'Not yet.'
Kennet cleared his throat of dust and spat neatly into the side of the road. 'Go ahead.'
Before sitting on the low wall outside the house, Kennet took a slender pouch of tobacco from the back pocket of his jeans, a packet of papers from the top pocket of his plaid shirt. His face and the backs of his hands were streaked with dirt and dust.
Elder sat down alongside him.
On the opposite side of the street, a young au pair went by pushing a small child in a buggy, talking excitedly into her mobile phone in a language Elder didn't understand.
Methodically, Kennet began to roll a cigarette.
'Maddy, how did you meet her?' Elder asked.
'Usual way, in a pub. Holloway. She was there with that pal of hers. Vanessa. To be honest, that's who I was interested in first off. Vanessa. You've met her?'
Elder nodded.
'Then you'll know what I mean.' Kennet wet the edge of the paper with his tongue. 'Up front, I s'pose that's what you'd say. Not shy about coming forward.' When his lighter didn't work first time, he gave it a quick shake. 'I was with a mate. We went over and sat with them. His idea, really. After a bit, my mate drifted off. Vanessa, she was dead lively – she'd had a few, I dare say – whereas Maddy, mostly she was just sitting there, smiling a little, you know, not unfriendly, but not – what could I say? – obvious. What she was after.'
'And you liked that?' Elder said.
Kennet grinned. 'S'pose I did. What bloke wouldn't? End of the evening I got both their numbers, but it was Maddy I called. She seemed surprised, I remember that. Thought I'd made a mistake, got the numbers mixed up.'
'And you went out with her for how long?'
'Few months. Three. Couldn't've been more.' He clicked his lighter again with no response. 'Haven't got a light, have you?'
'Fraid not.'
Kennet crossed the pavement to the car parked at the kerb, unlocked it and reached inside the dash for a box of matches.
'You didn't get on as well as you'd thought,' Elder said.
Kennet dropped the spent match towards the gutter and drew deep on his cigarette. 'No, it wasn't that. We got on fine. Least I thought we did. It was just – oh, I don't know, what would you call it? – circumstances, I suppose. And, to be honest, I think she lost interest. We were supposed to meet a few times and she called up, more or less last-minute, and cancelled. Got so every time the phone rang I knew that's what it was going to be.'
He looked at Elder and then off down the street.
'So you broke it off?' Elder said.
'Yes.'
'You did?'
'Yes.' More emphatically this time.
'Not Maddy?'
'No. Look -'
'It's okay. I'm just trying to get a clear picture of what happened.'
'Why?'
'What do you mean?'
'Why is it so important? Why d'you need to know? I've been through all this before, you know.'
'I know. It's just right now I don't know what's important and what's not.'
'And you think this might be?'
'It's possible, like I say.'
Kennet shook his head in disbelief. 'Glenn Close, right?'
'I'm sorry?'
'Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Can't stand being dumped. Attacks Michael Douglas with a knife. You think that's me.'
'Michael Douglas?'
'Glenn Close.'
'Is it?'
'Did I go after Maddy with a knife?'
'Did you?'
'No, I did not.'
'Of course not.'
Kennet's roll-up had gone out and he lit it again at the second attempt.
'Do you know if Maddy was seeing anyone else?' Elder asked.
'While she was seeing me, you mean?'
'Then or later.'
'Then I don't think so, later I wouldn't know.'
'You didn't keep in touch?'
Kennet shook his head. 'Clean break. Besides, once I'd said, you know, I thought we should stop seeing one another, she agreed it was for the best. I certainly didn't want to mess her around.'
He got to his feet and glanced towards the roof.
'I really should be getting back to work.'
Elder held out a hand. 'Thanks for your time.'
Kennet's grasp was firm. 'Catch him, right?'
'Right.'
'And hey!'
'Yes?'
'Happy New Year.'
Elder watched as Kennet climbed back up the scaffolding without putting a foot wrong, without missing a beat.
20
The first Friday of the new year, a grey cold day, the sky the colour of ageing slate, ice slick on the surface of untreated roads. Maddy Birch's funeral: Hendon Crematorium, eleven thirty sharp. The flower-beds a picture of turned earth and once-green leaves blackened by frost, spindly rose bushes cut back almost to the root. Maddy's mother sat hunched in the long black car as it followed the coffin around the slow curves of Nether Street and Dollis Road, her sister, whom she'd scarcely seen in twenty years, sitting pinch-faced by her side. Crowded in the car behind, disparate uncles and cousins sat with their hands clenched in their laps. Those who'd thought her mother would want the funeral near the family home in Lincolnshire had been swiftly disabused. 'She'd turned her back on all that,' Mrs Birch had said, 'on us, a long time since.' Blame, at that moment, easier than regret.
Elder had arrived early and stood a little to one side. As befitted the last rites of a fellow officer killed on duty, the police presence was sombre, manifest. Near the entrance, a surveillance team, unobtrusively as possible, videoed the assembled company, in case the hoary myth that murderers were drawn to the last rites of their victims bore any truth. Lawns, sparse and dry, stretched away towards a high boundary hedge and the municipal golf course beyond.
Alighting from the car, Mrs Birch lost her footing and only the outstretched hand of Detective Superintendent Mallory, ever alert, preventing her falling to the ground.
Inside the chapel a CD of uplifting music played, courtesy of Classic FM. Karen Shields, wearing a black trouser suit, hair pulled sternly back, slid, long-legged, into a pew across the aisle from Elder and began leafing
