End in Tears by Ruth Rendell

of ascetic and she a belly dancer. “It’s the chap next door. Brooks, he’s called. John Brooks. Must be hundreds of folks called John Brooks but there it is.”
    Because he had fallen silent, Hannah said, “What about him, Mr. Nash?”
    He answered her, but he looked at Bal while he was speaking as if it was the man rather than the woman who had asked the question. “He goes out in the nighttime,” he said on a note of triumph.
    â€œGoes out?” Bal said. “What do you mean, ‘goes out’? What sort of time? You’ve seen him?”
    â€œI’ve heard his car. He keeps it in the road. Why, you may well ask, when he’s got a bit of concrete at the side. I’ll tell you.
Because his wife sleeps in the back.
They have separate rooms if you’ve ever heard of such a thing. I sleep in the front and when he starts the car it wakes me up.”
    â€œWhat time, Mr. Nash?”
    â€œAny time it is, one, two, three, but it’s mostly around one. She won’t hear him in the back. She won’t know he’s gone. That’s what comes of separate rooms. No wonder she don’t have no babies. He snores, she says. Yes, I bet he snores. Does it on purpose to get himself in another room.”
    â€œDid he go out on the night Amber Marshalson was killed?”
    â€œDon’t know. I don’t always wake up, not if I’ve got nothing on my mind. Not if I’m not tossing and turning, thinking about the state of the world.”
    The thought of tossing and turning, as against remaining perfectly still, brought a fresh flow of sweat to Hannah’s face. She could feel it on her body now, a stream of it running down between her breasts. She got up, feeling she might faint if she stayed another minute in that hot and airless room. Outside, in the shade, it was cooler and at least the air felt fresher.
    â€œWe’ll have to talk to this Brooks,” she said, “and he won’t be home till the evening. If he was out that night he may have seen something, but I can’t see him as the perpetrator. If he wanted to kill Amber he’d hardly have got into his car and driven off somewhere.”
    â€œNo,” said Bal, “but driving off would give him an alibi and he could sneak back on foot to do the deed.”
    â€œI suppose he could.”
    He was looking hard at her and suddenly she thought how people of what she called “Asian subcontinental origin”—she wouldn’t have objected to being described as of “Caucasian-Celtic origin” herself—were so often as immaculate as if all their clothes were new. A damp patch had definitely appeared across her midriff.
    â€œYou look so hot, Hannah.” It was the first time he had called her by her given name as against “sarge.” “Come on, I’ve got sparkling water in a refrigerated bag in the car. That’ll set you up.”
    Â 
    Daniel Hilland’s friends with whom he had spent his Finland holiday had not yet been run to earth. It seemed that they had gone, in Daniel’s own words, on to “Iceland or Latvia or somewhere like that” and the hunt for them was so far unsuccessful. Ben Miller’s alibi, resting solely on his word that he had dropped Amber off on the Myfleet Road at twenty minutes to two and reached home ten minutes later, couldn’t be substantiated. Neither his mother nor his sister had heard him come in. He often came home late and had learned to be silent about it, even taking off his shoes at the foot of the stairs. Mrs. Miller’s “But I know he came in—what else would he have done?” was worse than useless.
    George and Diana Marshalson alibied each other, an unsatisfactory state of affairs, but in the absence of motive, seeing that Diana, at least, had the best of reasons for wanting to keep Amber alive, this was no line to pursue. Besides, Wexford was sure that George’s love