he repeated cautiously.
‘Yes, the police. Two detective constables. Girls. Looked like they should be in primary school. They came by in the morning and then they were back again in the evening.’
‘I wonder what that could have been about,’ Andy murmured, reaching for the coffee pot again. He noticed a little tremor in his hand as he poured. He wondered if Rhoda saw it.
‘Maybe they think you murdered Wendy,’ she said.
‘What? I didn’t kill Wendy!’ he protested.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure? Of course I’m sure. I haven’t seen her in weeks.’
‘You daft ha’p’orth,’ Rhoda snorted with laughter. ‘I was joking. Do you honestly think they’d suspect you? They said something about paperwork. Have you not been paying your parking fines again?’
‘Yeah, that was probably it.’
‘Or maybe they were asking about Vince – you know, if you’d seen him. You were drinking with him, weren’t you? Night before last? You might be able to provide an alibi.’
‘You think they suspect Vince?’
‘Well, it’s usually the husband, isn’t it?’ Rhoda said.
‘Is it?’
‘Those sausages are about to catch, by the way.’
‘But Vince? Surely not.’ He removed the sausages from the grill, scorching his fingers. ‘I don’t think he’s got it in him. Wouldn’t have the nerve, would he?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Rhoda said. ‘I’ve always thought Vince was a bit of a dark horse.’
‘Really?’
‘It was pretty nasty – her head was bashed in with a golf club. She was found in the back garden, wearing next to nothing. Makes you wonder what she was up to.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Andy puzzled.
‘Trish Parker,’ Rhoda said. ‘She’s the mother of one of the blokes that discovered the body. She’s in my book club.’
‘Your book club?’ Andy didn’t know which was more startling – that Wendy Ives had been murdered or that Rhoda was in a book club.
‘First rule of book club,’ Rhoda said, ‘there is no book club. Are you going to let that toast burn as well?’
‘So that’s the full English for you, squire, or the full Yorkshire as we like to call it here,’ Andy said, delivering a plate weighty with the promise of a heart attack to the man in Lundy. ‘And for your good lady, two perfectly poached eggs. Free-range, organic, sourced from a farm up the road.’ (Or Morrisons supermarket as we also like to call it, he thought.) What did the police want? His stomach was flip-flopping with fear and the smell of the eggs wasn’t helping. The performance of breakfast bonhomie wasn’t coming as easily as it usually did.
Had the police been in touch with Tommy as well? As soon as he could, he darted out into the hallway and called him, but his phone went straight to voicemail. Before he could think of a message to leave he heard a shriek coming from the breakfast room, closely followed by Rhoda’s shrill hulloo as she hunted him down.
‘Andrew! For Christ’s sake, you gave one of the lesbians black pudding!’
It took Andy nearly three hours to get to Newcastle. A lorry had shed its load on the A19 and the police were still directing traffic around the carnage of white goods. He felt a twinge of sympathy for the big cardboard boxes that were scattered along the hard shoulder like so many fallen soldiers. One box had split open to reveal a washing-machine lying forlornly, battered and bruised. It made him think of Wendy Ives, her head bashed in with a golf club.
What kind of club? he pondered idly as he crawled past the shamble of boxes. What would he choose himself for that kind of job? A wood, perhaps, but then you wouldn’t be looking to drive Wendy’s head any distance on to the fairway, would you? A short iron might be best, an 8 or a 9? He decided on a putter. The thin end of the wedge, he thought. Would crack a skull like an egg. His thoughts were interrupted by the sudden realization that it was a Holroyd Haulage lorry that had lost its cargo. Tommy would give that driver hell.
Andy tried Tommy again, but he still wasn’t answering his phone.
He felt as though he’d already put in a long shift by the time he was hustling Jasmine and Maria out of the Quayside flat and into his car. Their belongings seemed to have bred overnight in the dark and it took him for ever to load all their stuff into the boot. His phone rang with a number he didn’t recognize and he let it