local TV news. He remembered him turning up at the caravan park one night with a puncture. Carson had insisted on helping him change his tyre, in spite of the man’s insistence that he’d be fine. He particularly remembered the bale of clear polythene, the pack of black bin bags and rolls of duct tape in the back of the Volvo estate, because they’d had to move them to get at the spare tyre.
A woman couldn’t ask for much more, really. Carol lay on her back and stretched like a starfish. There was a soft thud and then a smoochy tickle in her ear. ‘Nelson,’ she said affectionately, scratching her cat behind the ear. He purred and head-butted her. ‘OK,’ she grumbled. ‘I’ll feed you.’
Her two mobiles, personal and work, were lying on the worktop above the cutlery drawer. As she took out a spoon, she noticed there was a message on her own phone: Brkfst? Txt me whn u get ths, Im up. Tx
She checked the clock. She’d been right first time, it was only quarter past six. It wasn’t like Tony to be up and about at this hour. Carol hadn’t noticed him leave the restaurant but she knew it had been pretty early in the impromptu party. She’d looked for him around nine, when they’d been ordering some food. But he’d been nowhere to be seen. She’d asked Paula, the person most likely to notice his departure, but she’d been too wrapped up in Elinor Blessing. Which was a good thing, naturally, but inconvenient right then.
She dished up Nelson’s food and texted back: Ur place or cafe?
Mine. I can haz sausages and eggs.
haf hour. She put the kettle on and headed for the shower.
Thirty-five minutes later, showered, dressed, Nurofen-ed and marginally caffeinated, she climbed the stairs from her basement flat to his house. The connecting door was already unlocked and she found him in the kitchen, pulling a tray of sausages from the oven and inspecting them suspiciously. ‘I think they need another five minutes,’ he said. ‘Which is just long enough to do the eggs.’ He waved at the coffee machine. ‘That’s ready to roll, do you want to help yourself? ‘
She did. While he whisked the eggs in the pan, she made lattes for them both and carried them to the table. ‘I can’t believe you’re up at this time, and with the makings of a proper breakfast,’ she added, noticing the plate of toasted crumpets dripping with butter.
‘I’ve been up all night,’ he said. ‘I went for a walk and the supermarket was open and I needed to talk to you, so I thought, breakfast.’
Carol pounced on the key part of his reply. ‘You need to talk to me? Don’t tell me you think there’s a problem with Diane Patrick?’
‘No, no, nothing like that,’ he said impatiently, plating the eggs and getting the sausages out. He put a plate of food in front of her with a flourish. Carol tried not to shudder. ‘There you go. Free-range eggs and local sausages.’
‘I can’t remember the last time you cooked for me,’ she said, gingerly trying the eggs. They were better than she expected.
‘No,’ he said, considering. ‘Me neither.’ He wolfed down a sausage and half his eggs. ‘This is good,’ he said, sounding surprised. ‘I should do this more often.’
Carol was making slow but steady progress. ‘So what do you need to talk to me about?’
‘You have to listen to something. But let’s finish eating first.’
‘This is very intriguing,’ she said.
‘It’ll blow your socks off,’ he said, suddenly sombre. ‘And not in a good way.’
Carol forced the rest of her food down and pushed her plate away. ‘I’m done,’ she said. ‘Wedged.’
‘Well done for a woman who walked in gripped by the hangover from the outskirts of hell,’ Tony said drily, taking the plates away. He came back with the recorder and the headphones. ‘This is what you need to listen to.’
‘What is it?’
‘It doesn’t need an explanation,’ he said, putting the cans on her ears and pressing play.
As it dawned on her what she was listening to, Carol’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh. My. God,’ she breathed. Then looking at him with tears in her eyes, ‘Oh, Tony . . .’ And then, ‘Unbe-fucking-lieveable. Jesus!’ Tony said nothing, just sat impassively watching her reactions.
When she reached the end, she pulled the headphones off and reached for his hand. ‘No wonder you were up all night,’ she said. ‘Talk about bombshells.’
‘We both said we didn’t trust Vanessa’s version. That there must be a hidden agenda. Turns out we were right.’ His voice was dull and hard.
‘Yeah, but I never expected to be right like this,’ Carol said. ‘What are you going to do? Are you going to confront her with it?’
He sighed. ‘I don’t see the point. She’ll just deny it. It won’t have any effect on how she lives her life.’
‘You can’t just let her get away with it,’ Carol protested. What he was suggesting ran counter to all her convictions about the importance of justice.
‘She’s got away with it. Nothing can change that now. Carol, I never want to see her again. All I want to do is to cut her out of my life the way she cut Arthur out of mine.’
‘I don’t know how you can be so calm about this,’ Carol said.
‘I’ve had all night to think about it,’ he said. ‘This case, it’s not been my finest hour. The only real lead that came from the profiling process was where to look. And that was Fiona Cameron’s work, not mine.’
‘You worked out Warren was dead. And you knew to ask the questions that uncovered the vasectomy,’ she protested.
‘You’d have got there in the end. But I’ve had to face the fact that I’m maybe not as good at this as I like to think. The last couple of weeks have made me realise I need to completely reconsider who I am. I’ve made choices
