Page 113 of We Chase Shadows

‘Shot dead?’ asks Felicity.

‘Very,’ says Steve. ‘Six bullets.’

‘Good,’ says Felicity. ‘It wasn’t me, I promise you that. But good.’

‘Bit much, six bullets,’ says Tony. ‘He was only a young lad.’

‘I have to ask what you were doing this morning,’ says Steve. ‘About half eleven. That’s when they heard the shots.’

‘I was with Tony,’ says Felicity.

Couples, in Steve’s experience, often give each other alibis. ‘He was with me.’ ‘She was in all evening.’ You can usually tell the liars. Either the alibi is too vague, or the alibi is too complicated.

Steve turns to his best friend. ‘And what were you doing together, Tony? You weren’t at work?’

Tony looks at Felicity. Steve looks at Tony.

‘Neither of you were at work?’ says Steve. ‘When the hitman was shot?’

This question hangs in the air for a long moment.

‘There’s a horse,’ says Tony.

‘A horse?’ says Steve.

‘I saw him the other day, out near Beaulieu,’ says Tony. ‘And I came back and I said to Felicity, it’s the damnedest thing, Phil, but I’ve just seen this horse, and he looks exactly like Harry Kane.’

‘The England footballer,’ says Felicity.

‘I know who Harry Kane is,’ says Steve. If Tony is lying to save Felicity, then he’s definitely chosen ‘too complicated’ over ‘too vague’.

‘And I was kicking myself,’ says Tony, ‘because I hadn’t got a photo of him, and I thought the local paper might like it, so I woke up this morning, and I was getting ready for work, I really was, I’ve got a VW Polo in at the moment, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the horse, so I said, I’m just going to head off, and Felicity says, you’re going to find that horse, aren’t you? And I said, no, you know, I’ve got this VW Polo that won’t behave, and she said, don’t lie to me, Tony Taylor, and I said, okay, I’m going to look for that horse, I can’t stop thinking about him, and she said, I’ll come with you, and I said, but you’ve got work, and, full disclosure, Steve, she says, I can take the morning off, and we jumped in the car and drove to Beaulieu to look for Harry Kane.’

Tony has gone straight through ‘too complicated’ and out the other side. If Steve heard this in an interview room he’d know it was a lie, but this is Tony Taylor.

‘Anybody see you?’ Steve asks.

‘Shouldn’t have thought so,’ says Tony. ‘We were mainly in fields.’

Steve doesn’t know what to think.

‘You want to see a picture of him?’ Tony asks.

‘You found him?’ asks Steve.

‘Of course we found him,’ says Tony. ‘Where do you think he’d have gone? Southampton?’

Tony scrolls through his phone then hands it to Steve.

‘Jesus Christ,’ says Steve. ‘He really looks like Harry Kane.’

‘That’s why I had to go back,’ says Tony.

‘I get it now,’ agrees Steve.

‘The Southampton Mercury are going to put it on their Facebook page,’ says Felicity.

The next photo is a selfie with Felicity, Tony and Harry Kane the horse in the middle. One final check. Steve opens the data attached to the selfie photo. It was taken this morning at 11.55 a.m. There was absolutely no way Felicity could have shot the man in the ditch. The question of who did, then, is still open.