of foul play?” I asked.
“It’s only a hypothesis,” Fielding replied, his eyes slipping away toward the handsome portrait above the mantelpiece. “Is this your wife?” he asked, still gazing at the stunning face that smiled, perhaps a trifle flirtatiously, from the wall.
“Yes,” I said and I, too, stared at the enormous grass-green eyes, the elegant nose, the sensuous lips, the cascade of dark hair, glowing with gingery streaks.
“Beautiful woman,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “She is very beautiful.”
“A woman like that can push a man beyond rage.”
Well, aren’t you clever, I thought. But I said, “This is very difficult for me.”
“For us, too, Mr. Snow. The snuffing of life is not one of the attractions of the profession,” Fielding said, turning away from the portrait and addressing me with affected nonchalance, “You know how it is.”
“I don’t know much of anything any more… I know that my wife went out to walk the dog and…” A long agonized pause, then the question took shape in my mind and spilled, “What about the dog? Does anyone know what happened to him? He never came back, though he must have known his way home.”
Sergeant Dale considered the query and seemed to wonder whether to address it or ignore it.
Fielding’s voice cut through the pause. “The dog,” he urged him, his patience dwindling fast.
Dale thumbed through his notes. “Ah, yes. Here it is on page 18,” he said, picking his way through his notebook. “A fourteen-pound, brown and white, long-haired Jack Russell named, hmmm –”
“Cappuccino,” I said.
“Like the coffee,” the inspector translated for the convenience of his subordinate.
The sergeant nodded, appeared to make a mental note to engage an interpreter. “Right,” he said. “Seems the little bugger has a limp.”
“Yes,” I said. “One of his legs is shorter than the others.”
“Well, sir,” Sergeant Dale concluded, tossing the last of his drink into his mouth. “They haven’t found the dog yet.”
Long silence. But Fielding’s patience was not benign. He stood up, walked to the mantle, turned and stared at me across the room. “We’ve got a suspect,” he announced.
That questioning look again, leaving me with an awkward dilemma. Should I pounce on the disclosure? Wait? Appear shocked? Marooned? Fielding obviously wanted some sort of drama.
“A suspect?” I echoed grimly.
“Yes.”
“I suppose it’s no good asking who.”
“On the contrary,” Fielding said, almost complacently. “It’s someone you know.”
“I know many people.”
“Danilo Terranova.”
“Dante!” I exclaimed. “That’s impossible. He wouldn’t –”
“At this time he’s only a suspect.”
“Why? In what way? What the hell could make you suspect him?”
“We received an anonymous phone call that points a finger in his direction.”
I frowned and looked away, uneasily. “I didn’t know the police took into account anonymous phone calls,” I said.
“Oh, we do. Our experts on voice identification decide whether or not to reject them.”
“I’ll tell you one thing, Inspector. You are on the wrong track. Dante isn’t the sort. He would never do this. He’s a trusted friend, not a criminal.”
“I didn’t say criminal, Mr. Snow. I said suspect.”
Suddenly I knew what was expected of me. I did not require any more prodding. I did not look at my watch again. I buried my face in my hands and ignored the flutter in my voice, each word struggling to make itself heard.
“Will you take me to the… the… Good Lord, I can’t quite say it.”
“The body,” Inspector Fielding said, in the tone of a man for whom the word holds few surprises.
I did not reply, just nodded with enough emotion to suggest the viewing would be a prelude to a new onslaught of misery.
“Well then, let’s go,” the inspector said, and switched to a more focused bloodhound mode.
Sniff, growl, pursue. What next? Apprehend? Not likely. Seems all they have is circumstantial evidence. At this juncture anyway.
FOUR
June 17, 2005
The fruity connotation of Honey Dew’s name sometimes pleased me and other times irritated me. But when I attempted to shorten it to Honey, on our very first assignation, almost two years ago, she said indignantly, “Your name Trevor. My name Honey Dew.”
“What’s wrong with Honey? All by itself?”
She knitted her small feathery eyebrows as if the question was not welcome, or not courteous, or not important. “Nothing wrong,” she said, as she took off her tweed jacket, her scarf and her black stiletto sandals. “But not my name. My name Honey Dew Tung.”
“Like the tree?”
“Yes. Chinese tree.”
I knew already after those on-again, off-again steamy sessions in a fourth-floor flat above a furniture store in Hampstead (which I had rented in an area not susceptible to the curiosity of neighbours) that, when challenged, this gorgeous little sex empress could display a blunt disdain, as stilted in annoyance as it was lavish in affection.
Now, observing that I seemed surprisingly unresponsive to her touch, she looked at me with a puzzled expression and asked, “What’s wrong, Trevor?”
“This thing about my wife.”
“I saw article in Daily Mail.”
“You did? Today?”
“Didn’t you?”
“No. Have you got a copy?”
“No. I saw newspaper at the tube station, on my way to work.”
“You remember what it said?”
“Something about clues.”
“What about them?”
“Clues lead to York Bridge, in Regent’s Park, then gone,” she said, her almond-shaped
