Dead in the Dog

‘You can’t stay up here on your own. Is there someone who can stay with you? What about Rosa next door?’

Her eyebrows went up about an inch. ‘Rosa! Like hell she will! That bastard was screwing her, didn’t you know? Sorry, I suppose I mustn’t speak ill of the dead.’

Slightly tipsy now, she jumped up and staggered slightly, then went across to get more gin. She held the bottle up and waggled it at Blackwell, but he shook his head uneasily. He didn’t want a drunken witness on his hands, bereaved or not. He stood up and beckoned to her.

‘Diane, come back and sit down, please! You do realize what’s happened, don’t you? James has been killed and we have to find out how and where, urgently.’

She padded over in her bare feet and dropped heavily on to the settee.

‘I hear you, Steve, I’m not numbed with shock. You may as well know, I’d decided to leave him anyway. I was planning to go home to England, I’d had enough of his bloody nonsense.’

She took a deep drink, downing almost half the glass. ‘So if I’m shocked, it’s because of the surprise, not grief. I’m sorry, you’re thinking I’m a hard bitch, but that’s the way it is. But what the hell am I going to do now, with the bloody estate and all that?’

There’s a lot more to be done before those problems need to be faced, he thought grimly, but he kept his mouth shut for the present. He suddenly realized that she had not even asked where James had been killed or who killed him!

Diane suddenly dropped her empty glass to the floor, where it rolled under the settee. She put both hands up to her head and groaned, rocking back and forth. But it was not sudden grief, but frustrated bewilderment.

‘This is unbelievable, Steven! I’m suddenly a damned widow, but I couldn’t care less about bloody James. I know I’m supposed to and from here on, everyone will call me an unfeeling cow! Yet everything has been turned upside down. I just can’t take it in yet, I’m afraid.’

The policeman in him rapidly came back to the surface.

‘I know, Diane, and I’m desperately sorry. But before we settle you somewhere, I have to ask a few things. We still don’t know if this was another terrorist attack, like the previous two. When did you last see James?’

She smoothed her hair back and consciously pulled herself together, sitting more upright on the cushions.

‘Of course you must get on with your job. I’m sorry, Steve.’ Groping in the bag that she had thrown down, she found cigarettes and a lighter. Rather shakily, she lit up, then began speaking.

‘We went to the club separately tonight. As you’ve heard, we haven’t been on the best of terms lately. I took the Austin down at about eight thirty, James was already there.’

‘What time did he go?

‘No idea, he went off this afternoon to Taiping, said he had to see about some repairs to the latex machinery, though for all I know he was meeting some woman there. He didn’t come back here, so I suppose he went straight to The Dog. He was there when I arrived, anyway.’

‘Did he tell you anything about where he had been – or anything else relevant?’

Diane crushed out the almost intact cigarette in an ashtray with a force that suggested that it could have been her husband’s neck.

‘I told you, we weren’t exactly on gossiping terms these past few days. I got mad at him earlier tonight, as he was dancing with that bitch from the hospital half the evening, deliberately leaving me stuck with a gang of old biddies.’

Blackwell found it hard to say ‘Which bitch?’ but Diane sensed his problem and added ‘That Franklin woman, the nurse he’s been having it off with lately.’ Her voice was getting slightly slurred.

‘So when was the last time you saw him? I need to get some idea of when this might have happened, as well as where.’

She rocked slightly and Blackwell was afraid that she might fall over, but she pulled herself together and steadied herself with a hand on the arm of the settee. ‘We had a row later on, after the buffet. When the room was empty, I cornered him and gave him a piece of my mind. Then I walked out and that’s the last I saw of him.’

‘What time would that be?’

‘I told you, after the supper had finished. About half ten or a bit later, I suppose.’

Almost like an automaton, Diane walked over to the sideboard and poured herself yet another drink, before coming back to flop heavily on to the settee. She lifted the glass to her lips, where it rattled momentarily against her teeth as she gulped at the gin. Her lipstick was smudged, half of it on the rim of her glass.

‘And when did you leave the club?’ asked Steven.

‘Soon after that, I’d had enough of his nonsense. I left him picking at what was left of the buffet.’

The superintendent ran a hand nervously over what remained of his hair, as the next questions would have to probe into sensitive territory. He was conscious again of the difficulties of being a policeman in a small European community, where almost everyone he had to interrogate would be a close acquaintance.

‘Can you tell me what the row was about, Diane?’ he said gently.