Питер Мэй - I'll Keep You Safe

From his use of the past tense, to the sadness that coloured his tone, I knew that she was gone. ‘What happened?’

‘Oh.’ He sighed. ‘The usual. Cancer. We live all these years, we fight to survive, to be successful, to be happy. And it all ends in shit. Like a bad punchline to a long joke.’

The kettle boiled and he went back into the kitchen. Ruairidh and I exchanged glances.

His voice came back through to us in the sitting room. ‘Isabella died six months ago. Which is what decided me to put Ranish on the market.’ We could hear the chink of china, the sound of water pouring into cups. Then he reappeared at the door. ‘I tell folk it’s the arthritis in my knees. That I have no choice but to sell. But it’s not that at all. I have no will to carry on since Isabella passed. Married just over fifty years, you see. We were one person, really. I am not motivated to keep it going without her.’

Niamh wondered where she would find the strength to carry on without Ruairidh. We were one person really , old man Faulkner had said of himself and his beloved Isabella. And in so many ways that had also been true of Niamh and Ruairidh.

Lieutenant Braque spoke for the first time, softly, without accusation or insinuation. But she was watching her, Niamh thought, very carefully. ‘In the Place de la République you said that Irina Vetrov and your husband were lovers.’ Niamh did not feel this merited a response. It was a statement, not a question. That came next. ‘How did you know that?’

Niamh dropped her eyes to gaze again at her hands, fingers twisting and interlocking now, an outward expression of her inner turmoil. ‘He... we...’ she began, not really knowing how to say this. ‘Things had not been right between us recently.’

‘In what way?’ Braque again.

Niamh lifted one shoulder a little and shook her head. ‘It’s hard to explain. You are the way you are with someone, then something changes. I can’t give you specifics. Except that to me, he was behaving oddly. He’d started making excuses, leaving me behind when he went to meetings. At first I didn’t think anything of it, then...’ Her voice tailed away and there was a long silence.

‘And?’ Braque prompted her.

‘There was the email.’ She was still looking at her hands and felt rather than saw her inquisitors exchange glances.

‘What email?’ Martinez this time.

‘I got an email from... I don’t know who from. A well wisher .’ And she thought how ironic that was. No one who sent you an email like that wished you anything but harm. ‘It said Ruairidh and Irina were having an affair.’ She raised her head to meet their eyes. ‘And that I should ask him about it.’

‘And did you?’ Braque’s gaze was unwavering.

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘Tonight. Just before he left for a meeting at YSL.’

‘YSL?’ Martinez frowned.

‘Yves Saint Laurent. But he didn’t have a meeting there. He had a rendezvous with Irina Vetrov. I saw them together in the courtyard from my hotel room. When I went down to the lobby her car was just pulling away from the door of the hotel.’

Martinez said, ‘And you chased them across the square.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

Niamh wondered how she could tell them what she could hardly even explain to herself. ‘I don’t know, I... I thought that if I let them go, it would be an end to my marriage. No going back. I thought... I don’t know what I thought.’ She looked at them as if they might provide her with illumination. ‘That maybe if I could intercept the car, somehow I could stop that from happening.’ She shook her head hopelessly. ‘Stupid.’ And she saw scepticism in their eyes. How could you make sense of the irrational?

Martinez reached an open palm across the table towards her. ‘Do you have your phone there?’

Niamh looked at the open hand, then at the opaqueness of the man’s eyes. For some reason she felt defensive. ‘What do you want my phone for?’

‘I’m assuming the email will be in it?’

‘Yes,’ Niamh conceded reluctantly.

‘Then I’d like to see it.’

She reached down to lift her bag from the floor, rummaging through it until she found her iPhone and slid it across the table.

‘I’ll need your pin to unlock it.’

Now this felt invasive. Bruised and hurting, physically and mentally, it was just one more violation. But she was in no position to refuse. ‘Four-five-nine-five.’

He lifted the phone and tapped in her code, then went straight to her mailer. ‘How is it titled, the email?’

‘ Something you should know .’ And Niamh wished she could simply erase that something from her mind, as if she thought that could bring Ruairidh back. She watched as Martinez found the email and read it. He was impassive as he handed it to Braque. She read it, too, then her eyes flickered briefly towards Niamh before glancing at Martinez.

He took the phone from her and turned it off, slipping it into his pocket. He made a note of the pin. Niamh wanted to object. But the objection never got past her lips. He said, ‘We have people who will want to take a look at this. You’ll get it back when they’re finished.’ He hesitated. ‘Unless we retain it for evidence.’

‘Evidence of what?’

‘Against you.’ His voice was level, and his eyes watched her through clouds of obfuscation.

For the first time two further emotions squeezed their way past her grief.

Fear. And confusion.

‘Me?’ she said. She looked at Braque, as if in the policewoman who had taken her from the hands of armed officers in the Place de la République and brought her here, she might find a friend.

But Braque was implacable. She said, ‘If this is not an act of terrorism, Madame Macfarlane, which seems less and less likely...’ She glanced at Martinez. Then back to Niamh. ‘It will become a murder investigation. Given that the occupants of the vehicle were Irina Vetrov and your husband, whom you believed to be having an affair, given that it was almost a week since you received the email alerting you to that fact, and given that you fought with him just before he left...’ She paused. ‘We would have to regard you as a prime suspect.’

The corridor stretched into darkness. A fire door at the far end was barely visible. The strip light on the ceiling, above the half-dozen chairs pushed against the wall where Niamh sat, flickered and hummed intermittently. At the near end stood a door with a window in it, barred on the far side, and Niamh could see the shadow of someone standing guard beyond it.

It was cold, and she was glad of her tweed jacket. Still, she folded her arms for warmth. It was over two hours since they had left her sitting here. At first she had glanced at her watch with a manic frequency, before finally giving up. Time never passed more slowly than when it was being watched. And now her whole focus was on keeping her mind free of all thought and emotion. How could anyone possibly think she had killed Ruairidh?

She concentrated on listening to the sounds that gradually invaded her consciousness, seeping from the walls, through doors and ceilings. Distant voices. The warble of a telephone. The chatter of a printer. All punctuated by long periods of total silence broken only by the hum of the strip light.

When the near door swung open, its hinges sounded inordinately loud and Niamh was startled. A uniformed officer in shirtsleeves approached and held out her phone. She glanced up at him before taking it. And as he turned away she said, ‘Does this mean I am no longer a suspect?’ But either he didn’t know, or wasn’t saying, or didn’t speak English. Without a word he pushed open the door and was swallowed by the building beyond it.