pills so that he could make the most of her before she left. It would take at least thirty minutes to kick in so he decided to wash it down with a cup of tea.
He crushed what was left of his fag in the ashtray on the floor and rummaged in the bedside drawer for a pill.
In the kitchen he opened the blinds and reached for the kettle to fill it with water. That was when he noticed his mobile phone on the worktop next to the sink.
As soon as he picked it up he saw that he had two unopened text messages and three missed calls.
‘Shit.’
At some point last night he’d put the phone on silent and had forgotten to take it off. It had been careless of him. Downright stupid.
He checked the times of the messages and the calls. They had all come in during the past hour, which was a relief. He would say he was asleep in bed and hadn’t heard it ringing.
It wasn’t until he phoned the office that he discovered why they were anxious to reach him. It was bad news.
He wasn’t going to have a day off, after all. And there would be no time for even a morning quickie with Ania.
Cain didn’t know what to make of it. Megan Fuller had been murdered in her own home in Balham.
Jesus.
He had never met the woman but he knew all about her. She’d appeared in a soap that had aired on the BBC for about five years, playing the glamorous wife of a cantankerous factory owner. In real life she’d been married to Danny Shapiro, and by all accounts it had been a tumultuous relationship.
The word on the street was that she’d fallen on hard times since the Beeb dropped her from the soap over a year ago as part of a character shake-up. She’d been struggling to find other work ever since and had recently been threatening to write a tell-all book about her life.
Danny was among a number of people who were apparently not happy about it. He feared she might reveal a bit too much about their life together in order to secure a lucrative publishing contract.
As Cain stood under the shower, he realised that Danny would most likely be in the frame for her murder because the book thing meant that he had a motive. If so, then things could get tricky. He thought about phoning Danny to find out what he knew, if anything. But he decided against it. Maybe later when he had a better idea about what was going on.
After the shower, he towelled himself dry and had another go at waking Ania. She hadn’t responded to the first attempt, but this time her eyes flickered open and she looked up at him.
‘I said get your arse out of bed and get dressed,’ he told her. ‘Something’s come up and I have to go out.’
She licked her lips and cleared her throat. ‘Can’t you just leave me here? I’m tired and I don’t feel well.’
‘Like I give a shit,’ he said. ‘Your clothes are over there. Put them on and scram. I’ve left a thirty-quid tip on the chair.’
Suddenly he was no longer interested in her. He was in such a hurry to get going he didn’t even look at her as she got out of bed and sauntered naked into the bathroom to use the toilet.
By the time he’d put on his grey suit and a white shirt he was flustered. He didn’t bother with a tie because he hated wearing them.
He told Ania she would have to have a shower when she got home and while she put on her clothes he called her a cab.
‘Charge it to my account,’ he told the operator. ‘The name’s Cain. Detective Inspector Ethan Cain.’
After hanging up he grabbed his wallet and warrant card from the dressing table and slipped them into his pocket. Then he checked himself in the mirror one last time and decided that nobody would guess he’d been up half the night shagging a teen prostitute and snorting coke. That was a relief. It meant he was ready to report for duty.
He checked his watch. Seven forty-five. Balham was only a couple of miles away and with luck he could be at Megan Fuller’s house in less than half an hour, traffic permitting.
Danny Shapiro
‘We’re getting reports that the British actress Megan Fuller has been found dead at her home in south London. Police say she was stabbed late last night. Her body was discovered this morning. Scotland Yard has confirmed that Murder Squad detectives are at the scene. We’ll bring you more when we have it.’
Those words from the BBC newsreader hit Danny Shapiro like a cattle prod. His eyes snapped open and he struggled to focus on the TV screen fixed to the wall in front of his bed.
For a few seconds it was just a blur, and by the time his vision cleared the newsreader was talking about something else. But the caption scrolling across the bottom of the screen told him that he hadn’t been dreaming.
Breaking News: Soap star Megan Fuller found murdered in her home.
Danny sat bolt upright and shuddered from a fierce intake of breath. He had turned the telly on twenty minutes ago to help him shake off his slumber before getting up. Since then he’d been dozing on and off and hadn’t taken any notice of it.
Now though he was wide awake and the morning news had his full attention.
Megan Fuller. His ex-wife. Murdered. Stabbed. In her own home.
Fuck.
Surely it can’t be true, he told himself. It must be a ghastly mistake or some sick joke. After all, he was at her house last night and she had been very much alive. As spiteful and as mouthy as ever. They had argued and there’d been a shouting match. He remembered threatening her and recalled the fear on her face as she’d backed away from him in the kitchen.
She had really pissed him off with her crude ultimatum, and he’d told her that he wouldn’t allow himself to be blackmailed. But she’d laughed in his face and had said he would have to pay up or suffer the consequences.
Afterwards he’d come straight home and had drunk himself into oblivion because he’d been so angry. That was why his head was bunged up now and there were things he couldn’t remember: such as whether he’d given her a slap – or worse – before storming out. If he had then it would have been the first time. During their three years together he’d never once laid a hand on her, even though he’d come close to it on numerous occasions.
He was sure he would have held back last night too, whatever the extent of the provocation. But right now he couldn’t be 100 per cent certain. He closed his eyes briefly, cast his mind back to last night, saw himself inside Megan’s house, yelling at her, threatening her.
The picture kept fading, which came as no great surprise. Although he enjoyed the booze, he wasn’t a heavy drinker, and when he did get rat-arsed he often suffered partial memory loss the morning after. Usually the memories surfaced eventually, but sometimes they didn’t.
He was reminded of the time he got into an argument with a stranger who got lippy with him in a nightclub. The next morning he remembered the argument, but had no recollection of punching the bloke in the face and then stamping on his head. Luckily Frankie Bishop had been with him in the club and had told him what had happened.
‘I wouldn’t worry about it, boss,’ Bishop had said. ‘Most of us don’t remember everything we do when we’re hammered. And I reckon that’s a good thing. It’s just a shame we can’t blank out some of the stuff we do when we’re sober.’
But Danny was worried. Not knowing exactly what had happened last night sparked a twist of panic in his gut.
He opened his eyes, grabbed the TV remote from the bedside table, switched over to Sky News.
And there was Megan’s face filling the screen,