‘I’m just a dumb copper from the backstreets of Brighton. I never got to read anything fancy. Who he?’

‘A Chinese Taoist philosopher.’

‘Of course. Silly me for not knowing.’

She dug her fingers into the ice at the bottom of her glass, then flicked a droplet of water at him. ‘Stop being horrid!’

He flinched as it struck his forehead. ‘I’m not being horrid.’

‘You are!’

‘Tell me what this Chaung Tse geezer said!’

‘He said, “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly.”’

‘So you turn corpses into butterflies?’

‘I wish.’

They were the last to leave the restaurant. Grace was so engrossed in Cleo – and so drunk – he hadn’t noticed that the last customers had left a good half an hour before, and the staff were waiting patiently to close up.

Cleo made a grab for the bill, but he snatched it off the plate, adamant.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I get the next one.’

‘Deal,’ he said, tossing his card down, hoping he still had some credit on it. A few minutes later they staggered out into the blustery wind, and he held the door of the waiting cab for her, then climbed in, his head spinning.

He’d lost count of how much they had drunk. Two bottles of wine, then sambucas. Then more sambucas. And they’d had several drinks to start. He slid an arm over the seat, and Cleo nestled comfortably against him. ‘Ish been good,’ he slurred. ‘Like I shmean, really-’

Then her mouth was pressed against his. Her lips felt soft, so, so incredibly soft. He felt her tongue hungrily against his. It seemed just seconds later the taxi pulled up outside her flat, in the fashionable North Laines district in the centre of the city. Through the haze of alcohol he recognized the block, a recent conversion of an old industrial building. There had been a lot of publicity about it.

He asked the cab to wait while he got out and walked with her to the entrance gates, unsure suddenly when they got there, of the protocol. Then their mouths found each other again. He held her tight, a little unsteady on his feet, running his hands through her long, silky hair, breathing in her perfume, totally intoxicated by the night, by her scents, by her softness and warmth.

It seemed just moments later when he awoke with a start in the back of the cab, alone, to the beep of an incoming text. Shit, he thought. Work.

He fumbled with the keys to read the text. It was from Cleo. It read simply, X.

40

Kellie was quiet, the orange street lights strobing on her face as Tom drove the Audi down the London road back towards Brighton. The radio was turned down low; he could just hear the Louis Armstrong song ‘We Have All the Time in the World’, which always stirred him. He turned it up a little, tired out, struggling to stay awake and completely sober. The car clock read 1.15 a.m.

The evening at Philip Angelides’ house had gone OK, but the atmosphere had been stilted. Some years ago he and Kellie had joined the National Trust and used to like driving out to visit different stately homes on Sunday afternoons. Some of the houses they had visited were smaller than the Elizabethan pile they had been in tonight.

There were sixteen of them seated around the antique dining table, served by a retinue of starchy retainers. Angelides forced each guest in turn to guess the provenance first of the white wine, then the red, starting with the country of origin, then going on to grapes, style, maker and year.

Caro Angelides, the tycoon’s wife, was probably the most stuck-up woman Tom had ever had the misfortune to sit next to, and the woman on his right, whose name he had forgotten, was not much better. Their sole conversation was horses – it veered from eventing to hunting and back again. He could not remember either of them asking him one single question about himself throughout the entire evening.

Meanwhile, Kellie had had the man on her right brag to her about how clever he was, and the man on her left, an oily-looking banker who had got increasingly drunk, repeatedly put his hand on her leg and tried to move it up inside her skirt.

All the other guests were clearly seriously rich, and from an entirely different social stratosphere to Tom and Kellie, neither of whom had ever had any exposure to really fine wines, and it had particularly angered Tom to see Kellie’s choices belittled by her host. And he’d had no chance to engage him in any kind of business conversation. In fact, as he drove he wondered why Philip Angelides had bothered to invite them at all. Except perhaps just to show off to them?

But it was bonding of a sort. He hadn’t misbehaved; he’d managed to keep the conversation going with the two women on either side of him despite zero knowledge of the horse world – apart from an annual flutter on the Grand National. And he had at least guessed that the red wine was French – although that was a total fluke.

‘What a horrible bunch of people,’ Kellie said suddenly. ‘Give me our friends any day! At least they are real people!’

‘I think I’ll get some good business out of him.’

She was quiet for a moment then she said, grudgingly, ‘Great house, though. To die for.’

‘Would you like to live in a place that big?’

‘Yeah, why not, if I had all those servants.’ Then as an afterthought she added, ‘We will one day, I’m sure. I believe in you.’

Tom put his hand out and found Kellie’s. He squeezed, and she squeezed back. He continued to hold it, driving with one hand as they lapsed back into silence. Into his thoughts. Heading home, heading back to reality.

His decision to go to the police hung like a dark shadow at the back of his mind. Of course he had done the right thing; what choice did he have? Could he have lived with his conscience? They had made the decision together; that’s what you did as husband and wife. You were a team.

They were approaching the turn-off now. He moved into the left-hand lane on the almost empty road, freed his hand, needing both now, followed the sharp bend all the way round, then headed up the hill, coming off at the roundabout at the top.

Less than a minute later, dropping down into the valley, he made a left turn into Goldstone Crescent, then a sharp left into their road. He drove up the steep hill, pulled into the carport, switched off the engine and climbed out. Kellie remained strapped in her seat. Tom, holding the key fob, his finger on the electronic locking button, waited for her to get out. But she didn’t move. He glanced around at the cars parked down either side of the road, all well illuminated by the street lighting. His eyes studied all the shadows. Looking. For what? A sudden movement? A solitary figure in a parked car?

Paranoid, he told himself. Then he opened Kellie’s door. ‘Home, sweet home!’ he said.

Still she did not move.

He looked at her face, wondering for a moment if she was asleep, but her eyes were open; she was just staring ahead.

‘Darling, hello?’

She gave him an odd look. ‘We’re home, I know,’ she said.

He frowned. She seemed to be having a Kellie moment. And they were getting more frequent. He could not put his finger on exactly what these moments were, but every now and then for a few seconds, sometimes longer, she seemed to disappear into a world of her own. The last time he’d raised it with her she had snapped back at him that sometimes she needed space, thinking time. But she sure as hell sometimes chose odd places and times to do it.

Eventually she unclipped her belt and climbed out of the car. He locked the Audi, then walked to the front door, put his key in, pushed it open and politely stepped aside for Kellie to go in first.

The television was blaring. Christ, he thought, the children were asleep; didn’t Mandy have any common sense? Then he looked around, surprised that Lady hadn’t barked or come bounding out to greet them.