Page 70 of A Murder is Going Down

‘This is me being a nosy sister-in-law, but are you and Patrick okay?’ Elena asks gently.

I’m surprised she’s noticed that Patrick and I are anything. Then she goes on. ‘He came in here pretty loudly a minute before you.’

‘Does Patrick have a quiet setting?’

Elena smiles. ‘He’s a lot,’ she says. ‘But you guys seem like you’re getting on really well.’

I’m wondering what Elena’s driving at when she adds, ‘I’m glad you have someone to hang out with,’ and I realise what’s going on. Elena, the woman in the wheelchair withthe dead husband, has twigged just how little I have going on these days and is trying to cheer me up. This is tragic.

‘I heard you talked to Jade and Haruto today.’ She doesn’t sound pleased about it, but I’m too busy fixating on the fact that Patrick told her what we were doing: another minor betrayal from someone I’d thought was on my side. Brilliant.

‘Right,’ I say, not sure how much to tell her. ‘Sorry. Patrick was so adamant that Felix wouldn’t have killed himself and he wanted you to get the life insurance money that he sucked me into believing there might have been something suspicious about it too.’

‘He’s good at that.’

‘Now, we’ve found out something that’s actually interesting.’ I want to saysuspicious, but I don’t want Elena to freak out, nor do I want to have to go into the specifics of what Haruto saw and who he was snogging at the time. ‘And Patrick’s acting like I’m the crazy one for being interested in this thing that he started.’

Can you feel the awkwardness here? I’m talking to my (ex?) sister-in-law about the quasi investigation that her brother and I are doing into the death of my brother, who was also her husband, and it’s exactly as comfortable as that description suggests.

Elena doesn’t look like she’s regretting ever engaging me for a chat, though. She looks like she’s wonderingwhether to say something. I’m not that surprised when she says, ‘Heidi, can I talk to you about something?’

‘Sure. What?’

‘We’ve never really talked that much about Felix,’ she says carefully. ‘What was he like as a brother?’

I wonder how honest I’m supposed to be. ‘He was my only brother. It’s not like I had anything to compare him to,’ I say. Then I think about the way that Elena and Patrick and Michael are with each other and how they seem to actually like each other. ‘We were never close. He was so much older than me. I felt like an only child most of the time.’ I know sometimes I wished I was.

‘We both know what he could be like,’ Elena says. ‘Charming but also cruel.’

‘Right.’

‘An arsehole,’ Elena says.

I laugh, but not because I think it’s funny. More because it’s awkward to discuss my dead brother this way, even if he was absolutely an arsehole. ‘Sometimes.’

‘And violent,’ she says. I look at her, too stunned to say anything. It’s not as though this is a complete surprise to me, but I never expected to hear it from Elena like this. ‘I think he was a sociopath,’ she says.

‘Is that the same as a psychopath?’

Elena seems relieved that I don’t immediately contradict her. ‘My knowledge of pop psychology comesfrom bad TV. You know what I’m talking about, though, right?’

Of course I know what she’s talking about. Felix’s many cruelties to me, physical and otherwise. The lies he would tell when he got caught out or one of his victims told their parents, a teacher or Aunty Sam. His ability to manipulate people. All I say is, ‘Yeah.’ Then I try harder. ‘I wasn’t sure if he was like that with you too.’

‘He was.’

I wait, in case she brings up any specifics, but she does not.

The first time Felix brought Elena home I wondered if I should warn her about him. Would she have believed me, then? But they had seemed happy, and I’d thought Felix might be capable of change.

‘I’m really sorry,’ I say, like it was all my fault.

‘You’re a kid, Heidi, none of it is your fault,’ she says. ‘But Felix is dead. I don’t know how he died. I don’t know if he did it on purpose or if it was an accident or even if someone hurt him. I just don’t know. But Idoknow that he’s gone and we’re not and we have to move on.’

‘You want me to drop it?’

‘I think you should drop it for your own sake.’

It’s a subtle distinction. And I think about it. I really do.