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“DC Patel has a degree from the University of Bradford.”

“They buy ’em, don’t they?”

“Why skip, Macliesh?”

“I don’t skip.”

“You got off a train in Aberdeen.”

“I was away to my job.”

“You don’t have a job.”

“I was promised work on the rigs. I can always get work on the rigs. I’ve done it before.”

“Was this since you came out of prison or before?”

“Don’t you come clever with me, you cocky bugger!” Macliesh’s hands were knots of fist, for a moment in sight and then punched down hard into his thighs.

Suzanne Olds stared at him hard, willing him to unclench his fingers. She shook the cigarette pack at him, breaking his concentration.

“Sudden change of plan, wasn’t it?” Resnick said.

“What change of plan?” He took a cigarette and laid it down, unlit.

“Night before, you were all set up for a burglary. You and your friends, colleagues, whiling away the early evening sizing up this warehouse, and the next thing you’re off with your bag to the station, booking a second-class single to Aberdeen.”

“Fucking class makes a difference, I suppose?”

Resnick could see the violence now, jumping behind Macliesh’s eyes.

“It almost sounds, Inspector,” said Suzanne Olds, “as if you are disappointed my client thought better of committing a crime and went off in search of honest employment.”

“Almost,” said Resnick sharply, reacting against the smirk in her voice.

“But you are conceding that my client was in Lenton Industrial Estate at the time that Shirley Peters was murdered?”

“I’m not conceding anything.”

“Don’t you!” growled Macliesh, twisting in his chair.

“Inspector…” said Suzanne Olds, wanting to draw him off her client, wanting to push her point home.

“There’s the matter of witnesses,” Resnick said.

Macliesh twisted back again. “I’ve given you witnesses.”

“Names.”

“Aye, names.”

“Names of people who can’t be found.” Macliesh swore and pushed his chair away from the table. At Resnick’s back, Patel tensed with apprehension.

“Inspector,” Suzanne Olds said forcefully, claiming his attention, “is it likely that my client would voluntarily confess conspiracy to burglary and name his accomplices in that conspiracy if it were untrue?”

“Which would you rather stand charged with, Ms. Olds? Conspiracy to commit a crime that didn’t take place or a murder that did?”

“No one in this room is charged with murder,” she said.

Macliesh had his arm towards Resnick, finger poking the space between them, his voice drowning his solicitor out. “I didn’t fucking murder anyone!”

“Did you love her?” Resnick asked.

Macliesh looked at the wall.

“Even after she threw you out?”

“She never threw…”

“I’ve talked to her mother, Macliesh. She got sick of you hounding her and hitting her and when you were out of the way she put your stuff in the street and changed all the locks.”

Macliesh said something beneath his breath nobody in the room could catch.

“Not that that was sufficient for you to understand. Phone calls, intimidation, threats of violence…”

“There was no threats of bloody violence!”

“Then a lot of people are lying.”

“They’re always lying!”

“You used your fists against her…”

“That’s not…”

“Used your fists against her when you were together…”

“That’s not true!”

“Signed statements. You beat her up whenever you felt like it, whenever you thought she’d stepped out of line, and in the end the only thing left for her to do was to get a court order made out against you coming anywhere near her.”

Macliesh crumbled a cigarette between his fingers. “That vicious whore put her up to it!”

“Who’s that, Macliesh?”

“That stupid tart, always putting ideas into her head.”

“You mean Grace Kelley?” Resnick asked.

“You sodding know I do!”

“Miss Kelley says that in addition to being violent, you were unreasonably possessive. That even after Shirley Peters had made it clear that in her eyes your relationship was over, you still continued to make it difficult for her to meet other men.”

Macliesh twisted round in his chair, wrenching his head from one side to the other.

“You were jealous, weren’t you, Macliesh?”

“Stuff it!” Macliesh hissed.

“You couldn’t live with the thought of her seeing other men.”

“Stuff it!”

“Didn’t like the idea of her being alone with them.”

Macliesh sat with his head back, mouth open, working at the stale air.

“The chance of her fancying them. Loving them.”

Macliesh’s chair went cartwheeling backwards and Suzanne Olds let out a shout and her pen went skittering across the floor.

“Letting them love her.”

Macliesh’s shoulder hit the wall and then the side of his fist, flat of his hand, fist again.

“Difficult inside,” Resnick went on as if Macliesh was still sitting across the table from him, “inside, when she never came to visit you. Lincoln.”

“Shut your fucking mouth!” Macliesh screamed.

“Thinking about it.”

Macliesh hit the wall first with both hands, fingers spread wide, then with his head.

“Difficult not to let those pictures keep forming.”

Again, and there was blood beginning to seep out on either side of the bandages.

“Inspector!” shouted Suzanne Olds. “I insist that this is stopped.”

“‘You as much as sniff another man,’” said Resnick, on his feet now, “‘and I’ll bloody strangle you.’”

Macliesh charged blindly, knocking the solicitor sideways and almost to the ground. His knee banged into a chair, his hip went hard against the table’s edge. He was already stumbling when he made his lunge at Resnick, who sidestepped him with the contempt of a man outwitting an unfocused bull.

“‘I’ll bloody strangle you,’ you said, and that was what you did.”

Resnick’s voice was strong and clear in the confines of the room. Patel had Macliesh’s arm high up behind his back and was forcing the side of his face down against the table. Graham Millington came through the door fast, drawn by the noise, and stood there staring.

“Charge him,” Resnick said.

Suzanne Olds was standing with her body bent forward, arms crossed tight across her chest. She was shaking.

“The murder of Shirley Peters.”

Eleven

The house was paid for: not much more than two up and two down, extension built on the back, kitchen and bathroom, garden the size of a snooker table with grass it took Luke about two days to reduce to mud. But no mortgage. He’d settled that, the one thing he did settle, prissying about with lawyers, bank managers, and bits of paper. “I’ll make sure things are right for you, Mary, you and the children. You’ll not want.”

Not want. Made him sound like one of those hymns she used to sing at Sunday school. He will lay me down in green pastures. Well, Highland Crescent wasn’t exactly green pastures, but aside from the rates, insurance, the normal bills…she knew families who were paying out as much as two hundred a month to the building society. Linda, who worked on electrical, almost two hundred and fifty theirs came to, outgoings, with the loan for the new furniture. Pounds. She didn’t know how they managed. She found coping difficult enough herself, and that was without splashing any around; if they went and stayed in that caravan at Ingoldmels another summer she’d push the wretched thing into the sea.

Last year he’d sent Luke and Sarah a postcard from Corsica.

She’d torn it up before they came home from school. What did they want to know about him and that po-faced pound of string beans he’d married, sunning themselves in Corsica? The water is clear and warm but you have to keep in the shade in the afternoons. If he had that much cash to throw away, he could pay for Luke’s new shoes, a winter coat for Sarah, one of those recorder things they both kept pestering her about.