Need You Dead

91 Friday 29 April

It was nearly 5 p.m. when an apologetic Christopher Diplock arrived home from his client and was finally able to make a copy of the GoPro recording for Packham to take across to Guildford.

The meeting in the Chief Constable’s office finished an hour later. With Exton due to be released from hospital in the morning, and both the enhanced GoPro video and, hopefully, data from the laptop recovered from the harbour expected, tomorrow promised to be a big day.

Grace decided to go home early for once, eager to see Noah, and to find out how Bruno was getting on at St Christopher’s school — and he hadn’t forgotten his promise to teach him firearms techniques. He was also looking forward to having a rare quiet evening with Cleo.

All was fine in the house. Noah had been grizzling earlier, teething, Cleo said, and Bruno had been getting on with his homework. He went up to Bruno’s room and chatted to him about how he was getting on at his new school, and if he had made any friends. Then he helped him — with some difficulty — with a couple of maths queries he had. Mathematics had never been Grace’s strong point — he’d failed twice before finally struggling through at the third attempt. Failure would have hindered his chances of becoming a police officer.

Bruno thanked him politely, and knuckled back down.

As he left the room he realized he still hadn’t fully accepted that this boy really was his son.

Nor, as he lay wide, wide awake at 2 a.m., had he fully accepted what all the evidence pointed to about Jon Exton.

Tossing and turning in bed, plumping his pillow then replumping it as gently as he could, trying not to disturb Cleo, sleep was elusive. He saw the green digits of his clock radio change. 2.03 a.m. 2.17 a.m. 2.38 a.m.

Thinking. Thinking.

Lorna Belling.

Her eyes wide open.

Staring at him from the bathtub.

Find my killer.

Or are you teasing me? Did you kill yourself?

Oh yes, and I wiped that memory card and put the GoPro in Jon’s car, from beyond the grave. Sure, to cover my tracks.

The one certainty he had right now was that he could rule out suicide.

At around 4 a.m. he fell into a deep sleep, to be awoken just twenty minutes later by Noah crying.