"When was that? When did we go?"
"Lost your memory, have you?" He laughed cheerily. "I haven't seen you both around. Been on holiday together, have you?"
"Not exactly."
"Is Jo back too? Nice girl, Jo. Ever so helpful. She took me to the hospital when I fell over and broke my leg. And came and visited me. No one else did, but she came and she brought flowers."
"She's not back yet," I said vaguely.
"I'm eighty-six," he said. "Do I look it?"
"No," I lied.
"My mother lived until she was ninety-five. Ninety-five and then suddenly, one day, boom. She was gone. I still miss her. Silly, isn't it? I'm an old man and I think about my mum every day. I still have her hairbrushes, you know, lovely silver hairbrushes with ivory backs and real horsehair bristles. You don't get things like that nowadays. And her napkin ring, silver with her name on the inside. Pretty."
"That tea was just what I needed. Thanks a lot."
"Are you going already? Without a biscuit?"
"I'll come again soon."
"I'm usually here."
I was in a deep sleep having a dream in which a fire alarm went off. I couldn't see where the fire was and I couldn't see where the fire exit was. I was paralysed by this ignorance. If I had known where the fire exit was, I could have headed for it. If I'd known where the fire was, I could have run away from it. The fire bell rang again and woke me up. Dimly and stupidly I realized it was the doorbell. I reached for my dressing-gown. My eyes wouldn't open. That was the first problem. They felt as if they were glued together. I pulled the lids apart on one as if I were peeling a grape but even so I had to get myself to the door virtually by touch. Even sleepwalking I made sure that the chain was fastened. I opened the door and the face of a young police officer appeared in the gap. "Miss Devereaux?" he said.
"What time is it?"
He looked at his watch.
"Three forty-five," he said.
"In the morning?"
He looked behind him. It was grey and cloudy but very obviously daytime. My mind began to clear. "If it's about the car," I said, "I was planning to get it. It got a ticket, and then it got clamped. I've kept meaning to do something about it but I've been busy. You don't want to know."
He looked blank. "I'm not here about a car," he said. "Can we come in?"
"I want to see identification."
He sighed and passed a thin leather wallet through the door. As if I could tell a genuine police identification. "You can probably buy these on the Net," I said.
"I can give you a phone number to call, if you're still concerned."
"To some friend of yours sitting in a bed sit somewhere."
"Look, Miss Devereaux, I've been sent by DI Cross. He wants to talk to you. If you have some problem with that, could you take it up with him personally?"
I unlocked the door. There were two of them. They wiped their feet noisily on the doormat and removed their caps.
"If Cross wants to talk to me, why isn't he here?"
"We've come to collect you."
I had an impulse to say something angry but at the same time I felt relief. Finally Cross was coming to me. I wasn't the one creating trouble. Five minutes later I was in a police car heading south. When we stopped at traffic lights, I saw people staring in at me. Who was this woman sitting in the back of a police car? Was she a criminal or a detective? I tried to look more like a detective. When we crossed the river, I looked out of the window and frowned. "This isn't the way," I said.
"DI Cross is at the Castle Road station."
"Why?"
There was no answer.
Castle Road was a shiny new police station with lots of plate glass and coloured tubular steel. We drove round to the back and then I was led in quickly through a small door by the car park and up some stairs. Cross was in a small office with another detective, a middle-aged, balding man who offered me his hand and introduced himself as Jim Burrows.
"Thanks for coming," said Cross. "How are you doing?"
"Is this about Jo?"
"What?"
"Because I drove down to Dorset and she isn't at the cottage where she normally stays. Also, I've talked to this man who knows her and he's rung other people who know her and nobody knows where she is."
"Right," said Cross, looking at Burrows uneasily. It was a see-what-I've-been-talking-about kind of look. "But there's something else I wanted to ask you. Please sit down." He gestured me to a chair in front of the desk. "Do you know a woman called Sally
Adamson?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Who is she?"
"Have you been in touch with Terry Wilmott?"
I suddenly felt a current of cold nausea run through my whole body. It started at the top of my head and ran down to the tips of my toes. Something bad had happened.
"I went round to collect some mail a couple of times." A thought occurred to me. "Sally. Is that his girlfriend?"
"His girlfriend?"
"I don't know exactly what the situation is. I've run into her a couple of times. She was arriving as I left. I don't know her second name. I don't know if they're actually together. But I think Terry is one of those people who is psychologically incapable of not being in a relationship. I mean, when we first met.. ." And then I stopped. "Has something happened?"
The two men looked at each other and Burrows stepped forward. "She's died," he said. "Sally Adamson. She was found dead last night."
I looked from one man to the other. I had about fifty questions to ask, so I started with the stupidest one. "Dead?"
"That's right," said Cross. "And there's something else. Her body was found under a hedge just inside the front garden of number fifty-four Westcott Street. Strangled, by the way. This wasn't natural causes."
I shivered. Suddenly I felt cold. "Terry lives at number sixty-two," I said.
"Yes," said Cross.
"Oh, God," I said. "Oh, my God."
"Can we get you something?" Cross said. "Some coffee?"
I shook my head. "It's a nightmare," I muttered. "It keeps on getting worse. Dear God. Oh, poor Sally. But what do you want me for?" Cross didn't answer. He just looked at me and then more realization battered its way into my tired brain.
"No," I said. "No and no and no. There's lots of crime around there. A woman on her own, at night, leaving the flat. She could easily be mugged."
Cross walked across the office to a table in the corner. He returned carrying something in a clear plastic bag. He laid it down on Burrows's desk. "Sally Adamson's purse," he said. "Which we found in Sally Adamson's shoulder-bag, lying next to her body. It contains forty-five pounds in cash. Two credit cards. Several store-cards. It was untouched."
"No," I said, more to myself than to the two officers. "No. It doesn't make any sense. Does Terry know?"
"Terence Wilmott is downstairs," said Jim Burrows. "My colleagues are talking to him at the moment."
"What's he saying?"
"Not much. He has his lawyer with him."
"You don't seriously think .. . ? You can't .. ." I put my head in my hands, closed my eyes. Perhaps I could go to sleep and when I woke up this would all have faded away, like a dream breaks up into vague, half-remembered images.
Burrows cleared his throat and I lifted my head and looked at him. He picked up a typed piece of paper from his desk and looked at it. "On at least three occasions in November and December last year, you phoned the police about your boyfriend."
"That's right," I said. "And they didn't do anything about it. They didn't believe me."
"What did he do?"
"There was nothing complicated about it. Terry gets depressed. He gets angry. He gets drunk. Sometimes he lashes out."
"He hit you?"
"Look, if you think for a single minute that Terry would murder a woman'
"Please, Miss Devereaux, we can talk about your opinions later but first can you answer our questions?"