knew, if anything. But he decided against it. Maybe later when he had a better idea about what was going on.
After the shower, he towelled himself dry and had another go at waking Ania. She hadn’t responded to the first attempt, but this time her eyes flickered open and she looked up at him.
‘I said get your arse out of bed and get dressed,’ he told her. ‘Something’s come up and I have to go out.’
She licked her lips and cleared her throat. ‘Can’t you just leave me here? I’m tired and I don’t feel well.’
‘Like I give a shit,’ he said. ‘Your clothes are over there. Put them on and scram. I’ve left a thirty-quid tip on the chair.’
Suddenly he was no longer interested in her. He was in such a hurry to get going he didn’t even look at her as she got out of bed and sauntered naked into the bathroom to use the toilet.
By the time he’d put on his grey suit and a white shirt he was flustered. He didn’t bother with a tie because he hated wearing them.
He told Ania she would have to have a shower when she got home and while she put on her clothes he called her a cab.
‘Charge it to my account,’ he told the operator. ‘The name’s Cain. Detective Inspector Ethan Cain.’
After hanging up he grabbed his wallet and warrant card from the dressing table and slipped them into his pocket. Then he checked himself in the mirror one last time and decided that nobody would guess he’d been up half the night shagging a teen prostitute and snorting coke. That was a relief. It meant he was ready to report for duty.
He checked his watch. Seven forty-five. Balham was only a couple of miles away and with luck he could be at Megan Fuller’s house in less than half an hour, traffic permitting.
Danny Shapiro
‘We’re getting reports that the British actress Megan Fuller has been found dead at her home in south London. Police say she was stabbed late last night. Her body was discovered this morning. Scotland Yard has confirmed that Murder Squad detectives are at the scene. We’ll bring you more when we have it.’
Those words from the BBC newsreader hit Danny Shapiro like a cattle prod. His eyes snapped open and he struggled to focus on the TV screen fixed to the wall in front of his bed.
For a few seconds it was just a blur, and by the time his vision cleared the newsreader was talking about something else. But the caption scrolling across the bottom of the screen told him that he hadn’t been dreaming.
Breaking News: Soap star Megan Fuller found murdered in her home.
Danny sat bolt upright and shuddered from a fierce intake of breath. He had turned the telly on twenty minutes ago to help him shake off his slumber before getting up. Since then he’d been dozing on and off and hadn’t taken any notice of it.
Now though he was wide awake and the morning news had his full attention.
Megan Fuller. His ex-wife. Murdered. Stabbed. In her own home.
Fuck.
Surely it can’t be true, he told himself. It must be a ghastly mistake or some sick joke. After all, he was at her house last night and she had been very much alive. As spiteful and as mouthy as ever. They had argued and there’d been a shouting match. He remembered threatening her and recalled the fear on her face as she’d backed away from him in the kitchen.
She had really pissed him off with her crude ultimatum, and he’d told her that he wouldn’t allow himself to be blackmailed. But she’d laughed in his face and had said he would have to pay up or suffer the consequences.
Afterwards he’d come straight home and had drunk himself into oblivion because he’d been so angry. That was why his head was bunged up now and there were things he couldn’t remember: such as whether he’d given her a slap – or worse – before storming out. If he had then it would have been the first time. During their three years together he’d never once laid a hand on her, even though he’d come close to it on numerous occasions.
He was sure he would have held back last night too, whatever the extent of the provocation. But right now he couldn’t be 100 per cent certain. He closed his eyes briefly, cast his mind back to last night, saw himself inside Megan’s house, yelling at her, threatening her.
The picture kept fading, which came as no great surprise. Although he enjoyed the booze, he wasn’t a heavy drinker, and when he did get rat-arsed he often suffered partial memory loss the morning after. Usually the memories surfaced eventually, but sometimes they didn’t.
He was reminded of the time he got into an argument with a stranger who got lippy with him in a nightclub. The next morning he remembered the argument, but had no recollection of punching the bloke in the face and then stamping on his head. Luckily Frankie Bishop had been with him in the club and had told him what had happened.
‘I wouldn’t worry about it, boss,’ Bishop had said. ‘Most of us don’t remember everything we do when we’re hammered. And I reckon that’s a good thing. It’s just a shame we can’t blank out some of the stuff we do when we’re sober.’
But Danny was worried. Not knowing exactly what had happened last night sparked a twist of panic in his gut.
He opened his eyes, grabbed the TV remote from the bedside table, switched over to Sky News.
And there was Megan’s face filling the screen, her eyes staring right at him. He felt the air lock in his chest and was gripped by a sudden anxiety.
It was a photograph he had seen hundreds of times before, one of the professional publicity shots distributed by the BBC. It showed Megan at her most stunning, before her life became a train wreck. Her long brown hair framed an oval face with soft, delicate features. Her smile was warm and engaging, and for a split second he remembered why he’d fallen in love with her in the first place.
His mind carried him back six years to the night they met. It was at a New Year’s Eve bash in a club his father had just taken over in Camberwell. She’d come along with a group of luvvie friends from television and he’d been there with Bishop and some of the crew.
Danny had introduced himself and had given them two bottles of champagne on the house.
‘It’s my way of thanking you for coming to the club,’ he’d said. ‘I do hope it’s the first of many visits.’
It was Megan who asked him to join them at their table to welcome in the New Year. And from that moment he was beguiled by her beauty and the fact that she was a celebrity.
At the stroke of midnight they kissed, and he would never forget how good it felt and how his heart raced. It was the start of a passionate relationship that most people – including his father – predicted wouldn’t last. They weren’t wrong.
Callum Shapiro never did like Megan, and he told Danny he was a moron for getting involved with someone in the public eye.
‘Are you off your fucking trolley?’
