them that lasted years.
No more. These days, she has got in the habit of mentally briefing herself before any social event. Just hang back. Observe. Don’t fill the gaps. Let other people do the running. It’s not your responsibility.
And the power of this, the way it releases her, still helps to this day. She has learned that awkwardness no more belongs to her than does the weather. She can observe it, like an interested bystander, rather than frantically trying to make it shift.
Not so Davy, who is a mass of easily-pricked embarrassment.
‘Where were you on the evening of Monday May 14th, the night before last?’ Manon asks.
‘In my home,’ Edikas says.
‘With anyone?’
‘No, just me. And Skirta, my dog.’
‘When did you find out about Lukas’s death?’
‘Today. Yesterday was day off.’
‘And what was your reaction to his death?’
Edikas shrugs, turns his mouth down. ‘This was gloomy person. Very negatif. I’m not surprise he kill himself.’
‘What makes you think he killed himself?’ Manon asks, eyeballing him.
Edikas looks at her, shocked. ‘I thought … I thought he heng hisself.’
‘So?’
‘It is not easy to hang another person.’
‘You sound like you’ve tried it.’
Edikas doesn’t respond.
‘Who was Lukas closest to in the house?’
‘Matis. He come from Klaipeda with Matis.’
‘All right, we’d like to speak to Matis, then. Can you give us his number?’ Manon asks.
Once again, Edikas turns his mouth down. Pats his pockets. ‘I don’t have my mobile phone.’
Manon nods, while sliding her own mobile phone under the table. While Davy supplies some questions about Matis’s location, she locates Edikas’s mobile number from an internal email and calls it.
Edikas starts ringing.
‘That mobile phone, you mean?’ Manon asks, smiling.
Unruffled, Edikas scrolls through his mobile phone. ‘No, I don’t have Matis number.’
‘Well, perhaps you could locate it for us. Or him. It’s important we talk to him. Anything else about Lukas?’ Manon asks.
‘He was having sex with the neighbour. Mrs Tucker.’
‘Right,’ says Manon, clipping down her seat belt outside Wisbech police station. ‘Mr and Mrs Tucker then.’
They drive in silence, Manon reminded of the pleasure of being with Davy Walker – so comfortable, they know each other too well for pleasantries, though she is worried, she thinks, glancing at his pale face. He looks shattered.
‘D’you want to stop for a break?’ she asks him. ‘We could get a sandwich.’
He doesn’t say anything but pulls up to park so they can walk to Greggs in Wisbech’s pedestrianised shopping precinct.
Looking in the chiller cabinet, stomach growling, she peruses starchy baguettes filled with creamy mayonnaise-slathered chicken or tuna. This is exactly what I need to stop eating – a thought that makes her want it all the more. She takes a baguette as long as her forearm and an accompanying bag of ready salted crisps to the till. Because the combination is on offer in a ‘meal deal’.
‘What are you getting?’ she asks Davy.
He is holding a sandwich (half the size of hers) and she takes it off him and pays for it along with her own, while he wanders outside. The smallness of his lunch compared to hers reminds her of the time she’d employed a nutritionist to assist her in the battle of the bulge.
‘And do you eat the same as your partner at meals?’ the nutritionist had asked.
‘I’ll say!’ Manon had replied, appalled at the idea she should have less.
Back in the car, she says, ‘So why wasn’t Edikas at work as usual yesterday? Busy night murdering Lukas?’
‘Might just be his day off,’ Davy says, yawning.
‘Time for him to do his Ocado shop and put a wash on, you mean? I don’t think Edikas looks the type to take days off.’
They pull up outside two adjoined red-brick homes – identical, though the contrast couldn’t be more arresting.
‘These could be before and after photos,’ she says to Davy.
‘I know, poor bastards,’ Davy says.
On one side, the Tuckers’ side, the window frames are newly painted bright white. The lower bay window gleams. The path is creamy York stone slabs that look newly laid. Not a crack, not a weed. They are so clean Manon wonders if she should remove her shoes before walking up the path.
The front door is grey-blue with a stainless steel oversized door knob and matching house numbers. Window film with a tiny star design frosts the front door’s glass panels, where she can see a figure approaching to answer the bell. These are the sort to hoover their garden with one of those deafening leaf blowers. The sort to file a bill the minute it comes in. No ‘storing’ their coats on the floor for these two.
Next door, the lower windows have been closed up with particle board. The frames are rotting and grey. The rubbish in the front garden is so high that it reaches the sill of the bay window. The front door is uPVC with rippled glass. On the step is a collection of tottering beer cans.
The bags of rubbish that have been tossed out front have been raided by foxes so that debris – crisp packets, banana skins, fag ash, ready meal trays, teabags – spill over the path. It smells. Stinks, in fact, like the open back end of a bin truck.
As the front door opens, Manon and Davy raise their badges.
Both at home during the day, Manon thinks, stepping over the threshold into an immaculate hallway with pale beech laminate flooring. Wonder how that’s going. The house smells of polish and Glade.
‘Come through,’ says Mrs Tucker. ‘Can I make you a tea or coffee?’
‘I’m all right, thanks,’ Manon says, following her into a gleaming white gloss kitchen while Davy and Mr Tucker disappear into the front lounge. ‘No work today?’
‘I work from home. Jim lost his job recently.’ Mrs Tucker gives Manon a weary smile as if she is tolerating a great deal. ‘A husband is for life but not for lunch! It’s driving me mad, to be honest.’
