He had a loss of two thousand pounds and a broken body to show for his troubles.
It was what he deserved.
39
The pub wasn’t the most salubrious she’d been in, and some of its clientele looked downright leery, but Marcel Lang had been right about the food. She’d opted for the seafood linguine, while Ben had gone for the steak and ale pie. Both were superb.
The wine wasn’t bad, either. Hannah had confirmed that several times over.
‘So,’ Ben said, ‘you still haven’t told me why we’re out on a Thursday night.’
‘Do we need an excuse?’
‘I don’t, but you normally do, especially when you’re busy on a big case.’
‘Hmm,’ Hannah said, and quaffed some more wine.
‘Ah, I get it. The case is the excuse.’
She sighed heavily. ‘It’s not looking good, Ben. I feel like we’re chasing shadows. The case landed on our laps on Sunday, and we still don’t seem to be any further forward.’
‘Any suspects?’
‘No. Not really. Everyone we’ve spoken to who might have a possible motive also has an alibi. I think there’s someone we’re missing. The problem is finding them.’
‘Well, what if it’s someone who doesn’t have a motive?’
She stared at him, wondering if it was the wine that stopped her understanding Ben’s contribution.
‘What do you mean?’
‘What is it you detectives always say? Means, motive and opportunity – isn’t that right? Do you always need all three? What if the killer had the means and the opportunity, but not the motive? Why couldn’t it have been just a spur-of-the-moment thing? Or even an accident?’
‘An accident? Ben, if I drove home now after all this wine, I might hit someone and kill them. And, if I were not the virtuous, upstanding individual you see before you, I might flee the scene in panic. What I would almost certainly not do is go back and collect the body, with the aim of chopping it up later and dumping it at a rubbish tip.’
‘No, but—’
‘Besides, the indications are that someone grabbed him by the throat and broke his neck. That doesn’t happen accidentally. Cobb lived in a world where violence and death were always around the corner. Someone must have had it in for him.’
Ben raised his pint glass. ‘If you say so. I bow to your superior knowledge.’
She clinked glasses, but what he’d said was still on her mind. Dismissive though she’d been, there was something else in his words – something already fading in her alcohol-fogged mind.
‘Tell me that again,’ she said.
Ben frowned. ‘Okay. I bow to your—’
‘No, not that. The earlier stuff about means, motive and opportunity.’
Ben looked to the ceiling as he tried to recall his thoughts. It was clear to Hannah that she wasn’t the only one affected by the drink.
Ben ruffled up his hair and put on his best Stan Laurel voice. ‘Well, the killer . . . he has an accident and he loses his motivation. And then the other guy has the opportunity to find it again, and . . .’
Hannah roared with laughter. ‘See, this is the only excuse I need to come out for a meal with my husband. I need to have some fun. Enough about my job. Tell me what you got up to today.’
So he told her – about the sculpture he had worked on, and the music he had listened to, and the funny story he had heard on the radio, and the woman he had bumped into in Tesco who’d had the biggest nose he’d ever seen – and to most people it would probably be the most mundane stuff ever, but to Hannah it was everything she wanted to hear. It was normality. It was a million miles away from death and misery and the stress of not being able to address the world’s imbalances, and it made things sane again.
After a dessert and some more wine, and then coffee and some more wine, Ben signalled for the bill. While he tried to pay with a card that seemed reluctant to surrender his money, Hannah taxed her eyeballs with the problem of focusing on her surroundings.
And then she saw her.
Tilly.
Standing in the doorway between the lounge and the bar area.
She was as blurry as everything else, but it was definitely her. School uniform and shiny shoes and that curl of hair across her forehead.
And then she was gone again. A couple of steps to her left was all it took to open up that wound in Hannah’s heart.
‘I just need to pay a visit,’ Hannah said.
Ben didn’t even glance her way. ‘Yeah, I’ll go myself as soon as this is sorted.’
She left him and the waiter struggling with the credit-card machine, then walked unsteadily through the doorway. She looked in the direction Tilly had gone, expecting nothing because that’s what Tilly did: she came and she went in a flash, leaving devastation in her wake.
But Tilly was waiting at the top of the stairs.
Hannah followed. As she got about halfway up, Tilly turned and walked away again.
