The Inheritance

FOURTEEN

The Rolls-Royce glided down the fast lane of the motorway, headed for Oxford. Silas was driving at close to one hundred miles per hour, but the car showed no sign of stress. Cocooned inside, Silas’s mind was racing. He had very little time to make a plan, and he needed something that would work.

Jeanne’s evidence had come as a complete shock. Only the day before she’d been her normal self. Ritter had gone into Oxford and they’d met in the trees by the west wall. And afterward she’d clung to him, fantasising about a future he knew they would never have. But it didn’t matter. He’d let her get on with it, building her castles in the air. Ritter would take her away once the trial was finished and Silas was the undisputed lord of the manor. In the meantime, there was no need to rock the boat.

But then she’d got up in court and practically accused him of murdering his father. She must have found out about the photographs of Sasha. There was no other possible explanation. Somebody must have told her about them. But who? Silas had asked himself this question a hundred times or more since he’d slipped out of the back of the courtroom in the middle of Jeanne’s evidence, but forty miles down the highway, he was still no nearer to an answer.

He’d known from the first that the photographs were his Achilles’ heel. He should have had the sense to destroy them before the police searched the house. But they had been very understanding when he’d gone down to the station in Oxford to ask for them back. They’d got their man, and the pictures weren’t relevant to the case. He’d burnt them when he got home, but that didn’t mean he could erase them from people’s minds. The whole bloody Oxfordshire police force must have been laughing at him for months, thought Silas bitterly-calling him a voyeur, a dirty little peeping Tom. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that now, thanks to Jeanne, he was a murder suspect. He needed an alibi. And there was only one person in the world who could provide him with one. Silas looked up into the empty afternoon sky and prayed to a god in whom he didn’t believe that just this once Sasha would be home.

He found her in the manuscript gallery on the second floor. He hadn’t seen her at first. The high polished oak bookcases, which the professor had had specially constructed by a firm of Oxford craftsmen a decade earlier, divided the gallery into self-contained aisles, connected by several open archways. The central aisle was the widest, but those at the sides had tables set under the high leaded windows, to enable the professor and his assistants to work using natural light. Sasha was sitting at one of these now, poring over some Latin text or other. She had turned on a green reading lamp, but a few final shafts of late afternoon sunlight still penetrated the library, illuminating motes of dust in the still air, picking out the gold titles on the spines of the old leather books on the highest shelves.

Silas had come quietly up the central aisle and now stood watching the woman he wanted from the other side of the archway between them. She had taken off the jacket of her grey suit and pushed her hair back over her shoulders. With an imaginary hand, he traced the line of her soft white neck down beneath her starched white shirt, on to the high mound of her right breast, and then round, behind, to where she was most vulnerable. Forgetting himself, Silas moved slightly, adjusting his weight from one foot to the other, and Sasha looked up, startled. Surprise and then irritation replaced the previous expression of rapt concentration on her face, and then, almost immediately, she reached back and put on her jacket. It was always the same. She could never rid herself of the consciousness of her disfigurement, and Silas imagined that it must itch her all the time, like eczema.

“What are you doing? Something interesting?” he asked, glancing down at the papers spread out on the table between them. There was no time, but he needed her calm before they talked.

“Just work. It wouldn’t interest you.” Sasha was ruder than she intended, unable to keep the annoyance out of her voice. Silas always seemed to appear out of nowhere, as if he’d been watching her for a while before he finally approached.

“Why not?” he asked. “Maybe I know what you’re looking for.”

Sasha suddenly became very still while her mind raced. What was he talking about? Perhaps Silas did know something about the codex. Perhaps he’d seen something. What a fool she’d been, allowing her dislike of the man to get the better of her common sense. If anybody could be relied on to pry out people’s secrets it was Silas, and yet she’d spent the last six months trying to avoid him.

“I’ve been watching you, Sasha,” he said. “I’ve seen what you do, late at night down in my father’s study, when you think no one is looking. Opening this, opening that, tapping on walls. And all the time what you’re searching for is sitting right there in front of your eyes.”

Silas laughed, but Sasha forced herself not to respond. His tone angered her as much as his words. She hated the thought of his knowing her so well, but she needed to know what he was going to say.

“It’s the book you’re after, isn’t it?” he said. “The one that my father stole from those people in France.” Silas knew there was no time left to fence about. He needed to engage Sasha, and all the time he was listening with one ear for the sound of police cars screeching to a halt outside. Jeanne’s evidence made it inevitable that they’d be coming after him.

“What is it you want, Silas?” asked Sasha, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice. At that moment there was almost nothing she wouldn’t have done to get her hands on the codex.

“I want to make a trade,” he said.

“A trade?”

“Yes, that’s what they call it in the secret service, you know. We each have something the other one wants. We make an exchange, and then we both live happily ever after. That’s how it works.”

“And what have I got that you want?” Sasha asked warily.

“Evidence.”

“Evidence.” She repeated the word as if she didn’t understand it. It was not the answer she had been expecting.

“Yes. I need an alibi.”

“For what?”

“For killing my father.”

It was Sasha’s turn to laugh. The thought of Silas as the Moreton Manor murderer had never even occurred to her. Silas was like Hamlet without the speeches. He never did anything. He just took photographs.

“Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “I didn’t do it, if that’s what you’re thinking. We’ve got my brother to thank for that. No, I’ve just been accused of it, that’s all.”

“By whom?”

“Jeanne Ritter. She gave evidence today. Said she saw me crossing the courtyard from the study to the front door, just before Stephen started shouting.”

“And did you?”

“No, of course not. I was up in my room, like I told the police.” Silas lied easily. It was something that came naturally to him.

“So what’s the problem?”

“She’s the problem. It’s my word against hers. And they’re going to believe her because I’ve got no one to back me up. Unless you help me.”

“Help you how?”

“By saying we were together before the shooting started. It doesn’t matter if we say we were in my room or yours, provided we agree on it before we make our new statements.”

Silas spoke confidently, but then his voice trailed away as he caught the instinctive look of disgust written so plainly across Sasha’s face.

“What about Stephen?” she asked.

“What about him?”

“Jeanne’s evidence might save him.”

“And put the noose around my neck?”

“Maybe.”

Sasha turned away, biting her lip. She liked Stephen. She’d only met him twice, but both times he’d gone out of his way to be friendly toward her, asking her about her work on the manuscripts, and she had appreciated his efforts at the time, realising the pressure he must have been under, seeing his father again after so long. But did that oblige her to try and save him? Did it mean that she had to give up the codex when she had worked so hard, had given up so much to find it? Leave it to Silas, who had no use for it? No, surely not. Providing the alibi might save Silas, but it wouldn’t condemn Stephen. His guilt was for the jury to decide. With a visible effort Sasha beat her conscience into submission. She had to have the book because that was the way to the cross, which was worth paying almost any price to obtain.

“So what were we doing in my room or yours?” she asked, making no effort to hide the contempt in her voice.

“Having an affair. And we made false statements because we didn’t want your Catholic mother to know about us.”

“How do you know I’ve got a Catholic mother?” asked Sasha, surprised.

“Because she came here once to visit you, don’t you remember? She arrived unexpectedly, and you weren’t happy about it. Took her straight off into Oxford. But I was the one who opened the door to her. She was complaining about her journey, and I got her some of my mother’s smelling salts that never got thrown out. Your mother said they smelt like something in her church. Her Catholic church.”

“Well, you’re right about one thing. I wouldn’t want my mother to know. Or anyone else either,” said Sasha.

Silas looked exasperated. “Oh God, does it matter?” he said. “It’s not like I’m asking to have an affair with you, can’t you see that? I just want you to say we did have one and to explain why you lied about it before. That’s all.”

“And for this I get what?”

“The book. But only after you’ve given evidence. Until then you’ll have to trust me.”

“No.” Sasha turned away and began gathering her papers together. She calculated that Silas needed her at this moment more than she needed him. And she was right. It didn’t take him long to give in.

“All right,” he said. “You can have it once you’ve made a statement to the police. At least you’ll be committed then.”

“Show it to me first,” she countered. “Then the statement.” It was the first time in his life Silas could ever recall Sasha’s smiling at him like she was now. He knew the reason, of course. He wasn’t stupid. It was the first and probably the last time that he had ever had anything she wanted. But still he wished he could stop the ornate clock that ticked away so loudly and relentlessly above the entrance to the library. He wondered for a moment if she would let him kiss her to seal their agreement, but then he realised that he would never have the courage to ask. Women frightened him, and Sasha most of all.

“It’s in the study,” he said.

“Well, at least I knew that much,” said Sasha, going past him. She was unable to keep the excitement out of her voice. She’d forgotten Stephen now that the codex was about to fall into her hands, just when she’d been on the point of giving up on it for good. She wondered as she went downstairs if all this was meant to be, but then laughed at herself softly. She’d studied religious history long enough to know that there was no such thing as Divine Providence.

In the study she turned to face Silas. One of the tall green leather armchairs was between them, and she stood with her hands lightly touching the brass studs in its back, watching him in the doorway.

“So show me,” she said. Her face was flushed and her lower lip trembled slightly.

“That’s the chair in which he died, you know,” said Silas, ignoring her demand. “Where he was most comfortable. I’ve got photographs of him sitting there. In life and in death. Before and after. I look at them sometimes up there in my room, wondering what it all means. Do you do that, Sasha?”

“What?”

“Think about him. I do. All the time. This whole house rotated round him like a clock, and now it’s stopped. I spent my whole life trying to make him notice me, and I don’t think he ever really did. Not even once.”

“You were adopted,” said Sasha brutally. Silas wasn’t the only one who’d had a bad time growing up.

“Yes. But that wasn’t it,” he said. “No one really existed for him. Except maybe my mother.”

“I never knew her.”

“And she wasn’t really my mother.”

Silas smiled, but Sasha stamped her foot, unable to contain her impatience any longer. Perhaps Silas was bluffing her about the codex. She had to know one way or the other.

“Where is it, Silas?” she said. “It was a deal, remember?”

“You’re looking at it,” he said. “You’ve been looking at it all the time.”

Sasha looked down at the low table between the chairs, but all she could see were several old magazines and the professor’s chessboard with the old ivory pieces set out in battle formation, ready to play.

“Don’t play games with me, Silas,” she said. “I’ve no time for them.”

“Which is probably why you never found your precious book,” he said, as he bent down over the table and began to remove the chess pieces from the board. “My father was brilliant at this game, you know. He’d have done well as a Soviet grand master, although perhaps he didn’t have the imagination to be the best. I wonder if that’s why he never played competitively,” Silas added musingly, as he held the now-empty board up to the light. His earlier agitation had disappeared, now that Sasha had agreed to give him what he wanted.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” he said. “So simple and yet so clever. Of all my father’s possessions it’s the one I like the most. Even more than the Rolls-Royce, I think, sometimes.”

“It’s a chessboard,” said Sasha, looking bemused.

“Yes, but it’s more than that. Much more. It’s also a hiding place.” Silas held the board just above the top of the table and began to press down on two of the diagonally opposing corner squares with his thumbs.

“I saw him doing this through my telephoto lens,” he said. “He was in a hurry for some reason and forgot to close the curtains. It was unlike him.”

Slowly, the base of the board divided down an invisible central seam, and the two sides opened. But the book stayed inside, kept in place by two small clips, until Silas turned the board upside down and lifted it out.

“I think he had it specially made, although I don’t know where,” he said. “And I don’t understand why he chose the two queens’ rooks for the squares to press. Perhaps there’s no significance.”

Sasha wasn’t listening. She’d seized the codex from Silas’s hands almost as soon as he had it out of the box, and now she found it hard to turn the pages with her shaking hands. But it didn’t take her long to know that it was the real thing. The tooled leather binding was an eighteenth-century addition, there to protect the ancient vellum on which the old French monk had inscribed the gospel of St. Luke. It was not long. Not many pages. But the painting was magnificent. Red and black and gold. The colours were richer than any that Sasha had ever seen.

But would it tell her the secret of the cross, or was that just an old wives’ tale in which John of Rome had too-credulously believed? Cade must have spent years trying to find the answer, but there was nothing of his inside that she could see, except a small sheet of notepaper between the last two pages with a series of numbers written in columns that made no immediate sense to her. Was it a code? Sasha thought of trying to remove it from the book, but there was no time as Silas pulled the codex back out of her hands.

“I can hear them coming,” he said. “Remember what we agreed.”

Sasha did not hear anything immediately. The windows were closed, and Silas’s hearing was much more acute than hers, but soon the sound of a car approaching fast up the drive became unmistakable.

“Christ, it’s not the police; it’s Ritter. And he’s got Jeanne with him,” said Silas a moment later. He had moved over behind the window and was looking out into the courtyard, where a blue estate car had just driven up.

“Well, what’s so weird about that? She is his wife,” said Sasha.

“Shut up and get over here.”

Sasha had never heard Silas speak to her so rudely, but something in his tone made her do as he said. Out in the courtyard, Ritter and his wife were still in their car arguing. But then the driver’s door flew open, and Ritter got out. He was clearly enraged. It was obvious from the way in which he pulled open his wife’s door and hauled her out.

She seemed limp and held on to the car for support when he let her go, and her face was obviously bruised around the eyes. She looked a mess, with her hair in a tangle and her dress crumpled. Below the hem her stockings were torn, and there appeared to be dried blood as well as dirt on her shins, as if she had fallen over. Or been pushed.

“What a pig!” said Sasha. “He’s not going to get away with it this time. I’m going out there. Right now.”

She moved toward the french windows, but Silas took hold of her arm and pulled her back before she could open them. It was the first time he had ever laid hands on her, and for a moment she was paralysed with shock.

“Keep quiet, Sasha,” he said, speaking through his teeth. “Do you want him to kill us too?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“He kills people. That’s what he does. The family in France who owned this book that you care about so much. And a man called Carson. Others too probably that I don’t even know about.”

“But why would he kill us?”

Silas didn’t answer. Outside Ritter was hitting his wife, holding her up with one hand and smacking her across the face again and again with the back of the other.

Leaving Sasha by the window, Silas crawled over to his father’s desk on his hands and knees and put his hand up above his head to lift the telephone receiver down from off its cradle.

Laboriously he dialed 999.

“Show me,” Ritter kept shouting at his wife out in the courtyard. “Show me where you fucked him, you cheap little whore.”

“Fire, police, or ambulance?” asked the operator at the other end of the telephone line.

“Police,” whispered Silas. There was no risk of Ritter’s hearing him, but fear had taken his voice away, and Silas had to give the address twice before the operator was able to tell him that help was on its way.

Outside, Ritter was getting no reply from his wife. That much was obvious. It didn’t look like Jeanne was still conscious, and, quite soon, Ritter let go of her and she slumped to the ground. It was only then that he seemed to take in the presence of the Rolls-Royce for the first time. He went over and pulled the door open as if he thought someone might be hiding inside, and then, finding nothing, he suddenly shouted out Silas’s name, causing its owner inside the study to drop the telephone receiver on the ground like it was a hot coal.

“Where are you, Silence?” he called up at the empty windows of the house. “You’re in there. I know you are. Snot pouring out of your fucking oversized nose and your legs shaking. Knock, knock, knock. I can hear them knocking down here, Silence.” Ritter laughed.

A minute or two passed before he started shouting again. “Look out here, boy,” he called. “I’ve got something to show you.” Ritter had picked up his wife from off the ground, and now he held her up like she was some kind of puppet. There was blood on her face. Around her nostrils and trickling down from the corner of her mouth.

“Don’t like the look of her now, boy? Damaged goods. Is that it?”

It was as if Ritter knew that Silas was at one of the windows watching, and the thought seemed to reinvigorate him. Ritter was like a man who had burnt all his bridges and was now looking for the bloodiest possible ending.

Inside the study, Silas had seen enough. He needed to get to the back door before Ritter found him. What a fool he’d been not to put the Rolls in the garage. But he had never dreamt that Jeanne would be fool enough to tell her husband about their affair. Or perhaps it had come out in court. In front of everyone. If Ritter found him, he’d never find out what had happened.

“Come on,” he said to Sasha, but she didn’t move, and so he pulled her out into the corridor. The door he needed was in the kitchen at the back of the house, but the only way to get to it was through the main hall, and turning the corner, Silas saw that his route was blocked. Ritter was just at that moment coming in through the front door, hauling his wife along beside him. Silas stepped back like he’d been burnt and clapped his hand over Sasha’s mouth.

For what seemed like forever, they stood flattened against the wall of the corridor, listening to the sound of Ritter running water in the kitchen, but in fact it was only moments later that somebody cried out with shock. Ritter must have thrown the water in his wife’s face. He obviously hadn’t finished with her yet.

Silas’s mind was racing as he calculated the odds. Upstairs Ritter definitely had one gun in his room, maybe more. But Silas didn’t know where they were kept, and he couldn’t face the idea of the big man finding him in there while he was looking. Escape was still the better option. If he could just get the Rolls started before Ritter found him, he could easily beat the sergeant’s old car in a race on the open road.

With Ritter busy in the kitchen, the best way was back through the study. There was no point in taking Sasha if she didn’t want to come. She’d only slow him down, and besides Ritter’s quarrel was not with her. They had a deal, and Silas still had the book. He looked at her one last time, realising it was his obsession with her that had brought all this down on their heads. The events of the afternoon had temporarily freed him of his inhibitions, and he leant forward and kissed her on the lips. But she didn’t respond, and he couldn’t read the expression in her dark eyes. He left her where she was.

In the study Silas softly opened the french windows and looked out, but there was no sign of Ritter. He must still be in the kitchen. Crouching low, and clutching the codex in his hand, Silas ran across the courtyard to the Rolls and opened the door. His hands were trembling, and he had difficulty fitting the key in the ignition, but at last it was there. He turned it, waiting for the roar of the engine, but instead he heard nothing. Just a dull click. Again and again the car didn’t respond, until finally he gave up, falling back against the seat in despair.

Opening his eyes after a moment, Silas looked out the window, wondering whether to make a run for the main gate, and that’s when he saw Ritter, standing at the front door, laughing. He was holding the distributor cap in his hands, and there was no sign of his wife.

Silas had no time to think. It was pure instinct that got him out of the car and through the open french windows of the study. Then, picking up speed, he ran down the corridor past Sasha and up the stairs. At the top, he stopped to catch his breath and hesitated for the first time, looking to his left, down toward the closed door of Ritter’s room. But a moment later he’d made his decision, and he went on into the manuscript gallery in front of him. There was a hiding place there, although he hadn’t been in it since he was a child. It used to be the best one in the whole house, behind the tallest bookshelf in the corner. Ritter wouldn’t find him there. All he needed was to buy a little time before the police arrived.

Downstairs, Ritter felt a strange contentment. It was like he was floating on air, watching everything and everyone from a distance. He knew what he was going to do. He’d known it ever since he’d taken his wife out of that underground station in London. But Silas’s running around like a frightened cat had increased the pleasure. The little creep couldn’t get away. Let him wait instead, shaking and sweating in some upstairs closet until Ritter found him. The sergeant rubbed his hands around the distributor cap, imagining the feel of Silas’s neck between his fingers. He’d shoot him first, and then strangle him afterward. Strangulation was an art. There was nothing more intimate in the whole world.

But there were other things to do first. Abruptly Ritter went back into the hall and bent down over the body of his wife. She had collapsed again after her brief revival in the kitchen, and now Ritter put her over his shoulder and carried her up the same staircase that Silas had just climbed. In his room he slung her down on the bed and then went over to a cabinet in the corner and unlocked one of the drawers. When he turned back to the bed, he had a gun in his hand.

“Wake up, you bitch,” he shouted at his wife. “You can sleep forever in a minute, but first of all you’re going to hear what I’ve got to say.”

Above and below, Silas and Sasha could hear everything. But neither of them moved. They were both frozen in a sort of terrible complicity.

On the bed, Jeanne was only half-conscious. Her husband was shouting something, but she didn’t understand what it was. She wished he would go away and leave her alone, so that she could be back with her father again, as he leant over her little white bed to look at her in the early half-dark morning before he went to work. He didn’t think she was awake, but she was. She just had her eyes closed, pretending to be asleep.

“Stop fucking pretending,” shouted Ritter, throwing another cup of water at her that he had just got from the sink in the corner.

She opened her eyes and saw the gun, and she screamed. Again and again. But no one came. Not her father or her mother or anyone.

“Don’t kill me, Reg,” she whimpered. “Please don’t.” She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t supposed to be this way, that it wasn’t what her papa had told her would happen when she grew up and the right man came along. Another postman, perhaps, like her father, or somebody with a shop. Somebody to look after her when he was gone. But she couldn’t find the words, and Reg was shouting again.

“This is where you fucked him, isn’t it, you bitch? This is the place. Tell me, you slut. Tell me.”

And suddenly Jeanne had had enough. Life was too hard, and she was too tired. Everything hurt too much. In the end it was always easier to give Reg what he wanted. There was no point in resisting him.

“Yes,” she said. And he shot her.

The sound of the gunshot reverberated round the house, and in the silence that followed, Silas knew that Jeanne was dead. Leaning over, he retched into a corner of the narrow hiding place, but it was just a momentary relief from the fear that was gripping his stomach. He wished now that he had run off into the trees instead of going back into the house. Maybe he wouldn’t have made it to the gate with Ritter coming after him in his car, but at least he would have been outside, moving. Here he could do nothing but just stand and shiver and wait for Ritter to find him. He remembered the feel of the sergeant’s pudgy hands when they squeezed him in his father’s study all those years ago. The fear paralysed him, and Silas realised with a terrible shame that he would probably die without putting up a fight.

The sound he was dreading began. Footsteps walking in the aisle. Just a few feet away. Then silence. Ritter was close. Silas could feel him. Standing, listening, weighing the air.

“You’re near, aren’t you, Silence,” he said softly. “Hiding somewhere. Trying not to breathe. I can feel you, Silence. I can feel how frightened you are. Because you know I’ll kill you, don’t you? Just like I killed Jeanne a minute ago. You can’t stop it, Silence. You can’t stay quiet forever. You know that, don’t you?”

Silas’s back and legs hurt terribly from standing so still. He had only a few seconds left before he had to adjust his position, but when he did, it didn’t matter. Ritter was no longer listening. A car had pulled up in the courtyard outside, and Silas could hear the sound of voices down below. It had to be the police. Sasha would tell them what had happened, and then it would be Ritter’s turn to be hunted down.

The footsteps receded. Ritter must be looking out the window, thought Silas, deciding what to do. A minute or two more, and he would be safe.

Downstairs, Trave had left Sasha with Clayton. Now he forced himself to go up the stairs. He was breaking every rule in the book. He knew that. Ritter was armed and desperate, and Trave had no gun. He should be waiting for the police reinforcements to arrive, but by that time everyone might be dead. Sasha was sure that she had only heard one shot.

At the top, Trave turned to his left and tiptoed down the corridor toward Ritter’s bedroom. He had no clear plan, except to run in and jump on the man before he could fire. Surprise was the only weapon he possessed. But when he crashed through the half-closed door, Trave found no sign of Ritter. Just his wife laid out on the bed, killed with a single bullet. She looked quite peaceful, and perhaps she was better off, Trave thought, as he bent down instinctively to close her eyes. He couldn’t at that moment imagine a fate worse than being married to Reg Ritter.

But there was no time to think. Over toward the centre of the house, Ritter was firing his gun. Five shots, and then a pause while he reloaded. Trave looked round the room madly. Ritter had to have got his gun from somewhere, and here was the obvious place. Trave noticed the cabinet in the corner just as the sound of the shooting began again. In the open drawer at the top was the rest of the sergeant’s private arsenal-a pistol, rounds of ammunition. Trave took the pistol and loaded it as he ran.

In the gallery, Ritter was firing indiscriminately into the shelves of books. One came through into the hiding place, ricocheting off the wall just above where Silas was standing. He had to get out. It was a physical necessity. He forced himself to wait until the sound of the shooting was farthest away and then pushed the bookcase just far enough back to enable him to squeeze out. He left the codex behind. It was the best place for it.

Ritter was nowhere in sight and the gallery was suddenly quiet, except for the ticking of the gold clock above the entrance. Had Ritter stopped shooting because he had heard the shelf move? There was no way of knowing.

Silas crossed quickly to an archway leading to the main aisle. On either side tall leather books climbed to the ceiling, with labels on the shelves written in his father’s careful script. It was almost too dark to read them now, and, on the other side of the gallery, beyond the opposite archway, the light from Sasha’s reading lamp was a luminous green pool in the gathering gloom.

Silas could hear voices again, talking down below. If he could only get to them, he’d be safe. They were so close. Just a few yards to run to the door at the far end of the gallery, and then down the stairs to safety. It was now or never. Silas stepped out into the main aisle. And Ritter fired.

Lying facedown on the polished wooden floor, listening to the heavy footsteps approach, it took Silas a moment or two to realise that he wasn’t hurt. It must have been the shock of the gunshot that had caused him to stumble and fall. He could have made it if his legs had carried him, but they hadn’t. And now he was going to die. For what? For nothing. For a little lust that had left him even more lonely than he was before. It didn’t seem possible that he would end. He couldn’t accept it, that he would never be again. Silas’s mouth filled with his own vomit, and he could hardly get out the words to beg Ritter for his life.

“Please,” he said. “I’ll do anything.”

“All right,” said Ritter, standing over him with an expression on his face that seemed almost like happiness. “All right, Silence, you can do something. You can crawl.”

On his hands and knees, Silas edged toward the half-open door. Perhaps he would escape after all. Miracles happened all the time. But behind him Ritter laughed.

“You’re a snake, Silas,” he said, “and you know what we do with snakes, don’t you? We shoot them.”

The bullet went straight through Silas’s left foot and lodged in the wooden floor below. The pain was unbearable. He screamed, and somewhere inside he could hear himself screaming, could feel his lungs uselessly contract and expand, as he watched Ritter reloading his gun. He looked up into the barrel and saw his own extinction, and then, just as he closed his eyes, the room exploded again, and Ritter fell down almost on top of him. Trave had aimed for the sergeant’s chest and had ended up shooting him in the head. Ritter was dead before he hit the ground.

Trave felt shocked-shocked to his core. The obvious necessity for his action didn’t change its significance. He felt a great emptiness inside; he felt Ritter’s weight on his soul.

But for now he didn’t have to think. He pushed Ritter’s big body away and leant down over Silas, removing the remains of his shoe and sock. The foot was a mess, and Trave tied his handkerchief around the wound to try and stop the bleeding. He couldn’t think of anything else he could do.

“Is he dead?” Silas asked. His voice was very faint.

“Yes.” Trave was sure of it. He’d turned on the lights in the gallery, and he could see Ritter’s eyes gazing sightlessly up at the ceiling. They hadn’t moved at all.

“Thank you,” Silas whispered, and Trave felt oddly touched. He had saved Silas’s life. It didn’t matter that Silas had probably killed his father.

“Stay quiet,” he said. “The ambulance’ll be here soon.”

But Silas had something else he needed to say. Something that wouldn’t wait.

“I didn’t tell the truth,” he said. “About when my father was killed. I was with Sasha. I didn’t want to say before. But now it’s different.”

“Why?” Trave was shaken, unprepared for what Silas was saying.

“Because of Jeanne. She was jealous. That’s why she said those things in court.”

Silas’s voice trailed away and he closed his eyes. Trave wanted to shake him, wake him up, cross-examine him about this new story, because he didn’t believe it. Not for a moment. It was too damn convenient.

Trave forgot the poignancy of Ritter’s death and Silas’s survival. He was a policeman again, with a mission to ferret out the lies and extract the truth. But at the last moment he pulled back his hand, knowing he had to let Silas be. Nothing he said now could be used in evidence. A statement could wait until after the doctors had done their work. Silas wasn’t going anywhere.

On the floor, the wounded man was no longer conscious of the policeman leaning over him or the dead man behind his head. The pain in his foot was still there, but it seemed to belong to someone else. Not just the gallery, but the whole house was full of bright blue water. His arms were strong, and he swam through the rooms like an arrow. Upstairs and downstairs, he could go where he pleased. Until the ambulancemen bent down to put him on a stretcher, and he came rushing back up to the surface and remembered who he was and how much everything hurt.

But worse than the pain was the knowledge that he’d lost something while he was underwater. It was on the edge of his mind but he couldn’t grasp it. Trying to reach it only made it seem further away. With a supreme effort of will, Silas concentrated his mind and realised it was why he’d lost consciousness upstairs. He was missing something. It was about Sasha. She was standing at the bottom of the stairs, and he was floating down toward her. He wanted to shout to get her attention, but all that came out was a whisper. It didn’t matter. She came over and stood by him for a moment. She wanted to know where the book was, but he shook his head. He wasn’t going to tell her that. Not yet. He needed to be sure of her first. And now it came to him what it was he’d forgotten.

“My room or yours?” he asked, but he couldn’t be sure that she had heard, and there was no time to repeat the question. He was going forward out into the dusk, and she was staying behind.

Now they were at the back of the ambulance opening the door, and suddenly she was there again, on the edge of his vision. He could hardly hear what she was saying. It sounded like “mine.” Silas raised himself on the stretcher, and she said it again. “Mine.” It was all right. They understood each other. And Silas sank back into the blue water again as the ambulance drove away.