The Order of Things Read Free Page B

envelope. To her surprise, the note inside was typed. Billy hadn’t arrived with a laptop and he’d never asked to borrow her PC. He must have composed it in Portsmouth, she thought. Even before he took the train west.
    The note was short, written in the kind of carefully measured prose that clogged the arteries of corporate organisations. He was really glad about the success that the book had brought her. He’d hoped something like this might be on the cards but he’d never expected it to happen so fast. Getting her first book into the Sunday Times top ten was a real achievement. She nodded to herself, only too aware that this was the good news. He’d said something very similar on Friday night. What next?
    ‘You’re free now. You’ve really done it. You’re home safe. You don’t need me any more. It’s been a real pleasure and a real privilege but for both our sakes I suspect we’ve come to the end of the road. Your book will open a million doors. I’ll be thinking of you when I next open a copy of the Sunday Times . My fingers are crossed. Go well.’
    She sat on the rug, staring at the note. ‘Pleasure’? ‘Privilege’? ‘End of the road’? ‘Go well’? Where did words like these belong in the relationship she thought they’d had? He must have carried this news in his head throughout the weekend. He must have known that every smile, every touch, every lingering kiss would end with this.
    For a moment she toyed with phoning him. He’d be on the train. He’d probably be deep in a book. She wanted to know whether he was sitting there in an agony of guilt wanting to change his mind. She wanted to be told that everything she’d thought they had was real and true and meant .
    She was crying now but she was angry too. Angry that she’d lulled herself into believing in something that would never happen. Angry because – in ways she couldn’t yet voice – he’d taken advantage of her. Bastard , she thought, struggling to her feet.
    At her PC she reread the email about the rogue GP. Then she reached for the keyboard.
    ‘Yes,’ she typed. ‘Let’s do it.’

Three
    M ONDAY, 9 J UNE 2014, 20.34
    Sheila Forshaw was struggling to put her feelings into words.
    ‘I expected it to be him …’ she said. ‘Alois. That’s what shocked me.’
    ‘Alois Bentner?’
    ‘Of course. It was his house. He lived there. If something bad had happened, something awful … it had to be him on the bed … didn’t it?’
    Suttle had met her downstairs, in the Custody Suite at Heavitree police station, where she was nursing a mug of stewed tea. Now they were sharing one of the adjoining interview rooms.
    Sheila Forshaw was in her late forties, trim figure, office suit, barely any make-up. The image of the woman’s body in the bedroom, she said, would stay with her for a very long time. On field trips abroad she’d seen plenty of bodies, often bloated in the heat. In Africa she’d watched what a lion could do to an antelope it had just run down. But nothing could compare to this. So raw. So savage. So ugly. So still.
    Suttle wanted to know more about Bentner. Was she close to the man?
    ‘No one’s close to him. He’s a loner, always was. Apparently there was a wife some while back, but I don’t know anyone who ever met her.’
    ‘Is she still around? The wife?’
    ‘I don’t know. You could check with HR, but they don’t always keep that kind of information. Maybe she died. Or maybe she just left him and moved on. I know it sounds harsh, but I’m not sure I’d blame her.’
    ‘So no real friends at work? Is that what you’re saying?’
    She nodded. Bentner, she said, had been at the Hadley Centre since it moved down from Bracknell in 2003. He was German by birth but had spent most of his childhood and early adult years in the States. She knew he’d landed a big job at NCAR at a very young age and had subsequently produced the string of papers that had finally brought him to the Hadley