I watch him now, in the blue-and-white-striped shirt from Gresham Blake I bought him last Christmas, which is creased and crumpled after this long, sticky summer’s day, sleeves rolled up, digging his fork into the macaroni dish (from the freezer), along with a passable Greek salad that I’ve managed to rustle up.

  He is still reading something on his phone, and a wild thought crosses my mind. What if he is only pretending this is a work message and really it’s a text from a mistress?

  Wishful thinking, I know, to appease my own guilt. He’s too decent to have an affair. Roy’s the virtuous one, and I’m the shallow imposter of a wife. Sometimes in these past months, when I’m lying awake in the middle of the night, while Roy sleeps the sleep of the innocent, I think fair play to him. He doesn’t deserve me, he deserves someone better than me, someone who will love him for who and what he is.

  Often, during those long, lonely hours of the night, I question myself. Do I really want a lifestyle like Tamzin’s? Would that actually make me happy? Is my life actually OK as it is? Am I, like so many others, unable to simply be grateful for what I have?

  Maybe. There are a lot of shallow people. But there are also a lot of talented people with something to offer the world, whose lives are unfulfilled because they never got the chance they deserved. Maybe because they married the wrong partner.

  Like me?

  On occasions, when we’ve met a real pair of oddballs, Roy and I have agreed, a bit jokily, that there’s someone out there for everyone. But there is someone out there for Roy, it’s just not me. It’s someone who would be content to play the role of honest, supportive wife – and that is really not me. I’ve failed as a wife and I’m ashamed of what I’ve let myself become. I’ve been unfaithful, I am living a lie, I’m scared – and I can’t deal with his dedication to his job.

  Being the other half of a Major Crime detective, I’ve realized, is not something I am good at. The detective gets the glory, the headlines, the press conferences and the promotions. The significant other gets the cancelled birthday and anniversary dinners, the solo Christmas, and short shrift if you put your foot down.

  A twenty-year-old university student has just been raped and murdered. Hello, is our dinner date at our favourite Italian really more important than my husband talking to the victim’s parents, trying to comfort them, to reassure them, to help them find some meaning in their lives that have now been destroyed for ever? God, and I had so much been looking forward to the fritto misto!

  It’s always going to be an argument you cannot win. So you go with the flow. But, if you want the truth, in my view only dead fish go with the flow.

  I may come across as a total flake, but I don’t think I am. I realize my husband does a very important job. But I’m important too. I’m me.

  And I’m pregnant. If I do nothing, I am trapped. I’ve desperately wanted a child for so long. There is no way I would get rid of this gift. But the moment I tell Roy, that’s it, I would be stuck. And I’d be stuck with a secret I cannot bear to hold. So that’s not an option. I’m going to have to leave before he finds out. I have a way out but it’s not going to be easy. I will take my gambling problems with me and leave Roy to his career without tarnishing it. Now Nicos has arrived in my life I have another option. Maybe he could stake me to win the money I need, or if he’s really loaded, he could pay off my gambling debt entirely. All things I’m considering. Along with when I can take my next Valium, but I really need to stop taking that.

  And actually, the timing of my departure from this life could hardly be better. Albazi expects the money within four days, or a letter from the lawyer confirming my inheritance. As neither are going to happen, I’m going to have to do a runner and go into hiding. Could Nicos really help me?

  Ironically, the person who could help me is Roy – by arresting Albazi. Problem solved – or at least delayed.

  Trying to sound nonchalant, as if I was merely making small talk, but desperate for some information as I carry this weight on my shoulders, I interrupted his reading of the long message on his phone by asking, ‘How’s that case going with that nasty Albanian guy, the one with the funny name – Abbassy or something? Are you close to an arrest?’

  ‘I can’t talk about it, Sandy,’ he replied without looking up.

  ‘Can’t talk about it?’ I said, a little more petulantly than I’d intended.

  ‘You know I can’t,’ he said.

  ‘You know I can’t,’ I replied, mimicking his voice. But he ignored me and that annoyed me even more. ‘It’s ridiculous, I’m your wife, we shouldn’t have secrets.’ I nearly bit my tongue, well aware of my hypocrisy. I badly wanted to share this stress with him, with anyone.

  Roy looked up. ‘You know there are work things I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Leslie Pope said Dick tells her everything.’

  Dick Pope was a colleague of Roy and the four of us were good friends.

  ‘Well, he shouldn’t, it’s not professional and it could get him into a lot of trouble.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to share every detail. You mentioned this guy a while ago, so I was just curious – you said something about torture and murder.’

  ‘We’re making progress, OK?’ he said abruptly. ‘He and his two henchmen are particularly dangerous people. They’ve even threatened police officers making routine enquiries and they don’t do idle threats.’

  ‘So is this the headless torsos case you’re working on – Operation Mullet?’

  ‘Sandy, I can’t say, OK? I’ve said too much already.’

  ‘I can keep a secret, Roy.’

  ‘Have you never heard the saying, “If you tell a secret to one person, you’ve told the world”?’

  ‘Well, that’s bloody charming!’

  He excavated another forkful of macaroni.

  As I watch him eat, I’m thinking about another problem – it is Roy’s thirtieth birthday in four days’ time and I’ve not yet bought him a present. He has hinted for some while that he’d like a new watch – I’d like him to have one too, the tatty one he wears is an embarrassment. He’s made a big hint about a Swiss Army watch and, at £60, that’s a lot more in my budget range than the six-grand Hublot I saw him admiring in a shop window a while ago.

  Although here I’m hesitating and it saddens me. This might be the last gift I’m ever going to buy him; should I go cheap or at least give him a parting gift from my inheritance? Something to remember me by for ever?

  My heart tells me to go for the Hublot.

  Common sense tells me the Swiss Army watch.

  I’ve always prided myself on being sensible.

  32

  23 July 2007 – Roel Albazi

  Alan Mitten and Robert Rhys had been sensible. To Roel Albazi’s relief, after Tall Joe had finally tracked them down and popped along to see them, the money they owed magically appeared in less than a day.

  But Sandy Grace was not being sensible. He wasn’t trying to help her because he was being altruistic, he was simply looking after his own skin. If Song Wu was reckless enough to come down hard on the wife of a cop, the police would be all over it – and very quickly all over him.

  But whatever the police might do was nothing compared to what Song Wu might do to him or his family back in Albania if Sandy defaulted, after she discovered, through the monthly audit, that Albazi had paid her back with her own money.

  He knew full well how much of an interest Sussex Police took in the local Albanian community, and steps they had been taking to engage with it, which only made all Albanians here even more suspicious of their motives. During the hours of questioning by the police he’d had to face since the devastation of his office and the humiliation of Skender, it was clear they believed it was the work of fellow Albanians, and they were going through all his links to them. A little too thoroughly for his liking. He had the distinct impression they were using the incident as an excuse to delve deeper into his own private business world and that was making him very uncomfortable.

  He was also angry, very angry indeed at Song Wu, for what she had done to his office and home, and the humiliation of Skender. And angry at his impotence. Angry because he knew there was nothing he could do to get back at Song Wu, to get even with her, without putting his family back in Albania at even bigger risk.

  She had sent a clear message to him. A warning. Letting him know how vulnerable he and his team were if they upset her.

  Skender was fine after his ordeal, and quietly determined to get revenge on the two henchmen from Song Wu who had done this to him. He told Albazi they’d tricked him into opening the door, then floored him with a taser and, he presumed, then drugged him before stripping him and applying the glue, as the next thing he knew he was naked on the floor, unable to open his mouth or remove his hands from the wall.

  Albazi’s office and apartment were uninhabitable, and until the repair work was done, he had checked into the Grand Hotel in Brighton. His computer equipment and physical records had been trashed, but he had a backup of everything and was able to function again quickly. And, to Albazi’s relief, the safe, which he had not told the police about and was concealed behind fake kitchen tiles, had not been touched.

  All his attention was now focused on Sandy Grace. Thanks to two bugs, loaded onto her phone, and the third, a magnetic one placed under the rear of her little VW Golf, he could keep track of all her movements. Even more importantly, he could hear all phone conversations she had, in real time. Or recorded, for those he missed.

  This guy Nicos, whoever he was, who thought he was a hotshot with phones, presented a threat. What rock had he crawled out from underneath?

  He needed to be eliminated and fast.

  33

  23 July 2007 – Looking back

  Nicos was late. We’d arranged to meet at 1.30 in the Casino d’Azur and it was now 2 p.m. I was starting to get concerned, all my random fears that he might be in cahoots with Albazi growing stronger with every minute that he did not appear.

  My head was in a very strange place. My anxiety was through the roof and my self-medication by way of another Valium was not helping. Nicos had a snake tattoo running down his neck. Could I trust someone with a tattoo like that? Why was I even so bothered about his tattoo? As goes the last line of one of my favourite films, Some Like It Hot, ‘Nobody’s perfect.’ The universe seemed to have gone weird on me, as if it was against me, and having a big joke at my expense.

  I was dangerously in debt. I couldn’t stay with my husband, as I would bring no end of humiliation on him, and I very definitely did not want to tell him I was pregnant. Because then I would be stuck. Stuck in a relationship I could not be in any more, even if I somehow managed to sort the Albazi shit out, and trapped by a lie.

  The lie that Roy was the father.

  He could be, but, shamefully, so could Cassian, who I had slept with a year ago, but also more recently just before I told him I didn’t want to continue seeing him. I was faithful to Roy for most of our marriage. Not that I’m trying to justify anything.

  Right now the only option I can see is to leave Roy before my bump starts to show. And before Roel Albazi’s boss sets the knifeman on me. Thanks to my small inheritance, I’ve got enough cash to tide me over for a bit. So long as I don’t lose it all this afternoon on more spins of the wheel.

  But where do I disappear and how?

  There were two of us in this now. Unless the test was wrong. But that was unlikely.

  OVER 99% ACCURATE!

  I was actually gambling sensibly for maybe the first time since I’d got the bug. Just small stakes this afternoon – one-pound and five-pound chips. Just as well I was keeping my stakes low, because I was on yet another losing streak. The roulette wheel wasn’t speaking to me, the ball wasn’t speaking to me, nor were the numbers and colours. Only the nice young croupier was speaking to me, but even she wasn’t saying much, other than she liked my hair colour, and she asked me where I’d bought my cream blouse and seemed excited when I said Zara in Brighton. She had a day off tomorrow and would go there, she said.

  I started to raise my stakes a little because I was increasingly annoyed about Nicos. He was definitely a no-show. Great. How had I misjudged him so badly? I was now certain he was an Albazi plant and I was just a dumb sucker. Over the next half-hour, gambling recklessly, I lost the equivalent of about thirty Zara blouses.

  And my patience.

  3.25 p.m.

  Sod you, Nicos. Go to hell. My anger was making me reckless. I dropped another £5,000 on the wheel. Great stuff. I’d managed to turn £30,000 into £20,000. And dwindling.

  Suddenly, my phone, which was on silent, started vibrating. I looked down: it was a call from Roy. I ignored it.

  I wanted so badly to take another Valium to calm down even though I knew it was becoming more and more of an addiction. A way to cope with the crisis I had got myself into.

  I was about to reach for one when, over two and a half hours late, I saw Nicos across the far side of the room, heading towards me with an urgency and a look of apology that instantly melted all my anger towards him.

  I felt a thrill at seeing him that I found hard to put into words. Like I’d taken a drug that instantly filled me with warmth and confidence. I didn’t need the tranquillizer, I had the sense, at that moment, that my future had walked into this grand room that was filled with gaming tables and hung with chandeliers. My white knight. Not in shining armour, but in a lightweight leather bomber jacket, black T-shirt, blue chinos and brown loafers.

  On Nicos they looked incredibly sexy.

  I raised an arm, signalling him to stop in his tracks, held up my phone and pointed to it, then with the index finger and thumb of my free hand made a zip-it sign across my lips.

  He stopped and nodded. He got it.

  Of course he did, he was smart.

  I turned my phone off, waited until the display had died completely, then gave it a few more seconds before I gave him the thumbs up, and he continued over to me, hooded eyes locking onto mine.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said.

  Just the way he said those words in his charming accent, while smiling at the same time, made me feel ready to forgive him instantly, before even hearing his apology.

  ‘To be this late is inexcusable,’ he continued. ‘It was a flight that was badly delayed. I had important business. I’m so glad you are still here.’

  I gave him a reproachful look. ‘What business was more important than me?’

  Instantly I regretted saying those words. They sounded pathetically shallow. So not me.

  To my relief he grinned. ‘The business of protecting you, Sandy Grace, OK?’

  ‘Maybe.’ I said it with a teasing grin.

  He produced a small phone from his jacket pocket. ‘We will communicate via this from now. Switch your old phone back on only when you absolutely have to. And be very careful what you say when it is switched on.’ He looked at me sternly. ‘If I’m going to keep you safe, you must always do exactly what I say to you. I’m making good plans for you.’

  I looked back into his eyes, searching them for any hint of deceit. But if it was there, I couldn’t find it. ‘You’re making plans for me, Nicos? Is this like a job phone? Like the one my husband is attached to?’ I laughed. ‘I barely know you.’

  ‘Do you really know anyone, Sandy? How much does someone let anyone else into their life – even their husband or wife? Isn’t trust a gut feeling?’

  I shrugged. ‘I guess it is,’ I said.

  With his stare fixed on me, he said, ‘There is no mathematical equation for trust. No matter how long you and I spend in each other’s company, you will never really know me any more than I will know you, beyond what I choose to let you know, and beyond the superficial.’

  ‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘So let’s be superficial. I know nothing about you. Tell me about where you grew up, tell me about your parents. Your family?’

  He shrugged. ‘I was raised on a small island in the Aegean Sea, Mykonos. It’s a cool place, but I didn’t appreciate that when I was a kid.’

  ‘I know it,’ I said. ‘I absolutely love it there. I’ve always wondered what it is like out of season, as I’ve only been as a tourist and it’s so busy. But so beautiful, those white buildings against the blue skies, stunning!’

  ‘It is very quiet in the winter months, that’s when I like it the most. My father was a tobacconist, with a little shop in the town selling cigarettes, cigars, soft drinks, ice creams, cold cappuccinos. My mother worked with him until she got cancer, when I was twelve, and died a year later. My sister and I helped my father out in the shop during our teens.’ He hesitated. ‘You want more?’

  ‘I do,’ I said. And I genuinely did.

  ‘I guess my horizon was bigger than the tiny island of Mykonos. When I joined the army I wanted adventure, but I never saw any action. So when I was discharged, as you call it – I think – I figured maybe the police would be more my thing. I moved to Athens and after being promoted to detective was asked to be an interrogator. Since then, bigger opportunities beckoned, and now a new one beckons.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Helping you to hide.’

  I remember looking at him, still unsure quite where he was coming from, and asking him, ‘Why do you want to help me?’

  He stared at me levelly. ‘Because I like you.’ His eyes sparkled with charm.

  I tried to read his expression. To find a subtext. But beyond his eyes there was nothing but steely resolve.

  ‘I know you need to hide. And you have three days to do it. I can help you. Trust me, I’ve had previous experience. But you will really have to trust me. If I tell you, jump, will you do that?’

  ‘I guess that will depend on how high,’ I replied, smiling.

  He gave me a deadly serious, almost mesmerizing look then said, ‘In the situation you are in, Sandy, that is really not funny. If you want me to help you, I need you to take me seriously. Are you able to do that?’