FIFTEEN
In the cab they took to Steve’s, Kit was uncharacteristically quiet. Fiona knew better than to try to force him to talk about what was on his mind. That would simply lead to a sullen and mean-tempered denial that anything was troubling him. Like most men, a sense of his own vulnerability made him uncomfortable. Rather than make him even more uneasy by pushing him, she placed her hand on one of his and said nothing. Halfway up Pentonville Road, he finally spoke.
“I know it’s hard to credit, but it really hadn’t crossed my mind that Drew’s killer might come after me,” he said, leaning his head against the back of the seat and sighing. “Dumbshit or what?”
“That’s the healthy response,” Fiona said. “Why should you imagine you’re going to be the next victim of a murderer who struck four hundred miles away? If-and it’s still a big if-Drew Shand’s death is the first in a series, we don’t know what it was about him that made him an attractive target. Was it that he was gay? Was it his work? Was it something in his past that we don’t know anything about? Was it his attraction to the dark side of his sexuality? All of those are imponderables and only one of them could apply to you. Statistically, your risk of becoming the victim of a serial killer is somewhere around vanishing point.”
“Even so, you’d think it would have occurred to me in passing that I might just be on some nutter’s hit list,” Kit said sharply. “After all, I’m supposed to be the one with the imagination. You thought of it, after all.”
Fiona squeezed his arm. “Yeah, but my way of looking at the world is even more fucked up than yours. Besides, I’m your lover. I’m legally entitled to worry unreasonably about you.”
Kit grunted, putting an arm round her and pulling her close. “Doesn’t it ever piss you off, being right all the time?”
She grinned. “Find out what you’re good at and stick to it, that’s what I say. And since you’ve just admitted I have a right to worry, you have to promise me you won’t talk to strangers.”
Kit snorted. “That’s an easy promise to keep. At least until the new book comes out.”
The cab juddered to a halt outside the four-storey Islington town house where Steve occupied the garden flat. He could have afforded somewhere bigger, but he spent so little time at home that he couldn’t see the point of moving from somewhere that met his needs perfectly. Two bedrooms one of which doubled as a study a dining-kitchen whose french windows opened out on to the garden and a living room big enough to accommodate two sofas and an armchair was all he needed. He kept the decor simple. Fiona loved the economy of style, but Kit hated its clinical purity. Both suspected Steve barely noticed his surroundings. As long as they were functional, he was content.
Fiona’s low heels clattered on the stone stairs down to the basement entry. Kit, following her, marvelled at her hair as the streetlights caught it, burnishing it to a rich chestnut-brown. She was, he thought, more beautiful than he could ever deserve. Catching up with her as she rang the bell, he put his arms round her and kissed her neck. “I love you, Fiona,” he said gruffly.
Fiona gave a low chuckle. “Don’t I know it.”
Steve opened the door and grinned down from his superior height. “Keep it decent,” he advised. “Some of us have to live here.”
They followed him down the narrow hall into the dining room, where the table was laid with an assortment of breads, cheeses, pates and salads. The air was thick with the aroma of leek and potatoes. Steve lived on soup. There was always a pan of some concoction on the stove, next to the stockpot containing the makings of the next brew. Soup was the only thing he ever cooked. Kit enjoyed mocking Steve’s culinary limitations, but when cornered, he was forced to admit that Steve made the best soup he’d ever tasted and, far from having a restricted repertoire, Steve probably experimented more with combinations of flavours than Kit himself.
“It’s just that it always comes with a bowl and spoon,” he had once complained. “It’s so predictable.”
“At least my guests don’t need a degree in civil engineering to eat their dinner,” Steve had growled. “I remember my first globe artichoke round your house. Besides, given the life I lead, I need something instant when I come in the door, and my soup’s a damn sight healthier than a bacon butty.”
But tonight, no one was interested in arguments about the menu. In the two weeks since she’d returned from Toledo, Fiona had finally found the time to give proper attention to the case file on the sting the Met had mounted against Francis Blake. Since she insisted her input was to remain informal, she had suggested outlining her conclusions round the dinner table. So for once there was an air of tense anticipation among them as they sat down and Steve poured a robust red into their glasses.
“Soup first, then we’ll cut to the chase,” Fiona decreed.
Steve gave a wry smile. “Whatever you say, Doctor.” He filled their bowls with steaming, creamy vichyssoise. “So what small talk shall we indulge in?”
“How about your love life?” Kit suggested.
“That should occupy all of ten seconds,” Steve said. He picked up his spoon and examined it critically. “My love life is like the Loch Ness Monster rumours of its existence are greatly exaggerated.”
“What happened to that CPS lawyer you took to dinner the other week?” Fiona asked.
“She was more interested in the rules on disclosure of evidence than she was in me,” Steve said. “I’d have had a more interesting night out with the Commander and his wife.”
Kit whistled. “That good, eh?”
“Hell, I don’t suppose I was much more interesting to her,” Steve said, lifting a spoonful of soup to his lips.
“The trouble with the three of us is that in our own ways we all have a morbid fascination with violent death,” Fiona said. “Maybe Kit should fix you up with a sexy crime writer.”
Kit spluttered. “Easier said than done. When you cross off the ones who are already attached, the ones who have a serious interest in recreational drugs and the dykes, there’s not a lot left over.”
“Besides, you couldn’t stand the competition,” Steve added.
The first course over, Steve cleared the bowls away and Fiona took a couple of pages of notes from her briefcase. “I must say, the material you gave me made for very interesting reading,” she said. “Not least the interpretations that Andrew Horsforth placed on the interaction. It was an object lesson in what happens when you push the theory ahead of the facts. In one sense, the conclusions he drew were valid. If, that is, you concentrate on the margins and ignore the central core of the material. If you look at a series of conclusions as a continuum from most likely to least likely, he’s opted more often than not for the least likely, because that’s what backed up the view he started with, namely that Francis Blake was the killer.”
“But, cleverly, you started from the opposite premise,” Kit said with affectionate sarcasm. “Nobody loves a smart arse you know.”
Fiona stuck her tongue out at him. “Wrong. I started from the neutral position. I tried to ignore my own half-formed opinion that Francis Blake wasn’t the killer. I was concerned with achieving as much objectivity as I could.”
“Not something anyone could ever accuse Horsforth of,” Steve said. “You’ll be pleased to hear that he’s been dropped from the list of Home Office-approved consultants after our debacle at the Bailey.”
“That’s a bit decisive for the Home Office, isn’t it?” Kit asked through a mouthful of salad.
“Horsforth’s an easier scapegoat than senior police officers,” Steve said. “We’re as much to blame as him for what happened, but heaven forbid that any more mud should be slung at the Met right now.”