Murder Song by Jon Cleary Page A

really promiscuous. Even here she never took him into her and Philip’s bed; they always went into one of the spare bedrooms. As if he were no more than a visitor in her life. Which (and the thought chilled her) was all he might prove to be.
    â€œA girl— murdered? Which girl?”
    â€œOne I used to know.” He had known dozens, she knew that, though he had never boasted of them. Indeed, he had seemed almost ashamed of them, as if he would rather have come to her a virgin. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved, he had told her the second time he had made love to her, and she had believed him. He was a liar and a robber in business; she had heard the Minister for Business Affairs describe him that way to Philip. Yet with her (or was it conceit on her part?) he was sometimes self-scaldingly truthful. As he was now: “I told her it was all over, but she didn’t want to believe it.”
    â€œWho killed her?”
    â€œHow the hell—sorry. I don’t know. The police are working on it.”
    â€œHave they been to see you?” He nodded. “What did you tell them?”
    â€œNothing. That’s where I was stupid—they’ll find out eventually. All I wanted to do, I was thinking on the spur of the moment, was to protect you.”
    â€œYou told them you didn’t know the girl?”
    â€œI even told them I knew nothing about the flat. I was bloody stupid, but I could see them asking other questions . . .” She wondered if men in desperate love were always so naïve. But naïveté, of course, was a part of love: that was one of its weaknesses.
    â€œShe was murdered at the weekend? Did they ask where you’d spent Saturday and Sunday?”
    â€œI told them I’d spent it with a lady I wasn’t going to name.” He could be very old-fashioned at times; it was one of the more endearing things about him. She wondered if the original Brian Boru had been chivalrous towards women, but decided it was unlikely: Irish and medieval, he would have been too busy fighting, drinking and talking.
    She squeezed his hand in thanks; then felt ashamed that so far her concern had been only for themselves. “How was the poor girl killed? Was it an intruder or someone?”
    â€œThe police said she’d been shot, it looked as if it was from a neighbouring building.”
    â€œDid you and—did she go to the flat regularly?”
    â€œFairly regularly—up till I met you.”
    â€œDid she have a husband or a boy-friend?”
    He looked at her with admiration; he was recovering his composure. “You would make a good detective.”
    She hadn’t meant to sound like that. “You don’t want me playing detective—there’ll be enough of the real ones. You should have told them the truth right from the start. In the long run it’s always best.”
    â€œYou don’t believe that.” He was gently cynical for the moment. “Not with a husband in politics. This is the same, darling. There are always cover-ups in politics. I was trying to cover up on you.”
    So far she had felt little fear; she was more concerned for the situation he had got himself into by his lying to protect her. Six months ago she would have laughed at the idea that she would be having a passionate clandestine affair with a man who was hated, even despised, more than he was admired. She was forty-five years old and a grandmother, even if only recently. True, she was still beautiful in face and figure, thanks to Jane Fonda’s videos and her own genes; her parents, in their late sixties, were still a handsome enough pair to look good even in the candid camera shots on the social pages. She was intelligent, could be witty, if sometimes waspish, and always rated in the top five of the list of Most Popular Women of the Year. She was married to the most popular prime minister in decades, a man who fitted perfectly into the Image, a