Tony Hill u Carol Jordan 08 - Cross and Burn

phone.
    Why not give in to temptation? There was no virtue in denying himself that pleasure, was there? So he pulled on a pair of latex gloves and picked up her keys. Just in case Marco had gone out to drown his sorrows and he got the chance to pick over their pitiful married life.
    Less than quarter of an hour later, he’d found a parking space in the next street and, sticking to the shadows, he walked briskly round the corner. In spite of the limp one of his father’s beatings had left him with, he could still move faster than most. At this time of night, the majority of the houses were in darkness, occasional slivers of light creeping through bedroom curtains, a few hall lights dimly seen through glass panels in front doors. This wasn’t the sort of area where people stayed up late and had fun, he thought. Solid suburbia to the core; either they had to get up for work in the morning or else they’d retired and acquired the old persons’ habit of early to bed and early to rise. Like they had something to get up for, he thought, imagining those unsatisfied lives where they’d settled for less than perfection. Not like him.
    He wasn’t entirely surprised to see plenty of lights on at the Mather house. The front room curtains weren’t closed, and light leaked in from the bright hallway. He checked to make sure he was unobserved, then cut into their tiny front garden, slinking past the front door and peering in through the window. No sign of life. A couple of deserted sofas, a TV, shelves that seemed to contain DVDs and a few books. No clutter whatsoever. There were paintings, or prints, he supposed, all over the walls. He couldn’t make them out in the dim light, but they looked colourful.
    He slipped past the front door and down the side of the garage. A small window cast a parallelogram of light on the ground, and he ducked low to avoid being seen. Then he turned and edged his head forward so he could look inside. The usual crap-filled garage, he thought. Lawnmower, gardening tools. A tall freezer. Shelves crammed with tins of paint, household chemicals, assorted car products. He inched forward to improve his field of vision and saw something completely unexpected.
    The top of a man’s head, motionless on the floor.
    Startled, he jerked back. When his heart stopped racing, he crept forward again, this time bolder than before. He could see the rest of the man’s head from behind. Unsurprisingly, it was attached to a body. A body that was sprawled on the floor beside an exercise bike, one leg still trailing over the frame.
    Marco Mather wasn’t pacing the floor, panicking over his wife’s absence. Marco Mather was dead.
    Either that or he was going to be dead very soon.

51

    B ronwen Scott enjoyed the moment then pushed her chair back. ‘I need a quick word with the custody sergeant,’ she said. ‘Five minutes, Carol, any more and he’ll start to get antsy.’
    Tony and Carol stared at each other, stony-faced, waiting for her to leave. The door closed and they were alone for the first time in months. A scenario both had imagined but neither had expected. Tony cleared his throat. ‘How have you been?’
    ‘That’s really none of your business.’ The severity of her expression didn’t diminish. He’d seen her look at colleagues she despaired of and criminals she despised in the same way.
    ‘I think it is. You blamed me for what happened to Michael and Lucy.’ Most people would have missed the infinitesimal flinch in her eyes at the mention of their names, but he didn’t. Undeterred, he carried on. ‘You probably still do. That gives me a burden of responsibility and I think our history runs so deep that you owe me the chance to discharge it.’
    She shook her head. ‘Even if I could translate that out of Tony-speak into something a normal person would understand, I suspect it would still be bollocks. I owe you nothing. No amount of twisted logic can change that.’
    ‘So why are you here?’
    She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. ‘I told you. Paula feels the need to save you and she can’t do it the straight way.’
    He let himself consider whether she might be speaking the truth. He wanted not to believe her, but he had to concede it made more sense to accept what she was saying. ‘But you agree with her, that I’m innocent?’
    ‘I can imagine situations where you might kill. But I don’t believe you’re this kind of killer. And I think if you were pissed off enough with me