The Party: The thrilling Richard & Judy Book Club Pick 2018. Elizabeth Day

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       II.

      Tipworth Police Station, 2.40 p.m.

      I REACH ACROSS THE TABLE FOR MY COOLING TEA. My throat is dry from all the talking. My eyes, too, feel scratchy. I wonder if I could ask for some Optrex drops but one look at Grey Suit’s downturned mouth suggests the request wouldn’t be met in a generous spirit.

      He still hasn’t spoken. While Beige Hair has been looking at me in a frank, friendly fashion and interjecting with the odd murmur as I recount the evening’s events, Grey Suit has been sitting impassively in his chair, arms folded across his stomach. No paunch. A hint of hard muscle beneath the gentle stretching of the shirt buttons.

      I’m guessing you have to keep fit if you’re in the police. There are probably regular tests where they have to run measured distances as a beeper goes off at shorter and shorter intervals. I can imagine Grey Suit in shorts and a loose T-shirt, perhaps bearing the faded crest of an American university he never attended, sprinting with all his might, his face as void of thought as it is now.

      I knew people like him at school: boys who excelled at physicality and who never needed to try with anything else. Big, slab-faced boys with no personalities and an understanding of the world wholly predicated on who would win in any given contest. The kind of boy who would always initiate an arm wrestle in a pub. They were popular, these boys. I wonder if it’s because we all have an innate need to be protected. So we seek out the bigger, brawnier specimens and we want to be around them because they will shield us one day when we most need shielding. They will man the lifeboats when we hit the iceberg. And for this, we are willing to overlook their complete lack of conversational guile or intellect.

      ‘So,’ Beige Hair is saying, ‘you weren’t staying at the big house. At Tipworth Priory, I mean?’

      I can’t work out whether this is a tactic or whether she really hasn’t been paying attention.

      ‘No. As I think I already said.’

      Beige Hair nods. ‘Of course you did, Martin. Of course you did.’

      Grey Suit shifts in his chair.

      ‘That didn’t bother you, then?’ he asks.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Not staying at the Priory? With Ben and Serena?’

      ‘Not at all.’

      In my account of the build-up to the party, I omitted a few of the more trivial details. There was simply no need for the police to know Lucy had been offended. Beige Hair keeps looking at me.

      ‘They had lots of family members staying,’ I say to fill the silence. ‘It was just a logistics thing.’

      ‘Right.’

      I exhale more loudly than I intended, not realising I’ve been holding my breath. It’s ridiculous, really, how nervous they make you feel. Even when you haven’t done anything wrong. It’s like those customs officials at American airports, scowling and rude and suspicious of anything you say.

      Beige Hair is looking at me expectantly.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t quite catch that?’

      ‘Well, Martin, I was only saying that they seem to have a lot of bedrooms at the Priory. It wouldn’t have been too hard for them to find space, would it? And you’re such close friends, it just seems odd …’

      ‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask Ben and Serena. Besides, there were security issues.’

      ‘Of course. The VIP.’

      ‘Exactly.’

      I glance upwards to the ceiling, hoping to find something of interest there. In one corner, there is a hairline crack. A childhood memory comes to me unbidden: my mother washing my hair in the bath as I, hating every second, fixed my gaze on a crack in the yellowing ceiling, willing it to be over.

      ‘Are you all right?’ asks Beige Hair.

      ‘Perfectly.’

      ‘You look a bit upset.’

      ‘Not at all,’ I repeat. ‘Just wondering how much longer this will take.’

      She turns one sheet of paper over, shifting it to the other side of her folder and revealing another page of foolscap beneath, covered with scrawled black handwriting.

      ‘So you and your wife arrived at the party before the other guests to have a drink with Ben and Serena,’ she recaps. ‘Did you think Mr Fitzmaurice was acting normally?’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Well, did anything strike you as out of character?’

      I shrug.

      ‘Anything on his mind, perhaps?’

      ‘It was three weeks ago. I don’t understand why you’re raking it all up now …’

      ‘You must know it takes time to gather together the relevant facts,’ she says. ‘As a journalist, I mean.’

      I don’t say anything.

      She tries a different tack.

      ‘How did Lucy think Mr Fitzmaurice seemed?’

      ‘You’d have to ask her.’

      ‘Oh, she’s been very helpful with our enquiries,’ Beige Hair says. ‘But I wondered what you thought, Martin.’

      She waits.

      ‘Tell you what,’ I say. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you’d like me to think was on his mind and I’ll tell you whether you’re right or not?’

      For the first time, her expression hardens.

      ‘We don’t have time for guessing games, Mr Gilmour. In case it had escaped your notice, we’ve got a person lying in a critical condition in hospital.’

      Mr Gilmour, now. No longer Martin. She stops. A note of irascibility is creeping into her tone and I can see her struggle internally to keep it in check.

      ‘We СКАЧАТЬ