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into making a pot of coffee.”
    â€œWell, seeing you both went to the trouble.”

    Ihaka poured himself a cup of plunger coffee, added sugar, and sat down in the visitor’s chair pulled up in front of Lilywhite’s sofa.
    â€œI’m sorry you got run out of town,” said Lilywhite. “Of course, at the time I was delighted.”
    â€œI wasn’t unhappy with how it panned out,” said Ihaka. “And if that’s the worst thing you’ve got on your conscience, you should be at peace with yourself.”
    Lilywhite managed a weak smile. “Good point. We’ll come to my conscience shortly. I don’t think you’ll leave here feeling you’ve wasted an afternoon, but could you do me a favour before we get down to business: why were you so sure I killed my wife?”
    â€œInstinct, experience, process of elimination. Once you take away the baby bashers and the psychos and the dumbfuck trash out of their tiny minds on drugs or booze, most murders boil down to sex or money. If a marriage is made in heaven, neither of those things comes into it. If it isn’t, one or the other or both generally do.” He paused. “Okay, a man who’s used to getting away with things has a rich wife. He likes the rich part, but she doesn’t do it for him any more. So he gets rid of her making it look like an accident, gets the money all to himself and, after a decent interval, moves the girlfriend into the master bedroom. That’s pretty much how it went down, right?”
    â€œBut the outcome doesn’t prove the theory,” said Lilywhite. “If Joyce had died of natural causes, I still would’ve got all the money and ended up with someone else.”
    â€œWho said anything about proof? I didn’t have any proof; that’s why the investigation got canned. Come back to the key question: were you happily married? Your wife’s friends thought so because that’s how your wife saw it – or chose to see it – and they got her version. Your mates said all the right things, but I’ve been lied to by experts. A couple of them
who tried to tell me it was all sweetness and light sounded like they’d learned the lines off by heart. Why would they have to do that? The truth should speak for itself. I’ve also had to deal with people who’ve had someone precious just vanish from their lives. Grief is a hard act, and you didn’t ring true. And then there were those fucking boy racers. Boy racers race, they don’t steal cars to go and see where the rich folks live. If they steal a car, they thrash the shit out of it for a few hours, then dump it. There were street races all over town that night, but no one saw the Subaru. Boy racers aren’t master criminals, either. Most of them are fucking dimwits who’ve sucked up too many petrol fumes. They couldn’t keep a hit-and-run secret if their lives depended on it. The bottom line is that if boy racers mowed down your wife, we would’ve found them inside a week.”
    â€œWhen you put it like that, it seems obvious. Why weren’t you able to persuade your colleagues?”
    â€œIn one corner you’ve got a well-connected, white, middle-aged businessman, in the other a couple of phantom boy racers. For some people that’s a pretty easy call.”
    Lilywhite nodded slowly. “I could say that’s a rather cynical point of view, but I suppose you’d come right back and call me naïve – or disingenuous. So you still think I got away with murder?”
    â€œI wouldn’t be here otherwise. You tell me something. What did your friends, particularly your wife’s friends, think when you hooked up with her PA?”
    â€œWell, some of them were a bit stiff-necked about it but a decent interval, to use your phrase, had elapsed.”
    â€œBullshit,” said Ihaka. “You were sneaking her in here long before you went