There was a long silence. ‘They were asking me – grilling me,’ Bishop blurted out. ‘They think I did it. They think I killed her. They kept asking me where I was last night.’
‘Well, that’s easy,’ she said. ‘You were with me.’
‘No. Thank you, but that’s not smart. We don’t need to lie.’
‘Lie?’ she replied, startled.
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘I feel so confused.’
‘What do you mean, We
A police car was roaring down the street, siren screeching. He said something, but his voice was drowned out. When the car had passed she said, ‘Sorry, I couldn’t hear. What did you say?’
‘I told them the truth. I had dinner with Phil Taylor, my financial adviser, then I went to bed.’ There was a long silence, then she heard him sobbing.
‘Darling, I think you missed something out. What you did after dinner with your financial adviser guy?’
‘No,’ he said, sounding a little surprised.
‘Hello! I know you are in shock. But you came down to my flat. Just after midnight. You spent the night with me – and you shot off about five in the morning, because you had to get your golf kit from your house.’
‘You’re very sweet,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want you to have to start lying.’
She froze in her tracks. A lorry rumbled past, followed by a taxi. ‘Lying? What do you mean? It’s the truth.’
‘Darling, I don’t need to invent an alibi. It’s better to tell the truth.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, suddenly feeling confused. ‘I’m not with you at all. It is the truth. You came over, we slept together, then you went off. Surely that’s the best thing, to tell the truth?’
‘Yes. Absolutely. It is.’
‘So?’
‘So?’ he echoed.
‘So you came to my flat some time after midnight, we made love – pretty wildly – and you left just after five.’
‘Except that I didn’t,’ he said.
‘Didn’t what?’
‘I didn’t come to your flat.’
She lifted the phone away from her ear for a moment, stared at it, then held it clamped to her ear again, wondering for a moment if she was going mad. Or if he was.
‘I – I don’t understand?’
‘I have to go,’ he said.
16
A small card, with a seductive photograph of an attractive-looking Oriental girl, was printed with the words ‘Pre-op transsexual’ and a phone number. Next to it was another card depicting a big-haired woman in leather, brandishing a whip. A stench of urine rose from a damp patch on the floor that Bishop had avoided standing in. It was the first time he had been in a public phone booth in years and this one didn’t exactly make him feel nostalgic. And apart from the smell, it felt like a sauna.
A chunk of the receiver had been smashed off, several of the glass panes were cracked and there was a chain with some fragments of paper attached, presumably belonging to the phone directory. A lorry had halted outside, its engine sounding like a thousand men hammering inside a tin shed. He looked at his watch. Two thirty-one p.m. It already felt like the longest day of his life.
What the hell was he going to say to his children? To Max and Carly. Would they actually care that they had lost their stepmother? That she had been murdered? They had been so poisoned against him and Katie by his ex-wife that they would probably not feel that much. And how, logistically, was he going to break the news? Over the phone? By flying to France to tell Max and Canada to tell Carly? They were going to have to come back early – the funeral – oh, Jesus. Or would they? Did they need to? Would they want to? Suddenly he realized how little he knew them himself.
Christ, there was so much to think about.
What had happened? Oh, my God, what had happened?
My darling Katie, what happened to you?
Who did this to you? Who? Why?
