The Devil’s Dice - Roz Watkins A DI Meg Dalton thriller

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cat on his knee and stroked it gently. ‘Yes, maybe he has been a little down.’

      ‘Do you know why?’

      The cat stood, arched its back, and re-settled on Mark’s knee. He rubbed under its chin. ‘Just pressure of work, I think.’

      ‘And, well, could there be any possibility he was having an affair?’ I tried to say this sensitively but it was hard not to speak ill of the dead when conducting these kinds of investigations.

      ‘Peter? I’d be really surprised. I don’t know when he’d have time apart from anything else. He was terribly busy.’

      ‘And what about the relationship with his wife, Kate? Was it good?’

      ‘Yes, I believe so.’ Mark’s stroking became jerky and the cat looked up at him with an irritated expression.

      ‘Don’t you work in the same medical practice as Peter’s wife?’

      ‘Same building, different practices.’

      ‘And do you get along?’

      ‘We get along all right, yes.’ He gave a pointed sigh. ‘Look, I’m going to be totally honest here. Peter and I had an argument. I feel terrible. The last things I said to him weren’t nice. But I didn’t kill him.’

      ‘What was the argument about?’

      Mark looked startled as if he was surprised I’d asked this obvious question. ‘Oh, as I said, he’s been very moody recently. It was just about his behaviour.’

      ‘What had he done, specifically?’

      He scraped his chair away from me. ‘Nothing in particular – just general irritability. Work stress mainly, but he shouldn’t have taken it out on Kate or me.’

      I spoke very gently. ‘Is there any possibility he could have taken his own life, do you think?’

      Mark’s eyes widened. ‘Oh no, he wouldn’t do that. No, I’d feel terrible if he’d done that. After we’d argued. No, he didn’t kill himself.’

      There was something I liked about this man, with his chaotic kitchen and impractical quantities of animals. At that moment, I felt like blurting out my own confession. To a stranger, even though I’d told no-one, not even Mum or my oldest friend, Hannah. But of course I didn’t. I kept it professional.

      ‘What about the rest of your family?’ I asked. ‘Do they live close?’

      ‘Beth lives in Ashbourne, and she visits Peter and me quite often. Dad lives near Stanton Moor, with Granny in an annexe. I’m afraid our mother died when we were children.’ I remembered the woman in the wheelchair, in the old photograph in Peter Hamilton’s study.

      ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ The cat dug its claws into my knee. I tried to shift it into a better position. ‘Peter’s wife said something about their house. About there being some kind of…’ I hesitated to show him I appreciated the odd nature of my question. ‘Curse. Do you know anything about that?’

      Mark froze. It was as if the air around us went colder. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’

      ‘I realise there isn’t actually a curse,’ I said. ‘But sometimes there’s a reason behind these rumours. And Kate said nobody had wanted to buy their house, and there have been a few deaths there.’

      ‘It’s utterly ridiculous. You know what people are like. They can’t handle coincidences. You always get clusters of deaths sometimes, it’s the way probability works. It’s like these cancer clusters people get so hysterical about. Just the result of randomness.’

      ‘So you’ve no idea what the so-called curse is about?’

      ‘Of course not. It’s nonsense.’

      ‘And what about Peter? What did he think?’

      ‘I’m sure he heard the silly rumours, but he was a scientist. He didn’t believe in a curse any more than I do.’

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      The road swept steeply down to Eldercliffe, the jumbled roofs and spidery lanes spreading below me like a toy village. The hills rose beyond the town, and the old limestone quarries shone white, as if a monster had taken bites out of the apple-green hillside. I wound my way into the marketplace, and parked on a slope which made me nervous about my car’s handbrake.

      I wanted to check Mark Hamilton’s and Kate Webster’s movements for the day before. The surgery where they worked was on a side street which climbed from the town centre, and I struggled up between stone cottages so tiny they looked like Hobbit houses. I wondered if there was a kind of medieval witch trial system in place, because anyone capable of making it up the hill to the doctor’s clearly wasn’t particularly ill.

      The surgery sat like an ugly boil amidst the loveliness of the other buildings – a concrete edifice overlaid with square windows like a messed up Mondrian. The early evening sun emerged briefly from behind the clouds as I arrived, sending a shaft of light onto the front of the building and further emphasising its hideousness. I tutted about planning laws, and walked through automatic doors into a spacious reception area that smelt of bleach and sickness.

      Both walls were lined with patients – mainly docile-looking older people, but also a child who was removing toys from a plastic box and spreading them around the waiting room with a furious enthusiasm. His hollow-eyed mother glanced up with a dairy-cow expression before returning to her copy of Hello magazine.

      I showed my card to a receptionist labelled Vivian. ‘Could I have a quick word please?’

      ‘Yes. What’s it about?’ The woman folded freckled arms across her stomach.

      ‘I just need to check Kate Webster’s and Mark Hamilton’s movements for yesterday please.’

      The woman sighed audibly. ‘Oh, of course. Dr Webster’s husband.’ She pushed wire-framed glasses up her nose towards her eyes. ‘They’d be prime suspects, I suppose?’

      ‘What makes you say that?’

      ‘Oh, nothing.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper and glanced at the patients sitting glumly in the waiting room. ‘The police always suspect the wife, don’t they?’

      ‘So, yesterday?’

      ‘Oh, yes.’ She twisted to look at a screen to her right, and tapped on a keyboard in a slow, two-fingered style. ‘Well, they were both here all day from about 8am to about 5pm, according to the computer.’

      ‘And did either of them go out at all during the day?’

      ‘It doesn’t look like it from the computer.’

      ‘But do you remember?’

      ‘Oh, no, I don’t remember. I can’t keep track of what they all do. But the computer should say if they went out. Health and Safety. Unless it’s been tampered with, of course.’

      Well, she was a loyal employee. ‘Who could tamper with it?’

      ‘Well, any of the partners, I’m sure.’

      I suspected the lovely Vivian was going to be less helpful than she appeared. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘One of my colleagues will come and take a statement from you.’

      I retreated through the waiting room and out of the doors, tripping on a plastic lorry which the child pushed into my path. The glass doors shushed to a close behind me, and I glanced backwards. A young woman had followed me.

      ‘Are you a detective?’ the woman asked. She had long, blonde hair and a charity-shop-chic look.

      I nodded.

      ‘I heard something last week and thought I should tell you, in case it has a bearing on the investigation.’

      ‘Okay,

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