Page 31 of The Dead Ex
The only one I know is the woman who handled my divorce. Her name was Lily Macdonald. I’d liked her. Professional and also understanding. Does she do crime? The very word seems absurd and yet all-too familiar. Amazingly,I still have her number on my phone. The voicemail is on. It is a Sunday, after all. I stammer a message, stressing the urgency.
‘Now what?’ I say to my inquisitors. ‘Are you going to charge me?’
Instantly, I realize I’ve said the wrong thing.
The inspector’s eyes narrow. ‘What exactly do you think we should charge you with?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say.
‘Are you sure about that?’
He’s tryingto confuse me. I need to get the upper hand somehow. There’s no proof, I tell myself. The photograph just shows that I had seen David the month before he’d disappeared. But it doesn’t mean I’m guilty of his murder.
‘May I look at the photograph again?’ I say.
I turn it over. There’s a silver-and-black sticker with a name on it.Helen Evans.
‘Who’s she?’ I ask.
‘The photographer. She was withMr Goudman at the time.’
‘Handy,’ I say acidly. I notice that the sergeant is no longer in the room.
‘Where are you going?’ asks Vine as I try to move past him.
‘To find my diary.’
‘I have it here,’ says Sergeant Brown, coming in from the lounge. She is tapping a thick black book. I think back to the psychologist who’d suggested keeping one. ‘It’s good for mental health,’ he’d said, ‘becauseit releases emotion safely without hurting anyone physically.’
Luckily, this is my office diary for appointments. Not the personal one.
‘How dare you? That’s private property.’
‘Come on, Vicki. If you’ve got nothing to hide, then surely you won’t mind me looking.’
‘Fine,’ I nod, after a moment’s hesitation. He’s right. Much better to show good will.
He turns a page. ‘Your diary says you hada client at 8 a.m. on the same date that the photograph was taken.’
‘There you are, then,’ I say triumphantly. ‘I couldn’t have gone to London.’
‘Then how do you explain the woman in the picture who looks just like you?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
I want to scream. ‘Can’t.’
He taps his fingers on the page as if doing Morse code. ‘Even if you’d seen this client, you would still have hadenough time to have left Cornwall and got to this part of London.’
‘But apart from medical appointments, I hardly go up to town any more,’ I say, choosing not to share the fact that I had just been about to pay Tanya a visit when the detectives had turned up.
‘Town?’ queries the woman officer. ‘That suggests you used to be familiar with it.’
‘You know I was,’ I snap.
‘Do we?’
