complexion that gave away his every emotion. At the moment he was flushed and definitely unhappy. His face was rounded, as if he had puppy fat left to lose. His shirt had pulled out from one side of his suit trousers and his tie was crooked.
‘Hi. Yes. The thing is, I don’t actually want to talk to you so I’m going to have to say no. Sorry.’ He started to close the door and I put out my hand to hold it open, using enough force to stop him.
‘Mr Asquith, as I explained to you on the phone, this is a murder investigation.’
‘I know. I know. I should have said no when you called me but I was at work and I wanted to get off the phone.’ He swallowed, embarrassed. ‘I’d like to help. Really, I would. But I think it’s best if I don’t say anything.’
‘I’d rather talk to you here than at the local police station,’ I said. ‘But if you’d prefer to accompany us there—’
‘Oh God. Oh, no.’ He ran a hand over his head, panicking. This wasn’t playing out the way he’d imagined it. ‘I don’t know what to say. I don’t know why you won’t take no for an answer.’
‘Because I am trying to find the person who killed Paige Hargreaves and disposed of her body in a particularly grotesque way. Do you know anything about that?’
‘About Paige? No, of course not. I heard she was dead.’ He was sweating now, his upper lip shining. He dabbed at it with the back of his hand. ‘I saw it in the paper.’
‘How did you know her?’
‘I didn’t.’
I tilted my head to one side. ‘That’s not true, is it?’
‘What makes you say that?’
The way he was behaving. The fact he had used her first name when he talked about her, unthinkingly. The fact that he had noticed the newspaper reports about her death, which had been light on detail because we wanted to keep some of it to ourselves. I knew he was lying to me, and fortunately I could prove it.
‘We found your name and telephone number among Paige’s possessions, handwritten by Paige herself. If we check your phone records, we’ll know the truth.’
‘You can’t take my phone without a warrant.’
‘I don’t need to. I can get a court order to check the records through your service provider. To be honest, I’d do that anyway. It’s useful for us because you won’t be able to delete any calls or messages by clearing your phone.’
‘I – I wouldn’t do that.’
I raised an eyebrow and he blushed more deeply. ‘Look, I just want you to leave me alone.’
‘That’s not an option, I’m afraid.’
‘Can we come in?’ Liv pushed her coat back and patted her bump, shamelessly playing the pregnancy card. ‘I’d really love to sit down for a bit. You know how it is.’
He took a deep breath, bracing himself. ‘No. No, I’m afraid you can’t. I don’t want you in here. If you want to talk to me, you’ll have to arrest me.’
‘I can’t arrest you if you haven’t done anything wrong,’ I said. ‘And I don’t want to. I want to know why you were in contact with Paige and if it has anything to do with her investigation into the Chiron Club.’
I thought he was going to be sick then and there. The colour drained out of his face. ‘You can’t ask me about that.’
‘Are you a member?’ Liv asked.
‘I’m not supposed to talk about it.’
‘But you did talk about it, didn’t you?’ I said it gently. ‘You talked to Paige.’
‘I didn’t think it mattered. But I shouldn’t have – I wasn’t supposed to—’ The words burst out of him before he’d considered the implications of saying them. ‘Oh God.’
‘Mr Asquith—’
‘No.’ He shoved the door, hard, and I couldn’t hold it open. The door slammed home and I took a step away, wincing. The movement had jarred my shoulder painfully. More than that, though, I was upset with myself for assuming he wouldn’t force the door closed, but panic had overcome his social conditioning. Panic caused by my mentioning the Chiron Club, I thought.
Liv bent and pushed open the letterbox. ‘Thank you for your help, Mr Asquith. We’ll come back for a chat soon. You have a think about what you know in the meantime and maybe you can be more helpful to us than you have been up to now.’
We headed to the car in silence. It wasn’t until the doors were closed