Suddenly he had a hundred per cent of Sanjar Aziz’s attention. ‘You saying it wasn’t Yousef that did this?’
‘No, I think it’s pretty clear that he did it. But I don’t think he did it for the reasons everybody is assuming. I think you can maybe help me understand why this happened.’ Tony gestured with his head towards the waiting taxi. ‘We can go somewhere and talk about it.’
Sanjar looked up at his home, where a white-suited forensic technician had just emerged with another plastic bag. He turned back to Tony, who felt he was being appraised. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to you.’
Dorothy Cross poured coffee from a silver pot into bone china cups decorated with roses whose exact shade of pink was picked up in the several patterns that adorned the walls. Two different wallpapers, one above and one below the dado rail, the curtains, the carpets, the loveseat, the two sofas and the scatter cushions each had a different pattern but they were united by toning shades of pink and burgundy. Carol felt as if she’d been sucked into one of those medical dramas where the camera journeys through internal organs. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation.
Dorothy stopped pouring and gave the two cups a critical look. Then she added a teaspoonful more coffee to one of them. Satisfied, she passed it to Carol. She pushed the silver milk jug and sugar bowl towards her then looked up with the desperate little smile of someone who is trying to keep herself from exploding into fragments. ‘It’s cream,’ she said. ‘Not milk. Tom likes cream in his coffee. Liked.’ She frowned. ‘Liked. I have to keep remembering. Liked, not likes.’ Her chin quivered.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Carol said.
The look Dorothy flashed her was sharp as a shard of glass. ‘Are you? Are you really? I thought the two of you never got on.’
‘It doesn’t make any odds to me, DCI Jordan. What matters to me is that I’ve lost him.’ It took both hands for her to raise her cup to her lips. It was strange to see such a big, solid woman reduced to fragility. But Carol could see the signs of her unravelling. Her shampoo-and-set hair was strangely asymmetrical, her lipstick line a little smudged. ‘He filled this house with his personality, and he filled my life the same way. We met when we were only seventeen, you know. I don’t think either of us has seriously looked at anybody else since. I feel like I’ve lost half of myself. What it’s like is that whenever one of you forgets some detail from the past, the other remembers it. What am I going to do without him?’ Her eyes were bright with tears, her breath catching in her throat.
‘I can’t imagine,’ Carol said.
‘It makes no sense, you know.’ She kept touching her wedding ring with the tip of her right index finger. Again, she flashed Carol that incisive look. ‘I’m not stupid. I know there must have been plenty wanted him dead at one time or another. People he’d arrested, people he’d got across. But why now? Why seven years after he left the force? I’m sorry, I just don’t believe anybody stays angry for that long. And the sort of people he put away? They’re not poisoners. If one of them was going to come after them, it would have been a shotgun on the doorstep.’
‘I couldn’t agree with you more. I’ll be honest with you, Mrs Cross. We think this might be part of a wider investigation, but I can’t tell you what that is right now.’ Carol took a sip of the excellent coffee. ‘I know you’ll appreciate how it is.’
Dorothy looked pained, as if she didn’t like the idea of her husband’s death not being a unique event. ‘I want whoever did this to be caught and punished, DCI Jordan. I’m not bothered about any other investigation you’re dealing with.’
‘I understand that. And Tom’s death is our number one priority.’
Dorothy reared up in her seat, considerable bosom heaving, and looked down her nose at Carol. ‘You expect me to believe that? With thirty-five dead at Victoria Park?’
Carol put her cup down and looked Dorothy straight in the eye. ‘They’ve taken that away from us. That’s up to Counter Terrorism Command. We’re concentrating on Tom’s death and I have to tell you that, when it comes to investigating murder, my team has no equal.’
Dorothy subsided slightly. But being Tom Cross’s wife for the best part of forty years had left its mark. ‘They’d never have dared take the Bradfield bombing off my Tom. He’d have given John Brandon what for,’ she said, making it plain what she thought of Carol and Brandon both.
Carol told herself she was dealing with a grief-stricken widow. It wasn’t the time to debate Tom Cross’s views on policing. ‘I was hoping you could help me with Tom’s movements yesterday,’ she said.
Dorothy stood up. ‘I knew you’d want to know about it, so I looked it out for you. I’ll be right back.’ She bustled out of the room. Carol couldn’t help thinking that if there were to be a biopic of Tom Cross’s life, you’d have to cast Patricia Routledge as his wife.
Dorothy came back with a sheet of paper and handed it to Carol. While she poured more coffee, Carol read a letter from the head teacher of Harriestown High, asking Tom Cross to act as security consultant for a fundraiser. At the bottom of the letter, Cross had jotted the name Jake Andrews next to a phone number and the name of a restaurant. Beneath that, in a different pen but in the same hand, he’d written Saturday’s date, the name of a pub in Temple Fields, and ‘1 p.m.’.
‘Do you know who Jake Andrews is?’ Carol said.
‘He was organizing the fundraiser. Tom said it was going to be at Pannal Castle. Him and Jake had lunch a couple of weeks back in that fancy French place round the back of The Maltings. They were meeting in the Campion Locks pub yesterday then going on to Jake’s flat for lunch. Do you think that’s when it happened?’ Dorothy said. ‘Is Jake dead as well? Were you investigating him?’
This is the first time I’ve heard his name. Do you know his address?’
Dorothy shook her head. ‘According to Tom, they were meeting in the Campion Locks because Jake’s flat is hard to find. He told Tom it would be easier if they met in the pub then walked round to his place.’
Carol tried not to let her disappointment show. This case was full of frustrations. Every time they had something approaching a lead, it frittered out. ‘Is there anything else Tom said about Jake Andrews?’
Dorothy thought for a moment, stroking her chin in a peculiar gesture that reminded Carol of a man caressing a
