Free Never Apologise, Never Explain by James Craig

at Henry Mills.
    Thrown by the question, Mills thought about it for a minute. Carlyle could see that he was wrestling with his thoughts, trying to work out an honest answer. For the first time, he felt a pang of empathy with the dishevelled man in front of him. It struck him that if Helen’s skull had been smashed in – even if it had been Carlyle himself who had brained her – he would have been left distraught. Life without his wife, he imagined, would be like a living death. He would become a kind of zombie, just like the man in front of him.
    ‘I don’t know,’ Mills said finally. ‘If you’re morbid enough to imagine these things, I suppose you expect it to be dramatic, gut-wrenching, a rollercoaster of emotions. In reality, it’s been a very tedious and boring day. I should have laid off the Scotch, like you told me, Inspector .’
    Carlyle gave him a small bow.
    ‘I know I should say something like the reality hasn’t hit me yet , but what the “reality” is, remains to be seen. Agatha and I have been married for almost forty years, we don’t have any children, and our lives could be considered fairly,’ he thought about the right word, ‘self-contained.’
    Carlyle nodded, trying to look thoughtful, inviting him to continue.
    ‘That’s not to say we had separate lives – we didn’t. What we had was a very comfortable combined existence where neither of us felt compromised.’ His eyes welled up and he struggled to keep his voice even: ‘Seeing her lying there on the floor – it wasn’t her. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t us .’
    Carlyle waited for more but nothing was forthcoming. He glanced at the lawyer, who seemed to be confused by her client’s opening gambit. Was that a confession or not?
    Switching off the tape-machine, Carlyle turned back to Henry Mills. ‘I want you to take a break,’ he said gently, ‘and then we can have another go. Talk to your lawyer here. She will know the kind of detailed questions that I’m going to ask. If you’ve basically given me your full statement, then it is going to take a while for us to go through the evidence. If you can think of anything – anything at all – that might help your case, now is the time to tell me. Then, if you want to change your story, we can get this thing sorted out quickly and you can have a rest.’
    He had almost got back to his desk on the third floor when he felt his phone vibrating in the back pocket of his jeans. Seeing that it was his wife, he hit the receive button.
    ‘Hi.’
    ‘John. You have to get to the school.’ Helen’s tone was verging on fraught.
    ‘There’s been a bomb scare . . .’

 
    NINE
     
    By the time he got to the Barbican, the place looked like a scene out of some straight-to-video cop movie. The whole arts complex surrounding the school had been cordoned off. Outside the tape, tourists and office workers mingled, sharing a mixture of concern and curiosity, while resisting the best attempts of a dozen or so uniformed officers to move them along. As he approached the Silk Street entrance, Carlyle counted more than a dozen police vehicles, including two large Bomb Squad vans. He wondered how long it would take them to search the entire site – several hours at least. There would certainly be no more chance of school today. He pulled up Alice’s number on his mobile, and cursed when he got a ‘network busy’ message.
    ‘Fuck!’
    Ending the call, he redialled immediately. And got the same message.
    ‘Bastard fucking phone!’
    And again.
    And again.
    At the fifth or six attempt, he got through. After barely two rings, his daughter’s voicemail kicked in. Hi! This is Alice. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you. Bye!
    ‘Alice,’ he said as calmly as he could manage, ‘it’s Dad. Call me when you get this.’
    Keeping the phone in his hand, he walked up to a sergeant standing by the police tape. Flashing his ID, he got a nod of recognition.
    ‘Where are the schoolkids?’ Carlyle