Page 34 of We Chase Shadows

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Felicity says to Rosie, with some force. ‘He’s out there, free as a bird. Maybe she knows where he is?’

Steve can see Rosie approves of this steelier side to Felicity. When Rosie hired Felicity, she had said that theatrical agents are not to be messed with. In fact, her exact words were, ‘They are the cyanide lacing the candyfloss of showbusiness.’

‘I promise you we’ll keep an eye on her, Felicity,’ says Rosie. ‘Which shouldn’t be hard. She took a shine to Stevie. Didn’t stop flirting.’

‘She did not,’ says Steve. ‘I would have noticed if she was flirting. Women touch their face, don’t they?’

‘Stevie,’ says Rosie, ‘at one point she literally looked at you and licked her lips.’

‘She’d been eating a digestive,’ says Steve. ‘They dry you out.’

‘They do dry you out,’ agrees Tony. ‘What time did you leave Rickmansworth?’

‘4.15,’ says Steve. ‘Something like that.’

‘Why do you think she was lying?’ Felicity asks.

‘Tiny pause when we showed her the photo,’ says Steve. ‘Smile a bit plastic too.’

Steve had noticed Georgie Glazier’s lying smile. And the pause. Even while distracted about the exact duration of the drive home. And they say men can’t multitask.

‘Why would she lie?’ asks Felicity. ‘If she wasn’t involved?’

‘All sorts of reasons for lying,’ says Steve. He and Rosie had been speaking about exactly this on the drive home. Before the phone call. It would be completely normal for Georgie to have heard of Jakob Eriksson. They moved in the same circles. Almost stranger if she hadn’t heard of him. So why pretend she hadn’t?

Tony has been thinking. ‘You left at 4.15? Something like that?’

‘About then,’ says Steve.

‘About then?’ asks Tony.

‘4.19 maybe,’ says Steve. ‘Give or take.’

‘You have to find Eriksson,’ says Felicity. ‘I need to meet this man. Preferably alone.’

‘Only you got here at 5.13,’ says Tony.

Steve sees where Tony is going with this. Steve has been distracted thinking about murder, and his friend looking so vulnerable. He’s fallen into a textbook Tony Taylor trap.

‘Which would give you,’ says Tony, cocking his head at Steve, ‘an average speed of eighty-three miles an hour? Hello, Her Majesty’s Constabulary, I’d like to report a crime.’

‘His Majesty’s Constabulary,’ corrects Felicity.

‘Too soon, Phil,’ says Tony.

‘I can explain the timings,’ says Steve.

‘Can you now?’ Tony says. ‘Because it sounds to me like someone’s been speeding.’

Speeding is one of Tony’s deadly sins. If you need to get somewhere quicker, you simply leave earlier. No excuses.

Of course Steve can explain the timings.

His phone had started ringing. Rosie had seen the name TONY PONY MACARONI on his screen. Steve had thought his old friend had been quiet for a while. He had sent Tony a meme of a hedgehog, for example, and hadn’t even got a cry-laugh back.

Rosie had asked if he was going to answer it, and Steve had said that of course he wasn’t going to answer it, he was driving, did Rosie want him to kill her on the M25?

Rosie had asked him if he didn’t have ‘hands free’, and Steve had had to explain to her that it’s not just your hands you need for advanced driving, it’s your brain. The concentration. The road awareness. He further explained that he and Tony can get into some pretty deep stuff on the phone, and before you knew it they’d be under an articulated lorry and there would be tailbacks for miles. Absolute chaos for everyone.