‘I love the smell,’ Spofford said. ‘Please go ahead.’
‘Want one?’ She offered him the pack.
‘I’d love one. But no thanks.’
Red lit the cigarette. ‘Please tell me what’s happened? You said you found a body – has Karl had an accident?’
The two police officers exchanged yet another glance. And that glance told Red all she needed to know.
‘Please tell me something, tell me what you know!’ Red pleaded. ‘Has he had an accident? Please tell me at least that!’
‘Can we establish when you last had contact with Dr Murphy?’ Sergeant Nelson replied.
‘The last time I saw him was on Sunday. But we spoke every day – several times a day. I last spoke to him on Tuesday evening. He . . .’ She hesitated. ‘He told me he adored me.’
‘Would you say that Dr Murphy was depressed at all?’
‘Depressed? No! Well, let me qualify that. Yes, he told me he had been very depressed after his wife died. He told me at one point he had felt suicidal because he loved her so much. But he would never commit suicide, he said, because of their children. He couldn’t do that to them.’
‘He talked about suicide?’ the sergeant pressed, and made a note on her pad. ‘What exactly did he say?’
Red shook her head. ‘He didn’t talk about it in a serious way. He said it had gone through his mind – in the immediate aftermath of her death. But he totally dismissed it.’
‘How sure are you of that?’
‘That he couldn’t kill himself? One hundred per cent. He’s a bright guy, very positive. And he lives for his children. They are the world to him.’ She felt engulfed in a dark cloud. ‘Why . . . why are you asking me about suicide?’
‘I don’t want to cause you unnecessary distress, Ms Westwood,’ Karen Nelson said. ‘But the body that has been found that may be Dr Karl Murphy appears to be a suicide victim. We can’t be sure at this stage, but the mobile phone recovered from the scene is the one you have been ringing.’
Red closed her eyes. ‘Oh God no, please no, please don’t let it be Karl.’
Sergeant Nelson raised her hands apologetically. ‘I will give you more information as soon as I can, I promise.’
‘Just to confirm, Red,’ Spofford said. All has been quiet with Bryce Laurent for how long now?’
Red thought for some moments. ‘Since we split up,’ she said.
‘Okay, good.’ He made a note in his book. ‘You’ve heard nothing at all? Not seen him anywhere?’
‘Nothing, not a call, and I haven’t seen him – well, I thought I might have seen him outside my office this morning, but I’m not sure. You were very helpful in bringing all that to an end, and I really appreciate it.’
‘You thought you saw him this morning? Despite the exclusion order? He’s not allowed within half a mile of you. Did you report it?’
‘No,’ Red said gloomily. ‘I wasn’t one hundred per cent sure. I might have imagined it. I went out and couldn’t see any sign of him.’ She shrugged.
The two officers stood up and Red showed them to the door. ‘I think you have the wrong person,’ she said. ‘Karl and I were talking about, you know, the future. He wouldn’t have committed suicide, believe me, please believe me. You have the wrong person.’
‘I’ll be in touch as soon as I have any more news,’ Karen Nelson said.
PC Spofford gave her a sympathetic but helpless smile as he followed his colleague out. Red did not respond. She felt numb. She closed and locked the door carefully. Inside she was a mess of jelly.
18
Thursday evening, 24 October
Van the man was playing ‘Someone Like You’ on the stereo, and he was watching two different shows, both muted, on his twin fifty-five-inch Samsung screens. On one was the news, and on the other was all the television he needed, most of the time – except tonight.
Red loved this song. They had danced to it on their second date. Someone like you! he had whispered into her ear, and kissed her on the cheek. Then they’d kissed on the lips and they’d danced the entire song out, in a Brighton nightclub, without their lips ever parting.
He watched her return to her living room after seeing the cops out, pour a large glass of white wine, and light another cigarette.
Tut, tut, you are smoking too much, baby. But don’t worry, smoke on! It’s not going to kill you. Something else is going to get you long before those thin white sticks with the filter tips.
He watched her pick up the remote and turn up the volume on the news, but the fire at the Cuba Libre was no longer showing. Now it was the Prime Minister, in some factory that made soup, wearing a silly-looking protective hat and protective gloves, nodding approvingly as he supped from a large spoon.
Red was crying.
Bryce was crying too. He was staring at his laptop screen, looking through all the emails and texts she had sent him back in those early days when they had been so much in love.
You’re incredible! I miss you so much, my darling Bryce. I can’t wait to see you tonight XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
God, my darling Bryce, what have you done to me? Every second without you is pure torture. I crave you.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Did I tell you that you are the most amazing, incredible, smart, beautiful man I ever met in my life. I want you so badly. Just get over here as quickly as you can. I’m naked inside my clothes and waiting for you. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
You stupid girl, he thought, sniffing and dabbing his eyes. You stupid, stupid girl. Remember that time we went to see Othello at the Old Vic in London? Remember that line? Like the base Indian who threw a pearl away, richer than all his tribe?
Remember?
19
Two years earlier
Red had chosen her dress carefully, with the help of her best friend, Raquel Evans, who had accompanied her, for several hours that June morning, on a trek around Brighton’s fashion shops. She’d finally settled on a simple black A-line dress from a boutique in Dukes Lane that both the assistant and Raquel, who was also a redhead, told her looked stunning – without being overtly sexy.
Black always suited her, and she had followed the Maître D’ confidently across the floor of Brighton’s elegant Cuba Libre restaurant, beneath the huge rotating bamboo ceiling fans, to a table in the corner.
Mr Laurent, he apologized, had not yet arrived. But as she reached the table she saw, to her surprise, a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket, and a red rose lying on the plate in front of the chair to which she was guided.
Would madame like a drink while she waited?
‘I’m fine,’ she had said, although in truth she was a bag of nerves and could have done with a seriously large cocktail.
She did not have to wait long. Within a few minutes, an apparition strode towards her. He was tall, with short black gelled hair, and looked like a young George Clooney. He wore a beautiful black linen jacket over a white open-neck shirt, expensive-looking jeans and dark-coloured loafers, and he had the most confident smile she had ever seen – with flawless white teeth. He was even better looking in the flesh than in his photograph.
‘You are here before me – that is unforgivable of me! I am so sorry!’ His voice was strong, with a faint transatlantic drawl. He took her hand and kissed it, and she smelled his very sexy, musky cologne, then he settled opposite her and said, smiling again, ‘Wow! You are so not what I expected!’
She smiled at him. ‘Oh?’ She was thinking the same. How come such a gorgeous hunk needed to join a dating agency?
‘No, really, I mean . . . I had a feeling, from your photo on the site . . . and all the ones on your Facebook page, that you would be lovely. But wow . . . not this lovely!’
‘Well, to tell you the truth, you are a very nice surprise, too!’ she said. ‘And thank you for the flowers. That was really thoughtful of you.’
‘You like champagne?’
‘If you really twist my arm,’ she said with a grin.
&n
bsp; He raised a hand in the air and waved, and almost instantly a waiter came over and began opening the bottle.
‘It’s vintage,’ Bryce said. ‘Only the best for you.’
When their glasses had been filled, he raised his. ‘So,’ he said with a smile that almost melted her heart. ‘Single girl, 29, redhead and smouldering, love life that’s crashed and burned. Seeks new flame to rekindle her fire. Fun, friendship and – who knows – maybe more?’
‘God!’ she said. ‘It sounds so cheesy, hearing it back.’
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘It’s what caught my eye. It’s why we’re here! I’m already having a good time. Are you?’
‘I’m having a very good time.’
They clinked glasses.
He drank some and then said, ‘You know, I’ve been a bit presumptuous. I’m told the menu here is very good, but I thought for our first dinner we should have something a little special. In one of your emails you said you liked shellfish?’
‘I do.’
‘Excellent. I phoned and asked the manager to get us two lobsters. And to start, I thought we’d go off-menu also and I asked him to bring us Beluga caviar – does that suit you? It’s the finest in the world.’
This all seemed so amazing, for a moment she wondered if it was a set-up. Had Raquel – or one of her other friends – done this? Like a Mr Hunk date-o-gram or something? But why would they? They’d never be so cruel, surely. She looked at his face and his eyes smiled back at her, full of laughter and life. This was real. Totally over the top, but definitely real.
‘My God,’ she said. ‘Wow . . . but – I – I’ve actually never had caviar before – not real caviar. Just that lumpfish you get in jars.’
‘Nothing is too good for you,’ he replied. ‘You are stunning, do you know that?’
‘Thank you, but no, I don’t.’
‘Well, you are!’
They clinked glasses again.
Who was this Adonis of a man? It was like a dream. She’d kissed an awful lot of frogs since Dominic. Had she finally met a prince? She couldn’t be intoxicated, not from just one sip of champagne, but she was definitely feeling a little bit tipsy. There was something about him she found deeply charming – and very sexy.
And yet, a caution bell was ringing in her mind.
‘So in your emails, you never told me what you do?’ he said.
‘I work as a PA for a structural engineering firm,’ she said. ‘Although, actually I’ve always fancied becoming an estate agent.’
‘I’ve got contacts with several estate agents in the city. Just let me know and I can put you in touch with them.’
‘Thank you! And what about you? What do you do?’
‘Well, I used to be a pilot for United in the US, then I got a job as a private pilot for a Texan oil billionaire. Unfortunately my wife became sick with advanced breast cancer and I couldn’t be away all the time my job required. I felt I needed to be around to look after her. She was from England, and she really wanted to come back here to spend her last days near her family. I managed to retrain and get a ground job as an Air Traffic Controller at Gatwick.’
‘Like in the film Pushing Tin?’
‘Yes, except it is not like that at all in reality.’
The caviar was served. It arrived in a silver bowl surrounded by ice, with tiny blinis and a mound of sour cream. The eggs were the size of miniature peas, a silver grey colour. She had never seen anything like them. They reminded her of large frogspawn.
Bryce showed her the way to eat it, by putting a tiny smear of the cream on a blini, then spooning the eggs on top, and popping it in his mouth with his fingers.
She copied him, then tried to mask her shock at the taste. Her first bite evoked the memory of her mother spooning cod liver oil into her mouth when she had a cold as a child. Then she felt the silky texture of the eggs themselves melting, and experienced a sudden frisson of excitement, realizing she was eating the world’s most fabled and expensive delicacy.
‘So?’ he asked.
‘Amazing!’ she replied.
‘You’re amazing,’ he said. Then from his inside pocket he suddenly produced a deck of cards, and with a flick of his wrist fanned them out perfectly so that every single card was visible.
‘Wow! That’s pretty impressive.’
He turned the fan away so that only she could see them. ‘Select one. Just choose and touch it, but don’t show it to me.’
She touched the queen of hearts. ‘Okay, done.’
With another flick he snapped the deck shut. And with another he fanned them open again. ‘Do you see the card?’ he asked.
It wasn’t there. She frowned and glanced down at the table wondering where it was. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t see it.’
‘Open your handbag.’
She leaned down, picked her handbag off the floor and popped the clasp. She opened it and gasped. The queen of hearts lay there between her lipstick and phone. She lifted it up.
‘Was that the one you chose?’ he asked eagerly.
‘That’s incredible! How did you do that?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s my hobby,’ he said. ‘I do close magic for fun. Have you heard of the Magic Castle in Los Angeles?’
Red shook her head.
‘Have you ever been to LA?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe I’ll take you there one day. Who knows?’
She grinned. ‘I’d love to go to LA.’
‘Are you missing anything?’
‘Missing anything? I don’t think so.’
He dug his hand into his side pocket and pulled out a watch. It was her white Swatch.
‘How the hell?’ she exclaimed.
He handed it to her and she clipped it back on her wrist. ‘Okay, I’m impressed!’
‘I’m impressed too,’ he replied. ‘With you.’
Against all her principles – and Raquel’s advice – and partly because she was smashed at the end of the meal, she invited him up for coffee when, leaving the taxi waiting, he walked her to the front door of her building.
He stroked her face and ran his fingers through her hair, held both her wrists gently, then gave her a single light kiss on her lips. ‘Not tonight,’ he said. ‘We’ve both drunk too much. When we make love for the first time, I want it to be special.’
She closed the door behind her, walked along the communal corridor, past her chained-up bicycle, and floated up the three flights of stairs. It wasn’t until she entered her third-floor flat, in a modern block beside the River Adur with its view out over Shoreham Port, that she noticed the bracelet on her right wrist.
It was a narrow silver band, completely circling her wrist, which fitted snugly. Too snugly to have been slipped over her hand. She stared at it, bemused, wondering exactly when he had put it on. Just now, when he had held her wrists outside?
But more puzzling still, there was no clasp. It was solid, all the way around. She examined it carefully, tugging at it, but there was no join, no seam that she could find. On the surface she saw tiny engraved writing. She had to squint to read the words. Queen of Hearts. Followed by a heart symbol.
Then her phone pinged with an incoming text. She pulled it out of her bag and looked at the display.
If you want it removed, you’ll have to wait for our next date.
She texted back, XXX
And almost instantly the reply came. XXX
20
Friday, 25 October
Red sat at her tiny breakfast bar, red-eyed from a sleepless night and her chest feeling raw from having smoked far too many cigarettes. Her flat was a mess – its usual state. Her CDs and DVDs were strewn around on the floor beneath the television and stereo stack. She needed to have a good tidy-up, but at the moment that was the furthest thing from her mind.
Her laptop was open, displaying the front page headline of the Argus online. Brighton restaurant destroyed in blaze. There was a photograph of the Cuba Libre surrounded by fire engines, its be
autiful grey facade blackened. It was 8.20 a.m. and she stared at the television, waiting for the local news to come on, spooning porridge into her mouth with no appetite and sipping her coffee. Outside it was pelting with rain, making her dismal view of the fire escape opposite even more dismal.
Suicide?
It wasn’t possible. It was so not possible. It had to be mistaken identity. Whatever had happened to Karl, he had not killed himself. No way on earth.
She felt terrible. October was always a grim time of the year, with the prospect of months of winter ahead. And the prospect of a lousy weekend in front of her. Karl had talked about them going away to a hotel he knew in the New Forest. That was clearly not going to happen now. Unless, miraculously, he contacted her.
Otherwise, Sunday lunch with her parents loomed. Red, the saddo single, and her elder, hugely successful sister, married and very smugly pregnant.
She felt she was the lame duck of the family. Margot, in addition to being married to a successful London hedge-fund manager, had her own meteoric career in a City law firm.
And here she was, struggling to write sales copy for a grotty little house that no one in their right mind would want to live in. And living in hiding herself.
Stalked by her ex, and her most recent date dead.
Could Bryce have had anything to do with that?
Absurd. She stared down at the bracelet. The one Bryce had slipped on her wrist, unnoticed, that very first date at Cuba Libre restaurant. She remembered that on their second date, when she had told him she could not remove it and asked him how the hell he had ever put it on, he had grinned and told her a magician never reveals his secrets. He would only take it off, he said, when she was no longer his.
The tarnished thin silver band had been on her wrist for so long she rarely noticed it. But she stared at it now. She had lost over a stone in weight in the past few months from worry, and the bracelet hung looser on her wrist. But still nowhere loose enough to slide it over her hand. She had toyed with going to a jeweller and asking them to cut it off, but something held her back from doing that. Fear?