He didn’t flinch. His face hardened and smoothed, as if he were slowly but perceptibly turning to stone.
‘You don’t have to say or do anything unless you want to. Anything you do say or do will be –’
Ethan said, ‘Christina.’ He had his head tilted as if he were listening to something. ‘I think there might be –’
She ignored him and continued speaking to Stan. ‘Anything you do say or do will be recorded and may later be used as evidence. Do you understand that?’
‘Yes,’ said Stan. ‘I understand that.’
‘Detective Khoury,’ said Ethan formally, a bit louder.
‘What?’ She felt a spasm of irritation.
Ethan lifted his chin to indicate something in the hallway behind her.
Christina turned around at the same time as a small woman with white shoulder-length hair came into the room, removing a backpack from her shoulders. A set of keys dangled from her finger.
Christina had been thinking so much about this woman and her life and her choices, it was as discombobulating as seeing a glamorous movie star in the flesh.
Stan Delaney walked like a man in a dream towards his wife and lifted her right off her feet. Her keys crashed to the floor.
Stan cried, his hand cradling the back of his wife’s head. He cried like a man cries when he has little or no experience of crying: dry sobs that racked his body.
It was the first time Christina had seen Stan Delaney, the man she wanted to convict for his wife’s murder, display even a modicum of emotion.
‘What in the world?’ said Joy Delaney.
chapter sixty-three
Valentine’s Day
Stan Delaney felt his colossal rage and humiliation, his pain and hurt, balloon within his chest and explode behind his eyes. But he was not his father. Just like his father had not been his father that day, the day his body finally reacted to the daily onslaught of cruelty.
That one action had defined the rest of his father’s life and the rest of Stan’s life.
He might be as stupid as his father, as thick as a brick, but he would never make his father’s mistake. He would never hurt a woman, not any woman, but especially not this woman, not the fair-haired tiny girl with the springy walk who had materialised like a miracle at that party all those years ago and smiled up at him with gleaming, combative eyes. He’d known, before that song finished its last silly synthetic beat, that she was the only girl for him.
More than fifty years later, he dropped his violently trembling hands. He turned away.
He didn’t slam the door. He closed it with a gentle click behind him.
chapter sixty-four
Now
‘Your family has been very worried about you, Mrs Delaney.’
Christina managed to keep her voice steady as she thought of the time and resources she’d spent trying to prove this woman’s murder. She thought of her boss’s face.
Accept nothing. Believe nothing. Check everything.
She hadn’t followed her own rules. They should have turned around once they got the information from the plastic surgeon about Savannah speaking to Joy on the same day she disappeared.
‘But I don’t understand,’ said Joy Delaney. She stood next to her husband, holding his hand in hers, patting it distractedly. She looked well rested and tanned. ‘Why would you call the police, Stan? You knew exactly where I was, I left you a note.’
‘I never got a note,’ said Stan shakily. He was a plant returning to life in front of Christina’s eyes: back straightening, shoulders dropping. ‘There was no note, Joy.’ He exhaled hard. ‘At first I thought you were just making a point, but this last week, you know, I really started to think something terrible had happened to you.’
‘There was so a note!’ insisted Joy. ‘I put it on the fridge door so you couldn’t possibly miss it.’
‘There was no note on the fridge,’ said Stan. ‘Where have you been?’
‘But I left it right there! It was a very nice note! I put a lot of thought into it.’
Stan said, ‘Did you use the London Eye fridge magnet, Joy?’
‘Oh,’ said Joy. She grimaced. ‘That was stupid. Oh dear.’
‘This fridge magnet is top-heavy,’ said Stan to Christina. He was almost chummy with her now. ‘Bad design. It keeps falling off the fridge.’
‘It’s a pity because it’s a lovely magnet,’ said Joy. ‘It has a picture of us on the London Eye.’
‘You didn’t see the note on the floor?’ said Christina to Stan, still treating him as a man with something to hide.