Cummins shook his head. “No matter how improbable, it must have been one of the others because I know I wasn’t there.” He became agitated, running his hands through his hair, down his tie, fiddling with a pencil.

Jury leaned across the table and put his hand around David’s arm. “David, you knew Kate Banks when she was Kate Muldar; you knew her much better than you’ve led us to believe. And Chris knew her, too.” He leaned back. “Why don’t you tell me about back then?”

David nodded. “The truth-”

That would be nice, thought Jury. But he didn’t say it. Cummins was having a bad time, and it was soon to get worse.

“It was in Brighton. Chris and I were going together, more or less. But when I saw Kate”-his smile said he was seeing her again-“I forgot everything else. I forgot I was just a grocer’s son; I forgot I had no career and no prospects. I forgot I had no money. I forgot Chris. That sounds impossibly exaggerated, I know, but it’s literally true. Nothing I did could set Kate aside. It wasn’t her looks, though God knows they were grand. Kate was the nicest person I ever knew.”

“That’s what I’ve heard from her godmother. She was a very good person.”

David nodded. “I can’t explain except to say I was dazzled, if you know what I mean.”

Jury knew about dazzle. The first time he’d seen Phyllis Nancy, that night of the Odeon shooting, coming toward him holding a black case, wearing a long green gown and diamond earrings that hung beneath her dark red hair. That was dazzle.

“Yes. Go on.”

“I was working for my dad, filling bags with onions, lettuces, potatoes. I can’t imagine a job less… sexy. I can still remember wishing I were a copper, a CID man.” He laughed. “God. Has anybody got a cigarette?” He looked at Jury, then around at Wiggins.

Jury said, “Wiggins, go out there and see if you can scare up some smokes. And matches.” As Wiggins left, Jury said, “How did Chris react to this? To Kate and you in Brighton?”

“You can imagine. We broke up. They-Kate and Chris-were in school; it was their last year at Roedean. I didn’t see Kate after that. I think Chris got rid of her. I think she told her something that really put her off. I don’t know. Kate just seemed to dissolve into the past.”

“And then she was back in the present. Maybe sitting in that coffee bar in Waterstone’s.”

“How did you know that?”

“You liked books. She liked books and the coffee bar there. Her godmother, Myra Brewer, told us.”

“I thought I was seeing things. Nearly twenty years and Kate Muldar hadn’t changed, not by…” He looked round as if searching for some measuring device to explain to Jury how much she had not changed by.

There was gut-wrenching pathos in it.

“Not by a hairsbreadth.” He settled on a cliché. Sometimes starved language was all you had.

The door opened then, and Wiggins came through with the smokes, a half-pack of Rothmans. He set this on the table, a book of matches on top.

David thanked him, shook out a cigarette, and sat smoking.

“Not all of these London trips were undertaken to visit the shoe emporiums of Upper Sloane Street, were they?”

David was silent, flicking ash from his cigarette into a dented metal tray with “Bass” written across it. He looked at Jury. The look was the answer.

“How many times did you meet with Kate Banks?”

“I can’t say exactly, a dozen, maybe.”

Jury smiled. “You can say exactly, David. You could recite it as surely as a prisoner of war giving name, rank, serial number.”

Weakly, David smiled. “I expect so. We met a dozen times in the last four months.”

“And before that? In London? Three years ago?”

His head went down again, as if dodging a blow. “What makes you think I was seeing her then?”

“Because of the way you’re acting right now. I was merely guessing before. But I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the reason you left London.”

He said hastily, “Chris didn’t know…”

Jury just looked at him. “Yet Chris insisted you leave, didn’t she?”

The nod was the barest movement of his head.

“Did Kate know you were married?”

The nod was more emphatic. “But not to Chris. I didn’t tell Kate that.”

“Why not?”

David blew out his cheeks. “Kate would think it was happening all over again, and she wouldn’t’ve let it.”

“It was happening all over again.” Jury leaned closer to him across the table, so close they might have breathed each other’s breath. “And Chris knew it.”

His alarm all too evident, Cummins looked at Jury and then past him, as if his wife might be waiting there in the shadows. Then he was consumed with panic-anger: “That’s ridiculous! Where do you get that idea, for God’s sake?”

“For one thing, to state what’s a cliché, wives seem to sense these things; they know if their husbands are straying. But more than that: you were careless. Which isn’t surprising, given your feelings for Kate. You said it earlier: she shut everything else out. Nothing else mattered. If she could do that to you at age eighteen, how much more could she at age thirty-seven?”

“But what do you mean by ‘careless’?”

“You’d have to have been; you were besotted. You’d have come home with perfume on your coat, lipstick on your shirt-”

“Of course I didn’t-”

“Not that precisely, maybe, but you were so preoccupied, you couldn’t have taken great care in rubbing out all of the signs of another woman. Kate Banks was lovely. And other things. I saw her. Dead, there was still something ineffable. I wished when I saw her I’d known her.”

David Cummins sat looking at his hands, fingers laced on the table.

“How did you feel when you found out she was working for an escort service?”

“It wouldn’t’ve made any difference; nothing made any difference except being with her. This one service wasn’t really a sex thing. There are men who really do want companionship. But, still, it wouldn’t have made any difference.”

“You were going to leave Chris, weren’t you?”

He nodded, wiping the wetness from his face with the heel of his hand. He sniffed. “But I didn’t know what to do. I mean, with Chris in that wheelchair.”

Wiggins heard the tears even though he didn’t see them. He was on his feet in an instant with a fresh handkerchief, which he laid on the table before Cummins, who picked it up, shook it open, and held it like a flag of truce.

Wiggins sat down again, tilted his chair against the wall, and reclaimed his notebook and pen.

Cummins picked up the copy of the receipt, tossed it down. Jury scraped back his chair. Wiggins rose, too, but David still sat. “Next you’re going to tell me Chris killed her.”

“No, I’m not going to tell you that. She could hardly have managed to get herself to the city, could she? Though God only knows she’d have wanted to.”

“She didn’t know it was Kate.”

Poor sod, thought Jury. “Yes.”

“I don’t think-”

“And you’re wrong. Bring the crime scene photos of that shoe impression.” Jury got up. “Come on.”

“What?”

Jury knew Cummins had heard him, but probably any answer he gave at this point would be “What?”

“I want to talk to your wife. Bring the photos. Chris might recognize something.”

David nodded. “The photos are in the incident room.” He went off.

Wiggins watched Jury. “It really looks as if you think-”

Jury cut him off. “I do.”

In another moment, David was back. He held up the photos. “I still say she didn’t know.”

“The moment you made the mistake of bringing home the despised shoes by Kate Spade, I’ll bet she knew. My guess is she hated Kate Spade just because of the name. You must have been out of your bloody mind, David.”