Dead Men's s Boots

‘Where does Doug fit into all this?’

Jan dropped her gaze to the table, where the photo of her husband was still lying. ‘He hadn’t even gone a hundred yards,’ she said, almost matter-of-factly. ‘He had blood all over him, so people were staring at him, getting out of his way. Someone called the police, and they just routed the call to one of the cars that had been sent out to the Paragon. When the squad car got to Cheney Road they didn’t even have to ask – people saw them coming along the road, pointed the way, and they found Doug sitting on the edge of the pavement, a block up from the station.

Just sitting there, staring at his hands like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. They brought him in right there. Then they got a DNA match and they charged him.’

‘A DNA match?’ I echoed. ‘Then—’

She didn’t flinch: under the circumstances that was mightily impressive. ‘Yes. It was my husband’s semen they found inside Alastair Barnard.’

I turned the expression ‘open-and-shut case’ over in my mind, checking to make sure that it had no sordid double meanings that would make it inadvisable to use.

Before I could say it, though, Jan was carrying on at a rush.

‘There’s no denying that part of it,’ she said. ‘Doug had sex with this man. I suppose he went there, to that hotel, specifically to do that. But I don’t believe he killed anyone, Mister Castor. I don’t believe he’s even capable of doing that.

‘We’ve been married three years now, and he’s – despite the way he looks, despite the way he was brought up – he’s the gentlest man I ever met.

Really. He’s six foot three, he works as a brickie and he used to box, but really, he is. If he gets angry, he turns it on himself. He never even shouts. Doug could no more kill someone than you or I could.’

I let that straight line sail right on by. It’s true that I never pointed a gun at someone and pulled the trigger; or tenderised anyone with a claw hammer either, for that matter. But I’d done things that had led to people dying, and I’d done them with my eyes open.

It was enough to give me a twinge of unease as I listened to Jan Hunter protesting her husband’s innocence on the basis that he was always nice to her.

‘Did you know that he was bi?’ I asked."

"Jan shook her head violently. ‘No. No, I didn’t. But in the last few months I knew I wasn’t satisfying him. We were scarcely ever together. He didn’t want to touch me, although he was still . . . he still seemed to love me.