‘Keep working for you?’ Strike repeated.
For a split-second he wondered whether it was possible that she had not quite grasped what had happened, that she thought Quine was still out there somewhere to be found. Did her faint eccentricity of manner mask something more serious, some fundamental cognitive problem?
‘They think I know something about it,’ said Leonora. ‘I can tell.’
Strike hesitated on the verge of saying ‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ but it would have been a lie. He was only too aware that Leonora, wife of a feckless, unfaithful husband, who had chosen not to contact the police and to allow ten days to elapse before making a show of looking for him, who had a key to the empty house where his body had been found and who would undoubtedly be able to take him by surprise, would be the first and most important suspect. Nevertheless, he asked: ‘Why d’you think that?’
‘I can tell,’ she repeated. ‘Way they were talking to me. And they’ve said they wanna look in our house, in his study.’
It was routine, but he could see how she would feel this to be intrusive and ominous.
‘Does Orlando know what’s happened?’ he asked.
‘I told her but I don’t think she realises,’ said Leonora, and for the first time he saw tears in her eyes. ‘She says, “Like Mr Poop” – he was our cat that was run over – but I don’t know if she understands, not really. You can’t always tell with Orlando. I haven’t told her someone killed him. Can’t get my head around it.’
There was a short pause in which Strike hoped, irrelevantly, that he was not giving off whisky fumes.
‘Will you keep working for me?’ she asked him directly. ‘You’re better’n them, that’s why I wanted you in the first place. Will you?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Cos I can tell they think I had something to do with it,’ she repeated, standing up, ‘way they was talking to me.’
She drew her coat more tightly around her.
‘I’d better get back to Orlando. I’m glad you’re all right.’
She shuffled off to her escort again. The female police officer looked taken aback to be treated like a taxi driver but after a glance at Anstis acceded to Leonora’s request for a lift home.
‘The hell was that about?’ Anstis asked him after the two women had passed out of earshot.
‘She was worried you’d arrested me.’
‘Bit eccentric, isn’t she?’
‘Yeah, a bit.’
‘You didn’t tell her anything, did you?’ asked Anstis.
‘No,’ said Strike, who resented the question. He knew better than to pass information about a crime scene to a suspect.
‘You wanna be careful, Bob,’ said Anstis awkwardly, as they passed through the revolving doors into the rainy night. ‘Not to get under anyone’s feet. It’s murder now and you haven’t got many friends round these parts, mate.’
‘Popularity’s overrated. Listen, I’ll get a cab – no,’ he said firmly, over Anstis’s protestations, ‘I need to smoke before I go anywhere. Thanks, Rich, for everything.’
They shook hands; Strike turned up his collar against the rain and with a wave of farewell limped off along the dark pavement. He was almost as glad to have shaken off Anstis as to take the first sweet pull on his cigarette.