Come on, is it that difficult to sort out? Cat carrier. Cat outside it. Something inside. Dog missing. What conclusion would one draw from that? What might the something inside the carrier be? If the Spotter couldn’t work out that equation, how could he sort a murder case?

Mungo had worked his paw up against the flap, wedged it into the flap, and worked it back and forth patiently. He got it open. He climbed out, stealth being his middle name. The Duck was driving, humming away…

Mungo pulled up to a window. He wanted to see just where they were, for instinct told him the Duck was going the wrong way-

Slough? What in God’s name were they doing in Slough? He watched as the car plowed round the roundabout twice. The Duck didn’t even know where-oh, there he went, missed it again!

LONDON RING ROAD

M4 M25 M40

Missed it again! What was it with humans? Had they no instinct for direction? Had they no maps in their minds? Good grief, even eels could swim from Europe to Bermuda; monarch butterflies could fly from Canada to Mexico; cows in a field could all point true north-but the Duck couldn’t manage to get out of Slough?

Mungo slid down to the seat and went back to the carrier. Might as well have a kip. It’s all going to come to tears anyway.

He crawled back into the carrier and didn’t bother pulling the flaps or this shambles of the human race in with him.

And the Duck drove on.

64

Rose Moss came to the door, looking as she had the first time Jury had seen her: cotton dress, hair in bunches, feet this time in a different pair of furry slippers, white with floppy ears. It made Jury wonder for a moment if he must be wrong, if this was the woman who had sat with him in Cigar; if this was the woman who had killed one person and probably two.

“Hello, Rose.”

It looked as if she might shut the door in his face but thought better of it and opened it wider instead. “Come to give me a hard time, have you?” she said as he entered.

He smiled. “Yes.”

“Me, I’m having a drink. If you want one.”

“I don’t mind. Whiskey’s fine.”

“Ha! Listen to him. It better be, as it’s all I have.”

Jury tossed his coat onto a chair and watched her walk toward the small tray table of faded flowers where the bottles were. How could the woman in Cigar, her feet encased in Christian Louboutin heels, be here now wearing bunny slippers?

“Rose…”

“Pardon? Adele to you, love.”

“Oh, we’re no longer friends?”

She handed him a glass with barely enough whiskey to copper-line the bottom. “Let the good times roll.”

Jury held it up.

Rose took a seat not by him on the sofa but in a small armchair opposite with her half-finger of whiskey.

“Tell me about Stacy, will you?”

She stopped the progress of the glass to her mouth and recrossed her legs. The slippers were outsized, as big as Ping-Pong paddles.

“What’s to tell, may I ask?”

“Well, she lived here for upwards of six months with you, off and on. Both of you worked for Valentine’s. You must have known her a little better than you seemed to last time I was here? You knew she wanted to marry Bobby Devlin.”

This made her look at anything else in the room but Jury. Her gaze drifted.

Jury’s silence made her look at him. Finally, he said, “I’ve met him, talked to him, of course, as police are always suspicious of family and lovers. He’s a nice guy, was really in love with Stacy, only he knew her as Mariah Cox, village librarian.”

Her eyes glittered, metallic. “She didn’t love him.”

“Why do you say that? She was going to marry him; at least that’s what she told her aunt.”

She shook her head in a wide arc, side to side, eyes tightly shut, as Jury had seen children do, denying whatever they wanted to shut out. “She didn’t love him. She loved me.” Her hands clapped against her chest.

The point, its awful implications thrown to the winds, had to be made. It had to be known, whatever betrayal Stacy Storm was intent on committing, that she, Rosie, had the final claim on Stacy and that Mariah Cox was a masquerade, a persona Stacy had invented to throw everybody off the scent.

“Who cooked the idea up, Rose? Was it you or Chris Cummins?”

Rose sat back, turning her glass in her hands. For a long time, she was silent.

She was not stupid. Jury knew she was assessing the situation, wondering. How much had Chris told Jury? Would it be a better tack to deny knowing her? Or to blame it on her?

Her legs were thrust straight out, toes slanting inward. He wished it weren’t Rosie; he tried to form some scenario in his mind that would let it not be her.

“Chris Cummins,” she said, blaming it on her. “She’s clever. I’m not. She wanted her husband to keep away from this woman.”

“How did Chris know about her?”

Rose shrugged and lit a cigarette. “I don’t know. But she said they’d been seeing each other-him and this Kate Banks-for a long time. This woman was someone both of them had known before, when they all were young. She told me her plan.”

“How did you two come to know each other?”

“Chance. I was in Amersham several weeks ago. I stopped off for a drink at the White Harts bar. She was sitting at a table by herself, reading a paper. One of the rags, you know, and I just sat down on the other side of the table, and the newspaper stretched out with its juicy sideshow murders. Not that I’d’ve taken a blind bit of notice, not of the paper or her or much else, because I was in a right sweat over Stacy. Stacy’d started talking about this fellow and that she might be leaving me. I couldn’t believe it. Her talking about getting married. To a man. Talking about it like we’d never meant a thing to each other. I just grabbed my keys and got out and ran to my car and drove. Drove around London, then out of it.”

“That was taking a chance, wasn’t it, that someone would remember? Chris Cummins was in a wheelchair.”

“Crutches. She got around pretty good on crutches. Only she didn’t use them, she said, in Chesham. She didn’t want people to know.”

“How did she get to Amersham?”

“Bloke she knew, someone that could keep his mouth shut. It was like a game with her, you know. What she could get away with. Even murder.”

“Still, crutches would have called attention to her, to both of you.” But it hadn’t called attention to them because no one had inquired at the White Hart in Amersham if anyone there had seen… what?

Rose said, “We thought it was worth the chance. You don’t know what it’s like to be so-to want somebody dead before you’d see her with someone else.”

“No, I suppose I don’t. How did you know Kate Banks would be where she was that night?”

“I followed her, didn’t I? All Chris knew was Kate used to live in Crouch End, so I called up the King’s Road place and told ‘em I was a messenger service and I was given the wrong street address in Crouch End. I just chose a street there at random to make it sound more believable, and this stupid cow gave me the right address. She shouldn’t’ve done.” Her expression told him she wished he’d comment on the artfulness of her plan.

And he did. “Couldn’t have done it better myself, Rosie.” He waited a moment so that she could be pleased with herself, then asked, “What did Deirdre Small have to do with all this?”

Rose was biting the skin around her thumbnail. “Nothing, really, except she knew about it.”

Jury tried not to look shocked. She had said it so casually, as if it were hardly worth spending time on. “How? How did Deirdre know?”

“I told her.” She stopped chewing on her thumb. “It was her gun. I didn’t know how to get hold of one, and I remembered Deirdre’d told me about this gun she’d got at a pawnshop somewhere. North London, I think it was. She carried it for protection, even though it was illegal. Deirdre”-Rose picked up her warm drink-“was a friend of mine.”