair and leather. Men and women – mostly men – enthusiastically slammed themselves into one another. Some pulled disconcerting faces as they soloed on invisible guitars or just kept on furiously nodding, like they were very much in agreement with themselves. Had it been possible, one or two looked as though they’d have been perfectly willing to swing a cat, but with that out of the question, the metal-heads made do with the feverish crush and, throwing herself around with the rest of them, ears ringing and denim jacket drenched in lager, Xiu was exactly where she wanted to be.

  Lost in the noise and the crowd and, for an hour or so at least, trying not to think about the strange murder case she was working.

  The even stranger man she was working it with.

  ‘Better lock the doors, gotta stay inside . . .’

  Next to her, two portly and impressively bearded devotees of the band were joining in with their latest banger, punching the air as they shouted along with the lead singer.

  ‘You don’t wanna be dinner, time to run and hide,

  They’ll eat your flesh like it was fish ’n’ chips,

  It’s the zombie . . . apocalypse!’

  No, to be fair, she hadn’t quite . . . got Miller yet, but then none of the others on the team seemed to get him either, and they’d been working with him for a lot longer than she had. It wasn’t like Sullivan and Akers hadn’t warned her. It wasn’t like Miller hadn’t warned her himself.

  Grief could do funny things to people, she knew that.

  ‘You’ll be people pudding and human stew . . .’

  Mind you, she guessed that Miller was funny enough before.

  ‘Or you’ll be served up as undead barbecue,

  They’ll gnaw on your knackers and they’ll nibble your nips,

  It’s the zombie . . . apocalypse!’

  Squeezed between the two screaming beards, Xiu used what little arm movement she was capable of to raise her plastic glass and take a drink. With her back to the makeshift stage she looked through the crowd and noticed a man staring at her from the corner of the room. He looked a bit like Keanu Reeves, she thought, albeit a lot shorter and with a few more piercings. His T-shirt was plastered rather nicely to his chest by sweat or beer and there was a fancy tattoo just creeping up from the neck of it.

  There were other ways to take your mind off work.

  ‘With your bodily fluids as a selection of dips, it’s the . . .’

  As the crowd chanted the song’s title, Xiu smiled and watched short-arse Keanu stop nodding to smile back.

  He’ll do, Xiu decided.

  FOURTEEN

  There had been a time when, if Miller had found himself unable to sleep, the soothing voices of night owls on phone-in radio had done the trick, their low level, soporific conversation proving far more effective than sleeping pills, or ‘Now That’s What I Call the Relaxing Sounds of Waves’, or even three and a half pints of IPA.

  Not tonight, though.

  He’d had three and a half pints of IPA and even that plus the radio wasn’t helping. In truth, the radio didn’t really help at all anymore, not since he’d started arguing with it.

  ‘. . . and they’re all the same. These film stars and pop singers . . . all paedophiles.’

  ‘What, even the Cheeky Girls?’

  ‘It’s all there on the internet . . .’

  ‘Oh, put a sock in it, you cockwomble.’

  ‘. . . and to keep themselves young, a lot of them drink the blood of our children. It’s a mystery to me why something isn’t done about it.’

  ‘No, mate. The mystery is how you manage to get yourself dressed in the morning.’

  Wide awake, Miller climbed out of bed and sloped, muttering into the living room. He made himself a bowl of corn flakes and stared across at Fred and Ginger, dead to the world beneath their tiny shredded-cardboard duvet.

  ‘Jammy buggers,’ Miller said.

  He watered his plants. He picked up his guitar and noodled for a while, then put it back and turned on the TV. He spent fifteen minutes struggling to choose between the cerebral delights of the curiously named Celebrity Catchphrase (they aren’t catchphrases and they weren’t celebrities), Four in a Bed (not as much fun as it sounded) and QVC. The latter was oddly compelling, but Miller knew it was best not to get too involved. A heavy-drinking desk sergeant he knew had once confessed to spending a night on the sauce, then splashing out on a diamonique collar for a cat he didn’t have and an inflatable dinosaur costume.

  ‘I’ve taken a few serious drugs in my time, Dec,’ the sergeant had told him. ‘I’ve even slept with a hooker or two, but I’ve never hated myself quite that much in the morning.’

  Miller made himself tea, drank it while flicking through an old copy of Dancing Times and, by half-past stupid in the middle of the night, found himself doing what he usually did. What he’d known he’d end up doing from the moment he’d got out of bed. He sat on the sofa scrolling through Alex’s phone, and when he wasn’t doing that, he was staring down at a tatty square of cardboard with the number 37 written on it.

  ‘Busy first day back?’

  Alex was standing in the kitchen doorway, wearing her favourite stripy pyjamas under the dressing gown she’d pinched from that hotel they’d stayed in on her birthday.

  ‘Ridiculously busy,’ Miller said.

  ‘Better than mooching about in here like a tit in a trance.’

  ‘Oh, and to make matters worse, Sullivan’s a bloody DI.’

  ‘Couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke.’ Alex wandered across and perched on the arm of the sofa. ‘Funny old case to come back to though, don’t you think?’ She stared down at the rats’ cage. ‘Adrian Cutler.’

  ‘Yeah, funny.’

  ‘So, what do you reckon?’

  ‘Bit of gangland business by the looks of it.’

  ‘Hitman with a silencer.’ Alex nodded. ‘Nice clean shot.’

  ‘Yeah, fairly straightforward, so all the usual suspects.’

  ‘Massey?’ Alex looked away again.

  ‘I’ll be . . . talking to him.’

  ‘You think the prostitute’s involved?’

  ‘You mean “sex worker”?’

  Alex smiled. ‘Oops. Cancelled.’

  ‘Maybe she is,’ Miller said. ‘They might have used her to catch Adrian off guard, relax him a bit. Anyone’s going to get a bit sloppy wearing penguin boxer shorts.’

  ‘Mmm . . . sexy.’

  ‘OK, maybe I’ll get some.’

  ‘So, what about the other bloke . . . ?’

  ‘Barry Shepherd.’

  ‘Yeah, him.’

  ‘Well, it might just be like I told Sullivan, or like I tried to tell him. Our hitman messed up and went to the wrong room. Come on, we’ve all tried to get into the wrong car in a car park, haven’t we? Kids calling their teacher “Mum” or a parent walking out of the supermarket with the wrong kid. Everyone makes mistakes.’

  ‘You included.’

  ‘Rarely,’ Miller said. ‘Very rarely.’

  Alex stood up and walked to the window. There was a view of the sea which predictably she’d always enjoyed far more than Miller. ‘I think you got lucky with your new partner, by the way.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘Come on, she seems nice.’

  ‘Lots of people seem nice,’ Miller said. ‘Charlie Chaplin seemed nice and he married three teenagers. Three! Ted Bundy seemed nice. Michael Palin seems nice, but I heard someone on the radio who said she saw him shouting at a dog.’

  ‘Well, I like her,’ Alex said.

  ‘She doesn’t laugh at my jokes enough.’

  ‘Which is definitely a point in her favour.’

  Miller reached for the phone again. He unlocked it and began scrolling. The contacts list, the text messages, the calls received.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Alex asked.

  ‘I’ve got no idea.’

  ‘Well, I can’t help you. I wish I could . . .’

  Miller started flicking through the photos: a selfie holding Fred and Ginger; Alex beaming and raising a glass after a successful court case; her mum and dad on the beach. He stopped and stared at a photo of the two of them, what was probably the last photo. Mary had taken it, just before that semi-final. Miller in his rented tuxedo and Alex in the dress her sister had made, their number written on cardboard and fastened to their backs.

  37 . . .

  Miller held up the handset in its sparkly red case and waved it at her. ‘Why didn’t you take your phone?’ There was an edge of desperation to his voice – how could there not be? – but he hoped he didn’t sound angry. ‘You always took your bloody phone.’

  Alex said nothing.

  ‘You can’t tell me, can you?’

  ‘Course not,’ Alex said. ‘I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know.’