‘Your trousers are in the airing cupboard on the landing. It’s the door you never open.’
Aimée lets out a guttural growl and walks towards the radio. ‘Would anyone like to dance?’ she says, turning on the radio. She looks back over her shoulder through a cascade of hair and starts to sway rhythmically.
‘My mother’s just had a stroke,’ says Stephen, so well trained in avoiding corporate sexual harassment claims that her presence in the room is causing him to sweat.
‘I think you really should go upstairs, Aimée,’ I say.
‘I’m just following instructions,’ Aimée says.
‘What’s going on?’ says Stephen, and he stumbles out of the room.
In an instant, Aimée drops the entire act, expresses disdain with a release of air from her lips and turns to me. ‘That’s two hundred pounds, would you like the same next week?’
‘That might work in France, Aimée, but an Englishman would never see that as flirting,’ I say.
‘Too much?’
‘Oh no, you would have to be a lot more direct than that,’ I say, furious at having wasted a good amount of testosterone gel, as well as £200.
Aimée leaves with one long sigh. I sit down, open Stephen’s phone, as I’ve long known his passcode, and transfer £200,000 from his savings account to our joint current account. As it’s an internal transfer, there’s no upper limit, which is helpful. I wait for the notice to ping on his phone. Approve, then delete. If I hide his phone and make a payment to the estate agent while he’s focused on his mother, he won’t even notice.
I smile at myself in the bathroom mirror. Madeleine half dead, Hampstead half secured. I feel that everything is falling into place.
Chapter36Pancho’s
Tuesday, 3 December
Pancho’s is a nondescript, low-rent Mexican café. The outdoor tables are rather weather-beaten and the whole ambience of the café is shabby without being chic. It is highly visible, and not a good place for an assignation as there is at least one camera that would record us.
I arrive early as I want to scope out an alternative meeting point. My plan is simple. I’ll see who this client is (if indeed a client) and work out how they’re connected to the deceased police officer, and what they want from me.
Secondly, I want to gauge his or her size. This will help with later considerations. I am not keen to be lumbered with a heavy and difficult-to-move corpse twice. I find a seat in the window of a Starbucks across the road, which allows me to keep tabs on the café. It is far enough away to avoid being seen, but close enough to identify the client.
I buy a newspaper, a touch spy-like, but it’s also helpful to pass the time. I order a latte, then all I do is keep an eye on my phone and read about the various conflicts around the world which can be depressing.
It gives me time to think about Cait. I saw her after she hadidentified Owen from a couple of non-flammable belongings. She seemed upset. I was expecting song and dance, elation and gratitude, but all I got was regret, recrimination and sadness.
I also mentioned that she was now free of worries about Owen getting custody so could stop worrying about theotherdead body, and she started shaking quite violently. I expect it’s just tiredness, and she still doesn’t look as though she’s eating well.
I look at my watch. It is ten minutes to one. The café opposite is not full. There are two women in office attire, a group of labourers, a man in a wheelchair sitting on his own, and an inexcusably jolly woman with two spoilt children. No sign of anyone I know. I wait until two o’clock. Nothing. I decide to give it ten more minutes. At five minutes past, a man arrives on his own wearing a baseball cap, which looks hopeful. He glances around him, looks at his watch and then sits down. He takes out his phone and starts to scroll.
I don’t recognize him. I want to be patient but I’m quite angry about being stalked by a dodgy copper, so I decide to make my move. I head out, cross the road and walk up to the café, shades and rather elegant cashmere-twill baseball cap providing enough of a disguise. I approach the lone man. I’m about to take the seat opposite him when a woman enters from the other direction and he rises up to embrace her.
Disappointed, I glance around. The labourers are laughing at their own jokes. The woman with the two children is wiping yoghurt from the table, the women in suits are chatting intently, and the man in the wheelchair is peering at a laptop looking at cars.
I decide that I must’ve missed some other communication that’s changed or cancelled the plan to meet. I head to my car. I’ve walked about twenty steps down the street when something stops me. What is it? A thought tugging at my memory banks. I turn around and stare up the road at the café.
I walk back towards Pancho’s, trying to filter my thoughts and find the one that is reverberating. I suddenly see it. A single sticker sitting among several other stickers.
I turn into the café and take a position across from the manin the wheelchair, hidden by the awning. I stare at a small image of a chimpanzee holding a samurai sword on the back of his Apple laptop.MonkeyWarrior.
I can’t see his face, as he’s bearded, and wearing a low baseball cap with the wordsWestern Bulldogs. There’s a shudder when I read those two words, but it can’t be, I tell myself.
His hand moves to the keyboard, and I see four small black tattoos on his knuckles – a star, a cross, a heart and a mountain. My stomach lurches.
My heart rate has risen, but it’s impossible. He types and then picks up his coffee and I see his face.
Sitting there is my husband, a man I killed ten years earlier.
