‘I don’t know. But I don’t have to explain it to you.’
‘You’re upset that your husband dies so what do you do? Weep and mourn? No. Get your life together? No. Talk things through with friends? No. See a counsellor? No.’
‘I have actually seen a -’
‘You pretend to be your own best friend and dabble in half-baked conspiracy theories – oh, Jesus. It defies belief. And where did it get you? Greg’s still dead. He still died in the car with a woman who liked having affairs with married men. Have you unearthed some deep plot?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘And now somebody’s died. What are you doing about that?’ He put his head into his hands, breathing deeply.
‘I don’t need help. I’m going to the police.’
‘You haven’t been to the police yet?’
‘No.’
‘I can drive you there now.’ Gwen stood up, placing both hands flat on the table to steady herself.
‘For Christ’s sake, you can’t drive anywhere,’ said Joe. ‘Why on earth haven’t you been to the police, Ellie?’
‘I was scared and stunned. I know I should. It’s all so complicated.’
He leaned back in his chair. He seemed so shocked that the fight had gone out of him.
‘I don’t know what it all means,’ I said. ‘Greg and Milena, and then Frances.’
‘Why does it have to mean anything except an unholy mess?’
‘I’m so tired, Joe.’ Having him there being so angry and fatherly made me feel younger and more foolish. Tears came to my eyes. ‘Maybe that’s the reason I haven’t been yet – I’m so very tired of thinking about all of it.’
‘Oh, Ell.’ Joe got up and crouched beside me, taking both my hands in his. ‘Of course you’re tired. I tell you what, leave it for tonight. Go tomorrow. I’ll take you myself, if you want.’
‘Will you?’
‘Yes.’
Then the phone rang again and at first I let the answering-machine take the call, but when I heard Fergus’s voice, I ran to pick it up.
‘Fergus? Has labour started?’
‘It’s nothing like that, Ellie. I’ve just seen some news online. It’s the weirdest thing. You know that woman in the car with Greg? Well, her partner -’
‘Fergus,’ I cut him short, ‘there’s something you should know…’
Later, when I’d finished talking to a stunned and stuttering Fergus, and Joe had gone home, leaving an enormous rowing-machine in the middle of the living room, Gwen said, ‘So why didn’t you feel able to confide in me?’
She was sitting on the sofa, her legs curled up under her, floppily relaxed and moving in a slightly uncoordinated way. Daniel was coming to take her home; she could collect her car the next day, when the whisky had worn off.
I hesitated. ‘I don’t know exactly. I think I didn’t want anyone to tell me that what I was doing was wrong. I knew it was wrong, and stupid, and maybe even a bit unhinged, or a lot unhinged, but I didn’t intend to stop. I’m sorry, though.’
‘And now?’
‘Now I’ve honestly got no idea what I think about a single thing. She was nice, though.’
‘The woman who was killed?’
‘Frances, yes. She came from an entirely different world and I would never have met her in the ordinary run of things – she was rich and stylish and ironic, and had that well-bred, well-groomed English reticence. But in spite of that I liked her. She was good to me. And I don’t understand why she’s dead. And I don’t understand why someone wanted me to think Greg was having an affair with Milena. I don’t understand at all.’
Chapter Twenty-six
I wasn’t sure which police station to go to, but I knew it would be bad either way, and it was. I went to see WPC Darby because I hoped she might be sympathetic to me, knowing me as a grieving widow. When she greeted me, I noticed the wary expression people adopt when they open their door to someone trying to give them a pamphlet about a fringe religion. But she sat me down and gave me some tea. I started to explain why I was there and her expression changed from wariness to puzzlement, then from puzzlement to what looked like alarm. She hushed me and almost rushed out of the room.
She returned five minutes later and asked if I could follow her. She led me through a door and into a room that was bare, except for a table and three orange plastic chairs. She sat me down and stood awkwardly by the door. I told her she didn’t need to stay but she said it was all right. It looked as if she had been told to stay with me and also not to say anything more. So I sat and she stood and we spent ten awful minutes avoiding each other’s eyes until the door opened and a detective came in. I recognized him as Detective Inspector Carter, the one I had talked to before. He didn’t even sit down.
‘WPC Darby tells me that you found the body of Mrs Frances Shaw.’
‘That’s right,’ I said.
‘And you called it in?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anonymously.’
‘Yes.’
‘Any particular reason for that?’
‘Kind of,’ I said.
He held up his hand to stop me. ‘It’s not our patch,’ he said. ‘I need to phone the Stockwell lads. You’ll have to wait here for a bit, if that’s all right.’
He was just being polite. I don’t think I had a choice. WPC Darby brought me a newspaper and another cup of tea, and I flicked through the pages without taking anything in. It was almost an hour before two more detectives, a man and a woman, came in and sat opposite me. WPC Darby left but DI Carter stood to one side, leaning against the wall. The man introduced himself as Detective Chief Inspector Stuart Ramsay and his colleague as Detective Inspector Bosworth. She opened her bag and took out a bulky machine, which she placed on the table between us. She loaded it with two cassette tapes and switched it on. She said the date and time and identified everybody present, then sat back.
‘The reason we’re being so formal,’ said Ramsay, ‘is that you have already made admissions that lay you open to being charged with a criminal offence. And that’s just to be getting on with. So, it’s important that, before you say anything else, we make clear that you’re entitled to legal representation. If you don’t have a lawyer, we can obtain one for you.’
‘I’m not bothered,’ I said.
‘Does that mean you don’t want a lawyer?’
‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘No.’
‘And you need to understand that anything you say in this and later interviews can be used as evidence and introduced in court.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘So how can I help you?’
The two looked at each other as if they didn’t know quite what to make of me.
‘For a start,’ said Ramsay, ‘you can tell us what the hell you were playing at, leaving a crime scene, interfering with a police inquiry?’
‘It’s a complicated story,’ I said.
‘Then you’d better start telling it,’ said Ramsay.
I had promised myself I would leave nothing out, make no attempt to justify myself or explain things away. I’m not used to telling stories and I started from the murder and worked backwards, and in other directions as well, when necessary, or when I remembered something that seemed relevant. When I first said I’d been working for Frances under an assumed name DI Bosworth’s jaw dropped, like that of a character expressing surprise in a silent movie.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Ramsay. ‘I didn’t quite get that. What did you say?’
‘It’s probably easiest if I tell you everything and then you ask questions about what you don’t understand.’
Ramsay started to say something, then stopped and gestured to me to go on. As I meandered through the story, I felt as if I was talking about the misadventures of someone I didn’t really know – a distant cousin or a friend of a friend – whom I didn’t much care for and certainly didn’t understand. When I got on to the subject of Milena dying in the car accident with Greg and how I’d read her emails and how she had also had an affair with Frances’s husband, David, Ramsay’s head sank slowly into his hands. I then told him that Frances had confided in me that she, too, had had an affair.