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So yes, that was our knife. But it was covered in rusty dark stains. Stains that looked a lot like…
I felt the blood draining from my cheeks.
“That—that’s our knife. We got it as a wedding present. Is that—is that the knife that—”
I stopped.
I felt incredibly cold all of a sudden—and very afraid.
“For the benefit of the tape, Jacintha Cross has identified the—” Malik said, at the same time as I spoke, interrupting her.
“I’ve changed my mind. I want a lawyer.”
Miles and Malik exchanged glances, and then Malik nodded.
“Okay. No problem, Jack. Interview suspended at…” She looked up at the clock. “Eleven nineteen a.m.” The recorder clicked off and she stood up, stretching her back. “I’ll go and sort that out. Are you happy to wait here?”
I nodded, but in truth I wasn’t happy. I was anything but. I should have had a lawyer. I should have had a lawyer right from the very start. What had I done? Hel’s voice came back to me: Repeat after me: Hel is always right.
“Do you have a lawyer you want us to call?” Malik was asking. “If not, we can appoint one for you.”
“Yes,” I said. I racked my brains for the name—I had told it to Hel only just outside the police station, but the shock seemed to have driven everything from my head. “Melanie… oh God, what’s her surname. Melanie Blair from Westland Law. Do you know her?”
“Yeah, I think we’ve dealt with her before. Okay. Let me go and make a few calls. Hold tight.”
She left the room, the door swinging slowly shut after her, and Miles and I sat in uneasy silence. Miles ventured what was probably meant for a sympathetic smile, but it came over more nervous than anything else, and I couldn’t bring myself to return it. I didn’t feel one bit like smiling. Our knife. Our knife. What did that mean? Where had they found it? I remembered them taking my prints the night Gabe died, and at the time I had assumed it was to eliminate them from the ones found at the scene. Now the simple action had suddenly taken on a much more sinister bent.
We had been sitting there for maybe ten minutes when Malik came back and stuck her head around the door. Her eyes were on her colleague, not me.
“Al, could I have a quick one?”
“Sure.” He stood up, gave me another slightly awkward smile, and slid out of the room, and I was left alone, trying to figure out what this all meant. Was I seriously a suspect? But how? Why? Surely they could tell that Gabe had been killed long before I got home?
But could they? It dawned on me that I had no real idea how accurate time-of-death estimates were. I could just about have made it home by three. The fact that I hadn’t, they had only my word for that. Could they really tell for certain, four or five hours after the fact, whether someone had died at two or three a.m.? Suddenly I wasn’t sure, and I wished more than ever that I’d called the police the instant I walked through the front door and saw Gabe’s blood on the floor.
In my pocket the borrowed phone vibrated and I pulled it out. It was another email, but not from a sender I recognized. Sunsmile Insurance Ltd. Subject line: Important: paperwork attached. Was this a pen test Gabe had set up and forgotten to put in the diary?
More to have something to distract me from the agonizingly silent wait than because I really thought it was important, I clicked to open it up.
Dear Ms Cross,
I’m delighted to confirm your joint life insurance policy with Mr Gabriel Medway is now active.
Please read the attached policy schedule carefully as it covers some important exclusions and conditions of cover, and keep it safe as you will need it in the event of a claim.
Your cover started from the date of your first payment, 1st February, and renews annually on the anniversary of your policy.
Congratulations on choosing the peace of mind only Sunsmile gives,
Sue
Sunsmile Insurance
What the… this made no sense. I certainly hadn’t taken out a life insurance policy. Had Gabe? But surely he would have told me? We had never bothered before. We didn’t need one for the house—we had paid for it outright with Gabe’s savings and my share of the money Hel and I had inherited from our parents—and as freelancers we weren’t covered by most income protection plans anyway, so cover for loss of jobs or sick pay wasn’t really an option. As for the rest, the chances of either of us dying had seemed—until a couple of days ago at least—so remote as to be laughable. We’d always told ourselves that it would be different when we had kids. Then it would have seemed like the responsible thing to do, to protect them in the event of something happening, however unlikely. But until then, surely it was just a waste of premiums.
Was it spam? Some kind of strange phishing attempt? For a moment I considered replying to the email to try to find out more—but when I glanced up at the sender details, in spite of the personalized footer, the email address was a generic Do Not Reply. It was quite possible that Sue wasn’t even a real person.
A PDF was attached at the bottom of the email, and in spite of my misgivings and Gabe’s voice in my head lecturing me about trusting strange attachments, I clicked it.
