Death of a Murderer by Rupert Thomson Read Free Book Online

sergeant’s exam, did we?”
    “I failed that before I even met you,” Billy said.
    Newman shook his head.
    Billy glanced at the house. It was after ten o’clock at night, but there wasn’t a light on anywhere. “No one here,” he said, half to himself.
    “No.” Newman’s expression was expectant, sly, even faintly humorous, as if Billy was about to deliver the punchline to a joke.
    “Well, you’d better come in, I suppose,” Billy said eventually.
    Newman had a word with his driver, then followed Billy up the short drive. At the front door Billy paused, fumbling in his pocket for his keys.
    Once through into the hall, he stood still for a moment, listening. When he came home from work, he usually walked in on some kind of disaster; it was almost never calm or tidy. He wondered if Newman could sense that. He was aware of the man behind him, alert, quiet, mocking. Like an assassin.
    “Sue?” His voice sounded thin, plaintive, and he wished he hadn’t opened his mouth.
    There was no reply.
    He was angry with her for not being home to deal with her father—but perhaps she hadn’t known he was coming. It was probably Newman’s style to spring surprises.
    He showed Newman into the lounge. Newman picked up a framed photograph of Emma as a one-year-old, and then put it down again almost immediately.
    “Your granddaughter,” Billy said.
    Newman looked at him steadily, but didn’t speak. Billy watched Newman’s gaze shift to the wedding pictures on the sideboard. There was Billy, with his top hat and his toothy smile—
I can’t believe my luck
—and there was Sue, in cream satin, a bunch of white and yellow flowers held at waist-level. She had the flushed, exultant look of somebody who had been proved right.
I always knew this day would come, and now it has.
Billy wondered how Newman had felt about not having been invited.
    Newman turned and sat down on the sofa, one arm stretched along the back. “So where’s Sue?”
    Like most successful people, he gave you the feeling that you lived too slowly, without sufficient clarity or focus. He didn’t waste any time on subjects that didn’t interest him.
    “I’ve no idea,” Billy said. “Do you want to wait?”
    “If you don’t mind.”
    “Would you like something to drink?”
    “What have you got?”
    “Tea, coffee. Beer.” Billy moved towards the kitchen. “I’m going to have a beer.”
    “I’ll have beer too.”
    Billy fetched two cans of Heineken from the fridge, then walked back into the lounge and handed one of them to Newman.
    “Do you have a glass?” Newman said.
    Billy hesitated, then went out to the kitchen again. The cupboard where the glasses were kept was empty—they would be in the dishwasher, which Sue never ran until last thing at night—so he chose a plastic beaker with Pooh and Piglet on the side. One of Emma’s. He took it into the lounge and handed it to Newman. Newman looked at the beaker, and Billy saw him decide not to comment. Opening his beer, Billy dropped heavily into the armchair by the fire. It had been a long day: a wife beaten by her husband, a stolen motorbike, two drunk builders fighting in a pub…
    “I thought your house might look a bit like this,” Newman said after a while.
    “Not what you’re used to, I imagine.”
    Newman laughed unpleasantly.
    Lose your temper, and you lose, Billy thought. It was a lesson he had learned over the years. Another lesson: don’t say any more than you have to. He raised his can to his lips and drank.
    “Actually, to be honest,” Newman said, “I thought it might be even worse. You know, more depressing…”
    Through the closed window Billy heard the clank of a bicycle. That would be Harry Parsons, riding home from the allotments. Harry had recovered from the fall he’d had not long after Billy and Sue moved in, and he was up there most days, whatever the weather. The last time they had spoken, Harry had told him that he was thinking of growing delphiniums. A