The meanest Flood

the detective might not be guilty?’
    ‘Yeah, I have. And it seems to me he fits the bill. I’ve been in prison myself. That’s not something you do without learning lessons. One of the things I learned was that just because a guy’s in prison it doesn’t mean he committed a crime - it means a judge sent him to prison, that’s all. Sometimes the guy did the crime and sometimes he didn’t. The system isn’t infallible, it’s crap. I want the right guy, the guy who did for Kitty. I’m not looking for a scapegoat. But everything points to Sam Turner.’
    ‘You see, Mr Parkins, what I believe will happen is that the police will capture this man. And if he’s guilty he’ll go to prison for a long time, maybe for the rest of his life. What I’m trying to discover is how you’ll cope when that happens. I’d like to think that you’ll accept that, that you’ll remember the good times you had with Kitty and be thankful for them. And that you’ll find a way of carrying on with your life. I know that doesn’t seem like a possibility for you right now, but I’d like to think that it will gradually seem more possible as time goes on.’ Ruben shook his head.
    ‘I don’t expect you to achieve that by yourself, Mr Parkins. I’m here to give you all the help and support I can. And there are other agencies that can help in different ways. Let’s say that that is our goal. Now, it’s usual to meet weekly but I think we ought to try to see each other twice in the next seven days. How does that sound?’
    ‘Sounds fine,’ Ruben said. ‘I like you. It’s good to talk. But you haven’t heard what I’m saying, not entirely. You heard some of it, but there’s other parts you don’t want to hear.’
    ‘I’ve been trying to listen,’ she said. She had a genuine smile on her face. ‘This is the first time we’ve met. Maybe next time you can tell me what it is you think I haven’t heard.’
    ‘I’ll tell you now,’ Ruben said. ‘I wanna strangle the bastard who killed Kitty. I wanna do it with my own hands. That seems like the only thing that makes sense to me.’
     
    Around the Lace Market Ruben knocked on the door of another B&B. ‘Can you spare me a moment?’ he asked the man who answered. He showed him the photograph of Sam Turner. ‘We’re trying to trace this man and have reason to believe he stayed in this area recently. Have you seen him before?’
    The man took the photograph into his bony hands. Thin fingers, long, like twigs. ‘What’s he done?’
    ‘We don’t know that he’s done anything, sir. We need to talk to him because we think he can help with our enquiries into a couple of rather serious incidents.’
    ‘I don’t know him,’ the man said. ‘Never seen him before.’
    Ruben wasn’t convinced about his own impersonation of a policeman. He’d known cops all his life, talked to dozens of them and listened to dozens more while he was waiting for them to decide what to do with him. But his impersonation wasn’t true. It was a cliché. That was because he couldn’t believe in himself as a copper. To be a good impersonator or a good liar you have to believe it yourself, or as near as possible.
    Still, it was good enough to get by. One hotelier this afternoon had asked to see his ID and he’d had to admit he wasn’t a cop. He’d told the truth: that Kitty had been killed and he was checking out if the guy had been in Nottingham that day. The man had softened immediately, introduced him to the receptionist and showed her the photograph. But she didn’t recognize the detective.
    Ruben used the cop impersonation because it saved explaining everything. When he told people his girlfriend had been murdered, they took a step back. It was as if Kitty’s death marked him out as someone with a curse. People recoiled from him because he’d been visited by tragedy and, like a disease, he might still be carrying it and pass it on to them.
    He liked the counsellor, Sarah Murphy, with her silver choker and her middle-class way of explaining everything in words of one syllable, desperate to be understood. Or maybe the desperation was to avoid being misunderstood? She had something of Kitty in her. Not a lot, but it was there. She knew things out of books and from courses she’d attended. But she’d never been on the street and was attracted by and frightened of men like Ruben.
    What it was, he recognized her professional manner and the propriety with which she conducted their