Free The meanest Flood by John Baker Page B

on his face took Ruben into a small interview room behind the front desk. ‘We don’t have any news,’ he said.
    ‘Who’s the chief suspect?’
    ‘Earlier we thought there might be a connection with her ex-husband. But we can’t prove he was in Nottingham. He has witnesses who place him in York.’
    ‘But you think he did it?’
    ‘We’re following several leads at the moment, sir.’ j They had nothing. If they were following several leads that meant they didn’t have a clue. Ruben would have to find the killer himself. He’d talk to everyone who knew Kitty and somehow he’d track the murderer down. He pushed his chair away from the table and got to his feet.
    ‘You should have some counselling, son,’ the Detective Sergeant said. ‘See your doctor and set something up. Or ring these people, they’re there to help you.’ He handed over a card with the telephone number of Victim Support. Logo in the top corner of a dark cloud and a yellow sun rising over it.
    ‘Thanks for seeing me,’ Ruben said. He turned and left the room and walked into the city. Something had changed in him. He felt no sense of urgency but in that tiny room in the police station he had committed himself to avenging Kitty’s death. His own life held no joy for him now. With splendid clarity he knew that there was only one thing left for him to accomplish. Everything else was dross.
    Back in his flat he wrote down the name of every person he could think of who had known Kitty. He racked his brain to recall everyone she had ever mentioned, however distant. When he’d finished he sat back in the chair and looked at the wall. He was like Superman, as if he had X-ray eyes and could pierce through bricks and mortar with his vision. But beyond the walls there was only Kitty mothballed in his memory. Kitty as she had been in life. Her hair and fair skin, her bright eyes and the brilliant promises she could no longer deliver.
     
    He put his mobile and camera on the passenger seat and filled the Skoda’s tank with petrol, headed out towards the Ml and took the slip-road to join the north carriageway. Kitty hadn’t talked much about her ex, Sam Turner, and she’d never said anything to indicate she was frightened of the man. In fact, there had been a wistfulness about her when she’d remembered her marriage, not enough to make Ruben actively jealous because Kitty always let him know that he was number one, but there had been times late at night when Ruben had definitely seen the ex-husband as a threat.
    Could be him. Ruben remembered someone in the joint telling him that most murders were domestic. Either the guy tops his missis with an axe or a broken bottle or she finally gets it together and feeds him Warfarin for breakfast - the point being that the statistics about murders are misleading. There’s all these little old ladies scared to go out of the house because the murder rate’s going up every year. They sit at home and watch killings on the box instead. But they’ve got nothing to worry about really; they could walk around all night and nobody’d bother them because the guy most likely to blow them away is the one they go visit in the cemetery on a Sunday morning.
    This life, Ruben thought, it hasn’t got anything going for it. You start with demons on all sides and they chip away at you until you’re on your knees. Then you’re given Kitty and you fall on your feet again. Least, you think you’ve fallen on your feet. That’s what it feels like, you’re so up you’d have to be psychic to remember that there’s no substance under you. The devil’s got you by the tail and he’s shifting the parts of the universe around all the time so you can’t see where anything fits. You think you’re set up with a woman by your side and the woman is telling you there’s nothing to worry about and she’s the one you were looking for and you’re the one she’s been looking for and now you’ve found each other. It’s like the