Summer Night, Winter Moon. Jane Huxley

this time he’s only a suspect.”

      “Why? In what way? What the hell could make you suspect him?”

      “We received an anonymous phone call that points a finger in his direction.”

      I frowned and looked away, uneasily. “I didn’t know the police took into account anonymous phone calls,” I said.

      “Oh, we do. Our experts on voice identification decide whether or not to reject them.”

      “I’ll tell you one thing, Inspector. You are on the wrong track. Dante isn’t the sort. He would never do this. He’s a trusted friend, not a criminal.”

      “I didn’t say criminal, Mr. Snow. I said suspect.”

      Suddenly I knew what was expected of me. I did not require any more prodding. I did not look at my watch again. I buried my face in my hands and ignored the flutter in my voice, each word struggling to make itself heard.

      “Will you take me to the… the… Good Lord, I can’t quite say it.”

      “The body,” Inspector Fielding said, in the tone of a man for whom the word holds few surprises.

      I did not reply, just nodded with enough emotion to suggest the viewing would be a prelude to a new onslaught of misery.

      “Well then, let’s go,” the inspector said, and switched to a more focused bloodhound mode.

      Sniff, growl, pursue. What next? Apprehend? Not likely. Seems all they have is circumstantial evidence. At this juncture anyway.

      FOUR

      June 17, 2005

      The fruity connotation of Honey Dew’s name sometimes pleased me and other times irritated me. But when I attempted to shorten it to Honey, on our very first assignation, almost two years ago, she said indignantly, “Your name Trevor. My name Honey Dew.”

      “What’s wrong with Honey? All by itself?”

      She knitted her small feathery eyebrows as if the question was not welcome, or not courteous, or not important. “Nothing wrong,” she said, as she took off her tweed jacket, her scarf and her black stiletto sandals. “But not my name. My name Honey Dew Tung.”

      “Like the tree?”

      “Yes. Chinese tree.”

      I knew already after those on-again, off-again steamy sessions in a fourth-floor flat above a furniture store in Hampstead (which I had rented in an area not susceptible to the curiosity of neighbours) that, when challenged, this gorgeous little sex empress could display a blunt disdain, as stilted in annoyance as it was lavish in affection.

      Now, observing that I seemed surprisingly unresponsive to her touch, she looked at me with a puzzled expression and asked, “What’s wrong, Trevor?”

      “This thing about my wife.”

      “I saw article in Daily Mail.”

      “You did? Today?”

      “Didn’t you?”

      “No. Have you got a copy?”

      “No. I saw newspaper at the tube station, on my way to work.”

      “You remember what it said?”

      “Something about clues.”

      “What about them?”

      “Clues lead to York Bridge, in Regent’s Park, then gone,” she said, her almond-shaped eyes wide open and a few strands of her coal-black hair waiting to be pushed back behind her ear.

      “Photograph?”

      “Yes. Big one. Pretty woman. Sad eyes. English people surprised when one person disappears. In my country thousands disappear. No one surprised.”

      Just then, the emptiness inside me, which felt like melancholy, turned into raw grief. Shaken, I put my head on Honey Dew’s chest.

      “Hug me,” I said. “Please.”

      She did. She put her arms around me and drew me close to her, allowing me to be sheltered by her, yet alone in my sorrow.

      “You’re a nice girl, Honey Dew,” I said, at last. “I’m lucky to have met you.”

      “You lucky I’m bad girl. I’m only nineteen, but I’m smart turning tricks. See what I mean?”

      Proudly she contemplated the outcome of her labours, my prick finally stiffening under her expert fingers. But not for long. A sudden image of the front page of the Daily Mail, which I had been torn between reading and ignoring, withered my ardour.

      “You really upset.”

      “Sorry, Honey Dew,” I said, staring down at the blunt language of a reluctant cock.

      But she drew breath and bent down again, her straight hair like a silk black curtain tickling my belly as her red valentine lips coaxed and stroked and salvaged the leftovers of my lust.

      Trembling and aroused, I allowed myself to submit to that adamant imperative, a stir of pleasure already tingling in my groin. Oblivion, I begged her. I want to forget. Him. Her. Myself. I want to tame the beast that pokes its head… ah, ah, ahhh… so that when my coital cries stopped and my weeping began they were one and the same, both hideous and exquisite.

      Though I covered my face with my hands, I was unable to suppress certain images – her smile, his laughter, the touch of her hand, the look in his eyes when the two of them saw each other – images that turned my sobs into convulsive gasps like the rush at the heart of a waterfall.

      Afterwards, gratified by the felicity of the outcome, we dressed and prepared to leave, she fixing her lipstick in the mirror, I taking the customary two hundred quid out of my wallet and leaving it on the night table.

      “Do you do this for many men, Honey Dew?”

      “Not many. Few.”

      “Would you do it for me if I didn’t pay you?”

      Her slanted eyes peered at me from under charcoal eyelids; then the scarlet lips, no longer smudged, broke into a smile.

      “Of course,” she said coyly. “But you rich man, I poor girl. Not equivalent.”

      “You mean fair.”

      “Right. Not fair, not square,” she said, picking up the money and slipping it into the back pocket of her tight elegant jeans.

      FIVE

      June 16, 2005

      I’ll do anything, I thought, I’ll go anywhere to avoid returning to the house where Piero Giordano, my wife’s father, is sitting in the dark, chain-smoking and staring at the portrait of his vanished daughter. Is it possible to hide glaring guilt from his eyes? A bruised soul from his scrutiny?

      I kept roaming in the murky twilight, asking myself at what point sadness turned into grief and grief into despair. Where did it lead? And to whom? Perhaps God (if I could invent Him) or repentance (if I knew how it felt) or absolution (if I could chastise myself enough).

      Now, thinking of the occurrence from whose horror I had fled and from whose consequence I might never be able to extricate myself, I came upon the imposing medieval church across the road from Regent’s Park – the Danish church I must have passed a thousand times without ever bothering to enter.

      Thoughts of providence, of miracles, prompted me to push the massive wooden door. To my astonishment, it creaked open and let me in. A sense of Christian hospitality (perhaps Catholic since the church was named Saint Katharine) mingled with the overbearing smell of lit candles and incense.

      How long since I was last in church? Too long to remember. Except for the image of Father Rowan, the crippled pastor of our Southern Baptist