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“Is that steak okay? It certainly looks good.”

Her mouth full, Kate nodded at once. “Mmm… delicious.”

He thought, You’re beautiful. Even a blind man would be able to tell that.

“And the wine? You like the wine?”

“I certainly do.”

Reed smiled. “So I should hope, considering the price.”

He hadn’t really been able to afford the restaurant-if truth be told, he felt out of place in it-but he had things to say tonight.

“Well it’s very good… mmm… very good indeed.”

“I thought so.”

The couple at the table next to them were in their late sixties and would not have looked out of place at an imperial ball; he suspected that they were looking secretly askance at the whippersnappers so uncomfortably close to them, perhaps unable to believe that they had let people in who were not related to the Lord Lieutenant of the County.

“So what’s the excuse for such extravagance?”

“Do I need an excuse?”

“Well… it’s hardly in character.”

He pretended outrage. “How dare you! I’ll have you know, I’ve been known to spend three pounds on a bottle of wine.”

“And the rest!” Her smile gilded a lily and somehow improved it.

“Anyone would think I’m a cheapskate.”

She leaned forward conspiratorially. “Wouldn’t they just?”

“Oh! So that’s what you think, is it?” He turned his face away, corners of his mouth turned downward. If he hoped for sympathy, it was a hope that was doomed from the off.

“Me and a few thousand others…”

There was no background music in the restaurant, no violins. As he let the silence between them grow, the chattering around them intruded.

His timing was good, though.

“So you wouldn’t want to marry me?” The tone-hurt innocence-was also good.

“What?”

Feigned surprise. “You wouldn’t want to marry me. What with me being a cheapskate.”

As she realized what he had said, her face erupted with bright delight. “Oh… Oh, God…”

“Fair enough,” he went on, apparently oblivious of her reaction. “I’ll strike you off the list and then move on…”

“You mean it?”

He shrugged. “It was only an idea. It doesn’t matter.”

She reached out, grasped his hand, as if to make him realize that she had something to say. “Of course I do! My God! Of course I do. I thought you’d never ask.”

He continued in the same slightly distracted tone, “Only, now that I’ve got a consultant’s job…”

“You what?” Her voice rose appreciably, and Lord and Lady Muck next door did not like it.

“Didn’t I tell you? I’ve been appointed as consultant pathologist at Saint Benjamin’s. I start in three months.”

“That’s fantastic!”

“Is that a ‘yes’ to marriage, then?”

“Of course it is!”

He shook his head. “You just want to marry a doctor. You’re a gold digger.”

At last he smiled, and after a moment’s pause, she sighed huge relief.

“You bet,” she said.

* * * *

“Interview commencing at eight twenty A.M., Friday, the seventh of June 2006. Present are Dr. Philip Reed, Detective Sergeant Sam Rich, and Detective Inspector Hannah Angelman. Dr. Reed has been cautioned but has declined to take up his right to have a solicitor present.”

Hannah smiled at the man across the desk. “Hello, Phil.”

He bowed his head. His demeanor was one of exhaustion, but his smile was genuine. “Hannah.”

I’m only the pathologist, the one who has to come face to face with whatever atrocity someone has brought upon another.”

“You know Sam?”

“I think we’ve met a couple of times.”

She relaxed back in her chair as if she were in a coffee shop, as if this were a meeting between old mates from university. “I must say, I never expected to find us in this position.”

His head bobbed from side to side. “A life without surprise would be a poor life indeed. It might, though, be marginally better than one that contains too many of them.”

“Or ones that are too big.”

He acknowledged this graciously. “Indeed.”

“How long have we known each other, Phil?”

“Oh, I suppose it must be seven, maybe eight years.”

She nodded. “I thought I knew you.”

“No human being ever truly knows another.”

“But I think I can usually tell the killers. God knows I’ve known a few.”

Reed closed his eyes. Sam thought that he looked ready to sleep for a thousand years. His jacket was creased and looked tired, his shirt collar grimed. He said slowly, didactically, “Killing and killers aren’t a specific type, Hannah. Even I know that, and I’m only the meat man, the poor blood infantry, the pathologist. I’m only the one who has to come face to face with whatever atrocity someone has brought upon another.”

“So what happened last night?”

He explained with brutal simplicity, “My wife died.”

“That we know. It’s what we don’t know that I need you to tell me, and you’re the only one who can.”

Sam thought for several seconds that he was showing no emotion at all, but then he realized his mistake. Reed’s eyes were aqueous, sparkling despite the gloom of the surroundings. “No one on the outside knows what goes on between four walls.”

“But you were on the inside.”

He sighed, and with perfect timing a single tear tracked down his right cheek. “Yes.”

“So tell me what happened.”

Now he drew in breath, a ragged, almost juddering sound. “I thought it would all be straightforward. I thought that it would be an ending.”

“And isn’t it?”

“No.”

Sam said in a low tone, “It was for your wife.”

Reed seemed surprised that anyone else was in the room. “Yes,” he agreed.

Hannah asked, “How do you feel about that, Phil?”

“How do you expect me to feel? My wife’s dead.”

“Who’s fault is that?”

He even managed to smile. “On the face of it, mine.”

“Is that a confession?”

At which he was given pause. “Ah, thereby is suspended a very interesting tale.”

“Did you kill Kate?”

His reply might have been to a question about the answer to number twenty-one down. “I’ve been thinking long and hard about that. I suppose, taking everything into account, I would have to admit that I bear some responsibility for her death, yes… Yet, no. There was a degree of inevitability about the events that culminated in Kate’s death.”

“So you admit that you slit her wrists?”

He took this, considered it, then admitted, “Yes, she asked me to.”

Sam was incredulous. “She asked you to? She asked you to grab hold of her hands and slice through her wrists?”

“Something like that.”

“And then you sat there? You’re asking us to believe that she was quite happy for you to watch her die?”

Reed protested. “We talked. We remembered the good times that we’d had together.”

Sam had heard stories on Jackanory that were more believable. “You’re asking us to believe that you just sat there while she sat in a bath of water, completely naked, and bled to death?”

“She was my wife. I had seen her sans culottes before.”

“You know what I’m saying.”

“Yes, Detective Sergeant, and I am asking you to believe what I’m saying. I loved Kate. I wouldn’t murder her.”

“Yet you admit that you slit her wrists.”

“That’s right.”

“What reason would she have for suicide? An attractive woman, a happy marriage… it was a happy marriage, wasn’t it?”

Reed smiled. “Are any truly happy?”

“We’re talking about yours.”

Reed looked up at him, tears still bright in his eyes. “Well, since you ask, no it wasn’t… But that wasn’t because we didn’t love each other. Far from it.”