I realize I’m making it sound like we were Ocean’s Eleven, assembling our crew, one by one, for the heist of the century, but we stopped at four.

And the idea of crime of any description never entered my head. Though I suppose I can only speak for myself.

7

27 December 2019

Two young female tourists swish by in biker boots and bobble hats, glancing appreciatively at DC Merchison, and I’m thinking he’s actually a bit of a dude. He’s got a certain poise, an unshockable way about him that reminds me just a little of Kit. If I wasn’t already confident of my own innocence on Monday night, I could easily be lulled into a false sense of security by someone like this – or, rather, a false confession.

Because this isn’t one of those stories of murder dispensed in drunken blackouts or PTSD fugues. I am one hundred per cent confident I did nothing wrong at Monday night’s drinks, other than knock back a bit more than planned, and if we’re going to call that a crime then this city’s going to need a couple of million more police cells.

‘Did Mr Roper confide in you about any worries he might have at the moment?’ Merchison asks.

This is easy. Everyone knows what Kit worries about most. ‘Yes, he’s got money troubles.’

The detective gestures for me to elaborate.

‘Debts. Student loans, and more recent loans as well. Even though he’s on a good salary, he spends every penny he earns and complains he’ll never be able to get on the property ladder.’

‘He’s shared details of his salary?’

‘Well, no, but it’s sure to be decent. He works for a big insurance firm and the benefits package alone is supposed to be fantastic. You’ve spoken to them, presumably? He’s meant to be in work today, I think.’

‘We will be in touch with his employer shortly,’ Merchison says, as if to dispel my fears, but in fact merely confirming that I am not only a priority over Kit’s other commuter mates, but also ahead of his colleagues. I make a painful attempt to gulp, but my saliva glands seem to have failed. God knows where Parry’s gone to get the coffee. Has he left town? I should have sent him to the Comfort Zone for the Indonesian guest bean that’s been so popular this month. I imagine Regan serving him, ignorant of the connection.

Then it strikes me that he might be taking his time because he’s making a phone call about me – or receiving one. Maybe he’s sent someone to hammer on the door of Mariners and take a look at the late-night footage from Monday. Good. But, wait, what if there’s a problem viewing the material? What if the camera wasn’t working that night for some reason and there’s literally no evidence that I walked home alone?

Aware of the expanding silence, I refocus. ‘Anyway, recently, he’s become fixated on me. He can’t bear that I get to live in a great house and he doesn’t, even though mine is actually my partner Clare’s and in reality I’ve got as little as he has. But he doesn’t see it that way, he thinks I’ve got it made. He resents Clare, as well. He was very rude to her the last time we all went out.’ I give a hollow chuckle. ‘I mean, if you can’t handle the idea of inherited wealth, then London’s really not the place for you, is it?’

DC Merchison observes me with increased attention. ‘You’re sure the resentment towards you is in relation to your perceived differences in financial assets?’

‘What do you mean?’

He pauses, gives the impression that he’s choosing his words with special care. Then he moves fractionally closer, a little gesture of discretion, though there is clearly no one to overhear us. ‘You should know that Mrs Roper has been very honest with us. She understands we need the full picture if we’re going to find her husband. Holding back important information only wastes time and you’re probably aware that in a missing-persons investigation you really don’t want to waste time.’

‘Oh. Right. Okay.’ My tone is as wary as my gaze.

‘You mentioned Mr Roper might have continued drinking at this bar, Mariners, and possibly gone home with a woman other than his wife. Assuming this was the case, is it possible he might have done it as some sort of tit for tat?’

Inside my cuffs, my fingers clench. ‘Tit for tat? You mean towards Melia?’ Unexpectedly flooded with shame, I meet his eye. ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose it might be that.’

‘So you and Mrs Roper . . .’

‘Please, can we just call her Melia.’

‘You and Melia,’ he says, agreeably. And he angles his head as if to appraise me afresh, to assess whether I’m plausibly appealing enough for a woman of her calibre. There’s a flicker in his gaze and I imagine him thinking, Yes, I can just about see it.

‘When exactly did you start sleeping together?’ he asks.

8

March 2019

I’m really attracted to you, Jamie . . .

It was so simple a seduction, so direct. My response? So predictable. Frankly, I never expected to hear words like these from my long-term mate, much less from a wildly attractive younger woman.

We’d known each other six weeks or so by then and were together once more as a four, this time at Kit and Melia’s place on Tiding Street. Just before it could start to be conspicuous by its absence, a dinner invitation had come for a Saturday night in March.

They’d spoken of their flat as a hovel, but it was no different from the first flats of my own youth, albeit at a vastly inflated rent (Clare knew the going rate off the top of her head: eighteen hundred a month). The difference was that I’d been quite content with such accommodation at their age; I’d scarcely given it a thought from one month to the next.

The sitting room was dominated by an acid-yellow velvet sofa, a raft of vivid colour in the ocean of rental neutrals. Whatever had been at the window had been torn down, an exhibitionist move on their part in a street this narrow or perhaps simply an act of negligence by their landlord. Other than the flowers we’d brought – purple tulips, with some sort of foliage that smelled of the woods – a framed Spanish poster for the movie Niagara was the only decoration, its star pictured lips parted, mid-protest.

‘Who’s the Marilyn fan?’ I asked.

‘Who isn’t the Marilyn fan?’ Melia said. She wore a zipped floral jumpsuit of mauve and buttercup-yellow and high cork-soled platforms that would have looked ludicrous on anyone else but on her looked, well, ravishing. ‘Kit bought me that for Christmas,’ she added.

Vintage posters were not cheap, I thought.

There were few personal items in evidence. Clare and I had dozens of photographs and spent a fortune on frames, but our hosts had only one (I supposed their memories were mostly digital). It was of a group of actors in front of a plantation house set, a baby-faced Melia, dressed in a slip dress, identifiable in the centre.

‘Was this your fifteen minutes of fame?’ I asked her.

‘Sure was. Guess the play.’

‘It’s got to be Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?’

‘Very good! I played Maggie. Rich but unfulfilled.’ Adopting a sultry Southern accent, she added, ‘I should be so lucky.’

‘You pull off the Liz Taylor styling pretty well.’

‘Thank you. Sadly, we didn’t get to keep the costumes.’ Her gaze lingered, and I suppose mine must have too for me to know hers had.