LITMIR.BIZ

      EIGHT

      The wine and the company in the Crown & Anchor had cheered Jude up, but when she said goodnight to Carole at the gate of Woodside Cottage, she felt the darkness closing in again. The reality of Burton’s death and the unpleasant recollection of her police interview in the morning dominated her mind.

      It wasn’t yet eight o’clock and she hadn’t had anything to eat since Carole’s cottage cheese salad, so she knew she ought to be assembling some kind of supper. But the urge wasn’t there. She didn’t feel hungry.

      Jude opened the laptop to check her emails. There was one from Megan. It read simply: ‘Yes, we should be in touch.’ No ‘Love’. No ‘Good Wishes’. No home address. Just a mobile number.

      Jude consulted the large-faced watch fixed to her wrist by a broad ribbon. It was a perfectly reasonable hour to ring someone. She dialled the number.

      ‘Hello?’ The voice was breathless and slightly actressy. But also guarded, cautious, as if expecting a call it didn’t want to take. Very familiar, though. Though they had been such close friends, Jude remembered the voice’s tautness, its owner’s inability ever quite to relax, her habit of watchfulness, always anticipating some kind of slight.

      ‘Megan, it’s Jude.’

      ‘Ah. I thought you’d probably be in touch quite soon.’ Megan made it sound as though Jude’s quick response was in some way shameful.

      ‘I just wanted to say I heard about Burton … Al.’

      ‘Well, of course you did. You were there when it happened.’

      ‘You know that because the police have talked to you?’

      ‘I was spending a long weekend with a friend in Scarborough.’ So Detective Sergeant Knight’s information had been correct. ‘There was no mobile signal at her place. I only found out they’d been trying to contact me when I got on the train. I rang them as soon as I could. They checked out my alibi with my friend. It was when I was talking to Detective Inspector Rollins that I found out about you being there.’

      ‘Let’s be clear, Megan, I was at Fethering Library for his talk in the evening. I wasn’t actually there when he died.’

      ‘No, of course not.’

      Again, there was an edge of scepticism in the voice. Jude was the last person in the world to get paranoid, but events of the last twenty-four hours had unsettled her deeply.

      ‘I think we ought to meet, Megan.’

      ‘As I said in my email, yes, I think we should.’

      ‘Where do you live now?’

      ‘Still in Morden.’

      ‘Oh.’