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this wasn’t important; it was just abstract. And when, he wondered, had he become so obsessed with creaturely comforts?
    ‘Do you smoke?’
    ‘What? Smoke? No. I stopped a few years back.’ Jury very nearly lunged forward. ‘Horrible, isn’t it?’
    Cody looked blankly at him. ‘Not really. After a few weeks, I hardly noticed.’ He shrugged. ‘Why?’
    Jury leaned back in the booth, stymied. How could you trust a man who stopped smoking without a tremor, a man who could order a plain round of toast with his tea? You wouldn’t catch Sergeant Wiggins nibbling on a piece of toast without beans on it. Never. Did Cody Platt spearhead a new race of men who could cut themselves and not bleed? Who could expunge their bad habits without any sense of loss whatever? He bet Cody showed up bright and early at the gym to do his hundred pushups and an hour on the treadmill, then bench-press (was that the word?) several hundred pounds while he balanced a ball on his toes with a dog sitting on it.
    Come on, come on, come on, man, Jury chided himself. Jury asked, ‘Did you have much contact with the Scotts after this search was over?’
    ‘With Mary - Mrs. Scott-yes, I guess I did. Keep up the contact, I mean.’
    Jury noticed the given name correction. Throughout this conversation, Cody had been calling her Mary. What was that about?
    Cody went on. ‘I never saw a woman more destroyed. The thing is she blamed herself, as if she should have been holding her daughter’s hand every second, but, well, you can’t do that, can you? You can’t hold your kid’s hand every step of the way.’
    ‘No, you can’t. What contact did you have with Mary Scott?’
    ‘I was assigned to the house with some others. You know-the aftermath of a kidnapping with calls being monitored waiting for the bugger to call. I didn’t man the phones. I was just general dogsbody, somebody to brew the coffee and run errands. Even the cook was put out of commission because of what had happened; even the maid was said to be prostrated because of it. She’s not there anymore, the maid. For God’s sakes, I always had the impression staff was supposed to carry on no matter what.’
    ‘A myth, I imagine. What about Declan Scott? Did he carry on?’
    ‘He did, actually. He did.’ Cody sat back, frowning, as if he were trying to work out how the stepfather could possibly have the presence of mind to ‘carry on.’
    ‘Somebody had to, Cody. There had to be someone who could answer questions, who could take directions if and when this person called.’
    Cody thought for a moment. ‘I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, making coffee. She – Mary - came in. Their kitchen is huge; it’s one of those that seem designed for a staff of fifty to do enormous dinner parties. Anyway, she’d sit down on a high stool and tell me stories about Flora: Flora at two, somersaulting in the gardens; Flora at four, insisting Declan take the goat out of the farmer’s fenced-in acres. That sort of thing, on and on. Flora was so pretty. She had the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. Cornflower blue, as blue as the dress she wore.’
    ‘You must have been a godsend, somebody for Mary Scott to talk to.’
    ‘But it wasn’t, in a sense, real. Mary wasn’t all there. She was living on another plane altogether.’
    ‘Denial, I suppose. Still, you seemed to feel you knew her.’
    ‘Yes.’ He fiddled with the menu, removing it from its chrome fixture. ‘She didn’t talk only about Flora; she talked a lot about herself, too, and Declan Scott, how he really loved Flora. He wanted to adopt her, but the father - this Baumann-more or less told Scott to F-off.’ He repositioned the menu in its holder.
    ‘Viktor Baumann?’
    ‘You know about him?’
    Jury nodded. ‘A colleague, a DI with the pedophilia unit’s been after him for some time.’
    ‘What must it be like, to lose both your wife and your daughter? Declan Scott must have felt bankrupt.’
    ‘It’s Fitzgerald who said