Free Kind of Cruel by Sophie Hannah

leaving, not by choice at any rate, and was well aware that the fall-out from his new uninhibited, unedited approach might start to rain down on him any time now. On all of them. He tried to communicate this to Sam with a tiny shrug: I’m not handing in my notice. I haven’t been told I’ve got less than a month to live, or that Proust has. I’m doing it this way because it’s the best way to do it.
    ‘Charlie took some work to the nearest pub, to kill an hour,’ he went on. ‘At four o’clock, when she went back to Ginny Saxon’s, she met Hewerdine coming out. She said Hewerdine seemed a bit spaced out – in her own little world, as if stuff was preying on her mind. She told Charlie she’d seen what was in her notebook and asked her to confirm that the words “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel” were there. Charlie told her they weren’t, which was both true and untrue.’
    ‘A factual impossibility,’ Proust contributed sourly.
    ‘Hewerdine couldn’t have seen what she thought she’d seen,’ Simon told him. ‘Here’s the crucial point: at three o’clock, when Charlie had the notebook open in the car – the only chance Hewerdine had to see it – the words weren’t there, not all of them.’
    Sellers opened his mouth, but Simon didn’t need to hear his question in order to answer it. ‘Charlie couldn’t be more certain: when she and Hewerdine had their first conversation, at three o’clock, she’d written “Kind” and “Cruel”, nothing else. About half an hour later, in the pub, with Hewerdine nowhere in sight, she went back to that page in her notebook and wrote “Kind of Cruel”. Why? What was she thinking she’d achieve? Same as we’ve all thought: that staring at the words might help, might bring something to mind. It didn’t work for her any more than it did for us. The words meant nothing to her beyond their obvious meanings, and she had the impression that it was the same for Hewerdine, who said to her, “I’m not asking you to tell me what it means, only to confirm that I could have seen those words in your notebook.”’
    Every time he stopped for breath, he risked interruption; he wasn’t finished yet, not by a long way. ‘Tell me if you think I’m leaping to conclusions, but it seems likely to me that seeing “Kind” and “Cruel” in Charlie’s notebook sparked off an association that already existed in Hewerdine’s mind between those words and “Kind of Cruel”. She also mentioned to Charlie that she thought she’d seen the words written like a list on lined paper. Charlie wondered what I’m hoping you’re all wondering now: did Hewerdine see the sheet of paper that was torn from the pad we found at Katharine Allen’s flat, before or after it was torn off?’
    Irritated by his colleagues’ non-reaction, Simon allowed his impatience to erupt; it didn’t count as losing your cool if you let it happen. ‘Can you see how lucky we are to have this fall into our lap? I’ll make a bet with each and every one of you – for as much as you want, name your price – that Amber Hewerdine didn’t kill Katharine Allen and that she’s going to lead us to the person who did.’
    Slowly, Proust started to turn. On the turn, like rancid milk . ‘By sheer chance . . .’ the inspector began, his words as light as the footsteps of a ballet dancer. Simon saw Sam Kombothekra flinch at the grotesque disparity between the gently tripping voice and the scorn-contorted face. ‘By sheer chance, the unfavourably married Mrs Simon Waterhouse, outside the premises of a hypno-quack in Great Holling, happens to run into a woman connected to the Katharine Allen murder.’ Proust raised an index finger in the air. ‘A woman who is thoughtful enough to reveal this connection, unprompted.’ He shook his head, smiled. His cheeks were mottled with mauve patches; it was odd to think that his blood was red and warm like everyone else’s. ‘That’s not luck. That’s a coincidence so