A Fancy To Kill For

Ricky Darling

Twenty-Two

If the setting for England’s first televised court case had been hand-picked, it could not have been better chosen. Exeter Crown Court, built within the great walls of Exeter Castle which dates back to Roman times, is spectacularly atmospheric.

The castle is set on a hill top, once known as Ruge Mont and after which the nearby Rougemont Hotel is named, and its sole approach is from a narrow city street leading steeply upwards to a forbidding iron portcullis, which forms the only entrance. Within the crumbling red-brown walls, virtually all that remains of the original fortification, is a courtyard area now used as a car park and vaguely reminiscent — somewhat appropriately in its new role as a TV location — of a Roman amphitheatre.

It was here, on a windswept autumn day, that, locked in a sealed vehicle accompanied, as usual nowadays, by private agency security staff, Richard Corrington was brought to stand trial for murder. His prosecution was, by now, huge international news, and press photographers from all over the world lined the approach road — somewhat irritated at being kept outside the portcullis even though the remote control cameras of the newly formed Court TV UK were set up ready for operation inside the court.

When he clambered out of the van Richard — again handcuffed to a guard — could not help remembering the history of the place as related to him endlessly by the jail’s resident scholar while he had been held on remand in Devon County Prison. In medieval times the courtyard had contained a pit in which prisoners were held until they stood trial, women to one side and men to the other. The bodies of those who were hanged, which was most of them in an age when even minor theft was a capital offence, were buried to the left of the courtyard as you face away from the portcullis — all around the spot where a statue of a famous Lord Lieutenant of Devon, Hugh Earl Fortescue, now stood. Richard shuddered involuntarily, his brief reverie intruded upon by the resounding chorus of shouts from the cameramen outside the gates, and some, he noticed, who had climbed on top of the ancient walls.

‘Ricky, Ricky!’

‘Over here, Ricky!’

‘Look this way, Ricky!’

Richard squared his shoulders and set his chin — he was clean shaven again now, his barrister having explained that he wanted to make the most of his television superstar image, the trial was going to be a TV show after all. This, Richard knew, was where the performance must begin.

An assault force of 500-millimetre and even some giant 1,000 mm. lenses, set up on monopod supports, were wielded expertly by masters in their craft, bringing him sharply into close focus. The metallic hum of a multitude of motor drives, capturing a staggering six frames a second, merged into a throbbing cacophony known in the trade as The Nikon Choir. And as he disappeared inside the courthouse Richard left behind the pandemonium of excited snappers, almost all armed with portable computerised picture-wiring machines, rushing to send their photographs throughout the world.

Richard was escorted to the jail in the basement of the building from which he could then be taken directly up the flight of stairs into the central dock of Number Two Court. This was the court where all Exeter’s major trials were held, an awe-inspiring room, which somehow seemed to retain in its polished wood panelling and lofty ceiling all the high drama it had witnessed since its construction more than two centuries ago.

‘It’s like the Bailey, even the air’s different in there,’ Richard’s jail historian had somewhat gleefully informed him. And, indeed, the actor, used to playing the world’s most alarming theatres, was surprised at just how daunted he felt when he emerged into the ominous legal solemnity of Court Two.

‘RIGHT AND WRONG — between whose endless jar justice resides’ read the inscription facing Richard on the wall opposite the dock.

Court Two was a brightly lit room, its ceiling fitted with squares of electrically-powered illumination, giving the effect of a patchwork of skylights, and Richard emerged from the darker area below blinking slightly as his eyes adjusted to the glare. His counsel, John Nemrac, clad in traditional black gown and horse-hair wig, sat before him facing the judge’s bench; the jury bench was to his right. The judge, Mr Justice Sinclair, resplendent in the red robes and white sash of the High Court, immediately and irresistibly drew Richard’s attention. At the same time the actor, as was second nature to him, checked out the positioning of the remote-control operated cameras. There were three of them, one pointing more or less straight at him in the dock, one directed at the witness box, and one pointed at the judge — all three set on pivots so that they could also focus on other areas of the court. The jury, of course, was out of bounds. Richard recalled that an early inadvertent and clearly identifiable shot of a juror during the O. J. Simpson trial had led to proceedings being temporarily halted.

He studied the judge. Mr Justice Sinclair was a man in his early sixties with, in view of the old judge’s nickname of The Beak, an extremely appropriate nose. Upon this formidable projectile balanced an impressive pair of black horn-rimmed spectacles through which his eyes gleamed unforgivingly. His lips formed a thin stern line above a firmly set jaw. His head seemed rather small compared with his considerable bulk, to which the heavy red robes added even more substance, but balance was partially redressed by his wig, set square above a sprouting of wispy grey hair. He was in his natural element, this was his court, he exuded easy arrogance and everything about him led Richard to the conclusion that Mr Justice Sinclair regarded conducting England’s first televised court case as the high-spot of his career. His demeanour also indicated that he considered there to be only one star of the show — himself.

Well, we’ll see about that, sunshine, thought the actor who, although rather disconcerted by the judge’s appearance and manner which he assumed was His Lordship’s intention, was recalling John Nemrac’s advice to always concentrate on the jury.

Richard made another quick check of the camera positions. He had actually been rather disappointed to learn that the proceedings would be shot by remote control — with director and production team safely isolated in a control room elsewhere in the building. The idea of a Timberland-booted film crew trundling all over the courtroom had rather appealed to him; not least because he was every bit as adept at handling and manipulating cameramen — who, with clever timing and the right angle, could make you look as good or as bad as the mood took them — as he was at handling and manipulating an audience.

From somewhere in the distance he became aware of John Nemrac looking around at him. The barrister gave a friendly reassuring wink and smile of greeting. ‘Act One, Scene One,’ he whispered. And when the clerk read the charge Richard had to make a conscious effort not to be still smiling as, with his usual dignified resonance, he pleaded ‘Not Guilty’. John Nemrac was going to be a worthy and impressive costar, thought the actor.

The trial lasted eleven working days, and did ample justice to its advance publicity.

The prosecution put its case fully and with care. Richard Corrington, crazed into believing that he had become his television creation Sparrow-Hawk, had killed Joyce Carter because she had set out to harm the show and its star with her vitriolic writing. There had also been an unsavoury sexual liaison between the two, which had added to Corrington’s sense of betrayal.

The forensic and eye-witness evidence was meticulously set out.

It appeared to be a pretty good case. But John Nemrac was brilliantly cool. He had an answer to everything. Allegations he could not actually fully refute he made light of, and when he knew he had a strong response he laboured the point, making the most of every possible angle. Todd, giving the police evidence, as clearly and as succinctly as he could, while trying desperately to forget the TV camera pointing menacingly at him, had been the first victim of the barrister’s incisive cross examination technique.

‘So, Detective Chief Inspector, you are suggesting to this court that my client made a confession to murder, are you?’ John Nemrac’s voice was packed full of incredulity.

‘Well, very nearly, sir,’ Todd had replied, thinking that if the barrister had not turned up at Heavitree Road when he had, there might not have been any doubt about it.

‘Very nearly,’ repeated Nemrac with careful annunciation, turning theatrically for a moment toward the jury. He reverted his attentions abruptly to Todd Mallett.

‘Very nearly what, exactly, Detective Chief Inspector? Very nearly a confession, or very nearly a murder?’

Several members of the jury tittered. Even the judge’s lips twitched into the ghost of a smile. Todd groaned inwardly. He didn’t stand a chance with this man, and he knew it.

‘Very nearly a confession, sir,’ said Todd, trying to sound calm and controlled.

‘Really, Chief Inspector, well I put it to you that a man so publicly arrested, dragged half way across the country and interrogated in the middle of the night would “very nearly” not know what he was saying. Do you agree with that?’

‘Yes’ was obviously the wrong answer. ‘No’ was asking to be torn to shreds. He settled for: ‘I really wouldn’t know, sir.’

Unsurprisingly, that turned out to be very wrong.

‘You really wouldn’t know, Chief Inspector, and yet you have submitted a statement obtained under these circumstances to this court?’

‘Yes sir.’ Todd wished the floor beneath the witness stand would open and swallow him up.

‘Well, it will be my submission to the jury that they should disregard a statement procured in such a manner, does that surprise you?’

It didn’t surprise Todd one bit. He mumbled and stumbled some kind of reply. By the time he had finished Nemrac had moved smoothly on to his next point, turning his attention more than a little contemptuously to the whole crux of the prosecution’s case.

‘And do you really think, Chief Inspector, that an actor of Richard Corrington’s standing is likely to be so taken over by a role he plays that he turns into a murderer?’

There was only one answer. ‘Yes, I do, sir.’ How pathetic it was all beginning to sound. Todd sought to add substance to his reply.

‘I have watched dozens of episodes of Sparrow-Hawk now, sir, and quite frankly I have never before seen such gratuitous violence. Jack Sparrow is an extremely brutal anti-hero and I’d say it is quite reasonable to expect the person who portrays him to be affected by doing so.’

‘Would you indeed, Mr Mallett? So, I take it you do not much like the Sparrow-Hawk TV series.’

‘Not a lot, sir, no.’

‘And you’d like it taken off the air would you?’

‘I suppose I would sir, yes.’ Afterwards Todd could not understand what had made him say it. He sounded stuffy, petulant and small-minded.

‘I am quite sure that the members of the jury are fascinated by your views, Chief Inspector.’

The man managed to sound both sarcastic and dismissive at the same time. Todd glanced sideways at the jury — Sparrow-Hawk fans to a man and a woman, he expected. Well done, Todd, he thought to himself. He was cross-examined for little more than half an hour — John Nemrac always knew when to stop and never allowed a jury to become bored — but it felt like half a lifetime.

The nightmare continued after he returned to his seat. Nemrac proceeded to systematically decimate much of the key evidence for the prosecution. He had just one question for the expert witness giving the forensic evidence, the scientist Peter Conway, Todd’s friend from Chepstow.

‘Is it not possible that the thumb print could have been left, and the strands of material torn out from Mr Corrington’s jacket during a normal physical exchange, even perhaps when he had lunch with Joyce Carter? And certainly during a sexual encounter?’

Pete Conway made no better job of his time in the witness box than had Todd. Being an expert in a given field, and Pete Conway really did know his stuff, can sometimes make people seem over-confident — patronising even. Todd had seen that happen before. Certainly Pete allowed himself to be rubbed up the wrong way by the smooth John Nemrac, and from the beginning had an unfortunate look in his eye which said quite clearly that he had seen it all before and certainly wasn’t going to be bullied by the likes of Nemrac. He also made the mistake of trying to be glib.

‘What, with his suit jacket on?’

Nemrac remained expressionless. ‘Indeed.’

Pete made things worse by at first bristling and then rather pompously attempting to explain how improbable he thought the barrister’s theory to be. His squeaky voice did not help, particularly when so starkly contrasted with Nemrac’s perfect speech pattern.

John Nemrac was relentless. ‘I am not asking you to gauge probability, I am asking you if what I have suggested to you is possible?’

In the end Peter Conway could only agree lamely that, yes, it was possible. And he grimaced in resigned apology at Todd as he left the witness box.

Meanwhile Nemrac gave Richard another wink, as aware of the camera angles as his client and careful not to be in shot.

The evidence of Dr Jeremy Hunter was made to appear highly questionable. The barrister simply encouraged him to agree that he was indeed a country doctor with no specialist knowledge of drugs at all — and later Nemrac’s own expert witness for the defence expounded at some length on the positive qualities of Trozactin while obligingly glossing over the consequences of knocking back huge amounts of the stuff washed down by similar quantities of alcohol.

The former director of Sparrow-Hawk was simply asked if it was true that he had been sacked from the show for incompetence — and when he admitted, after some prevarication, that it was true, more or less, Nemrac said he had no further questions. Then it was Millie Brooks’ turn.

‘You say you heard my client’s motor cycle returning through the hunting gate into the stable yard on the afternoon in question, Mrs Brooks, can you tell me what kind of motor cycle it is?’

‘Uhm, it’s a black one,’ stumbled Millie.

‘A black one!’ John Nemrac gave it exactly the same emphasis as did Dame Edith Evans to the famous Lady Bracknell line ‘A handbag?’ in The Importance of Being Earnest. He was rewarded by a rumble of amusement around the court.

‘Do I take it you are not an expert on motor cycles, Mrs Brooks?’

Millie Brooks was forced to admit that she was not an expert on motor bikes, that she had not actually seen the bike nor its rider, and indeed she could not say for certain that it had been Richard Corrington’s machine nor him aboard it...

‘But who else’s would it have been, coming through that little hunting gate, nobody else uses it,’ she did manage to remark rather courageously.

‘Let’s stick to the facts, shall we, Mrs Brooks,’ the barrister responded sternly.

It was poor Mrs Murdoch, Joyce’s neighbour, on whom the prosecution had so much relied, who was on the receiving end of the most devastating display of John Nemrac’s skills. Mrs Murdoch was the witness he had been most looking forward to cross examining. The barrister had noticed something crucial about her written statement of evidence which had failed to occur to DCI Mallett and his team.

‘Mrs Murdoch,’ he began, ‘you are absolutely sure that the man you saw leaving Miss Carter’s home was the defendant?’

‘Absolutely sure, sir,’ replied the woman. At first she gave exactly the impression of self-assurance and honest reliability that Todd had hoped for. ‘I never miss Sparrow-Hawk, I’d recognise Richard Corrington anywhere.’

‘Indeed. And you are absolutely sure that it was at four o’clock that you saw the defendant.’

‘Oh yes, sir, that’s when we left for the ferry, you see.’

‘So it could not have been two hours earlier, as my client claims?’

‘No. It had to be four o’clock.’ The woman was adamant.

Nemrac nodded. ‘And you would recognise Richard Corrington anywhere.’ He repeated her earlier words.

‘Yes, I would.’

‘In fact you have already stated that he looked “just like he does on the telly”; is that not right?’

‘Oh yes, sir, just like he does on the telly.’

‘And is Jack Sparrow clean shaven on TV, or does he have a beard?’

‘He’s clean shaven, sir, of course.’

‘I see, and so, was Richard Corrington clean shaven when you saw him on the day of the murder?’

‘Yes, sir, he was, I keep saying, just like on the telly.’

‘And when you picked Mr Corrington out of an identity parade three and a half days later, was he clean shaven then?’

‘Oh no sir, he had a full beard, but I recognised him all right because I’ve seen lots of pictures of him with a beard...’

The woman stopped abruptly, sensing danger too late.

‘So when you saw the defendant leaving the victim’s house, as you claim you did, he was clean shaven, and when you formally identified him three and a half days later he had what you describe as a “full beard”. Is that what you are telling me, Mrs Murdoch?’

She looked frantically around the courtroom, as if seeking an escape route. There was none. The trap had been adroitly laid and she was enmeshed.

‘Well, I know what you mean... I can’t explain it, just can’t explain it...’ She was rambling now. The judge interrupted imperiously, looking down on her from the commanding position of his elevated platform.

‘Just answer the question, Mrs Murdoch.’

‘Yes sir,’ the witness replied plaintively. She looked back at John Nemrac. ‘Yes sir, what you say is right, sir.’

‘So how can we explain this, do you think perhaps that the police allowed a suspect held in custody to don a false beard for the identification parade?’

‘No sir, of course not.’ Janice Murdoch gave the impression she would agree to anything now just to make him stop.

John Nemrac knew how to milk an advantage to the full. He would not let up until even the dimmest juror had the scenario indelibly fixed in his mind.

‘But in your opinion, Mrs Murdoch, how long would it take an average man to grow a set of whiskers as full as those boasted by my client when you formally identified him?’

‘Well, I don’t know, sir...’

‘Come now, Mrs Murdoch, you are a married woman with grown sons, I believe. You must have some idea. A month? Two weeks? Even with heavy growth, surely not less than two weeks?’

Mrs Murdoch sighed. She was confused, bewildered, and thoroughly beaten.

‘No, not less than two weeks, it couldn’t be less than two weeks...’ she replied in a very small voice, so small that Mr Justice Sinclair did not fully hear her. Or at least he said that he didn’t.

‘Could you please repeat your answer and would you speak up so that the court can hear you properly,’ he instructed.

Visibly trembling now, Mrs Murdoch did so.

‘I see. So, Mrs Murdoch, now we come to the time when you claim you saw a clean shaven ‘Richard Corrington leave Miss Carter’s house. Do you still say it was four o’clock?’

‘Well y-yes sir.’ The woman had even developed a stammer.

‘Are you not so sure of yourself now, Mrs Murdoch?’

‘Well, I thought I was, but...’

John Nemrac interrupted swiftly. ‘You thought you were sure? Well that’s not good enough, Mrs Murdoch. Thank you very much. I have no further questions.’

The barrister swung on his heels and paused at just the right moment so that the camera with its red action light glowing caught a good long full frontal of his almost professorially solemn look. Then he returned to his table in front of Richard Corrington and immediately wrote a brief note which he passed to his client.

It consisted of one bastardised word. ‘’Owzat?’

Richard flicked his eyes downward and almost imperceptibly bowed his head — one master professional acknowledging the deadly talent of another.

As they left the court after the fourth day’s proceedings at the end of what was supposed to be the case for the prosecution, Todd Mallett had sunk even deeper into pessimistic depression. How on earth had he and his team missed that business of the beard, he wondered. He had watched the jury’s reaction. They had thoroughly enjoyed the destruction of poor Mrs Murdoch. When Nemrac had started to ask about how long it took to grow a beard, one or two of them had been unable to stop themselves chuckling knowingly — just as they had tittered over all that ‘very nearly a murder’ stuff.

He winced at the memory. Wondering whether he dared go on an almighty bender again he swiftly descended the steps outside the court. He bumped straight into Jacky Starr, who, as a material witness quite free to do so, had stayed on to watch the proceedings after giving his evidence.

‘I didn’t expect you still to be here,’ he greeted the young man.

‘I want to watch that bastard go down,’ said Jacky. He did not seem particularly pleased to see Todd, which the policeman thought was fair enough considering the circumstances under which they had last met. He also noticed that Jacky still looked distressed and under strain. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen.

‘You’re not going to do anything barmy if he doesn’t, I hope.’

Todd’s manner was almost threatening, Jacky’s reply correspondingly belligerent.

‘Like what?’

‘Like anything that might hurt your mother.’

Jacky grinned knowingly. It was almost a leer. ‘So that’s it,’ he said. ‘I thought as much.’

Todd felt himself flush. He had been both clumsy and obvious, and he should remember that Jacky wasn’t always quite as thick as he sometimes seemed. On the other hand he might as well carry on now.

‘So how is your mother?’ he asked as casually as he could.

Jacky shrugged. ‘She’s lost her house, she’s broke, but, you know Belle, she’s keeping her end up. And she’s here with me. She wouldn’t come to court though — said she’d only add to the circus...’

That stopped Todd in his tracks. The last thing he had expected was for Belle Parker to be back in Exeter. For a start she had given him the distinct impression that she and her son were not very close at all.

And she had been quite right in her assessment of Todd’s feelings for her; he was still not yet ready for her. But the thought of her being so close stirred him, his pulse quickened. He could feel the excitement rising in him in spite of his better judgement.

Jacky had volunteered that he and his mother were staying at a place called Light Hall, which Todd knew to be a not very prepossessing block of inexpensive holiday flats on the edge of town. As he watched Jacky set off at a trot down the hill to the town he began to ponder whether or not he should call Belle. What he would say to her. Would she still want to see him?

Bruce Macintosh had also turned up for the trial. Todd found it hard to understand why anyone who didn’t have to be there would want to be, but looking at Bruce’s face he could see still that need to be doing something, to be in some way involved, that he had noticed all those months ago. That was the thing about murder. It wasn’t just the death of the victims, so many connected lives were destroyed and turned upside down.

Bruce had been hovering nearby while Todd talked to Jacky, waiting to approach the DCI. Now he fell into step alongside Todd and walked across the car park with him. Although they had actually met only a couple of times, the two men were easy together.

‘You don’t think he’s going to get away with this one too, do you, Todd?’ Bruce asked, referring obliquely to the murders — including that of his wife — with which the police had been unable to charge Richard Corrington. He sounded bitter and disillusioned.

Todd gave a wry Smile. ‘We’re not doing very well, I’m afraid.’

The other man grunted. ‘Tell me, do you still believe in justice?’ he asked glumly.

Todd had been slightly bent over unlocking the door of his car. He stood up straight and directly faced Bruce. He waved an arm impatiently at the courthouse and then at the vehicle, parked alongside his, with Court TV UK emblazoned colourfully on its side.

‘Yes, I believe in justice,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s the damned law I don’t believe in any more.’

He climbed into the car, started the motor, and turned on the lights. It was gone five and heavy cloud had already turned the sky dark as he steered out through the portcullis and down the castle approach road. It was scarcely possible to make normal progress through the heaving mass of people. The world’s press had by now been joined by hundreds of Sparrow-Hawk fans and others who were attracted, by some morbid fascination, to the spectacle. On the first day of the trial 27 million people in Britain alone had tuned in on television.

Vaguely Todd thought that the public hangings of another age must have been a bit like this.

At the bottom of the hill, where the crowd thinned out a little, he spotted Jacky Starr threading his way through the remaining onlookers. It had just started to drizzle and he was wearing a denim cap and had his coat collar turned up. He seemed to have miraculously passed through the ranks of the press without being bothered — he was, after all, the toyboy lover of the murder victim, thought Todd, slipping easily inside his head into tabloid speak. But Jacky was fleet of foot, and the press were really only interested now in the star of the show, Richard Corrington.

Todd made a spur of the moment decision. He slowed the car and unwound the driver’s window. ‘Want a lift?’ he called.

Jacky looked startled, and none too welcoming. At first he made a move that suggested he was going to turn the offer down. As well he might, reflected Todd.

Then he looked up at the sky, the rain was beginning to fall more heavily. ‘OK,’ he said gruffly.

Once settled in the passenger seat he made no further attempt at conversation. Todd didn’t particularly want to talk either. He was lost in his own thoughts. Neither he nor Jacky noticed the red van which remained about 100 yards behind them throughout the journey.

When they reached Light Hall Jacky glanced at Todd and remarked casually: ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting to see Belle.’

Todd took it as an invitation, followed Jacky into the building and puffed his way up three flights of stairs to the top flat. Arabella might have fallen on hard times but she continued to look the part, complete with salon hair-do, immaculate make-up and tight black sweater over leopard skin-patterned leggings. And if she was surprised or embarrassed by seeing him she did not show it. She was warm and welcoming.

‘Afraid I don’t run to The Rougemont any more,’ she remarked ruefully. ‘However, I’ve discovered that off season holiday flats are a bargain.’

Todd smiled. ‘How long are you staying?’

‘For the duration. We had to take this place for a fortnight anyway — but it’s peanuts. Jacky wants to see justice being done. Any chance?’

‘Depends from where you are standing,’ said Todd, and immediately regretted it. He saw the hurt fleetingly but unmistakably cross her face.

‘Todd, you’ve no idea how much I wish I’d never said anything...’

‘Don’t be daft,’ he interrupted her, kicking himself. ‘I didn’t mean to bring all that up again.’

He wondered if the court case would ever stop coming between them. He had no desire even to speak about it. He wanted only to talk about Arabella Parker. As soon as he had seen her again he had longed to take her in his arms, just like before.

He stood awkwardly, his big hands hanging at his sides, not knowing what to say or do. Jacky had sat down at the table in the corner and picked up a newspaper, but to Todd he seemed to be dominating the room, making it impossible for him to concentrate on Belle.

She seemed to read his mind, as she had before. ‘Come and see the view,’ she said, and led him out through French windows on to a tiny balcony. The rain had suddenly stopped and the sky cleared to give a glimpse of a late October sunset that was unseasonally stunning. The main road lay directly in front of the block of flats, but beyond it, glowing in amber light, Devon rolled endlessly glorious, culminating in the rugged purple hills of Dartmoor in the distance.

‘Great, isn’t it?’ she remarked.

‘I thought you were a city girl,’ he said.

‘Oh, I like the countryside well enough as long as I can look at it from somewhere civilised,’ she replied.

‘Like an air-conditioned Jaguar?’ he suggested.

‘Absolutely!’ she said.

He thought, not for the first time, how plucky she was, she seemed so remarkably untroubled by her sudden change in circumstances.

‘I’m sorry about your money troubles,’ he said.

She shrugged, and nodded her head in the direction of the living room, in which Jacky remained sitting at the table. ‘Funny thing, I lost my son because all I wanted was my career and the rewards it brought. Now I seem to have lost all that, but I may be getting him back. I’m not so unhappy, actually.’

They continued to chat for a while, but he did not seem able to take the conversation beyond rather stilted small talk. He realised he wanted to be properly alone with her, to take her into his own territory. On impulse he reached out and clasped her hand in his, oblivious, suddenly, of anything in the world except her and his quite unaccountable feelings for her.

‘How about another dinner date?’ he asked, surprising himself. ‘Tonight, if you like, and I’ll try to do better than before.’

What an awkward, clumsy invitation, he thought. But it probably would have made no difference however he had phrased it.

‘You did fine,’ she replied quickly.

‘It’s just that I’m not very good at saying what I feel...’ he tried to explain.

‘I know, it’s OK. Very British. Stiff upper lip and all that.’

He smiled wanly. ‘Yes, well that was about all that was stiff the last time, you see...’

She interrupted him, wonderingly, as if understanding at last. ‘Was that why you backed off the way you did?’

He nodded.

‘You big fool,’ she said, but the words were not harsh. She sounded reproachful yet hugely affectionate, and most of all relieved.

He flushed. ‘Well, it’s never happened to me before, and I didn’t, couldn’t...’

She interrupted him again. ‘So that was all, and there was I thinking you’d gone off me.’

She was smiling and her tone was bantering now. She went on, more softly, more gently, ‘Didn’t you know it would have been enough to lie in your arms?’

He thought his heart was going to burst, and yet he still did not know what to say. He could be such a blundering oaf. Never again would he lose the magic.

‘So what about dinner then?’ He tried to keep his voice light, it was the best he could do.

She was still smiling at him, but then she turned his invitation down. ‘I’m sorry, Todd, love. I’m cooking supper for Jacky...’

Todd nodded, accepting it, trying to keep up the lightness.

‘You once told me you didn’t cook,’ he said.

‘Times have changed,’ she said.

She paused and then added: ‘You can stay, if you’d like.’

Todd shook his head. He didn’t think so. He wasn’t sure that he could trust himself. ‘I’ve got work to do later, anyway,’ he said, which was only half an excuse.

She nodded. ‘Another time, then.’

It was all they ever seemed to say to each other, he thought.

She was still talking. ‘That might be for the best. I have this idea that things will never be right for us until this case is over, until the file is closed.’

He felt that already familiar sense of accord pass between them.

‘I know exactly how you feel,’ he said.

‘Yes, I think you do,’ she said. And she touched his cheek with her free hand.

Suddenly he was assertive. ‘So how about making a date for the last night of the trial, it’ll be one day next week?’

‘Mightn’t that be too soon?’

‘Not for me, it won’t,’ he said, and at that moment he really meant it. He could think only of those very special words — it would have been enough to lie in his arms she had said. Now that was magic, wasn’t it?

As if she could read his thoughts she stretched upwards, wrapping her hand around the back of his neck, and kissed him very slowly and very gently full on the lips.

He left her, then, feeling more cheerful than he had in ages, certainly far more cheerful than he had since the start of the whole awful courtroom extravaganza in which he was grimly aware he was such an outclassed player.

It was an extremely cheerful John Nemrac who took Amanda back to the Rougemont that same evening. Again he ordered champagne, as he had done all those months ago when they had just received the bad news about Richard’s DNA.

‘This time we might have something to celebrate,’ he remarked as they raised their glasses.

Amanda regarded him carefully. He had had an excellent day and was flushed with his own success. He was a very powerful man. People said that power was the greatest aphrodisiac of all, greater even than money. Certainly at that moment it seemed so to Amanda. She was one of those women who could go without sex for months on end and not miss it, but when she did have sex which excited her she wanted more of it soon. Yet she didn’t dare try to contact Harry Pearson again. He had indicated that he wanted her all to himself — whereas not only was John Nemrac a quite exceptional man, it also seemed that he was about to save her husband. And that meant saving her entire way of life.

The irony of her train of thought totally failed to occur to Amanda.

This time when Nemrac suggested a second bottle she agreed. He was being extremely attentive. She had no doubts at all as to his intentions. They had both been tempted on the previous occasion, and it was perhaps only through lack of an appropriate opportunity that they had not got together properly before now. Certainly neither of them had any moral qualms, she was quite sure of that. They were two of a kind. And when he suggested that they enjoy the second bottle in the privacy of his suite upstairs, she swiftly agreed to that too.

‘I think we could be more comfortable together there,’ he said.

He gestured her to the little modern sofa, sat opposite her too far away to touch, and made small talk until the champagne was safely delivered, then he stood up and walked behind her. He leaned over her and brushed his lips lightly against her hair. His hands were already on her breasts, feeling her through the soft material of her blouse.

‘Wouldn’t you prefer to have the champagne afterwards,’ he suggested.

‘It would be nice to be asked first,’ she responded. Coquettish. Trying to pretend she was still playing a game. But she was already breathing quickly, her body beginning to take on a will of its own. She wasn’t going to refuse him, and he knew that well enough.

‘Amanda Lane, I would very much like to make love to you,’ he whispered.

‘Isn’t there any code of conduct about lawyers screwing their client’s wives?’ she asked, still pretending.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘So you want to be screwed do you, that’s what it is.’

He took her almost as roughly as Harry Pearson had so recently done, although without as much invention. He pushed her sideways on to the sofa and thrust himself into her without bothering at first to properly undress either himself or her.

When he eventually saw the bite marks still evident on her neck he tightened his grip on her body.

‘Is that what you like?’ he asked. Then he buried his face in her breasts and used his teeth on her nipples until she cried out with the pain.

Afterwards he poured the champagne meticulously into the two flute glasses, careful not to spill a drop. Then he let just a little from the bottle drip on to her sore nipples. The liquid stung sharply. He used his mouth on her again. Her body continued to respond even though she began to find that she no longer particularly wanted it to.

‘I’m sorry this will have to be the only time,’ he said when he had quite finished.

But she didn’t think he was really sorry at all. She suspected he was never very interested in sleeping with the same woman twice. She thought that he had at least one thing in common with Richard, only the conquest mattered to him. She was quite sure of that.

He had excited her — although not as much as Harry Pearson, whom she also knew she really must never see again. But she actually wished she had not given in to the temptation to sleep with John Nemrac. On balance she rather preferred the myth to the man.

The case for the defence began on Friday, October 23rd, the fifth day of the trial. It was superbly presented, as Todd had expected it to be. The actor’s agent, Larry Silver, the current Sparrow-Hawk director, and Richard’s wife, Amanda Lane — still wearing a high-necked blouse — were among those called as character witnesses giving evidence of Richard Corrington’s undoubted sanity and exemplary conduct.

Difficult to work with? ‘Not a bit of it,’ asserted Larry and the director. Erratic behaviour, impossible to live with? Complete rubbish, responded Amanda.

‘There is absolutely no way he would be capable of anything like this,’ she gushed. ‘I know my husband. He is a gentle, sensitive man.’

She remained a picture of elegance, a paragon of reason, the ultimate caring and supportive wife. Nobody in the courtroom could ever have guessed at the violent sexual excesses in which she had so enthusiastically taken part over the previous few days. And anyone observing that her lips looked a little fuller than usual would probably have assumed that she had indulged in the fashion for collagen injections, rather than that they were swollen because they had been chewed until they bled.

Todd — unaware, of course, of any of this — was reminded of the famous Jeffrey Archer libel case won without doubt from the moment the judge had memorably described Archer’s wife as ‘fragrant’.

Amanda Lane was most definitely fragrant of appearance, and the transparently captivated Mr Justice Sinclair indeed looked as if he were quite capable of publicly describing her as such.

But the moment the court, the whole country, and at times it seemed, half the world, had been waiting for came when — after the testimonies of Nemrac’s expert witnesses, the drug doctor and finger print and DNA specialists pouring further scorn on the police evidence and the psychiatrist avowing to the defendant’s perfectly normal mental state — counsel for the defence called his client to the stand on the afternoon of the seventh day of the trial. Richard Corrington was his own trump card.

Richard had worn a different suit each day. For the day when he was to give evidence he had chosen a very formal city suit, a navy and black pin-stripe, beautifully cut and flattering to his figure. His shirt was heavy cream silk, his tie navy and black with occasional flashes of deep red, his shoes gleaming black Church’s brogues.

He stood very straight in the witness box. Millions of eyes were fixed upon him — and, in direct contrast to poor Todd Mallett, this brought out the best in him.

Carefully Nemrac took Richard through the circumstances of his arrest at the BAFTA Awards, and his experiences at Heavitree Road police station afterwards.

‘It was impossible for me to think clearly, I felt under the most terrible pressure. I could not believe I was being suspected of such a terrible thing. And I was tired, so very tired...’

It was not so much what he said as the way he said it. He humbly admitted that he had over the years overdosed on disorientating cocktails of prescription drugs and alcohol, and on the night of his arrest had taken cocaine to calm his nerves, which had ultimately made him less able than he would otherwise have been to withstand the police barrage. He deeply regretted his misuse of drugs which had been partially responsible for a succession of dreadful misunderstandings leading to this court case.

He also deeply regretted his infidelity with Joyce Carter, which he knew had caused such pain to his loyal and supportive wife.

As instructed by John Nemrac he did his best to appear to be directly addressing the jury, whose attention was riveted. But when he mentioned his wife he had glanced briefly and proudly towards the public gallery where Amanda Lane sat, her demeanour as ever giving no clue to her nocturnal activities, and somehow managing to wear an expression which contrived to be both long suffering and loving.

‘But, I have to take responsibility for my actions, because never, at any time in my life, have I been so under the influence of any substance that I have not known what I have been doing,’ he said. ‘Never.’ John Nemrac asked the question designed to lead Richard into the climax of his performance. ‘And what about the police suggestion that you have taken on the persona of Jack Sparrow?’

Richard smiled slightly. ‘I am an actor,’ he said, and the jury appeared to be treating every word he spoke as if it were a precious pearl of wisdom. ‘Actors act the characters we portray, we do not become them. I have played Othello and Macbeth, I have become neither a Moor driven mad by jealousy nor a megalomaniac Scottish king. I have played a surgeon in a television soap, but I think it would be unwise for me to operate. In various films and TV shows I have played an airline pilot, a university lecturer in ancient Greek, an architect, a racing car driver, an Olympic athlete and a stonemason. I have taken on neither the characteristics nor the attributes of any of these characters. My ancient Greek, in particular, remained at the same zero level throughout the making of a two-hour feature film...’

The jury were laughing aloud now. Richard turned to face the judge.

‘M’lud,’ he said. ‘My name is Richard Corrington and I am an actor. I am not Jack Sparrow.’

The verdict was a foregone conclusion.

The closing speeches of counsels for the prosecution and for the defence, and even the judge’s summing up, were mere formalities.

The jury found Richard Corrington not guilty.

Todd Mallett felt utterly defeated. He telephoned Belle to cancel their dinner date, unable to remember, in the depths of his depression and when he had already suspected what the result would be, why on earth he should ever have suggested a date for the last night of the trial.

He went to an off licence and bought two bottles of whisky — one might not be enough. Tomorrow he had work to do all over again. If Richard Corrington was not guilty of murder, then who the hell was? One way or another the killer was still at large.

Trial by television be damned, nobody could stop him getting blind drunk in the privacy of his own home.

Twenty-Three

It seemed like half the world was camped outside Exeter Crown Court.

Richard Corrington stood ten foot tall oh the top of the steps. He was beaming. Seven months on prison fare had made him just a little leaner. His cheek bones were more finely defined, the breadth of his shoulders enhanced by a slimmer waist. He looked even more handsome than before. The crowd roared its appreciation, the adulation of his fans heightened rather than lessened by the charges their hero had faced and ultimately conquered.

Amongst them stood a strangely quiet man wearing a baseball cap pulled down over much of his face. From beneath the peak little could be seen other than a pair of dark glasses, in no way necessitated by the day’s weather, and a full grey beard. He would have attracted little enough attention even if anyone had been looking at him particularly, but in fact nobody was interested in an anonymous man in a baseball cap. Nobody was interested in anyone except the star of the show.

All eyes and all cameras were on Richard Corrington, and the actor responded magnificently. He posed for photographs and motioned for silence so that he could speak. TV and radio microphones were thrust in his face. Richard was not in the slightest bit phased. He was, of course, in his natural element.

When he spoke, the hullabaloo subsided and the assembled crowd waited in eager anticipation, hanging on his every breath. A reporter turned a page of his notebook in order to have a clear sheet before him and you could hear the paper rustle — so much so that one or two of his colleagues turned to glare at him.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Richard began. ‘Justice has been done today. The people of Britain can walk tall. I am an innocent man, and I thank God that in this country I was able to stand before a jury of my peers and rely on the judgement of the people. And the people have spoken!’

He gave the last sentence full projection. The assorted microphones fairly shuddered with the power of his delivery. He thrust one arm triumphantly in the air, remembering, of course, not to clench his fist. That always gave the wrong impression, as Neil Kinnock found out to his cost in 1992.

Brushing aside further questions with an imperious wave softened only by his most charming smile, Richard, with his wife just a step or two behind him, was then escorted swiftly by aides through the pulsating throng to his waiting Range Rover and the faithful George Brooks.

Coincidentally he passed right by a man wearing a baseball hat, who, watchfully silent, stood out somewhat in the noisy crowd. In fact, he almost bumped into him.

But Richard did not notice the man any more than he would have noticed Salman Rushdie or Princess Diana in the frantic throng. Indeed, such was the commotion surrounding his freeing, it was even possible that nobody would have noticed Princess Diana.

The man in the baseball cap acknowledged grudging admiration.

Richard Corrington had turned his statement into exquisite high drama worthy of any stage in the world. The man bet himself silently that the words had been written for the actor and carefully rehearsed in anticipation of this moment. An actor always needs his lines.

With eyes narrowed behind the concealing sunglasses he watched the car draw away, Corrington turning to look through the back window and execute one last imperious wave.

The man knew a fine performance when he saw one, but beyond that he felt only anger. Richard Corrington was going to get away with it again. That was the way the man saw it. And he did not like that one little bit.

The Dom Perignon was already being poured by the time Larry Silver, the last of the Corrington entourage, arrived at Landacre. A fire roared in the Adam fireplace and Richard and John Nemrac were leaning on either side of the grand white marble mantelpiece clutching fine crystal glasses. They were laughing loudly at some shared joke, or perhaps just with pleasure. Both looked radiant. Amanda stood by the corner table, smiling a welcome, champagne bottle at the ready. Larry approached her and gave her a kiss on each cheek. Her smile widened, but she appeared coolly controlled, showing little of the excitement being exhibited both by her husband and his lawyer. Planning her next move, Larry reckoned, just as he was. It was hard even to remember how broken up she had been on the night of Richard’s arrest.

‘We all owe you a great thank you, my dear,’ Larry said to her.

Amanda was almost arch in her reply. ‘What on earth for?’

Larry leaned forward and gave her a third kiss, and then spoke again, this time almost into her ear, his voice little more than a whisper.

‘You know what for,’ he said.

He stepped back and looked into her eyes, but she lowered her lashes briefly. For once there seemed to be no affectation in her. She uttered a small, almost inaudible sigh.

‘We got through it, Larry, didn’t we?’ she asked. ‘We did it, Quick Silver. You and me.’

‘Yes, my dear, we did it,’ replied the agent.

‘Do you still love him?’ Amanda asked, very very quietly. Larry studied her without alarm or surprise.

Larry had always assumed that Amanda had known about his affair with Richard, which had not ended until after the Corrington marriage — an affair Richard would now deny every bit as vociferously as he had eventually denied his murder charge.

‘No,’ he said evenly. ‘I don’t love him any more.’

He paused, then not knowing quite why, he said: ‘He was never really gay, you know. Our liaison meant nothing to him.’

She raised one elegant eyebrow. ‘I know that. As it happens, his affairs have never been about love, or sex, for that matter — just ego.’

Larry couldn’t help laughing. She was some woman, and she was right, of course.

He looked deeper into her eyes. Her expression was unreadable.

‘Do you still love him?’ he asked finally.

She smiled the ice smile. ‘No,’ she said. ‘But he is mine. I made him, and I wasn’t going to lose him.’

Larry took her hand and squeezed it between both of his, affectionate, familiar, admiring. Then he swung about and raised his glass to his client, still raucously cheerful by the fireplace.

‘Here’s to you, superstar,’ he said.

Richard beamed. ‘I think we should drink a toast to John, myself. Here’s to the world’s greatest barrister.’

John Nemrac was a picture of triumph, he radiated victory. Understandable enough, Larry supposed, although, while he respected the lawyer’s talent he did not much like the man. And he could not help noticing the quick, almost gloating, look the somewhat flushed Nemrac, his brow beaded in sweat, shot across the room at Amanda. There was triumph in that too. Larry had already suspected that there might be something between the two, and he certainly would not blame Amanda if there were. Rather, as he observed the self-assured arrogance of the portly legal wizard, he almost pitied her.

Quite oblivious to any of this, Richard in turn raised his glass, downed the entire contents in one, and gestured loftily for a refill. Amanda obediently obliged. She had apparently lost all interest in John Nemrac, Larry thought, if indeed she had held any real interest in him in the first place. She was concentrating on Richard now. And her expression indicated that she knew there was no point in arguing or trying to reason with her husband on this of all days. None the less Larry saw the anxiety in her eyes.

It was not until lawyer and agent had departed, both heading back to London, that the trouble started. Three bottles of champagne had already been swiftly demolished — and at least half of each by Richard himself. And right after his guests left Richard opened a fourth bottle of Dom Perignon which Amanda somewhat frostily declined to share with him.

Idly he began to read some of the cards and letters from well-wishers which had already been delivered to the house. His bonhomie was disappearing fast to be replaced by the morose surliness she had become more and more accustomed to in the weeks before his arrest.

Amanda decided to leave him to his own devices in the living room and settled herself in the kitchen, sitting in one of the pair of Victorian rocking chairs on either side of the Aga. She had no wish to watch him make an exhibition of himself. She knew he was going to get even more maudlin, and she had no time for that either. She already wanted to start rebuilding, and she was afraid Richard was going to rake up the past in a way she wished to be no part of.

Her husband had downed another three glasses of champagne and was clutching the glass and the already half-empty bottle in one hand and a piece of notepaper in the other when he somewhat unsteadily entered the kitchen. He kicked the door shut behind him, his drink-induced clumsiness causing him to stagger even more dangerously as he approached his wife.

He tossed the sheet of paper at her.

‘What the fuck is this about?’ he asked.

With a sinking heart she realised that it was a letter was from Harry Pearson. ‘Just a note to welcome you home,’ she read. ‘Congratulations on your release...’

‘It’s just what it seems to be, Ricky,’ she said.

‘Is it? I think he sent this to mock me. You’ve been fucking him while I’ve been inside, haven’t you?’

‘Would you care?’ Suddenly Amanda reached breaking point with her husband. Her control snapped without warning. His casual adultery had almost brought about their downfall. How dare he be sanctimonious.

‘I don’t like being made a total fool of, that’s all.’

With an awkward bump he sat down opposite her on the second wooden rocking chair.

‘There’s something you need to know,’ he told her. His voice held defiance, the words only very slightly slurred by alcohol. His attitude was devil may care, Errol Flynn on a bad day. He was going to cause damage, and he didn’t give a damn.

Amanda spoke quickly. ‘There is nothing I need to know. I’ve told you that before.’

He laughed, and the laughter contained none of his earlier good humour. It sounded harsh, cruel almost.

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘I’m a killer. Watch my lips. I killed Joyce Carter. And she wasn’t the only one...’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Richard.’ Amanda was shouting now. ‘You’re mad. You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re mad.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘That is what I am trying to tell you, you stupid bitch. I am mad! And I killed them. All three of them.’

Amanda began to cry. Except in the hysteria of the night of Richard’s arrest she could not remember when she had last cried, probably not since the death of their child. And even then there had been just the one awful outburst of desperate sobbing tears, followed by nothing. Yet the loss of the little boy, and the manner of it, had changed her, hardened her beyond recognition, she knew. Now she recognised the defeat in her husband, in spite of his hollow victory, saw the crazy gleam in his eye, and for once, after so long of being the crutch at his elbow, she could not cope.

But Richard wouldn’t let go. He wouldn’t, or couldn’t, stop.

‘I did it, I can’t pretend any more. Can’t kid myself any more, let alone you.’

He hurled his champagne glass at the floor. It smashed to pieces on the Delabole slate tiles, the little champagne left in the bottom of the glass splashing over the slate, forming tiny glistening spots. He threw back his head, tipped the neck of the bottle into his mouth and drank long and deep. His cheeks were flushed now and he was dribbling the liquid before he could swallow it properly. He swilled the stuff like beer, twenty or so quids’ worth of Dom Perignon emptied down his throat in one gulp.

Amanda felt the familiar surge of disgust, loathing almost, begin to overwhelm her.

‘You’re married to a fucking serial killer, my dear, so how do you like that?’

It was too much. He was taunting her with their own destruction, she who had done everything to hold his pathetic life together. For the first time ever she let her true feelings run riot. She began to scream at him, horrible insults, obscenities, turns of phrase and expressions of ugliness from her rough and ready past that she hadn’t used in decades.

She rose to her feet, filling her lungs to capacity in great belts, the better to give power to her raving demolition job.

‘Without me you’d be floundering in a filthy gutter somewhere, and don’t you forget it. You can’t even fuck properly, and you never could. You’re just an inadequate wretch, a pathetic worm.’

She thought she would tame him with the force of her fury. And that was to be the biggest mistake of her marriage.

Unthinking in her rage, she stormed on, incapable now of stopping. She heard the final words that she yelled at him almost as if someone else had shouted them.

‘I gave birth to a deformed freak because of you...’

Richard stood up and faced her. He rocked back on to his heels and gathered up all of his still considerable strength. He tucked the elbow of his right arm in close to his waist and drew it back, with muscles tensed, every sinew tightened ready for release, taut as a medieval crossbow. He drew in his breath, paced himself, and let rip.

This time she had gone too far. She should not have said it. That was his son, his poor dead son, she was talking about.

His arm shot out as if jet-propelled and even before the punch landed he could feel the immensely satisfying sensation of his clenched fist smashing into Amanda’s face. He could already hear the crunch as his knuckles crushed her nose. He could see the torrent of blood bursting from her shattered features and drenching him in its warm sticky wetness.

Yet at the very last moment something stopped him. He swerved to one side and opened his hand. In the end he caught her with little more than a glancing slap on the cheek with his palm. But she had drawn back, physically alarmed by him for the first time m their life together, putting herself off balance, and the force remaining in the blow was enough to cause her to fall, which she did awkwardly.

Her head cracked against the unforgiving slate floor, and bounced just once. She gave a little grunt. Unsteadily he leaned over her, staring at her. Her eyes were shut. He leaned closer, saying her name, suddenly afraid of what he had done. He still had the bottle of champagne in his left hand, some of it dribbled on to her face. With his right hand he reached out and very cautiously touched her.

She opened her eyes. They were as clear and icy as ever. His face was just inches from hers and his sour drink sodden breath was all over her. Even through the alcoholic haze he was starkly aware of the way in which she was looking at him. He thought he had never seen such hatred.

Twenty-Four

It was dawn when he woke up, November 3rd, and unusually bright for the time of year. The clocks had just gone back and the early sun streamed in through the great east-facing window and bathed the room in orange light. He was in his bed wearing his silk pyjamas. The curtains were open as usual and he blinked painfully in the morning glare. Everything seemed normal, although he realised he had no memory of going to bed. All he desired in the world was to return to his usual beloved routine. He wanted to sit on the wrought iron terrace clutching a mug of tea and gaze out over the moors, and yet, even before the numbing ache in his head allowed him any memory of the previous evening, a voice told him that would not be possible.

His head really hurt. An empty Laphroaig bottle was on the floor by the bed. Had he drunk all of that, and on top of the champagne he remembered downing after his release? There was a medicine phial on the dressing table. He peered at it, bleary eyed. It was empty. The label indicated that it had contained Valium. He groaned. He must have raided Amanda’s medicine cabinet. She would be furious.

No wonder the previous evening was a disjointed blur. He remembered again what Jeremy Hunter had told him about the combined effect of drugs and alcohol. He had vowed never to take the risk again. But all those months in jail without any props at all had taken their toll. He had exerted every last ounce of his strength, summoned up every last vestige of will power. His performance had impressed even Amanda.

Oh God, Amanda, that was it. He swung his legs out over the bed and sat there for a moment, feeling giddy. He almost wished he were back in jail. At least he was safe there. At least he could not harm anyone there. He shut his aching eyes and tried to think. How badly had he hurt her?

Across the room his clothes were neatly folded on the bedroom chair, trousers in the trouser press he could see through the open door of his dressing room. He was always meticulous with his clothes, but pretty sure he could not have managed that last night. Amanda must have helped him to bed, surely — she had done it often enough in the past.

Amanda’s casually vicious remark about their dead child, he remembered that all right, had taken him over the edge, and the alcohol had made everything so much more extreme — but the true wretchedness was inside him, at the very core of him.

Amanda had not understood the rage welling up inside him the previous night. She had no way of knowing that the not guilty verdict, hard as he had worked for it, had been perhaps even more devastating to him than a conviction would have been. She had absolutely no appreciation of the precipice upon which his state of mind balanced, of the way in which he felt the last threads of his sanity were stretched to the edge of endurance.

He realised now, that as a man cleared of all charges in a court of law, he had to live alone with his abiding sense of guilt and that this might prove to be beyond him.

He felt terrible, as if he were groping around in a pea souper of a fog — only it was all happening within his head. And he still had the terrible lurking fear that somewhere in that fog lay some fuzzy knowledge of events that would finally destroy him.

On auto pilot, he stumbled to his feet and used his bedroom electric kettle to make the tea. Then, clutching a steaming mug of tea he went into the bathroom adjoining his bedroom. Methodically he brushed his teeth and shaved, seeking reassurance in routine. Finally he put on his silk dressing gown over his pyjamas and very slowly went down the stairs to the kitchen.

What he saw there shocked him rigid but did not surprise him. He stood silently for a moment surveying the scene. He knew exactly the meaning of it. It had, he supposed, been inevitable. The miracle perhaps was that it had not happened before.

Carefully he put the still half-full tea mug down on the work top. He thought that if he tried to drink any more of it he would be sick. Quietly he moved into his study where he sat for several minutes at his writing desk.

Then he went upstairs to his bedroom again and changed into his riding clothes. Any other man might not have bothered with the breeches and tweed coat and roll neck sweater, might have considered that any old clothing would do on such a morning, but Richard was not any other man. He stood before the full-length mirror studying his reflection. The handsome face, eyes deceptively clear, the gleaming head of hair, the athletic sweep of his broad shoulders, all meant nothing now: Instead he saw straight through the handsome face to the grim emptiness within.

The clarity of his eyes did not disguise their awful blankness as he pulled on his brown leather riding boots, left the house and strode purposefully down to stables.

Richard had not seen Herbert for seven long months, yet the horse whinnied softly as his master approached, and Richard rubbed his muzzle affectionately, enjoying the warmth of the horse’s breath and the musky stable smell. In spite of everything he felt momentarily lulled, strangely relaxed. He went to the feed bins behind the looseboxes and prepared the horse’s morning feed. In a bucket he mixed pre-soaked sugar beet, oats, nuts, barley and a couple of handfuls of roughly chopped carrots, before tipping the mess into Herbert’s black rubber feeding bowl. Standing back to admire his handiwork he had second thoughts and added another scoop of oats and a few more carrots. He wanted Herbert to have a particularly good breakfast.

Then he pottered about, picking up this, putting down that, giving Herbert a few minutes for his stomach to settle before beginning to tack up.

It was such a long time since he had ridden, yet he mounted easily from ground level — after all, he had always promised himself he would give up riding when he was no longer able to do that. He squeezed Herbert forward and steered the horse out of the yard through the hunting gate behind the stables and on to the path that led to his favourite moorland route.

It was a particularly beautiful morning, and Richard was immensely glad of that. The sun was well up in the sky now but its light still glowed amber. So far the weather had been extremely mild, and there had yet to be a proper frost, or even any really severe winds, to cause the leaves to drop massively from the trees and bushes blazing with the glory of autumn colour. The sea, when Richard began to glimpse it through foliage growing more sparse as horse and rider climbed higher and higher, was a glittering gleaming mirror far beneath.

At the top, as the pair emerged from the woods of the lower slopes on to the bright open moorland, the joy of the turf beneath his feet and the sharp cool Exmoor air caused Herbert to break unasked into a trot and then a canter. Richard gave him his head. He had genuinely only intended to walk the horse, but he loved it when Herbert was sprightly and full of himself like this. Equally unasked, as ever, Herbert veered off the main track on to the jutting outcrop of grass-covered rock which formed such a spectacular viewing platform of the ocean and had for so long been the favourite vantage point of horse and master. As usual he stopped at the very edge of it and stood still as a glorious black marble statue, muscles tensed, ears pricked, staring down across the sweeping miles of moor, over Porlock, and way out to sea.

Richard was overcome by the beauty of the moment more than ever before.

He felt the tears prick against his eyelids and ultimately could no longer prevent them from falling. Great drops trickled down his cheeks and his shoulders began to heave with massive sobs.

After a while he dismounted, still weeping, but gently now. He walked around to the front of Herbert and stood facing the horse, his face pressed close to Herbert’s muzzle.

‘You’re a beaut, a beautiful great beast and I love you to pieces,’ he told the horse. His voice seemed to come from a long way away and cracked as he spoke.

He stroked the big neck, and spoke quietly into a twitching ear. ‘I can’t do it without you, old boy,’ he said.

The horse was so calm, so splendid. For a moment Richard felt he could not go through with it. But he had made his decision, the only choice.

From out of the woods he came silently. The sound of the gunfire still echoed in the hills and a small pall of smoke drifted lazily skywards above the bodies of man and horse.

He walked right up to them and stood looking down at the carnage. His eyes were very pale grey like the sea in the early morning, and they shone bright as the white orb of the sun in the October sky.

The man drew back his lips in a humourless grin. He leaned forward, took the Sparrow-Hawk gold pin from Richard Corrington’s jacket and very carefully attached it to his own lapel.

Neither the sight of an animal nor of a human being with their heads blown off lying in a pool of blood and gore seemed to move him at all. He was, by now, beyond normal human emotion.

Twenty-Five

It was the daily cleaning woman arriving at 9 a.m. who found her. The woman’s screaming, they claimed later, could be heard right down at Porlock Weir, although that was probably an exaggeration. Certainly George Brooks, in the stables seeing to his charges, heard her clear enough and set off for the big house at a run.

Amanda Lane lay sprawled across the kitchen floor, still clad in the cream Chanel suit she had worn to court the previous day. She was lying on her back, legs and arms spread-eagled, her face discoloured and swollen, eyes wide open and sightless.

The daily remained looking down at her employer as if unable to move. George took the woman by the arm and led her out of the kitchen, closing the door behind them. He escorted her into the drawing room, sat her down on an armchair and used the drawing room phone extension to call the police and to ask for an ambulance, although it was quite patently obvious that the latter was a merely academic request. Then he called his wife at the gatehouse lodge, told her, with as little drama as possible, what had happened, and asked her to come up to the big house. He had a feeling the daily help was about to lurch into an attack of hysterics and he was not sure that he could cope on his own. He had never been very good with hysteria, which was one of the reasons he had married the woman he did.

‘The police should be yer any minute — I’ve got to find the boss,’ he told her urgently.

His wife was ahead of him, reading his mind.

‘George, don’t you,’ she instructed. ‘Wait for the police, I wish you would.’

‘’E’s got ’Erbert up on the moor,’ George said by way of reply, as if that explained everything.

He was at the door already. He looked back over his shoulder at her.

‘I’ll be back before you’ve blinked.’

It took him just a couple of minutes to dash back to the stable yard. No warning bells had rung that morning when he had arrived there to find Herbert missing. It was not unusual for his employer to take out the old horse so early, and on this particular morning, Richard Corrington’s first day out of jail and first opportunity to ride his beloved Herbert after so long — and such a sparkling bright autumn morning too — it had seemed totally to be expected. Nothing in the stable had been out of order either.

Until the body of Amanda Lane had been discovered there was no earthly reason why George should have been alarmed.

Now, though, he almost took a running dive at the security cabinet concealed in a corner of the backroom, fumbling the combination lock in his haste. Quickly checking the contents, his worst fears were realised. Two twelve-bore shotguns and a .22 rifle lived in the steel cabinet along with a stack of ammunition. One of the twelve-bores was missing, a box of cartridges had been newly opened and several removed.

George swore roundly under his breath. Then he grabbed the saddle and bridle belonging to the fastest horse in the stable — the new chestnut, Dutchy — tacked up and swung himself aboard the handsome young gelding in little more than a minute. He knew of no faster way to get to the top of the moor.

At a spanking trot he rode Dutchy across the yard and around the back of the stables through the hunting gate on to the track which led up through the woods to the moor. It took him just over ten minutes to reach the rocky outcrop.

He pulled Dutchy to a halt. The horse was on his toes, frothy white with sweat and dancing around, not just because of the excited exertion of the gallop. The creature was afraid and trembling now. His nostrils had been filled with the stench of blood.

A nightmare scene lay before horse and rider.

George half fell out of the saddle, and, not really knowing he was doing it, began to shout out loud at the already cold, nearly headless, corpse of Richard Corrington.

‘You bastard, you mad mad bastard,’ he yelled. ‘Why the fuck did yer have to take ’Erbert with yer, you mad bastard?’

The hills had no answer. A breeze blowing up from the sea caused the bits of Richard Corrington’s hair still sprouting, uncongealed with blood, from the small part of his head which remained intact, to flutter about.

The local police from Minehead were on the scene within fifteen minutes. Todd Mallett and Sergeant Pitt arrived from Exeter little more than half an hour later. Under normal circumstances a crime at Landacre would have been the responsibility only of the Avon and Somerset force — but anything connected with Richard Corrington was Todd Mallett’s domain. He was, after all, the policeman who had charged the actor with murder. And Pitt — an advanced police driver transferred the previous year from the Regional Crime Squad — had again driven like the rally driver he had once dreamed of becoming.

Amanda Lane still lay across her kitchen floor with her head at an impossible angle. Todd could see at a glance from her distorted and discoloured features that she had been half-strangled, but he suspected that she had died from a broken neck, and that the manner of her death would fit the pattern of the murder for which Richard Corrington had stood trial and the two previous murders for which Todd had believed he should also have stood trial. Indeed, Home Office pathologist Carmen Brown, who arrived within the hour, confirmed his analysis.

‘It’s just too much of a coincidence,’ said the small, intelligent-faced doctor, provoked by the unique circumstances she faced into being far more speculative than usual.

‘If Richard Corrington has killed his wife, then he really must have killed Joyce Carter too.’

Todd and Carmen Brown used a four-wheel drive to travel up the hillside to the top of the moor where a scene of crime team had already set up camp around the body of Richard Corrington and his horse. All three deaths seemed straightforward.

‘Classic shotgun suicide,’ said Dr Brown, looking down at Richard’s gruesomely displayed corpse, and sounding more matter of fact than ever.

Meanwhile Todd tried desperately to maintain the illusion that the sight of a decapitated man and a horse with a bloody great hole in its head had no effect on him at all.

When he returned to the house Todd learned that on the desk in Richard Corrington’s study was a sealed envelope addressed to Larry Silver. Todd did not hesitate. This was a murder inquiry. Carefully, and still wearing the paper suit and surgeon’s gloves with which he had been issued on arrival at the scene, he opened the envelope and removed from it a sheet of headed notepaper on which was handwritten in black ink, by fountain pen Todd thought, a letter to Larry signed by Richard Corrington.

‘I cannot explain why I have done the things that I have done,’ it began. ‘I did not mean to kill Amanda. I did not love her, sometimes I even thought that I hated her, but I did not mean to hurt her.

‘The terrible truth is that as I write this I have no memory of killing her. What they said in court was true, perhaps you knew that? I think Amanda did, although she was not afraid of me. I believe that the drugs combined with alcohol which I have O. D.’d on for so long have dangerously distorted my mind, and I have feared for some time now that I have driven myself mad.

‘I have to accept that I am either mad or unimaginably evil, and I prefer to think that I am mad. Either way, I can no longer pretend to myself, as well as to everyone else, that I have not done these terrible things.

‘I am a murderer, and I cannot live with my guilt.

‘The act is over, Larry. You have been good to me always, better often than I deserved.

‘I can think of nothing more to say, except goodbye.

‘With love, and sorrow.

‘Ricky.’

Silently Todd passed the letter to DS Pitt. The other man read it swiftly.

‘Well that’s that then, boss,’ he said. ‘You were right all along. Guilty as hell and nutty as a fruitcake.’

‘Yes,’ replied Todd.

He felt no sense of triumph, it was already too late for that. If there had not been that TV show farce of a trial, if Richard Corrington had been found guilty and put away for life, then there would have been one murder less. Amanda Lane would not be dead.

Anyway, it was finally all over. Done and dusted. And Todd just could not understand why he continued to feel so uneasy.

Twenty-Six

Unaware of the high drama that had already occurred at Landacre, Arabella Parker and her son Jacky left Light Hall soon after midday on the day after the trial. Belle still had money matters to sort out, and in any case she couldn’t bear the idea of waiting around in Exeter for Todd to call.

Jacky was unusually quiet, and while Belle had relished the chance to spend time with him — to her shame she was not sure if they had ever spent almost a fortnight under the same roof together before — and delighted in the change in his attitude to her — he was so much warmer, warmer probably than she deserved — she continued to be concerned about him. She knew how depressed he remained, and the Corrington verdict had not helped one bit, although he had appeared to take it quite philosophically — he had been expecting it, he said — and she still secretly suspected it was probably the right verdict. Also she wished Jacky didn’t hit the dope so heavily. She had said nothing, she had relinquished that right in his childhood, and in any case realised he would find it pretty hypocritical coming from her, with the amount of booze she’d put away in her life. She just hoped to God he was sticking to dope.

Jacky quickly fell asleep beside her in the front passenger seat, and, coasting along the motorway with no one to talk to, she became aware of a motor bike which seemed to be keeping speed with her consistently, even when she slowed to fiddle with the car radio. The bike became the focus of her attention for some time until she was suddenly jerked out of her absorption by the lead item on the two o’clock news. The bodies of Richard Corrington and Amanda Lane had been found at or near their Exmoor home. The former had died of shotgun wounds and the latter from a broken neck. The police were not looking for anyone else in connection with the incident.

Involuntarily she cried out. Jacky woke at once. Together they listened to the rest of the report, much of which was speculation and conjecture concerning the trial of Richard Corrington for the Sparrow-Hawk killings and his subsequent clearing.

‘So the bastard did kill my Joyce then, didn’t he, Belle? That’s for certain, now, isn’t it?’

Yes, Belle agreed. There couldn’t be any doubt any more.

At the right moment, for once, she passed a sign telling her that there was a motorway service station approaching. She indicated left, then put a hand affectionately on Jacky’s arm.

‘Time for a cup of tea, love,’ she said. ‘And I couldn’t ’alf do with one...’

She had completely forgotten about the motor bike and did not even notice whether or not it pulled off the motorway into the service station behind her. Such was her preoccupation with the dramatic radio news bulletin that neither did she check for the presence of the bike during any of the remainder of her journey home to London.

She dropped Jacky at his Kennington bed-sit where, in the spirit of their new mother-son relationship, she had given him a key to the dockland flat, which was technically his after all, before driving on there. In spite of the impact of the latest and presumably final development in the Corrington case, she spent a pleasantly peaceful evening watching a curiously reassuring rerun of The Man From UNCLE, on TNT cable, in between the TV news bulletins that she could not resist tuning into. And the next morning she woke feeling really quite happy under the circumstances and went over in her mind the state of her life.

She was broke but, more by luck than judgement because when she had bought the Limehouse flat in Jacky’s name it had not even remotely occurred to her that she might end up living in it herself, she had somehow retained a decent enough place to live and even the aged Jag — for the time being at any rate. A letter from her agent had awaited her, telling her that she was up for a tasty role in what promised to be a thoroughly decent little Channel Four film, and the director had already confided that she really did think Belle was right for the part.

When Todd Mallett had cancelled their end-of-trial dinner date, which had not offended her as much as it might otherwise have done because she had understood, he had, even in what appeared to be a state of abject misery, still asked if he could perhaps visit her in London as soon as he had cleared everything up concerning the case. That might take longer now with what had happened the previous day, but she hoped he had really meant it, and found herself looking forward, almost indecently, to such a meeting.

Most important of all she really did seem to have discovered that she had a son, and, rather more remarkably, he seemed to have started to accept her as his mother.

Ever the fighter, ever willing and eager to find the best in any situation, Belle really felt quite chirpy — until she went to the bathroom and happened to glance out of the little window, the only one in the riverside apartment which looked on to the street.

There was a man standing across the road. He was leaning against the wall of the old warehouse opposite and he appeared to be staring quite intently up at her apartment. He was wearing motor bike leathers topped by a flyer’s jacket with its sheepskin collar turned up, and his head was encased in one of those helmets that covered virtually the whole of his face, even though there was no motor bike anywhere in sight as far as Belle could see. She watched him for several minutes. He did not move. There was something about him which was familiar, yet she could not for the life of her think what it was or who, even in the helmet, he reminded her of. She told herself she was being neurotic in thinking he was watching her flat, there was nothing much to watch for a start with almost all the windows looking towards the river, and she couldn’t see his eyes although his head was pointed towards her apartment block.

Eventually, always a practical and unusually down-to-earth sort of person for an actress, she admonished herself sharply for being silly and returned to the living room where she had earlier started to respond to her accumulated mail and the various messages left on her telephone answering-machine — many of them concerning her financial dilemma and quite unwelcome, but none the less demanding attention. She wished she had stuck to showbusiness, although for so many years chance would have been a fine thing.

She sighed. After half an hour or so she could no longer concentrate and returned to the bathroom for another look out of the window — just in case. The man was still there. Damn! She watched him for a few minutes more, the feelings of anxiety fully returning now in spite of her attempts to quell them, but was just about to make herself turn away and ignore his presence — he could be there for so many reasons, she told herself — when the man removed his motor bike crash helmet.

She could see his face clearly and he did indeed seem to be staring directly at her, although she knew that he could not see her through the mottled glass of the bathroom window.

Recognition came swift and sharp as the thrust of a knife to the heart. The hair, with its idiosyncratic quiff, was so distinctive. And the leathers, that flyer’s jacket — of course! She had many times seen photographs of him wearing those, with that blessed bike of his.

It was Richard Corrington. He was dead. And yet he was alive and watching her.

She shook her head as if she mistrusted her own vision, then she pushed her face against the window, screwing up her eyes to get a better look and ensure she had made no mistake. She remembered the binoculars she always kept by the balcony window, in order to be able to study the river, and ran to fetch them, but the man replaced his helmet just before she had managed to focus properly.

She craned her neck and peered up and down the street, and then she saw it, its front wheel and part of the handlebars just sticking out of the alleyway close to the river — a black motor bike. She recalled from the court case that the bike Richard Corrington rode was a black Triumph Daytona. She wouldn’t know a Daytona from a skateboard — but it was a black motor cycle out there, sure enough.

Involuntarily she shivered.

Shaken beyond measure she returned to the living room and half fell on to the big squashy sofa. Pulling herself partially together with a huge effort of will she reached for the telephone and dialled the number of Exeter’s Heavitree Road police station.

In Exeter Todd was enjoying a rather better day than he had experienced in a long time. He had spent most of the previous afternoon and that morning running the gauntlet of the press, but it was not proving to be that unpleasant an experience, as they seemed to want to turn him into some kind of hero. The cop who was right all along. Everybody wanted to talk to him, and a lot of people, including some of his superiors, wanted to congratulate him. He had got the result in the end. It was not in the way that Todd would have wished, certainly not with two more deaths to take into account, albeit one of them the murderer himself, but, in the police force, as in any other line of work in the modern competitive world, it is ultimately only results that count.

The murder of Amanda Lane followed by the written confession and suicide of Richard Corrington seemed to prove the case for the prosecution — which in court, amid all the showmanship of a TV spectacular played out to the biggest public gallery in the history of the British legal system, had failed to convince a jury that the actor was guilty — beyond any doubt at all.

Todd was pleased, of course. He could not help but reflect that he was almost certain now to walk the promotion he was up for that winter. And he was in the middle of this thoroughly satisfying thought when his direct line rang. He picked up the receiver and heard the voice of Belle Parker.

‘Todd, he’s not dead, he’s here outside my flat.’

Her voice was high pitched, verging on hysteria, he thought. In spite of his strong feelings for her he did not know her all that well, none the less he did not think she was a woman who would often lose control.

‘What are you talking about, Belle?’ he asked.

‘Ricky Corrington.’ She was shouting into the phone now. ‘It’s Ricky Corrington. He’s outside my flat. He followed me all the way from Devon on his motor bike, I’m sure of it.’

Todd groaned. Don’t say Belle was going to turn out to be a complete nutter, too.

‘Belle, listen to me very carefully.’ He was aware that he was being patronising, but he couldn’t help it. This was one of the good days. There hadn’t been too many of them lately, and he didn’t want it ruined by a load of hysterical nonsense.

‘Richard Corrington is quite definitely dead. I went to Landacre yesterday morning and I saw the bodies of both Amanda and Richard Corrington. He’d shot himself through the mouth with a twelve-bore and damn near blown his head off. Not a pretty sight.’

Belle was quick. ‘If he’d blown his head off then you couldn’t see his face, could you?’

Todd sighed. Why was he always attracted to difficult women?

‘No, I couldn’t see his face, but there is absolutely no doubt that Richard Corrington killed himself yesterday and that I saw his body and his poor bloody dead horse beside him. I also saw the suicide note he wrote in his own handwriting.’

‘And what the fuck does a suicide note prove?’

She sounded very angry and Todd was taken by surprise. He had not heard her swear before. When he spoke again he had changed the tone of his voice.

‘Look Belle, Richard Corrington is dead, but if there’s some kind of a prowler watching your flat, call your local nick.’

‘You’re not bleedin’ listening to me, are you?’ she still sounded angry.

He sighed. They’d really got off on the wrong foot this time.

‘Call your local nick,’ he said again. ‘There’s nothing I can do from here.’

‘Thanks very much,’ she responded. The phone went dead.

He sat for a few seconds looking at the humming receiver he still held in his hand. Finally he replaced it, and made himself return to the pile of paperwork concerning the case which he had been trying to plough through.

After a few minutes he gave in, sat back in his chair and buzzed for Sergeant Pitt. ‘Has Corrington’s body been formally identified yet?’ he asked.

‘Well, no boss, it’s a bit difficult when he’s got no head left worth mentioning, but we’ve got George Brooks coming in this afternoon to keep the book straight.’

‘Right, I want a finger print check on the body, and I want it fast,’ said the DCI.

Pitt looked surprised. ‘But there’s no doubt, boss, there can’t be.’ He said it as a statement but with a note of wondering none the less.

‘Just do it, Pitt,’ snapped Todd.

When the man had retreated he picked up his phone and contacted the London police station covering the area where Arabella Parker lived. He told them they may or may not receive a call from the actress concerning a prowler which could be connected with the Corrington murder inquiry, and either way, he would appreciate a thorough check around her dockland home.

Belle, by now very anxious, did call her local police. They turned up at the apartment in comforting strength and were indeed reassuringly thorough, although obviously quite bemused by her repeated claims that she was being watched by a dead man.

There was no sign of any prowler in the vicinity. The uniformed sergeant in charge, who looked about twenty years old to Belle, assured her that he would have someone regularly patrol the area for a bit, and then left. It was already early evening. She poured herself a large gin and tonic and tried to think of something else.

She dug out a favourite old video and watched it resolutely. Eventually she decided to indulge in a spot of comfort eating and phoned for a takeaway pizza.

Was it possible that she had been mistaken? She knew she hadn’t been, really. Disconsolately she wandered into the bathroom and peered out through the window. It was dark, but the street outside was well-lit, and there was no sign of a lurking motor cyclist, or anybody at all lurking, come to that. Just as she was turning away a police car obligingly drove past, very slowly, its two occupants obviously carefully scrutinising the street. Somewhat cheered by this, she accepted delivery of the pizza — none the less checking carefully through the spy hole in her front door before opening it — and uncorked a bottle of Chianti. She drank the lot, and this further cheered her. She even managed a little half joke to herself. Perhaps she had seen a ghost.

The finger print check was a disaster.

‘What do you mean, they’ve been destroyed?’ stormed Todd.

‘Once someone has been acquitted of an offence we have no right to keep his prints, boss,’ Pitt explained early the next morning. ‘They wouldn’t normally be wiped as quick as this — but you know Nemrac, he was on to it straight away.’

Dental records were a non starter. The corpse had virtually no head left let alone teeth. Todd was beginning to get a very bad feeling about all of this. He called Belle Parker. Her answering machine replied. He did not leave a message. He told himself that he was in danger of becoming as hysterical as he had judged her to be — and that he must not let his personal feelings influence him. Richard Corrington was dead, and that was that.

Minutes later came a telephone call that really set him thinking. It was from Bruce Macintosh. Todd assumed the man just wanted to talk about Corrington’s death, to be reassured again of Todd’s belief that the actor had also killed Ruth Macintosh, to be able to believe perhaps that it really was all over. The policeman could not have been more wrong.

‘I’ve just had a phone call from one of the women Ruth shared a flat with in London before we married.’ Bruce sounded breathless. ‘There is a connection between Ruth and Sparrow-Hawk, would you believe. About a year before I met her — around seventeen or eighteen years ago it would have been — Ruth had an affair with the actor who first played Jack Sparrow, in a pilot that never got shown or something. His name was Martin Viner.’

Todd sat up very straight trying to take in what he had been told.

‘The woman who called me is a nurse, I knew about her but I hadn’t been able to find her. She’s been with the Red Cross in a remote part of Africa for almost a year. I wrote to her at the last address Ruth had for her, but she didn’t get the letter until she returned to England yesterday.

‘She said Ruth met Viner when she worked for his solicitor, and she saw him for several months around the time he made the Sparrow-Hawk film. He was a real looker of course, flavour of the month, and all that, but apparently Ruth was always a bit afraid of him. He had a terrible temper. And she chucked him after he lost the Sparrow-Hawk role.’

‘Because of his temper?’

‘It was more than that. Ruth told her friend that she reckoned losing Sparrow-Hawk sent Viner right over the top. She couldn’t cope with his behaviour any more. He was desperately possessive and always in a rage.’

Bruce broke off from the narrative. ‘I don’t know what this means, Todd, maybe it’s just a coincidence... I mean what do you think?’

Todd didn’t respond. ‘Is there anything else?’ he asked.

‘Well, apparently he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He kept following her around and writing her letters. Although, whatever happened, by the time I met her he had given up and it was all history.’

‘And you never knew anything about the affair?’

‘No. We had a pact never to discuss our previous relationships.’

‘I’m surprised none of the other people you contacted earlier knew anything about it, though.’

‘He was a married man, Todd. It was all a secret, but I suppose Ruth needed to talk to someone, and it seems that she confided in just this one friend.

‘And she tells me Viner kicked up a real stink with the TV company, too, when he was dropped,’ Bruce went on. ‘I would’ve expected you guys to have found out about him earlier, I mean, I’d have thought he would have been an obvious suspect once you had the Sparrow-Hawk link...’

‘We did find out about him, Bruce.’ Todd cut him short. ‘He died three years ago.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure.’ Todd snapped his reply.

The truth was he was beginning not to be sure of anything any more. Life and death at least were normally straightforward enough, weren’t they, whatever Belle Parker and Bruce Macintosh might think?

He forced himself to calm down. ‘Viner died in a fire in a nursing home, he’d had a terrible accident and was confined to a wheel chair, he had no chance.’ Todd could not resist getting his own back a little. ‘I’m surprised a journalist like yourself didn’t know that...’

‘I haven’t checked cuts yet, I came straight on to you. But in any case he wasn’t that well known, was he?’

‘No, you’re right. I was just winding you up. The pilot was never shown, he’d done bugger all else, nobody really knew or cared who he was. There was little or no publicity about him when he died.’

‘I didn’t think so, but wait a minute.’ Todd could hear Bruce gasping at the other end of the phone. ‘You said he died in a fire in a nursing home, didn’t you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Do you know where?’

‘Yep. It was here in Devon. Place called Craddack, just outside Plymouth.’

‘The Oceanview.’ Bruce said the name very slowly and deliberately.

‘How do you know that?’

‘Todd, I meant to tell you when Corrington was arrested, but I couldn’t see how it fitted anyway...’

‘What?’

‘Margaret Nance was an auxiliary nurse at the Oceanview.’

Todd stiffened. ‘But she worked as a children’s nanny in Truro.’

‘Only after Oceanview burned down.’

‘There’s damn near a whole county between Craddack and her home

‘Todd, if you live in Cornwall you go where the work is, there’s not much of it down there — you know that. Her family home was in St Ives but she used to travel to Devon every week and live-in at Oceanview when she was working.

‘The fire happened just a couple of months before she died. She was one of the lucky ones. Off duty.’

‘Dear God!’ Todd turned the two words into a cry of anguish.

Bruce Macintosh was still talking. ‘Are you absolutely sure he is dead, Todd?’ he asked.

‘Of course we bloody are. Do you think we didn’t check it? I had a team on it. There was an autopsy. An inquest. But I didn’t know Margaret Nance worked at Oceanview — I don’t even remember it being in her file.’ Todd took a deep breath and started again. ‘Bruce, I don’t know what to think, mate, any more. But thanks anyway.’

He finished the conversation as quickly as he could and then called in Sergeant Pitt.

‘Martin Viner,’ he said simply. ‘I want all we’ve got on him on my desk — now — and I want everybody we’ve got looking into his history.’

‘But he’s dead, boss.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Pitt, do you have to question everything?’ Todd was a lot more ruffled than he liked to admit to himself. ‘When we talked to Viner’s wife, she didn’t have any doubts about him being dead, did she?’

‘Good Lord, no, boss. And she was glad to see the back of him, made no bones about it. I reckon he used to knock her about, until he was crocked, that is. She said he had a vicious temper and put it about a bit, but fortunately that kept him out of her way a lot of the time. Quite open about it all, she was.

‘They’d been separated for years but never got a divorce. So when he snuffed it, she got the life insurance. Happy woman.’

Todd thumped the top of his desk with a clenched fist.

‘There’s something not right, Pitt. I want the investigation into Viner opened up. And I want Mrs Viner’s phone number.’

Anxiously Todd called the number in Richmond, Surrey. There was a quick reply, and fortunately it was Mrs Susan Viner at the other end of the phone and not a dreaded answering-machine.

As calmly as he could, Todd apologised for bothering the woman again, muttered something about ‘one or two gaps in our inquiries’, and began to ask Mrs Viner about her husband and his death.

‘I wonder if you could tell me what kind of man your husband was, Mrs Viner?’ he asked evenly.

‘I’ve already told you all about it, he was barking mad and he had a vicious streak running right through him,’ she responded.

Pitt was certainly right. There was no love lost there, Todd thought. ‘But people say things like that about actors, don’t they? You know, actors are all mad?’

He was coaxing her almost, he wanted her to talk freely to him, although he was becoming more and more afraid of what she was going to say.

‘Detective Chief Inspector, when I said that my husband was mad that is exactly what I mean. His father was a violent schizophrenic who took his own life. His only brother was a diagnosed psychotic schizophrenic who died in his teens. There was a sister who died as a baby — a cot death allegedly although there were those who suspected differently, I later learned...’

Susan Viner’s voice sounded shaky. ‘I didn’t find out about Martin’s background until about four years after we married. He always claimed he had avoided any mental illness, but he would never go near a doctor, and the more I lived with him the less sure I became of that. As time went by the more relieved I became that we never had children.’

Todd could feel the ground being pulled away from beneath his feet. ‘Mrs Viner, why didn’t you tell my officers about all this in the beginning?’

‘My husband is dead, Chief Inspector. I got to the stage where I believed him to be capable of almost anything, but he couldn’t be involved in your inquiries. He died three years ago, you know that. And there’s no point in raking up a very painful past.’

‘Mrs Viner, how did your husband respond when he was dropped as Sparrow-Hawk?’

‘It took him right over the edge. It was the accident which really broke him, though. Do you know about that?’

‘Yes of course, but I’d like to hear it from you.’

‘Martin was a brilliant stuntman, Mr Mallett — because he was crazy, I always said. He had no fear. Even after the Sparrow-Hawk fiasco he had his stunt work. He was particularly talented as a pilot, but he always pushed everything to the limit. There were a number of producers and directors who would not work with him because they did not think he was safe. He was being filmed flying a helicopter under a low bridge when apparently he misjudged by inches and crashed. He was lucky, although he never saw it that way, to come out alive.

‘His legs and his pelvis were shattered, and he never walked again. But because of his reputation he didn’t even get damages. The director claimed he had been asked to fly just over the bridge, not beneath it. It was typical of Martin to go a step further...’

The woman paused. She sounded weary. ‘And of course he took the attitude that if he hadn’t been dropped as Jack Sparrow he would still have had the use of his legs because he would not have had to go back to stunt work...’

Todd interrupted. His imagination was getting the better of him. ‘Mrs Viner, did you ever see your husband’s body?’

‘No Chief Inspector. He was burned to a cinder. There wouldn’t have been much to see.’

‘Mrs Viner, do you think there is the slightest possibility that your husband could have survived the blaze and started a new life for himself, taken on another identity?’

‘My husband couldn’t walk.’ Mrs Viner enunciated as if she were talking to an idiot. ‘He could barely move unaided. He could never have survived. He was burned to death in his bed. And in any case there was an autopsy, you know...’

Desperately Todd tried to work it out.

He called Belle Parker’s number again. He checked his watch. It was almost midday. There was still only the answering-machine in attendance. He cursed silently and this time left a message for her to call him urgently. God knows who was standing outside Belle’s flat. He kicked himself for not taking her more seriously. He had been revelling in smug euphoria, and that was the kind of luxury a good policeman could not allow himself.

Under the circumstances Belle had had a pretty good day, even though during the brief amount of time she spent in her flat she had been unable to stop herself frequently glancing through the bathroom window. Outside there had been no sign of a motor cyclist or any other kind of prowler, and once more she had seen a police car driving slowly by — the local nick were proving as good as their word and were obviously keeping an eye on her. She had begun to work really hard at convincing herself that she was mistaken, that Richard Corrington had not been lurking outside her home, and, perhaps, Todd’s opinion that she was being hysterical — so clearly indicated by his patronising attitude — had been justified.

She had been shopping that morning and picked up his message when she returned briefly at lunchtime before dashing off to a meeting at Channel Four with her agent. She had not really had time to return his call, and in any case, although it pleased her considerably that he was concerned about her, she had not quite forgiven him for being so patronising during their earlier conversation. She thought it would do him no harm to be kept waiting for a while before she called back.

Grateful for the underground garage — in addition to keeping the Jag out of the sight of anyone who might be inclined to remove it from her, the garage could be approached directly from within the building and there was a complex security card system controlling access from outside — she took the lift downstairs and collected her car. As she swept through the garage doors in the big motor she slowed down and carefully surveyed the street to either side of her. It was a typically dull early November day. There was nobody suspicious around, in fact, nobody at all. Limehouse Mews was a quiet cul-de-sac constructed only to give access to the homes built as part of the development around Limehouse Basin — which in prouder days had linked the River Thames with Britain’s foremost canal, the Grand Union, and had been the dock where cargoes were transferred from sea-going vessels on to canal barges.

She drove slowly up the mews on to the main drag heading for the City and throughout the journey to Channel Four’s Victoria HQ — in an area where it was mercifully still just about possible to park, Belle, always unhappy when separated from the Jag, liked to drive everywhere if she could — she checked frequently in her mirror to see if there was any sign of being followed.

The meeting went well. The station’s new chief executive had asked that she pop into his office for a chat; and every indication was, that as long as the film went ahead as planned, the part would be Belle’s if she wanted it. So when Belle and her agent left the futuristic metal and glass building they both considered that a small celebration was in order and found a nearby wine bar where they treated themselves to a bottle of champagne.

‘Here’s to the future.’ Belle proposed the toast with feeling, and her agent happily drank to it.

But when the bottle was empty Belle reluctantly declined the offer of a second one.

‘I’m sorely tempted, I reckon I could do with a really good drink, but I’ve got the motor,’ she offered by way of excuse.

On the way home she hit the full force of the evening rush hour. The journey back to Limehouse was mind-bogglingly slow, taking more than an hour.

She finally unlocked the door to her apartment at 8 p.m. And as she stepped gratefully into the hallway, she considered that she might console herself by cracking that bottle of rather good champagne she knew she still had in the fridge and drinking it all on her own.

The frustrations of driving under such conditions, and the excitement of the prospect of quality work again, so occupied Belle’s mind that she barely gave a thought to her mystery motor cyclist.

Twenty-Seven

Todd had a photograph of Martin Viner on his desk. He was a handsome man with a strong, chisel-jawed face framed by a shock of blonde curls which would now be considered unfashionably long. His eyes were striking. Pale grey and, even in a photograph, somehow penetrating. The picture had been taken around the time that Viner made the Sparrow-Hawk pilot, seventeen years earlier, and was the latest photo it had so far been possible to obtain.

The policeman stared long and hard. There was something familiar about Viner. Todd had the distinct feeling that he knew the man from somewhere.

‘Well, I don’t know, boss, maybe he’s just got one of those sort of faces,’ said Sergeant Pitt unhelpfully. ‘And he did an awful lot of telly once, didn’t he? Small parts, maybe, but all over the place he was...’

Todd put the photograph in his briefcase. Pitt was probably right. In any case he had no intention of wasting any more time.

Abruptly he rose to his feet.

‘We’re going to Plymouth, Pitt, and I want you to imagine you’re driving in Le Mans,’ Todd commanded.

The high-powered police Rover roared through the gates of Heavitree Road police station as if it were about to take off and fly, which was more or less Sergeant Pitt’s intention.

‘What I want to know first,’ said Todd, ‘is if there is any chance at all that Martin Viner could still be alive. And I don’t trust any other bugger on this one.’

En route Todd worked on his mobile phone. First he called Plymouth’s premier police station, Charles Cross, where the duty inspector, who introduced himself as Jim Pendennis, promised to have all the files on the nursing home fire ready for Todd’s arrival. Then he contacted the fire brigade and talked to the chief fire officer.

‘All three residents who died were wheel chair cases and they didn’t stand a chance,’ reported the man. ‘The nurse who tried to help them went with them. It was the worst case I have ever dealt with. The screams were terrible. They didn’t die at once, you see, and the fire erupted so suddenly they didn’t have the mercy of being asphyxiated by smoke.

‘They were in rooms on the second floor. The lifts went down straight away, and within minutes the staircase collapsed. Those who could walk were able to get out straight away, but the wheel chair cases were trapped. They couldn’t get out and we couldn’t get to them. Their rooms had fire doors and window seals. If the doors had been shut the people inside should have been reasonably safe for an hour — that’s the regulation now with nursing and old people’s homes — but the doors had been left open. So bloody stupid — it happens again and again.

‘I’ll never forget that night as long as I live. Half my men were weeping as they worked.’

The fire chief had a quiet, matter of fact way of talking. Todd found himself imagining the scene vividly. He shuddered.

‘I’m trying to find out if there is any chance at all that one of the wheel chair cases, a man called Martin Viner, may have secretly escaped.’

A hollow laugh came down the air waves.

‘You should have been there — you wouldn’t even ask.’

Was he on completely the wrong track? Todd didn’t know. All he could do was to carry on digging.

Pitt touched almost 120 on the motorway-standard A38 between Exeter and Plymouth. Even though he had torrential rain to contend with for most of the way, the journey was covered at the highest possible speed with blue light flashing and siren wailing, and took just on half an hour. They arrived shortly before 1 p. m.

Sergeant Pitt looked as if he was on a high, driving fast excited him.

‘Well done Pitt,’ said Todd. ‘Eat your heart out Damon Hill.’

The sergeant was beaming as the two men, heads bowed against the still heavy rain, walked briskly into Charles Cross police station. But Todd could not help his attention being drawn to the ruined church, bombed during the Second World War, which had been preserved as a memorial in the middle of the roundabout in front of the station.

He turned to look at it, as he had so many times, today a starkly dark shape, strangely featureless, shrouded in a veil of rainfall. He barely noticed the stream of traffic roaring around it. Todd always remembered his mother talking of the wartime night when Plymouth burned and the red glow in the sky could be seen in his North Devon home town seventy miles away. The city, its entire centre destroyed, had suffered a blitz every bit as devastating as London. Todd shivered. To him Plymouth would always be a town of ghosts.

Inside the police station he focused his concentration on to more recent tragedy. The files on the Oceanview fire were filled with chilling photographs of burning rubble, and of the remains of the victims. Remains was the accurate word.

‘A lot of petrol went up, and there’s nothing quite as devastating as a petrol explosion,’ said Inspector Pendennis by way of explanation.

‘Petrol?’ Todd was puzzled. ‘In a nursing home?’

The inspector shook his head. ‘The boat work shop next door. I say next door, you know Craddack, don’t you? It’s an overgrown fishing village, attracts the tourist trade in spades now. In the heart of Craddack everything is back to back, on top of everything else. That’s where Oceanview was — not the usual location for a nursing home, because it was part of a terrace — but it was a huge building on several storeys with fabulous sea views on every floor, and they’d installed lifts of course. It was also damn near on top of Ely Trevilian’s boat workshop.

‘And he had the place stashed full of petrol. He worked on power boats, the kind you use for water skiing, and they usually run on petrol. A couple of them went up too.

‘Funny really if it wasn’t so tragic. All the safety regulations there are if you run a nursing home, and yet neither the fire people nor us have any jurisdiction at all over the property next door.

‘Old Ely was damn lucky not to go to jail for manslaughter. He was actually prosecuted for misuse of premises and he got a suspended sentence. It was probably his age that saved him.

‘He’d broken every rule in the book. Mind you, I reckon they all do...’

Todd’s luck was in. Jim Pendennis, every bit as Cornish as his name suggested, was a long-serving officer in the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary and had been stationed in the Plymouth area for almost twenty years. He knew his manor and its history backwards.

‘So what actually caused the blaze?’ asked the DCI.

‘An electrical fault in the workshop. Old Ely again. He’d wired half the place up himself and a right botch up, it was.’

‘I’d like to talk to this Ely.’

‘You can try, but you’ll be lucky to get any sense out of him. He’s more Cornish than a tiddy oggie and he doesn’t trust foreigners. He’s always been a bit eccentric, Ely, and since the fire he’s gone right off his rocker, if you ask me. But he’s supposed to have been a superb natural engineer in his time, worked in Devonport Docks, which is what brought him up this way...’

Todd told Pendennis about the Martin Viner connection, but the policeman merely reiterated the verdict of the local fire chief. Martin Viner was dead, all right, along with the other wheel chair cases.

The DCI picked up a photograph of Margaret Nance.

‘She worked at the nursing home. There are all these threads, Inspector. Too many coincidences...’

Jim Pendennis took the photograph from Todd. ‘I come from Hayle, you know, just this side of St Ives; went to school with the poor maid’s father.’

He sighed. ‘It was two months after the fire that she was murdered. How can it be anything other than a tragic coincidence?’

‘I don’t know, Inspector, but if there is a link then I’m damn well going to find it.’ Todd was brisk again. Business-like.

‘Is there anybody else I should talk to?’ he asked.

‘Well, there’s Dr McTavish. He ran Oceanview. A bit of a character around these parts, but the fire destroyed him. He’s a broken man, really. There was some criticism of the way he ran the place, bound to be. He must be well into his seventies now. People say he was too old to be in charge of a nursing home.’

‘McTavish? He’s not local then?’

‘From Glasgow. Came to Craddack on holiday thirty years ago and never went home.’

John Pendennis walked over to the open window and took a big breath of fresh air. Beyond him through the window Todd could see the shell of the church again. Pendennis was staring at it, as if he were seeing much more than a carefully preserved ruin.

The Plymouth policeman’s voice was sad when he spoke again. ‘It’s not just the dead and injured who are the casualties...’

Ely Trevilian was not quite what Todd expected. The old man had a leathery weather-worn face and impossibly black hair which Todd thought must surely be dyed. In different circumstances Todd would have found it difficult to keep a straight face.

Ely lived alone in an old coastguard cottage on the edge of Craddack, a little white-painted place which seemed to be almost precariously balanced on the cliff side. A sea breeze turned the rain to salt and Todd could feel his skin stinging as the wind lashed his face.

He hammered for some minutes on the front door, causing fragments of peeling blue paint to fall to the ground, before Ely eventually emerged. And, as Jim Pendennis had predicted, he was not best pleased to see his visitors.

‘Questions, questions and more bleddy questions — for three bleddy years,’ he grumbled.

If the old man felt any remorse or even responsibility for the terrible fire which started in his workshop, he certainly wasn’t showing it. He was, in fact, openly belligerent.

‘They’m be putting the blame on me and tidn’t right,’ he said. ‘’Tis a bleddy load of nonsense. There weren’t nothing wrong with me electrics.’

‘But Mr Trevilian, you had wired the place yourself. Didn’t it occur to you to bring in a professional electrician, at least to have it checked?’

‘A professional? I can do a better job with electrics then any so-called professional. I always ’ad a way with electrics.’

He looked pleased with himself. His eyes shone unnaturally. Jim Pendennis was probably right, thought Todd. Off his rocker.

‘Mr Trevilian,’ he persisted, ‘your workshop was full of petrol. Didn’t it occur to you that was dangerous?’

‘Pah.’ The old man oozed contempt from every pore. ‘You’m never worked in an engine room when yer ship is under fire then? More’n fifty years ago ’twas, and I can still taste the fear. Seven attacks I survived, what be the odds on that? That be danger, I tell ’ee.

‘There weren’t nowt dangerous in my workshop. I don’t care what thigee rule book says — I knows ’ow to keep petrol safe enough.’

‘Mr Trevilian, your stash of petrol exploded and caused a terrible fire. How do you explain that?’

‘Some bugger tampered with me electrics, I told ’em all that. Never took no bleddy notice.’

‘A team of fire experts went through what was left of your premises with a tooth comb. There was absolutely no indication that anything had been tampered with. They concluded that the fault was in your wiring which could have self ignited at any time.’

Ely Trevilian was not impressed.

‘Pah,’ he said again. ‘Bleddy experts. Brains in thigee backsides. What do they bleddy know?’

Todd was smiling in spite of himself as he and Pitt left the old man in his little cottage.

‘Now you know why we won the war, Pitt,’ he said.

Dr Iain McTavish was a rather different proposition. His thin, acutely intelligent face clouded over when Todd explained who he was and what he wanted to talk about. Dr McTavish was a tall man with a slight stoop. Deep lines of sorrow were etched on pale parchment skin. His eyes had a permanently haunted look in them.

He lived in the Barbican now, the touristy part of Plymouth full of cobbled streets and curio shops, with an old harbour where they used to moor a replica of the Pilgrim Father’s ship. The Golden Hind. Dr McTavish’s small neat flat was tucked away at the top end of an insignificant little lane, far too narrow for a car to manoeuvre. It was almost as if the doctor were deliberately hiding, and in some ways he was. Certainly he confided straight away that he could no longer bear to even visit Craddack.

‘You were cleared of all blame,’ said Todd.

The older man smiled wanly. ‘Not possible,’ he said. ‘I shall carry the burden to my grave. Those people were in my care and I failed them.’

‘I want to talk to you about Martin Viner,’ said Todd. ‘What can you remember about him?’

Todd was aware of the doctor almost physically pulling himself together.

‘A difficult patient, a difficult man, realty. But then he had a lot to put up with. Terrible thing for such an active person, a man who made a living out of performing stunts. You know all about the helicopter crash, I presume?’

Todd nodded. ‘And Viner never walked again. Is that correct?’

‘Absolutely. His legs and pelvis were smashed to pieces. He suffered terrible pain.’

‘And there was nothing that could be done about it?’

‘Well, no...’ The doctor hesitated.

‘Dr McTavish was there any chance at all that Martin Viner would ever have been able to walk again?’

‘Well, there’s been extraordinary progress in that area in recent years. Hip replacement. That kind of thing. There are surgeons who can virtually rebuild a person’s legs. But Martin’s case was extreme. He’d had surgery, of course, but it had not been successful.’

‘How long was he with you, doctor?’

‘About a year. His accident happened a year before that and he had been in hospital before coming to us.’

‘And was he regularly medically examined?’

‘Not in the way that you mean. He hated being “messed about with”, he called it, and there wasn’t much point, so we held off. I wanted him to have psychiatric help, for his depression, you know. But he wouldn’t. Went quite white with anger when I suggested it, I remember...’

‘Dr McTavish, is there any way Martin Viner could have regained the use of his legs without you knowing about it?’

The doctor ran his fingers through his sparse grey hair. ‘I suppose there is. He had his own room. But why would anyone keep something like that a secret?’

‘What if he wanted to disappear, to create a new identity for himself?’

Iain McTavish looked startled. ‘And deliberately cause the death of severely disabled people? Even if it were possible, Chief Inspector, nobody could be that evil, could they?’

Todd looked at the other man. You could almost reach out and touch the gentleness in him.

‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Doctor,’ he said quietly.

McTavish shook his head. His eyes were troubled.

‘You know once, at night, when everyone was in bed, I thought I heard footsteps from Martin Viner’s room. Up and down, as if someone was pacing the room. I went to investigate, and the door was locked. Now that was never allowed for safety reasons.’

He paused, and for a moment Todd thought he was going to break down. ‘Safety! What a joke that seems, now, Inspector, aye? There shouldn’t even have been a key, God knows where Martin got it from.’

The doctor continued as if there had been no interruption in his narrative.

‘Eventually Martin came to the door, in his wheel chair. I said I thought I’d heard footsteps. He looked down at his legs, and then just laughed at me. Rather unpleasantly I recall. He gave me the key meekly enough when I insisted, although I remember that he seemed terribly angry. But then, he was almost always angry.’

Todd was riveted. He felt that burst of adrenalin he always got when he knew he was making some progress at last. Even his anxiety for Arabella’s safety had been banished firmly to the back of his mind.

‘Dr McTavish, was there any link at all between Martin Viner and the girl who worked at your home who was later murdered — Margaret Nance?’

The expression ‘jumped out of his skin’ flitted across Todd’s mind as he watched the doctor’s alarmed reaction.

‘Why on earth do you ask that?’

‘Will you just answer me, doctor.’

‘Inspector, you are beginning to frighten me. There was something between them, yes. You see, I started to keep an eye on Martin after the incident of the key, and one day, well, I caught Margaret in his bed.’

It was Todd’s turn to jump.

‘So what did you do about it?’

‘My first reaction was to sack her, but I’ve never been very good at sacking people.’

Iain McTavish sighed. ‘She broke down in tears and begged me not to tell anyone. Said it would never happen again and she was only comforting him because she felt so sorry for him. A man struck down in his prime, she said.

‘In the end I just gave her a severe warning. I spoke to Martin pretty sharply though, told him he might be disabled but that didn’t excuse his behaviour. I mean, Margaret was only eighteen, and he was almost three times her age. I told him that if anything like it ever happened again he would have to leave.

‘He apologised. But he gave no appearance of being at all sorry. In fact I remember thinking that he seemed quite smug...’

Todd could feel his fingers tingling with excitement.

‘Can I ask, in the condition he was allegedly in, would he have been capable of full sexual relations?’

‘Of course, Chief Inspector. Just about every bone in his lower body had been broken, but he wasn’t paralysed. And anyway, even in cases of paralysis sex is frequently possible...’

‘Dr McTavish, did you tell anybody about this when Margaret Nance was killed?’

The doctor shook his head. ‘No, Chief Inspector, I didn’t. Her family had enough grief to cope with. Martin was dead. There seemed no point. Not then.’

He looked directly at Todd. ‘I see what you are driving at very clearly. I don’t know if I can believe it...’

Todd shrugged. ‘I don’t know either. But it’s beginning to fit. A patient who is not as disabled as he pretends to be seduces a young girl. She is under his spell. She provides him with the key you discovered. Maybe she also provided him with the key to Ely Trevilian’s workshop, maybe he needed tools and she got those for him. Transport too.’

Todd was warming to his theme. ‘But unlike our man she has a conscience. It probably had not occurred to her that people would have to die. She shares a terrible secret with Viner and he doesn’t trust her. He fears she is going to break and give him away. So he kills her... What do you think, Doctor?’

Iain McTavish looked stunned. He did not speak.

‘If Martin Viner had been able to walk,’ Todd continued, ‘would he have been able to come and go quite easily from Oceanview, at night, say?’

‘Well yes. We didn’t run a prison. The front door had an ordinary Yale lock.’

There was bitter irony in the doctor’s voice when he added: ‘And, of course, there was a fire escape...’

‘So,’ Todd seemed to be talking to himself now, ‘if Martin Viner did fake his death and take on a new identity, where is he now? And who is he now?’

Uneasily Todd found himself thinking about Belle and her prowler again.

‘You haven’t got a more up to date photograph of Viner, have you, Doctor?’ Todd asked. ‘The only stuff we could find was donkeys’ years old.’

McTavish shook his head. ‘That was another of Martin’s phobias. He would never let a camera near him. Mind you, I suppose you could understand it...’

Todd’s antennae started to waggle again. ‘Why? Was he scarred? Nobody told me?’

‘No, nothing like that. He had no facial scars at all. But he suffered all kinds of psychological reaction to the accident. The most dramatic thing was that he lost all his body hair. He had alopecia...’

Todd felt the blood rise in him. He looked at Sergeant Pitt. The younger policeman was already on his feet. The two of them bolted out the door and ran down the cobbled street towards their parked car like a pair of sprinters.

Twenty-Eight

He came at her like Jonah Lomu. His bulk propelled itself through the doorway as if catapulted, smashing into the small of her back. She had not had a chance to turn and lock the door behind her.

Arabella was already falling forwards, the breath forced out of her body, when he wrapped his arms around her legs, whipping her feet off the ground. She crashed heavily to the floor, somehow managing to twist herself around so that she was looking up at him. She had to see his face.

He stood above her staring down at her with contempt, not even bothering to hold on to her. He knew that she was completely in his power. With one leg he kicked backwards slamming the door shut. She was trapped in the apartment with him, and she thought crazily that the slam of the door had sounded like the lid of a coffin being closed.

She could see his face quite clearly now. It was like a death mask. Cold. Merciless.

He was wearing beautifully cut country tweeds and highly polished brown leather boots, and he was smiling as if already pleased with what he had done. Almost dispassionately she realised she probably had only minutes to live, possibly only seconds. She felt unable to move, frozen in a pain-racked heap on the ground, almost beyond fear, resigned to the inevitable. She could not take her eyes off him, although she had been stunned by the fall and her vision was slightly off key. She took in the thick dark hair in its distinctive quiff, the famous Sparrow-Hawk lapel pin. She was not sure if she could speak, but somehow the words came.

‘Hello, Ricky,’ she said.

The contempt in his chilling stare increased. ‘What did you call me?’ He just breathed the words, his voice a menacing whisper.

She didn’t know what she was supposed to say but suspected it would make little difference.

‘Ricky.’ Perhaps he did not like the diminutive. ‘Uh, R-R-Richard,’ she stumbled uncertainly, staring at him, suddenly acutely aware that she was seeing only what she had by then expected to see.

He took a step to one side and kicked her viciously in the ribs. It felt as if the polished leather boot concealed a metal tip and she cried out with pain as his foot crunched into flesh and bone. There was a definite cracking sound. She was sure that at least a couple of her ribs had been broken, and she seemed to have no breath left at all. He pulled back his foot and lashed out a second time. This time the lethal toe made devastating contact with her wrist as she ineffectually stretched out a hand to defend herself. The pain was overwhelming. She no longer had the strength to plead for him to stop as she lay gasping on the ground completely at his mercy. Only with her eyes, full of pain as they were, could she beg for her life.

He had no pity in him.

‘My name is Jack Sparrow,’ he said.

And it was then that she knew who he was...

‘Burrowgate Farm?’ Pitt had asked as he threw himself into the big Rover.

‘How did you guess?’ responded his superior, who within seconds was on the phone talking to DI Cutler.

‘I want a team at Burrowgate right away, and I want the place turned over.’

There was some crackling interference.

‘What? What are you saying?’ yelled Todd. ‘I don’t care how you get a soddin’ search warrant, just get it. And if you have a problem, go, go, without. Do you hear me?’

DI Cutler indicated in his customary expressionless monotone that he heard well enough.

‘Right. And I want the Met round at Belle Parker’s again. I have reason to believe she is in grave danger. Move! Then get back to me.’

Within half an hour, great organiser that he was, Cutler called to say that a team of officers, including forensic, were on their way to Burrowgate.

‘Right,’ said Todd. ‘Now — get me an order to have Martin Viner’s body exhumed, wherever it is. Also, I want all his medical records. I want to know exactly where he was and what happened to him during the year between his helicopter accident and his arrival at Oceanview. And find out if any middle-aged men disappeared from the Plymouth area around the time of the Oceanview fire.

‘One more thing. Any news from London about Belle Parker?’

‘The local nick will send a couple of chaps around as soon as they can, boss.’

‘What! Nobody’s on their way?’

‘Unsavoury characters lurking outside people’s homes are two a penny up there, I gather, boss. And they have been keeping an eye...’

‘Get back to them and put a rocket up their arses, Cutler!’

Todd’s every nerve seemed to be standing on end. He tried Belle Parker’s phone for the umpteenth time. Still there was only the answering-machine.

The scene at Burrowgate Farm was chaotic. Mercifully the rain had stopped, but the ground was still sodden underfoot.

There were police all over the place, dogs barking, Jim Kivel demanding over and over again to be told what the hell was going on and his wife in floods of tears.

Thanks again to Sergeant Pitt’s extraordinary driving skills Todd arrived only twenty minutes or so after the team from Exeter. And as he picked his way across a farmyard awash with vibrantly aromatic slush he wondered fleetingly just how many years he would have to work as a rural policeman before he remembered never ever to go anywhere without a pair of Wellington boots.

‘Nothing yet boss,’ said the sergeant whom Cutler had put in charge of the operation. ‘We’ve had at least a quick look everywhere. There’s a big red van in the helicopter hangar, the back of it’s sealed up and there are black-out curtains across the rear windows, so you can’t see into it at all. It’s locked up, and I’m waiting for a PNC check on it before we go any further...’

On cue the sergeant’s radio bleeped.

He listened for a bit and then, looking rather puzzled, turned to Todd.

‘The van is registered to one Jack Sparrow, Wellington Mansions, Wellington Square, Fulham,’ he began.

Todd went white.

‘Search it, now!’ he ordered, and began to run across the muddy field towards the hangar, no longer even remembering his unsuitable footwear.

‘It’s locked, sir,’ said the sergeant again, trotting behind him.

‘I want the thing broken into, fast!’

Todd was shouting at the top of his voice.

It was Pitt who produced a crow bar from nowhere. First he tried to wrench the rear doors open. They were extremely well secured.

‘Get on with it, man, smash the damned window,’ yelled Todd.

Pitt did his best to comply. It took several almighty blows. The van had been fitted with toughened glass.

Finally Pitt broke through. He tapped out the remaining splinters, and leaning inside the van, managed finally to prise the doors apart.

The interior of the red van resembled a detective’s dream of Aladdin’s Cave. There was a small bunk bed, a sleeping bag and pillows, a rack of the kind used to carry motor cycles during transit, a selection of stylish suits and country clothes suspended from a rail fastened to the roof, an assortment of false beards, some theatrical make-up, several pairs of dark glasses, a couple of baseball caps, a pair of powerful binoculars, a stack of Sparrow-Hawk videos and a selection of posters and photographs from the TV show.

Probably the most chilling discovery of all was a wallet bearing a label with a name and address on it. The name was Ruth Macintosh. Todd felt a tremor run up and down his spine. But there was yet more.

Pitt had also found a surgeon’s rubber apron and cap and a box containing surgical gloves

‘No stray fibres, no DNA, clever bastard,’ thought Todd, and out loud he said: ‘Bingo. Now all we’ve got to do is find the sod.’

His nearly-new suede shoes were wet through and oozing mud and slime. Todd didn’t care that they were almost certainly ruined, but became suddenly acutely aware that his feet were icy cold. And as his thoughts once again turned to Belle Parker he felt a raw numbness spread throughout his body.

For the umpteenth time he reached for his telephone and dialled her number. This time there was no reply at all.

Twenty-Nine

The pain in Arabella’s ribs was such that she thought her body was going to break in two when he hauled her roughly to her feet. The phone began to ring as he was dragging her upright and he pulled her across the hall to the main telephone point and casually ripped the wires out with one hand.

Then he swung her around, wrapped his hands around her neck, lodged his knee in the small of her back and began to squeeze with strong, expert fingers.

He was concentrating so hard that he was not aware of the door to the spare bedroom opening to his left and very slightly behind him. Jacky stood there, rubbing his eyes with his hands, as if half-asleep or half-drugged or both, struggling to take in the scene before him. The mists cleared suddenly. He picked up the big Chinese vase by the front door, took a step forward, and just as his mother’s assailant became aware of movement behind him, smashed him over the head with it.

The man rocked on his feet but did not go down. He was big and powerful. He let go of Belle, though, pushing her away from him so that she dropped to the floor again, a gasping wheezing wreck.

The attacker knew better than to waste energy on words. He let fly with a powerful punch which, even though Jacky had ducked away from the worst of it, caught him a glancing but effective blow on the side of the head. Jacky reeled, collected himself and hit back. He was young, heavily muscled and very strong. But he wasn’t a fighter, he’d been on one hell of a bender that afternoon, and his opponent had been trained in how to kill and inflict pain. The viciously booted foot which had already caused his mother so much damage shot out skilfully, like a professional kick box. Jacky, naturally so athletic, dodged the first kick but took a second one full in the stomach. He doubled up, dropping to his knees, and felt a numbing karate chop slice into one shoulder. Jesus! If that had been to his neck he’d probably be dead already. He tried to get to his feet, aware that another blow was about to land. Then the doorbell rang.

The shrill tone just tipped his assailant off balance, Jacky managed to avoid the next brutal chop and flung himself backwards at the front door, fumbling for the lock, thankfully taking in that neither the security chain nor the bolt at the bottom of the door had been slotted into place. His shoulder, the already injured one, had been grasped in a vice-like grip which was sending agonising messages direct to the core of his nervous system, and he felt himself being bodily lifted away from the front door. He gave the lever on the Balham lock a final desperate twist and, just as he was hoisted away from it, the door swung slowly open behind him.

Standing in the doorway, confronted with probably the most extraordinary scene of their careers stood two young uniformed police constables from Limehouse nick.

Belle was still flat out on the floor whimpering to herself and watching with horror as the Sparrow-Hawk attacker, completely ignoring the two policemen, aimed another karate chop at her son.

‘What the bleedin’ ’ell is going on?’ asked the smaller of the two policemen, presumably not really expecting a reply. The other, a keen amateur boxer with the build of a budding Bruno, decided to act first and talk later. He grabbed the raised arm of the attacking man, wrenching it to one side and backwards at an impossible angle. The man screamed and let go of Jacky whom he had still been grasping by the shoulder with his other hand.

‘Would you like me to break this arm for you, sir, or are you going to calm down now?’ asked the powerfully-built constable conversationally. His colleague took advantage of the moment to grab the other arm of the man who called himself Jack Sparrow, and together the two policemen managed to successfully lock him into a pair of handcuffs.

Studying him as they did so, the second policeman’s face was a picture of open amazement. He took in the distinctive head of thick dark hair, the characteristically tailored clothes, and the gold sparrow-hawk pinned to the lapel.

‘You’re dead,’ he said. ‘You’re that Ricky Corrington.’

‘Oh no he bleedin’ isn’t,’ said a weak voice in the corner. Belle, still breathing with difficulty had dragged herself into a sitting position.

‘That’s Martin Viner you’ve got there, the mad bastard.’

Viner turned and looked at her. She cringed away from his steady gaze. There was death in his pale grey eyes. She had no doubt that if he could break free he would still finish the job he had begun on her, even with two policemen in the room. He thought he was invincible. The TV hero who must win through to fight again next week. The evil madness was clear in him now.

‘I am Jack Sparrow,’ he said again. And his delivery was just perfect.

Back in Exeter DI Cutler was on overdrive. He was in his element. Information was coming at him from all directions, and that was just the way he liked it. He was about as near as it was possible for him to get to happiness.

Within minutes of receiving Todd’s second lot of instructions the computer search he had ordered revealed that a fifty-one-year-old man had disappeared from Plymouth two days before the Oceanview fire. The man, Peter Nash, had last been seen at midnight leaving a particularly disreputable Union Street strip club where it was well known that the artistically described ‘exotic dancers’ also provided an imaginative variety of additional services for the right price. And although Peter Nash’s wife had claimed her husband would never willingly leave home, police inquiries had revealed that Nash was a regular of the sleaziest joints the notorious Union Street could offer, and, unsurprisingly enough, had a history of marital troubles. He was listed as a vulnerable missing person, but only limited inquiries were undertaken.

‘Clever sod,’ said Todd when DI Cutler radioed him the news. ‘Watch for some sad-looking character leaving a knocking shop and then whack him. Chances are the police won’t even think murder. Blokes like Nash do disappearing acts all the time...’

Cutler had relaunched investigations into every aspect of Martin Viner. There were still so many unanswered questions. The detective inspector learned that there seemed to be an unaccounted six months in Viner’s life following his medical treatment immediately after the helicopter crash. He had, in fact, been released from the London hospital — where he had indeed undergone extensive surgery which had not resulted in him being able to walk again — six months before he went to Oceanview.

Reports indicated that the London hospital had believed that they could do more for him, but Viner had declined. Although British doctors pioneered hip replacement surgery and are probably the best in the world at rebuilding shattered legs, Viner apparently had a fixation with American medicine.

DI Cutler instructed a team to contact America’s leading orthopaedic specialists. The DI now thought it likely that Viner had spent the missing six months undergoing surgery and rehabilitation in the States. Then, determined to seek revenge against those he felt had destroyed his life, he returned to England and hatched an elaborate plot to stage his own death and reinvent himself as the only person he had ever wanted to be. Jack Sparrow.

But the DI realised that if this theory were correct, Martin Viner would have needed to be a very rich man. Without money — a very great deal of money — he could not have gone to America for medical treatment, he could not have bought Burrowgate, he could not have acquired a helicopter. And yet Viner had allegedly been near enough penniless after his helicopter crash.

The team Cutler had ordered to look again at the accident provided the solution to that one. The film director who claimed that he had asked Viner to fly just over the low bridge and not beneath it had originally lied. Overcome with guilt and remorse he had confessed to his deception a few months after the crash. As a result, the film company, one of the American giants able and willing to spend almost anything to avoid a major scandal, proposed an out of court settlement. They made Martin Viner a damages offer of Hollywood proportions — in excess of two million pounds. There had been only one condition. Total secrecy.

Cutler whistled out loud when he heard the news.

‘And he did keep it secret too,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Even from his wife...’

The autopsy report was the clincher. In Cutler’s opinion it had not been conclusive at all.

It noted that the body of the man believed to be Martin Viner had been so badly burned that the only way of identifying him was through dental records. Teeth survive a blaze beyond any other part of the human body — but there had been no dental records available for Martin Viner. He had apparently not been to his dentist for eleven or twelve years and his records had been either lost or discarded.

However a heavy gold ring which Viner always wore on the index finger of his left hand had been found among the remains along with a gold sovereign he wore on a chain around his neck. His charred wheel chair and other belongings were also found among the ashes. The remains had been removed from Viner’s room. There had been absolutely no reason for forensic to suspect that they could be dealing with anything other than Martin Viner’s remains. And so his identity had been verified, based on a considerable amount of assumption, and a death certificate issued.

Todd Mallett was in the car being driven by Pitt back to Heavitree Road when Cutler contacted him for the third time.

‘Any news from Limehouse?’ the DCI asked at once.

‘Two blokes have definitely gone round to her place now — nothing more yet.’

Cutler had a suspicion that his chief was showing more than professional concern, but he passed no further comment before informing his boss of the news of the autopsy report, the question mark over Viner’s true medical condition, and the fresh information on his financial situation.

Cutler was just finishing a phone call when Todd walked into the Heavitree Road Ops Room. He looked slightly flushed.

‘You were right, boss. Belle Parker’s been attacked. And it looks like it was our man...’

To Todd it seemed as if the world had jolted to a halt on its axis. He could no longer hear the police station hubbub. He felt as if he was in a vacuum. Every second seemed like a day. His voice, when he eventually found it, sounded as if it belonged to somebody else.

‘Belle?’ he stumbled.

‘He gave her a right going over...’

‘Cutler!’ Todd stepped forward, grabbing the inspector by one arm. ‘Is she alive, man?’ This time his voice was stronger but curiously high pitched. Vaguely he registered that he sounded hysterical.

‘Oh yes, boss, she’s alive. Knocked about a bit, but she’ll get over it. ‘They’ve got the bastard, too, boss. Pair of young bobbies walked right in on it...’

DI Cutler was still talking. Todd was no longer listening.

He felt his legs go weak. Abruptly he sat on DI Cutler’s desk and buried his head in his hands. The relief of the news he had just been given was totally physical. For just a minute or two he was unable to function.

‘Thank God,’ he said quietly.

It was some time before he became aware of DI Cutler studying him in open-mouthed surprise.

Todd came to pick her up when she was allowed to leave hospital two days later, just as he had said he would.

He had driven to London on the morning after Belle was attacked to liaise with the Met and take part in the interrogation of Martin Viner. He also wanted, more than he could remember wanting anything in his life, to see Belle Parker.

He felt terribly guilty about her ordeal — he really should have both thought and moved faster. And he should never have failed to take her seriously.

Her appearance was a shock. She looked pale and wan and was transparently still in pain. She walked stiffly, four ribs had actually been broken, and her fractured wrist was encased in plaster and carried in a sling held around her neck. But she was coping with the horror and the shock of being so brutally attacked far better than Todd could have imagined possible.

And she was still Belle Parker. She wore a big fluffy coat over a black mini dress brought to the hospital on her instructions by Jacky, who had appeared battered but clearly more chirpy than he had been since Joyce Carter’s death.

It was difficult to show off her cleavage in the condition she was in, so she had settled for showing off her legs, which were encased in the kind of fishnet stockings nobody wore any more, except Belle Parker of course, and displayed to their best advantage with the help of her usual stilettoes. A hairdresser had visited her in the ward that morning and her hair was a sculpture of big black curls. And although the strain of her ordeal showed in her face on close examination, she was made-up as if she was setting off for a party.

Todd thought she was magnificent. And so did the snappers gathered outside the hospital — tipped off that she was about to be released by Belle’s agent who hadn’t thought the publicity would do his client any harm at all, particularly with a new film in the offing. Did she know how to play to this kind of gallery or what, thought Todd admiringly.

Having faced quite enough publicity for one lifetime he kept as much as possible out of the way of the lenses. Jacky Starr, whom Todd felt more able to cope with now that the case really was solved, offered to be driver for the day.

‘Thought you couldn’t drive,’ said Todd.

‘I’ve learned, gone right off hitching.’

Todd grunted. ‘Just do us a favour then, don’t drink or smoke anything,’ the policeman instructed grumpily, but he had agreed readily enough to the proposition. After all, Jacky had come good in the end. He had saved his mother’s life.

And so Jacky, using Belle’s Jag, had picked up his mother at the front of the hospital after she had been photographed and then whisked her around to the back where Todd waited, before driving the pair of them to her home.

At Limehouse Jacky had told his mother that he wouldn’t be coming into the flat.

‘I’ll be off back to my place,’ he said. ‘I reckon you’ll be in safe hands. Well, sort of safe...’

Jacky had grinned broadly. Todd realised suddenly that he had never seen the lad smile properly before. He had his mother’s smile.

Todd grinned back. ‘You did a good job, boy,’ he said.

‘Well, she is me mum,’ replied Jacky.

Todd felt Belle stand two inches taller beside him.

‘Goodbye, son, and thank you,’ she said. There were tears in her eyes.

Once inside the apartment she slumped on to the big squashy sofa clutching a mug of instant coffee made by Todd.

‘It’s good to see you,’ she said. ‘And I’ve got so much to ask you...’

‘I know,’ he put a reassuring arm around her, and it was he who asked the first question. ‘When did you know it was Viner?’

‘It was his voice first of all. Then there were the eyes. He was staring at me with those grey eyes, cold as steel, and although I wasn’t functioning properly I suddenly remembered that Richard Corrington had brown eyes — ’aven’t you seen all those stories about his blessed come-to-bed brown eyes? I had to look into them enough when I made that episode of Sparrow-Hawk with him.

‘Then I realised his face, close up — and ’e was bleedin’ close — wasn’t Ricky’s face at all. Ricky’s hair, Ricky’s eyebrows, Ricky’s colouring. But not Ricky. The teeth clinched it.’

‘His teeth?’

‘Yeah. Ricky Corrington had designer molars — a Hollywood capping job. That bleeder Viner’s got ’orrible teeth.’

Todd could not help laughing.

‘But the really crazy thing is, why was I so easily convinced that he was Ricky?’ Belle continued.

She leaned back against Todd’s arm as he started to reply.

‘The man was an actor who did everything in his power to make you believe he was someone else. It’s association too: the hair, the clothes, the famous Sparrow-Hawk lapel brooch, false eyebrows identical to Ricky’s, same skin colouring, thanks to make-up. Quite a package. And even the motor bike.

‘Also their height and build were much the same and facially they really were quite alike. Same basic bone structure. I suppose the Sparrow-Hawk producers had a particular look in mind when they were casting their show, and when it didn’t work out with Viner subconsciously they sought out someone of similar appearance.

‘When Viner had all those blonde curls you’d never have thought about the similarities, and of course his colouring is naturally very pale and Richard was dark to the point of being swarthy.

‘When I met him as Harry Pearson, he was completely bald, his paleness was all the more apparent, and of course the baldness changed the way he looked completely. His face became an empty canvas — I think that’s the way he saw it too. The alopecia was almost a bonus.’

Arabella clasped Todd’s free hand with one of hers. ‘“I am Jack Sparrow.” That’s what he said, Todd.’

He was aware of a shiver running through her body. She had used her actress’s voice and he had a feeling it was a pretty close impersonation of the way Viner had spoken. He found it quite chilling.

‘I thought I was going to die, Todd,’ she said. ‘In fact I knew I was going to die.’

He squeezed her hand. ‘Bloody lucky Jacky was here. Why was he here anyway?’

‘Little bugger had been on the piss all afternoon, pub crawling around the East End, and been indulging in all sorts of other things you don’t tell policemen about, I shouldn’t wonder. They finished up in a boozer just around the corner from my gaff and he staggered around to bum a cab fare home — spent out as usual. When he found I wasn’t there he decided to wait and crashed out in the spare room to sleep it off. I think Viner was probably following me all day — so he wouldn’t have known Jacky was here.’ She looked at him. ‘Todd, it’s just ridiculous. How did he do it, how did he convince everyone he was dead?’

He told her all about it, everything she did not already know, and saw the shock in her eyes.

‘I spent all day yesterday at your local nick,’ he said. ‘Our friend is singing like a bird. It’s as if he is proud of himself. The only thing you have to remember is to call him Jack all the time. You were right about him being barking, you and his missus. Call him Martin or Mr Viner and he throws a major wobbler.

‘We guessed that he probably went to the States to have advanced surgery on his legs and he confirmed that. It actually worked better than even the doctors had expected — come to think of it he still limps but it’s little more than an awkward stiffness — and that was when he began to hatch his revenge plot.’

‘But why did he have to stage his own death, kill all those innocent people?’

‘They didn’t come into the equation. They were in Jack Sparrow’s way. He didn’t want to be Martin Viner any more, he wanted to be Jack Sparrow, the mad bastard. You mistook him for Richard Corrington — but he didn’t see himself as impersonating Corrington at all. He saw himself as taking on the persona of Jack Sparrow.

‘It would be almost sad if he hadn’t done so much bloody evil.

‘His ultimate aim was to destroy Richard Corrington, but he couldn’t kill him. In Viner’s convoluted mind Corrington was an imposter but none the less he was also Sparrow-Hawk. He could not face him directly and murder him. I think he also thought that would be too easy, the twisted sod. He planned an extraordinary frame-up, the key of which was to make Corrington believe he could be a murderer.

‘Viner stalked him relentlessly for the three years he was on the loose after the fire, spying on him through binoculars, planning and scheming. He knew everything the poor bloody man was up to, he knew about the drugs, he knew when Corrington was out of his mind with them — which was when the murders were always committed and was inclined to be towards the end of a Sparrow-Hawk shoot when Corrington would be at his lowest ebb.

‘He got right inside Ricky’s head. You could say his aim was to drive Richard Corrington as mad as he was himself. Even the helicopter he took down to Landacre and the hangar that he built were designed to send Richard potty.

‘Along the way he killed with seeming abandon. Although in his mind it wasn’t like that. Ruth — Macintosh and Joyce Carter had both wronged him or wronged Jack Sparrow — and he, of course, was Jack Sparrow. Poor Margaret Nance became a threat to Sparrow-Hawk. The others, Peter Nash, the man in Plymouth whose body he substituted for his own, and the nurse and two invalids who died in the fire, were deaths necessary to his cause.

‘His wife believes, incidentally, that he always hated women. Apparently his mother walked out when Martin was a toddler — not surprising with their family history. They were all half-mad. You were a bonus, by the way...’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well he was out to get Joyce Garter anyway, after the hatchet job, and he said he knew Corrington had knocked her off, but when he found out who Jacky was he saw that as fate. Indirectly it was all going to cause you trouble and he still blamed you for losing him Sparrow-Hawk. He hadn’t foreseen Jacky being arrested, but it didn’t affect his end game. The sod followed me when I came to see you during the trial, I’m afraid, and saw us kissing on the balcony. His attempting to kill you was also partly my fault, because he then reckoned that would hurt me.

‘I had admitted in court that I hated Sparrow-Hawk, you see, and that I’d like to see it scrapped — and I had failed to make Ricky Corrington’s charge stick.

‘He was appalled when Ricky was freed, of course, and killing Amanda Lane so that Richard would get the blame was his last ploy. He had slept with her, you know — that was all part of the game too. But he had no compunction about murdering her when it suited his purpose.

‘It went like a dream, that too — with Richard getting out of his brains on his very first night after jail and finally going right over the edge — and Viner might well have got away with it. But by the time he attacked you he thought he was immortal, and I don’t think he could stop...’

Belle shivered again. ‘And all the time he really believed he was Jack Sparrow?’

‘Absolutely. It was schizophrenic delusion. His vehicles were registered in the name of J. Sparrow, he rented his London flat as J. Sparrow — he was even on the electoral register as Jack Sparrow. Amazing, isn’t it?

‘Only in Somerset was he Harry Pearson. Even Viner was just sane enough, unfortunately, to realise that if he had bought the house next door to Ricky Corrington as Jack Sparrow there may have been a few questions asked.’

Belle was fascinated. ‘But didn’t anybody in London suspect anything, didn’t anybody here think Jack Sparrow was an odd name?’

Todd smiled. ‘Why should they? There are nearly 150 Sparrows in the London area phone books alone and over thirty J. Sparrows. We checked.

‘He had it all worked out. As well as being part of the revenge campaign, his affair with Amanda Lane gave him access to Landacre. He admits that he took Richard Corrington’s suit — the one we found the thumb print on and which the strands of material in Joyce Carter’s watch came from — and then planted it back in Richard’s wardrobe.’

Belle gave a little snort. ‘Pity he didn’t put his inventive brain to better use,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t fault the maniac on initiative, could you?’

Todd smiled his agreement.

‘What will happen to him?’ she asked.

‘He’ll stand trial, probably at the Old Bailey, two of his crimes were committed in London, the murder of Ruth Macintosh and the attack on you, and he was arrested here. He’ll plead insanity, which nobody’s going to argue with. He’s a psychotic, and he is congenitally schizophrenic. What a mixture. He’ll be sent to Broadmoor, more than likely.’

Belle studied the policeman carefully. ‘I have one more question,’ she said. ‘What about us?’

Gently, he drew her closer to him.

‘We had to wait until it was all over, really and truly over. We both knew that, didn’t we?’

She nodded. ‘And now?’ she asked.

‘Well, if I can get it together...’ he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

‘Don’t be a prat,’ she said. ‘Less booze, a bit more time, and some peace of mind, that’s all you ever needed.’

‘OK, woman,’ he said, deepening his voice, playing at being masterful. ‘In that case, we are going to get to know each other very, very well indeed...’

‘But not today we’re bleedin’ not, with me in this condition,’ she told him, suddenly sparky. She waved her injured wrist at him, which proved to be a mistake and caused her to wince with pain.

‘Serves you right for presuming...’ he replied, enjoying the banter now.

With her good hand she touched his lips. ‘Just you wait, Detective Chief Inspector Mallett,’ she said. ‘Just you bleedin’ wait.’

‘That’s all I ever seem to do,’ he responded.

She grinned, yet could not help her thoughts returning to the grim events of the past few months.

‘At least we are able to wait,’ she said quietly.

He knew what she meant. ‘Nine victims: the three at the home whose names I do not even remember, Peter Nash, Margaret Nance, Ruth Macintosh, Joyce Carter, Amanda Lane, and Richard Corrington.’

He spoke solemnly, as if reciting names on a roll of honour.

When he stopped speaking she remained silent. He thought that suddenly she seemed very small and vulnerable and overwhelmingly sad. Typical Belle Parker, probably much more affected by it all than she was ever going to reveal.

He smiled at her wryly. ‘And you were right about Richard Corrington. He was just an averagely mad actor. No more or less bonkers than all the rest — including you.’

It was an attempt to lighten the moment which did not work all that well. She looked at him with eyes full of sorrow.

‘Poor old Ricky darling,’ she said.