Really? Is that why his principles and his fear of Francine meant more to him than you did? Is that why he told you to get out of his life, and hasnt been in touch since?

Waterhouse reaches into his file again and pulls out a crumpled sheet of A4 paper. He unfolds it and hands it to me.

"Tim asked me to give you this," he says. "Its a poem."

I take the page from his hand. Mine is shaking.

"He told me to tell you it was from The Carrier. Do you know what that means?"

You b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Tim.

I cant concentrate on the poem at first. Tims writing is all I see; its only significance is that its his. He held the pen, touched the paper, folded it . . .

"Yesterday you told Charlie that Tims not The Carrier, and that Kerry Jose is. What did you mean?"

Waterhouse can wait until Ive finished reading. I start to cry halfway through. I read the sonnet again and again.

"Gaby?" Charlie says gently.

I shake my head.

"Does Kerry know that shes The Carrier?"

"Oh, yes. She knows."

"Carrier of what?" asks Waterhouse. "A disease? A burden of some kind?"

I wipe my eyes. "Neither. I dont want to talk about it. Its personal."

"Who and what is The Carrier?" Waterhouse asks again, as if he hasnt just heard me say Im not going to tell him. "Do you know why Tim wanted you to have this poem? What it means?"

Falling in loves a paradox like this. / Either it happens like a thunderbolt, / So when it makes our lives make sense, it lies . . .

"Thats easy," I say.

"What does it mean?"

Or we had long been hoping for the kiss / That changed us, and, aware how it would jolt / Our beings, we could suffer no surprise.

"I cant speak for the poet, but I can tell you what Tim means by it."

Ridiculous and immature though it is, I have a sudden urge to run to the Proscenium and search every volume until I find the perfect poem to send back to him. Stupid; Im about to see him in person. Anything I want to say to him I can say directly and not in rhyming quatrains.

And he wont hear it as clearly.

"It means that he doesnt trust love," I tell Waterhouse.

22.

13/3/2011.

Sam took a deep breath before going back into the interview room. Wayne Cuffley had brought a cloud of bad smell in with him, and it wouldnt leave until he did: a combination of strong aftershave, stale smoke and clothes that hadnt dried soon enough after being washed. "Your briefs on her way," Sam said. "Her names Rhian Broadribb. If you want, we can wait till she arrives before continuing with the interview."

"Whats the point?" said Cuffley. "Ive got nothing to hide."

Something about his tone made Sam uncomfortable. People normally described themselves as having nothing to hide when they were innocent.

Or proud. Was Cuffley here to do more than confess to the murder of Jason Cookson? Was there an element of boasting?

Sam sat down so that he was facing Cuffley across the large table. The nicks audio-visual equipment grew ever more sophisticated, and each interview room had a different setup. This one could only be operated with a remote control. Sam picked it up and pressed the b.u.t.ton that meant, though unhelpfully didnt say, record. "DS Sam Kombothekra interviewing Wayne Cuffley on Sunday, thirteenth of March 2011. Interview resumed at two-fifteen p.m. Mr. Cuffley, youve confessed to the murder of your son-in-law Jason Cookson. Is that right?"

"Yes."

"Id like you to repeat what you told me before we took a break."

"Why? To check I dont slip up and say something different?"

"Its standard. You might have inadvertently left out an important detail."

No reaction from Cuffley apart from a visible tensing of the arm muscles. His "IRONMAN" tattoo shifted, stretched. Never had body art been more guilty of false advertising, Sam thought. Cuffley was no hulking superhero. His head was too small for his short, wiry body, and his rats-tails hair made it look even smaller.

"I killed Jason, I wrapped his body in Bubble Wrap, I put it on the backseat of my car and I brought it here, to the police station. My wife, Lisa, drove the car. I sat in the backseat with the body. I pushed it out of the car in the car park, then we drove away, back home."

Hed left out a detail hed included first time round.

"Had you done anything to your car before setting off?" Sam asked.

"You know what I did to the car. I told you: I took off the number plates."

"Why did you do that, Mr. Cuffley?"

"Didnt want the car traced back to me. I wasnt planning to give myself up at that point."

"So what changed your mind?" This was new territory.

"Lauren. She was panicking. She had no idea where Jason was, and shes not good with stress. She was going out of her mind, not knowing what had happened to him. Best she knows as soon as possible, I thought." Cuffley exhaled slowly. "Look, I didnt want to give myself up. If Id hidden the body, youd never have found it, but . . . Laurens my daughter and I love her. She deserves to know the truth about what happened and why. If I didnt owe that to my daughter, youd never have known it was me. Youd never have found that c.u.n.ts body, for a start."

Sam had come across this phenomenon many times before: killers facing long sentences, keen to let you know how easily they could have got away with it.

"Lisa supported my decision-thats my wife. She said, 'Whats the point of doing what you did if Laurens still living in fear of him walking back in at any moment?"

"That explains why you gave us Cooksons body," said Sam. "It doesnt explain why youre confessing."

Cuffley folded his arms. He looked as if he was trying to stare Sam down. As if he couldnt believe Sam had had the nerve to make such a trivial point. Or perhaps Cuffleys objection was that he didnt know how to respond to it.

"I couldnt have Lauren thinking someone else might have done it, could I?" he said, just as Sam was about to give up hope of getting an answer. "If she knows its me, she knows Im not going to come after her. I did it for her, to protect her-sh.e.l.l understand that. If she thinks it might be one of Jasons crew, some vendetta, shes going to worry about them targeting her next, isnt she?"

Crew? Did handymen-c.u.m-gardeners have crews?

"They often target the wives, even when theyre nothing to do with anything," Cuffley said.

"Was Lauren scared of Jason?" Sam asked.

"Me and Lisa thought so. She always denied it. Look, can you let me tell her hes dead?"

That hes dead, and that you killed him? Talk about two for the price of one.

"Im afraid that wont be possible, Mr. Cuffley. Im sorry. I need you to tell me what happened between you and Jason Cookson on Friday night."

"What do you want to know?"

"Where and how did you kill him?"

"In the house."

"Your house?"

"Yeah. Stabbed the c.u.n.t through the heart." Cuffley smiled as if at a fond memory.

"Where did this happen?"

"I told you: at home."

"Which room?" Sam asked.

"Laurens old bedroom."

"When?"

"Friday night. Bit after midnight."

"I need the full story, Mr. Cuffley. What happened?"

"Me and Lisa were watching telly, about to go to bed. Suddenly theres all kinds of loud banging on the window. Jason. We knew it was, soon as we heard the noise. No one else we knowd turn up at that time."

"What time was it?" Sam asked.

"I dont know-eleven-thirty? Hed come from the pub, p.i.s.sed up, shouting all kinds of s.h.i.t about Lauren."

"What did he say?"

"It was disrespectful to my daughter. Im not repeating it." Cuffley sneered. "What are you going to do, send me to prison? Im going there anyway."

"All right, so . . . Jason was shouting unpleasant things about Lauren. Had anything like that happened before?"

"Once or twice," said Cuffley. "When he was drunk, which didnt happen very often. This time he was so drunk, his guard was down. He said too much. Id always thought he probably did worse than get p.i.s.sed now and then and come round asking me if Lauren was s.h.a.gging someone else. Which she wasnt, and she never would have either. Shes no s.l.u.t, my Lauren. Shes loyal as anything."

Sam waited, sensing Cuffley hadnt finished.

"I asked her all the time: is he treating you nice? She always said he was, said he just needed to get it into his head that she wasnt interested in anyone else. He was the jealous type, you could say. Lisa used to worry about it-so did I-but Laurend say, 'Please, Dad, just leave it. So what could I do?"

Kill him? Had Cuffley forgotten the solution hed eventually arrived at?

"You say Jason said too much on Friday night. What did he say that was too much?"

"He was mouthing off about what hed done to Lauren-in the f.u.c.king street! Any of our neighbors could have heard. Some probably did. And you can ask me as many times as you like, Im not telling you what he did to her. Bang me up for a hundred years-I dont give a f.u.c.k. My daughters been through enough. Im not having her humiliated any more." Cuffley clenched both fists. "I went to open the door, drag him inside before he made any more of a show of us all. By the time I got there he was on the floor. Hed pa.s.sed out. I dragged him inside. Lisa said to take him up to Laurens old room. 'Best ring Lauren, she said. 'No way, I told her."

"Because?"

"I didnt want Lauren coming round to fetch him home. I wanted to f.u.c.king kill the t.w.a.t. And I did," Cuffley reminded Sam, scratching his "IRONMAN" tattoo. "I went to the kitchen, got hold of the biggest knife I could find, went back upstairs and stuck it in him-all the way in. Lisa wasnt involved. I didnt tell her what I was planning. Shed have stopped me. You know what women are like."

Not so much women as people who disapprove of murder, thought Sam. He stood up, walked over to the window. There were metal bars across it, top to bottom. He was tired of spending so much time in this room and others like it. Whatever his next job was, its windows needed to offer a view that was uninterrupted by gray stripes. "Where did the Bubble Wrap come from?" he asked.

"The what?"

"That you wrapped Jasons body in."

"Oh, right. I bought a roll from Brodigans yesterday. Look." Cuffley reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a small white piece of paper. He handed it to Sam.

A receipt.

Sam managed not to thank him. "When forensics search your house, what evidence will they find that Jason was killed where you say he was?"

Cuffley was unfazed by the question. "We got rid of the bedding, but the mattress is still there. Lisa wont come back till its gone. Shes taken the kids and gone to her mums. Put it this way, no onell be looking at that mattress and imagining someone cut themselves shaving."

"You and Lisa have children?"

"Two. Theyre not mine."

"Were they in the house when you killed Jason?"

"They were asleep," said Cuffley defensively. "They saw nothing. I wouldnt have let them see anything. Lisa got them up, dressed and out first thing Sat.u.r.day morning."

Oh, well, thats all right, then. Heres your Stepdad of the Year award back. Sorry I doubted you.

"How did Lisa react when you told her what youd done?" Sam asked.

Cuffley shrugged. "Shed rather it hadnt happened in her house, but she was never Jasons biggest fan. We both had a feeling he wasnt treating Lauren right. Were solid, me and Lise. She drove me here, when I needed to . . . you know, with the body, and shes said sh.e.l.l stand by me whatever happens. She knows I did what I did for Lauren."

Something was bothering Sam. It took him a few seconds to pin down what it was. "How long was it between you killing Jason and telling Lisa what youd done?" he asked.