Stephen Spencer was hunched up at the end of one of the sofas, surrounded by framed photographs of Richard Pryce, himself and the two of them together. He was wearing a crumpled linen shirt, pale blue corduroys and loafers. He must have been in his early thirties, about ten years younger than his husband, and would have been good-looking if his eyes weren’t swollen with tears, his cheeks red and his fair hair flattened down and damp. He was very slim with a swan-like neck that emphasised his Adam’s apple. He was holding a handkerchief in one hand and I noticed he wore a gold band on his wedding finger, identical to the one I had seen in the picture of Richard Pryce that Hawthorne had shown me.
The room had become quite crowded with the five of us in it. DI Grunshaw plumped herself down on the other sofa, her legs apart. Hawthorne went over to the window. I stood next to the door with my shoulders against the wall, deliberately hiding the embroidery on the back of my jacket. Darren had followed us in. He was standing in a very casual sort of pose, ostentatiously holding a notebook and pen.
‘How are you feeling, Mr Spencer?’ Grunshaw asked. She was trying to be sympathetic but her words were forced and condescending, as if she were talking to a child who had just fallen over and scratched his knee in the playground.
‘I still can’t believe it,’ Spencer said, his voice thick with grief. He clutched the handkerchief tighter than ever. ‘I saw him on Friday. I said goodbye to him. I never dreamed—’ He broke off.
Darren scribbled all that down.
‘You have to understand that we have to talk to you now,’ Grunshaw went on, none too delicately. ‘The sooner we can get the answers to our questions, the sooner we can begin our investigations.’
He nodded but said nothing.
‘You said you’d just come back from Suffolk . . .’
‘From Essex. Clacton-on-Sea. We have a second home.’ He gestured at a photograph. It showed a white, pocket-sized building, 1930s in style with curving balconies and a flat roof. It didn’t look real.
‘Why were you on your own?’
Spencer swallowed. ‘Richard didn’t want to come. He said he had too much work. Also, he had someone coming to the house on Saturday afternoon. I was visiting my mother. She’s in a nursing home in Frinton.’
‘I’m sure she was pleased to see you.’
‘She has Alzheimer’s. She probably doesn’t even remember I was there.’
‘When did you leave?’
‘After breakfast. I cleaned the house and locked up. I suppose it must have been about eleven o’clock this morning.’
‘You didn’t call Mr Pryce before you left?’
Darren had been scribbling the details down in his notebook but now he paused with the pen over the page. Meanwhile, I’d taken out my iPhone – Hawthorne had been right about that, by the way: I’d picked it up from my flat on the way over – and quietly turned it on. I wondered if it might be illegal to record a police interview. I supposed I’d find out in time.
‘I did try. Yes. But I got no answer.’ Spencer brought the handkerchief up again, screwing it into the corner of his eye. ‘He should have been with me. We’ve been together for nine years. We do everything together. We bought the house together. I can’t believe that anyone would do this to him. I mean, Richard was one of the kindest men in the world.’
‘Do you always take Monday morning off?’ Grunshaw’s voice was unemotional now. Everything about her – the way she sat, her heavy plastic spectacles, her black, pudding-basin hairstyle – could have been designed to remove any sense of empathy.
Spencer nodded. ‘We never take the A12 on a Sunday evening. There’s too much traffic. If Richard had been with me, we’d have left at the crack of dawn. He was always focused on his work. But I’m my own boss. I have an art gallery in Bury Street, just round the corner from Christie’s. We specialise in early twentieth-century art.’ That explained the Gills and the Ravilious. ‘We’re open Tuesday to Saturday so on Monday I work from home.’
‘You spoke to Mr Pryce last night.’ Grunshaw picked up the thread again.
‘Yes. I rang him at about eight o’clock.’
‘How can you be so sure of the time?’
‘It was the twenty-seventh yesterday and the clocks had gone back. I’d just finished going round the house and I rang on my mobile.’ He took it out and thumbed a few buttons, checking his call register. ‘Here you are!’ he exclaimed. ‘Eight o’clock exactly.’
‘Get a decent signal in Clacton?’ That was Hawthorne, speaking for the first time, on the edge of hostile. But there was nothing new about that.
Stephen Spencer ignored him.
‘Can you tell us what your husband said during your conversation?’ Grunshaw asked.
‘He asked me what I’d been doing. We talked about the weather and about Mum . . . the usual sort of thing. He sounded a bit down. He said he was still worried about the case he’d been working on.’
‘What case was that?’
‘It was a divorce case. I’m sure you’ve heard that Richard was a divorce lawyer, a very successful one. He had just represented a property developer called Adrian Lockwood. His wife was that writer . . . you know . . . Akira . . .’ Her second name had slipped from his mind.
‘Akira Anno,’ I said.
‘That’s right.’ His eyes widened as he suddenly remembered. ‘You know that she threatened him. She came up to him in a restaurant and she threw wine at him. I was there!’
‘What exactly happened?’
‘I should have told you immediately. I don’t know why I didn’t. But coming home this morning and finding the police here and Richard . . .’
He paused, collecting himself, then continued.
‘We were having dinner together at The Delaunay in Aldwych. This would have been last Monday, a week ago. It was Richard’s favourite restaurant and we often met there after work . . . it was sort of convenient for both of us and then we’d get a taxi home. Anyway, we’d just finished eating when I saw this woman coming over, passing between the tables. She was short, Japanese-looking, and I didn’t recognise her. There was another woman with her, just behind.
‘Anyway, she stopped at our table and Richard looked up. Of course, he knew who she was at once but he didn’t seem particularly disturbed. He muttered something polite, “Can I help you?” or something, and she looked down at him with this weird little smile on her face. She was wearing tinted glasses. “You’re a pig!” Those were her opening words. She said something about the divorce, how unfair it had been. And then she reached down and picked up my wine glass. I’d been drinking red wine and we’d finished the meal but there were still a couple of inches left. For a crazy moment, I thought she was going to drink it but instead she threw it all over his head. Richard had wine on his face and on his shirt. It was outrageous. I thought we should call the police but he didn’t want to make a scene. He just wanted to leave.’
‘What else did she say?’
‘Well, that’s the thing. Immediately after she’d thrown the wine she put the glass down and said something about how really she wished she could hit him with a bottle.’ Spencer stopped as the significance of what he had just described caught up with him. ‘Oh my God! That was how he was killed, wasn’t it!’ His hands flew out, one on each side of his head. ‘She told him she was going to do it!’
‘We’re not jumping to any conclusions, Mr Spencer,’ Grunshaw said.
‘What do you mean, you’re not jumping to conclusions? She confessed. She admitted it. There were a dozen witnesses.’
‘Did he mention her name when the two of you were on the phone on Sunday night?’
Spencer thought back. ‘No. He didn’t say her name. But he did refer to her. I knew the case had been on his mind . . . he’d talked about it a bit when we were at The Delaunay, although he was very discreet; he never gave me any details. Anyway, one thing he did say when we were on the phone was that he’d spoken to Oliver. That’s Oliver Masefield. They were both senior partners at the firm . . . Masefield Pryce Turnbull. I was going to ask him about that when the doorbell went.’