left him to it. “Maybe he was up the tree, he slipped and he broke his neck falling into the hole. Maybe he was off his face on something and thought he had to go down there to look for dwarf treasure, and then he couldn’t get out and he, I don’t know, suffocated. Choked on vomit.”
“The detectives asked that. Whether he ever did drugs.”
“There you go. What did you say?”
I turned my shoulder to the rain, trying to keep it off my phone. “I said yeah. I wasn’t going to fuck about. They would’ve found out anyway.”
“Right,” Susanna said. There was an absent note to her voice; she was thinking hard. “Or maybe he actually did kill himself.”
“Why the fuck would he kill himself in our tree? And how?”
“Overdose, maybe. And I haven’t got a clue why. I barely knew him. That’s not our problem; the detectives can figure it out.”
“Yeah, that’s the other reason I’m calling. They interviewed me, or interrogated me, or whatever they call it. And Hugo. And now they’re searching the house. They threw us out.”
That got Susanna’s attention. “Searching the house? What for?”
“How would I know?” I had finally managed to find a bin; I jammed the rubbish into it. “Because Dominic ‘had links to’ it, they said. I’m just giving you the heads-up: whenever they get finished, they’re probably going to show up at your place.”
“Those pricks threw you out? Where are you? Where’s Hugo?”
“Only for an hour and a half. We’re just hanging out in the car. Hugo’s having a nap. It’s fine.”
A second while she decided whether to get really pissed off or save it. In the end: “What did they ask you?”
“About Dominic, basically. What he was like, how well I knew him. Whether he was depressed that summer. How much he was at the house. Stuff like that.”
Susanna went silent again. I could practically hear her mind whirring.
“They weren’t shitty about it, or anything. It was fine. I just thought you’d want to know before they show up on your doorstep.”
“I do, yeah. Thanks, Toby. Seriously.” A breath. Briskly: “Listen. I’ll let you know when they’ve been and gone. Then we can take it from there.”
I wasn’t sure what she was talking about—take what where? what exactly did she think we could do about any of this? “Yeah. OK.”
“Got to go. See you later, or tomorrow. Meanwhile, just remember: they’re allowed to lie to you. And they’re not your buddies.”
I wanted to ask why exactly she thought her knowledge of cops beat mine, but— “Su. Hang on.”
“Yeah?”
“The first time the three of us got stoned. On the terrace. Remember?”
“You told Leon I’d turned into a fairy. He was freaking out.”
“Yeah. Was Dominic there too?”
“No. Why would he be?”
“I couldn’t remember who it was. I thought maybe him.”
“There wasn’t anyone else there,” Susanna said. There was a note in her voice that I couldn’t read; bafflement, curiosity, what? “It was just the three of us.”
No it wasn’t, I almost said, but the ugly twist in my stomach stopped me. “Right,” I said. “I guess that stuff was stronger than I thought.”
“I think it must’ve been pure skunk or something. I even started believing I’d turned into a fairy. I was getting worried about how I’d turn back, except I figured you probably had a plan and you wouldn’t let me get stuck that way.”
“God, no.” That actually got a smile out of me. “I had the antidote all ready.”
“There you go. Talk later. Bye.”
Leon’s phone was busy. I had wandered far enough in search of the bin that it took me a while to find my way back to the car—indistinguishable wet shabby side streets, tiny empty gardens, I had a nasty mental image of having to ring Hugo to ask him where he was—but when I finally found it he still had his head back on the headrest, eyes closed. He looked asleep. I leaned on someone’s garden wall and lit another cigarette before I tried Leon again. This time his phone rang out.
It was half-one. I figured surely to Jesus the cops had finished whatever they were doing in the study by now, and even if they hadn’t, that was their problem. I threw my cigarette into a puddle and headed for the car.
* * *
Rafferty met us at the door like a host—come in, great timing, just finished the study, up you come! shepherding us down the hall past a glimpse of some uniform squatting to rifle