doing a runner because I’ve got something to hide.”
“It’ll look like you’re going home. To your boyfriend and your job. Like you were going to anyway.”
“No thanks.”
“Well then.” Susanna dug a packet of Marlboro Lights out of the depths of her bag. “Come on.”
The rain was still holding off, if only barely. A lean gray cat, which had been stalking a blackbird among the ridges of mud, streaked away and scrambled over a wall at the sight of us. “What a mess,” Susanna said. She had brought out an old dishtowel; she dropped it on the terrace and scuffed it around with her foot, soaking up leftover rain. “We should replant all that stuff, before it dies.”
“Melissa and I are going to do it when she gets home,” I said.
“How’s Melissa with all this?”
“Fine. Glad they’re out of our hair.”
“Well,” Susanna said. She tossed the towel towards the door and dropped down to sit at the top of the steps, moving over to make room for me beside her. “More or less.”
“Oh, God,” Leon said, sinking down on her other side. The week’s events had apparently hit him right in the fashion sense: his forelock hung over his face in a childish, neglected flop and he was wearing a misshapen gray jumper that didn’t go with his edgy distressed jeans. “I hate cops. I didn’t like them even before I got arrested, and now I swear to God, just the sight of them—”
“You got arrested?” I said. “What for?”
“Nothing. It was years ago. In Amsterdam.”
“I didn’t know you even could get arrested in Amsterdam. What’d you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. It was stupid. I had a fight with— You know what, it doesn’t even matter, it all got sorted out in a couple of hours. The point is, I could really do with a nice big spliff right now.”
“Here,” I said, tossing him my cigarette packet. “Best I can do.” I was kind of enjoying this, actually, after all Leon’s little jabs about how there was no way I could cope with a tough situation; not that I had handled the detectives like a champ or anything, but at least I wasn’t having the vapors and practically demanding smelling salts. “Just breathe. You’ll be fine.”
“Don’t fucking patronize me. I’m so not in the mood.” But he took a cigarette and bent his head to his lighter. His hand was shaking.
“Were they mean to you?”
“Just fuck off.”
“No, seriously. Were they? They were fine with me.” A little too fine, actually—the thought of Kerr’s slowed-down sympathy still twisted my stomach—but that was none of Leon’s business.
“No, they weren’t mean. They don’t have to be. They’re detectives. They’re scary no matter what.”
“They were totally considerate to me,” Susanna said. “They gave me a ring in advance and everything, to check what time I’d have the kids out of the way. What did they ask you?”
Leon threw my smoke packet back to me. “What Dominic was like. How I got on with him. How everyone else got on with him. How much he was over here. Stuff like that.”
“Me too. What did you say?”
Leon shrugged. “I said he was around every now and then, he was your typical loud rich rugby-head, but I don’t remember a lot about him because I basically didn’t give a fuck about him. He was Toby’s friend, not mine.”
“He wasn’t my friend,” I said.
“Well, he definitely wasn’t mine. The only reason we knew him was through you.”
“It’s not like Dominic Ganly would’ve normally hung out with the likes of me and Leon,” Susanna said. “God forbid.”
“He wasn’t my bloody friend. He was a guy I knew. Why does everyone keep—”
“Is that what you said to the cops?”
“Yeah. Basically.”
An approving nod. “Smart.”
What? “It’s not smart. It’s true.”
“I’m just going to keep saying I don’t remember anything about anything, ever,” Leon said. He was smoking his cigarette fast, in short sharp drags. “I don’t care; they can’t prove I do. The less we give them, the better. They’re looking to pin it on someone, and I’d rather it wasn’t me, thanks very much.”
“What the fuck have you been watching?” I wanted to know. The coffee and the cigarette were helping my headache and my fatigue and the overall sense of low-level prickling unease, but not a lot. “‘Pin it on someone’—pin what? They don’t even know what happened to him.”
“On the news they said ‘treating the death as suspicious.’ And ‘anyone with any information, contact the Guards.’”