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breakfast.  Even in the loose fitting bathrobe his stomach protruded.  His hair had not aged as badly as his body.  It was thick and short but the original dark brown was only visible in small patches hidden within the light grey.
    Charlotte said, “I’m. . .”
    Roach didn’t let her finish.  “I know.  I remember.  Those documents aren’t for me.”
    He tried to close the door, but Charlotte thrust the documents she carried through the ever closing space, their edge touched his chest.
    “These are the ones I held back,” she said.
    Roach looked down at the sheets of paper in new brown cardboard file.
    “And why am I interested?” he asked.
    “Jim is dead.”
    Roach opened his eyes as if buzzed by caffeine.
    “Did you see?”  He asked.
    “I saw him go.”
    “In his VW?”
    She nodded.
    “He took his time,” Roach said.
    Roach looked at the ground; he lifted his right foot and the slipper in which it was encased to scratch this left shin.  He nodded his head like someone listening to Motown on headphones.  He stopped and looked up.  They paused; Charlotte fidgeted, rocking on her heels.
    "He took his time," Roach said again.
    "Christian is alive."
    "I always thought he was."
    She couldn’t help but think Roach was disappointed.  This was the moment, the decision he had already taken, already promised.  But now he wavered.
    "Do we start?"  She asked.
    "You've given me the papers.  No more watching?"
    "Nor waiting.”
    Roach opened the folder.  He turned and pushed the door with the outside of his left foot.  He walked back into his house as the door closed and said,
    “I’m not inviting you in,” he said.
    She watched the door close, hearing the click of the latch.
    “You never have.”

CHAPTER TWELVE
    “He got in by himself.  He wasn’t forced, he was asked and he went,” Mitch said.
    Mitch had been sat there an hour and said the same words thirteen times.  He hadn’t been arrested but told it was in his best interests.   A dirty, bare room, military green walls, a Formica table and two cracked red plastic chairs, faded in parts to pink.  Mitch sat in one, his back to the frosted glass window, and Detective Parker in the other. 
    The town had a small police station.  It had once been thriving, but cuts, and the apathy toward late night drunken fights, had meant the station was on bare bone staff.
    They called at 8 a.m.  Two uniformed policemen at Mitch's front door.  They drove him without lights or sirens all the way to the back door of the station and walked him straight to the interview room.  He waited alone until an old man, at least sixty-five, face starched from tobacco and caffeine entered.  He was wearing an expensive but old-style tweed suit, indicating his after dinner habits were cigars and port.  His large red bulbous nose told the story of a man who was never satisfied with the one glass.
    He introduced himself as Detective Parker.  He sat down and made sure his jacket didn't crease.
    “At least I was,” he said.  “I retired and moved on.  I now work in a consultancy faculty, more for the elite class.”
    He said this as if he had worked hard enough to be one of them, without knowing you could only be one if you were gifted the position.
    Mitch knew his own salary put him firmly in the easy-life rich category.  He had never worked but he earned four-thousand-sterling a month for simply being alive.  But he figured this guy knew that already.
    “Witnesses say you tried to fight.  Would that have been to save him?  Protect him?”  Parker said.
    “I don’t even know the man.”
    “A strange reaction from you for a stranger.”
    “Sometimes I lose my head.”
    “Every three days?” Parker asked.
    Mitch looked up, and Parker looked back, arching an eyebrow, feigning to be surprised that he had got Mitch’s attention.
    “Accurate guess,” Mitch said.  “Maybe it’s to do with the lunar cycle.”
    “Maybe it’s to do with who exactly you