Callow’s frosty gaze softened. She looked past me, and I could almost hear her mind sifting through possible places to interview a hysterical woman.
“There’s a pub at the bottom of The Street in Foxearth—do you know it?” she asked.
A pub? Foxearth?
“You mean The Den?” I asked.
Callow nodded. “The Den.”
Foxearth, a hamlet just down the road from Smeaton-under-Lyme, had only the one pub that I knew of. It sat low in the landscape on a busy bend in the road and was almost indistinguishable from the concrete storage buildings nearby—apart from the glaring neon signs in the small, high windows. Motorbikes usually packed the car park—I’d thought it was some sort of club bar.
“Yeah, I know it.”
“It’s off my patch, you see, and it’s also away from your estate.”
“Ah, neutral ground.”
“I’ll meet you there,” she said. “Thirty minutes?”
“All right,” I said, and she disappeared behind the door that led to the inner workings of the station. I looked down at my TIC uniform; I wasn’t going for a drink at The Den looking like this. And then I remembered my trousers and trainers and pullover sweater I’d worn at Marshy End early that morning—they were stuffed in my bag in the car. I retrieved it, came back into the station, and changed in the public toilet.
—
I pulled into the car park at The Den and squeezed my little Fiat between two enormous black motorbikes, the sort you can hear rumbling down the road long before you see them. No sign of Callow’s Volvo.
Inside, the place was heaving—with bikers, pensioners, couples, a few groups of young women seated out of the fray along the wall. Two children dashed past me and into a larger room. So just a family pub after all. And they must do food as well—I detected a hint of curry in the air. My tummy growled.
“Julia?”
Adrenaline shot through my veins—they must’ve found me, those journos. I backed up and bumped into the door, thinking to flee. I should’ve waited in my car until Callow arrived.
“Julia, over here.”
I cut my eyes left, afraid to acknowledge I’d heard my name. A tall, slender woman wearing a snug black turtleneck sweater, skintight denims, and knee-high boots—her short silver hair swept back on the sides—stood by a table in a corner. She nodded me over. I obeyed.
“Um,” I said, not sure how to talk to a detective inspector who wasn’t in her usual black business suit and who called me by my Christian name. “Hello.”
“I’ll get us drinks, shall I? What will you have?” Ah yes, now I recognized her—brusque, efficient, a let’s-get-on-with-this attitude.
“Thanks. A glass of wine, please.”
Callow raised an eyebrow.
“Oh. White?”
I sat with my back to the wall and watched as she went up to the bar. My gaze shifted past her, and pride swelled in my chest as I noticed a line of bottles on the shelf. I spotted Bugg’s Best Cider—our cider, grown and bottled on the Fotheringill estate by Adam Bugg.
“Wait!” I got up just as a swarm of extremely large men all wearing leather vests and no shirts took a position directly in my path. “Excuse me,” I said. They didn’t move. “Do you mind?” I stuck an elbow in the middle of a protruding stomach and bumped my way through, finally squeezing my face between two bare, hairy arms. “Wait—Tess!”
She turned and frowned.
“I’ll have a cider instead.” I pointed to the bottles. “Bugg’s Best.”
I returned to our table, eyeing a server who passed by carrying two steaming plates of curry. Perhaps I’d order a meal when Callow and I were finished.
She returned with a bottle of Bugg’s Best and a pint of ale.
“Right, who is it?” I asked as she sat on the bench next to me instead of across the table. I didn’t blame her—I wouldn’t want my back to this room, either. “Who’s the leak?”
“No one on my team is leaking information about Mr. Hawkins’s death.”
“Then how do they know?”
Callow took a long drink of her beer. “The general manner of a death is difficult to keep quiet—too many people and departments involved. The forensics team, following leads, uniforms, all the questioning of potential witnesses.”
“Yes, but they said what did Michael do with the knife. Why did they say his name?”
“Speculation,” Callow said. “Unscrupulous, but not unheard of. They look for the worst possible scenario, stretch it past its limits of believability, and try to put those words in your mouth.”
I disagreed—but silently. There was something particularly evil about how those jackals were going about this, as if their real goal was to destroy Michael’s reputation and our relationship. They’d mentioned Dad in their headlines, but Rupert, the celebrity associated rather tangentially with the murder, didn’t seem to be the focus of their unwelcome attention. My mind returned to wonder what Nick had wanted with me—and with Michael—and was that why he was killed?
A shadow fell across the table as a tall man leaned far enough over us that I could see the top of his head where his greasy blond hair had been pulled up into a ball of a ponytail. He had a few wiry hairs on his chin and thick eyebrows that joined in the middle. He leered at Callow.
“How are you this fine evening, Tess?” A cloud of whisky fumes stole all the breathable air from our space.
Callow smiled and shook her head. “I’ve nothing for you tonight, Tommy—I’m only having a drink with a friend.”
Tommy’s head swiveled so that he now loomed over me. “Good evening, Tess’s friend. You’ve chosen a fine establishment in which to enjoy that bottle of…cider, is it?”
“Push off, Tommy,” Callow said in a friendly way.
“Right you are,” he replied amiably. “You ladies enjoy yourselves.”
My mind swelled with questions. Not a police officer. Not a boyfriend—even if Callow had been interested in men, I don’t think she’d be interested in this one. That led to only one answer—an informant. I tried that annoying police technique: I looked at the DI, smiled, and said nothing.
“Police business,” she said at last.
Ah, I was right. Wouldn’t that be handy—to have someone on the inside feeding you the details you needed in order to solve a case. I wouldn’t mind an informant about now—explaining just what I was doing in the middle of an investigation into the murder of a man with whom I hadn’t shared a life even when we were married.
“Have you talked with Nick’s co-workers?” I had a long list of questions, and although I knew Callow would not answer all, perhaps I could annoy her enough that she would answer one or two.
The DI took another drink of her ale and leaned forward, arms resting on the table. “We’ve yet to find them. Emails to the Avian Institute of Learning’s website have not been returned. The few year-round residents verify Mr. Hawkins was one of them, but kept mostly to himself. Two men came out in the summer. They say he left Monday last—five days before he was killed. There was no mobile phone on the body. We’ve asked police from the Western Isles Area Command to go out and search his digs.”
I frantically updated my mental list, amazed that Callow would rattle off answers to questions I hadn’t yet asked.
“We can find very little on the AIL,” the DI continued. “These days, every man jack is able to set himself up as an institute. I want to talk with your father about this—I’ve told him so.”
“Rupert isn’t a suspect.”
“No, we’ve confirmed his whereabouts for Friday, but he may be able to shed light on the Cambridge end of Mr. Hawkins’s life.”
Dad could tell me if he’d found anything. Next topic. “Can you do something about those jackals?” I scrambled for my bag. “I can show you what they look like—I snapped a photo through the TIC window this afternoon.” I called up the photo, held it out to her, and pointed. “It’s the same group all the time. Look—that large fellow, t
he twins—not really, of course, but they’re wearing the same windcheaters—and kitten woman—”
Callow cut her eyes at me. “You’ve named them?”
“Well, she has this handheld recorder with a muff on it to reduce wind noise and her…” Her hands were covered in scratches as if she’d been playing with a kitten. Even I realized how silly that would sound. “Him—the little weasel.” I pointed to the last one, cameras round his neck, waistcoat covered in Velcro pockets. “Today, he actually came in the TIC.”
Callow’s frown was deep. “Did he harass you?”
“I didn’t give him the opportunity. I told him to leave or I’d call the police. That got him moving. Here now, let me send this photo to you.”
“No need, we already have it,” Callow said, and my hand froze in midsearch. “From Mr. Sedgwick.”
My heart thump-thumped. “Michael sent it to you?”
“We’ve CCTV from Sunday afternoon outside the station, where you first saw them,” the DI said, “but these are no local journalists we know of.”
“Michael’s gone away,” I said in a voice so weak even I had trouble hearing it.
“Yes, and I can tell you firsthand he is frustrated at not being here to sort this out for you—to the point he thought he could order the constabulary around, demanding a police guard at your door, insisting we get a no-contact order from the courts.” She picked up her glass and just before taking a drink added, “He sounded fairly miserable.”
“Did he?” I flushed with pleasure at the thought of Michael as miserable as I.
“I warned him off getting involved, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted, saying he could use his family’s PR firm and its connections to try to track down their identities.”
“And so you’ve crossed him off your suspect list, right?”
“He’s a suspect until he isn’t,” Callow said. “We continue to look for evidence to show he left the village only minutes after driving in. Yes, he is being helpful, but”—she leaned back and stuck her booted legs out, crossing her feet—“there have been cases where the murderer is most eager to assist the police and therefore send them off track. Of course, it’s more common in arson, but not unheard of in this situation.”
I leaned forward. “You can’t be serious? Are you telling me that you actually think Michael—or me—capable of this?”
Her gaze shifted to me, and I saw a bit of iciness melt. “No,” she said. “I know the two of you well enough by now, and I have enough sense that I don’t believe that. Too bad, though—we’re remarkably short of suspects.”
My emotions, a tangled-up ball of rubber bands, lodged in my chest. I couldn’t sort out what I truly felt. Michael’s and my conversation had been stilted and caused me such pain, but he’d gone to the police and now was helping them to try to stop those jackals from attacking us—no, not us, me. He’d tried to draw them away and it hadn’t worked, and so he would find another way to protect me.
“Julia?”
I blinked, and remembered where I sat—in a pub with Tess Callow.
“He’s concerned about you.”
Please don’t be nice to me, I thought, blinking again several more times so that reality came into sharp focus. “Not concerned enough to come home,” I said to the table.
Tess looked into her glass as she said, “Sergeant Glossop told me you and Mr. Sedgwick are…separated.”
“We are not separated,” I said hotly. “We’re just not…He thought this would be better until you find out who killed Nick. But it isn’t better at all.”
“Might it have been at all possible that Mr. Hawkins had gone to the estate seeking a reconciliation with you?” She kept a close eye on me but leaned back ever so slightly, as if expecting the explosion.
I bit my tongue to keep control, but I despaired at the number of times I’d had to answer what amounted to the same question: Had Nick wanted you back? Each time, for a split second I would feel a sliver of sheer terror that perhaps they were right, but common sense followed quickly on. The people asking me this question—Tess, SaraJane, Peg, Gwen—they had not known Nick Hawkins. I had, and I knew better.
“I don’t think I explained myself well enough. My marriage to Nick was not…” I wondered how I could put this in words that wouldn’t make me sound like a person deficient in human emotions.
“Happy?” Tess offered.
“It wasn’t happy. It wasn’t unhappy. It was a five-year period of nothingness.” I shrugged. “Look, I may not know who will win the next World Cup, but I am certain about this: Nick did not come down from St. Kilda to profess his undying love and win me back or to challenge Michael for my affections. His life lay elsewhere.”
“Relationships can be complicated,” Tess replied, and drank her beer.
“How’s Chloe?” I threw the question out there more to deflect than to enquire.
She cut her eyes at me and away. I steeled myself for a police rebuke, but she softened. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, feeling like a heel. “She seemed quite nice.”
Tess shrugged her shoulder and glanced toward the pub door when it opened. We heard the rumble of a motorbike.
At the sound, I made the connection—right, no black Volvo parked outside. “Is one of those enormous things out there yours?” I asked.
“I keep meaning to sell the thing; it’s a holdover. Chloe’s favorite way to travel.”
How odd. I could almost be having fun, girls’ night out, commiserating about relationships. My nose went on high alert as another plate of food passed by. I took a tiny leap of faith.
“Look, I’m starving—how’s the food here?”
“All right, I suppose—but I’d steer clear of the curry if I were you.”
—
I ordered two fish suppers at the bar and returned with a second pint for Tess and another cider for me. We began a cautious conversation, which sounded remotely like two new friends.
“…And just about the time I moved back home—after Nick and I split—Dad reached an agreement with the BBC about the television program, so I added producer to the list of responsibilities as Rupert’s PA.”
“Do you think Mr. Hawkins’s coworkers are also from Cambridge—that he met them at university?”
Tess asked this casually as she scraped her plate clean, and I realized that the conversation had been heavy on my end and light on hers, and that this counted as just another form of questioning. DI Callow couldn’t put work down even when she wanted to.
“Possibly,” I said, “or from one of his bird groups. They were all scientists—a bit too intense for me, so I didn’t participate.” The only other person I’d known as extreme about birds as Nick was Gavin Lecky, a twitcher—someone who would go to the ends of the earth for a rare sighting. But Gavin was far from the emotional void that described Nick’s entire personality; Gavin was hotheaded and passionate about his desires.
—
I arrived back to my Pipit Cottage and ignored the silent cold, instead making myself hot cocoa and pulling out my laptop. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t look at the tabloid headlines. I wanted to be sure I hadn’t missed anything from Dad’s schedule before I sent it to him and we went over it by phone the next day.
boyfriend runs from bloody scene!
did julia set her lover up?
you’ll never have her, cried murderer!
Well, maybe for only one second.
When, eventually, I found it difficult to lift my hands to the keyboard, I remembered that I’d been awake since four o’clock that morning. I dragged myself up the stairs and stripped. Pulling on Michael’s T-shirt, I fell into bed.
But my mind had other ideas. Smeaton’s Summer Supper—organizational meeting tomorrow evening. Update the estate’s website. Review film Basil—now associate producer extraordinaire—had sent me. Was the studio booked for Dad’s voice-overs?
Michael was looking out for me.
I
slept.
—
We walked the dunes at Minsmere, the wind off the sea bending the grass, sending the hood on my mackintosh straight up and Michael’s hair into his eyes. Clouds scuttered across the sky. With the sea on our left and the sluice ahead of us, we walked in and out of the line of enormous concrete blocks left over from East Anglia’s coastal defenses during the Second World War. We meandered along, observing a flock of lapwings soaring inland toward the scrape, pausing to watch the konik ponies grazing at the edge of the reed beds. Mostly we took note of each other—Michael wrapped his arms round me from behind and whispered things in my ear. Lovely words.
I awoke to the darkness of my cottage and a sound. What sound? I listened and heard a thunk and a scraping. Last year, the cottage door wouldn’t open well and the bottom scraped across the stone floor, but it had been repaired. Would the door make that sound again?
“Michael?”
Silence. I held my breath, crept out of bed, and stood on the landing. Below me, nothing moved. I could see everything—the outline of furniture, the kitchen, the French doors to the back garden—the benefits of living in a tiny space. I could see the front door, closed and chained as I had left it.
A car motored by and I jumped, then sank weakly onto the top step, pulling Michael’s T-shirt over my knees. I had been dreaming of Michael, and when I awoke, I thought he’d come back. But no, I was still alone. I returned to bed and stared at the ceiling, waiting for the blackbird to begin its predawn song. At some point I fell back asleep, only to be awakened at six o’clock by actual noise—someone beating on my door and shouting my name.
“Ms. Lanchester! Julia? Are you in there?”
I ran down the stairs. The beating continued, but I paused with my hand hovering over the chain, the stone floor cold underfoot and a chill creeping up my bare legs.
“Who is it?”
“Sergeant Glossop, Ms. Lanchester—are you all right? Can you open the door?”
“Of course I can open the door,” I said, but my voice shook. I dropped the chain and turned the latch as the worst possible events crowded into my mind, each vying for top billing. Dad, Michael, Linus—who, what?
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