“Don’t act the innocent, love. We both know his form. Was he armed when he left here?”
“Course he wasn’t. He’s going straight since he got out.”
It was time to get real. “There was an armed raid at a sub-post office yesterday and a man died.”
“The postmaster?”
“No, the robber. It’s just possible he was Jack Soames. We’re checking on everyone we know.”
“Oh, my God!”
“Would you be willing to come to the hospital and tell us if it’s him?”
Zara looked, squeezed her eyes shut, and looked again. I watched her. She was easier to look at than the corpse.
“That’s him, poor lamb.”
“Jack Soames? You’re certain?”
“Positive.”
I nodded to the mortuary assistant, who covered the dead face again.
Outside, I thanked Zara and asked her where she wanted me to drive her.
She asked, “Will I have to move out of Jack’s place?”
“Who paid the rent?”
“He did.”
“Then I reckon you will.”
“I can go to me Mum’s place. What killed him?”
“We’ll find out this afternoon, when they do the PM.”
In her grief, she got a bit sentimental. “I used to call him Jack the Robber. Like… ” Her voice trailed off.
I nodded. “So you knew he was an ex-con?”
“That was only through the toffee-nosed bitch he married.” Zara twisted her mouth into the shape of a cherry-stone. “Felicity. She claimed she didn’t know she was married to a bank robber. Where did she think the folding stuff was coming from? She was supposed to give him an alibi and she ratted on him. He done four years through her.”
“And when he came out he met you.”
“Worse luck.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I tried to console her. “It’s not your fault he went back to crime, is it?”
She didn’t answer, so I decided not to go up that avenue.
She said, “What did he want to do a piddling post office for?”
I shrugged.
“Where did you say it was?”
“Five Lanes.”
“Never heard of it. He told me he was going up the Benefits Office.”
“It’s a village three miles out. That’s where he was at nine-fifteen yesterday.”
“Get away,” said Zara, pulling a face. “He was still in bed with me at nine- fifteen.”
“That can’t be true, Zara.”
She was outraged. “You accusing me of lying?”
“Maybe you were asleep. You just thought he was beside you.”
“Asleep? We was at it like knives. He was something else after a good night’s sleep, was Jack.” The gleam in her big blue eyes carried total conviction. “It must have been all of ten o’clock before he left the house.”
“
“No way.”
“How do you know?”
“Me watch.”
“It must be wrong.”
She looked down at her wrist. “How come it’s showing the same time as the clock in your car?”
My boss was unimpressed. “Why is she lying?”
“I’m not sure she is,” I told him.
“How can you believe her, dickhead, when you saw the body yourself at just after nine-twenty-five?”
“She’s got nothing to gain from telling lies.”
“She’s muddled about the time. She was in no state to check if they were humping each other.”
“She’s very clear about it, guv.”
“Get this in your brain, will you? Jack Soames was dead by nine-twenty.”
“Would you like to talk to her yourself?”
“No, I bloody wouldn’t. You say she identified the body?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then.”
I had to agree. Something was wrong with Zara’s memory.
Horgan made the first constructive suggestion I’d heard from him. “Find the wife. She’s the next of kin. She’ll need to identify him.”
I didn’t fancy visiting that mortuary again, but he was right. I traced Felicity Soames routinely through the register of electors, a slight, tired-looking woman in her fifties, who lived alone in a semi on the outskirts of Salisbury and worked as a civil servant. She was not much like the vindictive creature Zara had portrayed.
“I don’t want any more to do with him,” she said at first. “We separated.”
“But you’re not divorced?”
“Not yet.”
“Then you’re still the next of kin.”
For the second time that morning, I stood well back while the mortuary assistant went through the formalities.
Felicity confirmed that the body was her husband’s.
Zara’s steamy sex with Jack that Monday morning was beginning to look like a fantasy, but I couldn’t forget the sparkle in her eyes as she spoke of it.
“Right, son,” said Johnny Horgan when I told him I had lingering doubts. “There’s one final check you can make. The post-mortem is at two. I’m not going to make it myself. Frankly, it’s not high priority any more, one old robber who dropped dead.”
My knees went weak. “You want me to…?”
He grinned. “There’s a first time for everything. Have an early lunch. I wouldn’t eat too much, though.”
“I’m sure the body is Jack Soames,” I said. “I don’t really need to be there.”
“You do, lad. You’re standing in for me. Oh, and make sure they take a set of fingerprints.”
My hand shook as I held my mug of tea in the mortuary office, and that was
“So you’re the police presence?” Dr Leggatt, the pathologist, said with a dubious look at me.
