Written in Blood

Hector Pulls it Off

Brian pushed his muesli and grated apple sullenly around its homely dish. He had had a rotten night and was now looking at a rotten, filthy day. Rain beat in a rattling crescendo on the white-framed kitchen windows and, in the garden, trees and shrubs bent this way and that in the force of a driving wind.

Sluggardised by wakefulness and bad dreams Brian sat on the fake pine breakfast bench attached to the table. Actually he did not so much sit as lurch, semi-upright. A posture that, should anyone else in the family have adopted it, would have brought about an immediate lecture on slovenly behaviour.

Brian was going over, as he had done more or less constantly since hobbling away from Quarry Cottages, the complete turn of events that had taken place there. His imagination had already largely rewritten several crucial moments, but enough were left inviolate to make his memories of the occasion somewhat disagreeable.

But he tried not to dwell on those. And it wasn’t as if matters could not be put right. It had, after all, been the first time. A certain amount of awkwardness was only to be expected. But now that he knew what Edie wanted, what turned her on, things would be very different. Looking at the already brown fruit mincings in front of him Brian reassembled the apple in his mind’s eye. Immediately it transformed itself into a creamily perfect, pink-tipped breast.

Keenly fraught with lust, he shifted uneasily back and forth, staring sourly across the room at his earnest shambles of a wife. He wished her moon face far away. And her saggy, russet-aureoled boobs and big feet. Christ, how was it possible for a woman with legs like Olive Oyl to take size eights? He’d thrown himself away there all right, by God he had. Casting the pearls of his intellect and talent before such an unpractised simpleton.

There was little doubt in Brian’s mind where the main responsibility for last night’s shortcomings lay. Why, when finally holding the girl who had fired his red-hot imaginings for so long in his arms, he had reacted like a puritanical schoolboy.

A more sensitive partner, a more perceptive, caring partner, would have found ways to develop her husband’s sensuality. Made him wise in the paths of carnal knowledge, for were not the skills of the harem in every woman’s blood?

Oh! Why had he ever let his parents persuade him into ‘doing the right thing’? Why hadn’t he had the courage to just clear off and leave Sue and her infant to fend for themselves? Other men did. Tom Carter probably would have. Collar and Denzil, no question.

It wasn’t even as if his family appreciated the sacrifice. Sue took him totally for granted and spent money as if he had a printing press in the garden shed. Mand, quite sweet when she was little, now hardly spoke unless it was to moaningly compare him to someone called Trixie’s dad who apparently let his daughter stay out all hours, drove an open-topped Jaguar and looked like Jason Priestley.

Brian tucked a cushion beneath the vacuum in the seat of his trousers and tried to wriggle into a comfier position. He was fraught with anxiety at the thought of meeting Edie again. There was no rehearsal, and no English class either today so unless he sought her out, or unless, miracle of miracles, she sought him out, they would not see each other till after the weekend. He didn’t think he could bear that.

Brian wondered how it would be when they did meet. Perhaps she would be shy and unable to bring herself to talk about the matter. Or eager, like she was last night, already angling for another date? He’d take her somewhere really plush next time. Maybe a hotel on the river for a drink and a meal afterwards ...

Already the negative aspects of their encounter (squalid environs, uncontrollable spillage of the Clapton seed, genitals that felt as if they were gift-wrapped in barbed wire) were fading fast. And Edie’s post-coital coldness, wounding at the time, was, on reflection, totally understandable. How she must have been looking forward to that first conjugation. Naturally, after his inadequate performance she had withdrawn, no doubt needing to protect herself from further hurt and humiliation.

If only she hadn’t touched his beard.

Brian emerged from this reverie to find himself gazing at a residue of black sludge in the bottom of his cup.

‘What the hell’s all this?’

‘All what?’

‘This mud.’

‘It’s filter coffee.’

‘But we don’t have a filter.’ He spoke slowly and loudly. ‘We use a coffee pot.’ A. Coffee. Pot. For extra emphasis he held it up.

‘You won’t drink anything but Costa Rican. And Sainsbury’s only had it in filter grind.’

Patience, Brian, patience. She can’t help it. Count to ten.

‘It’s all right if you don’t stir it.’

‘How on earth you ever got through teacher-training college beats me.’ He poured the thick, dark stuff over his muesli and pushed the lot aside.

There was a rattling from the front door and Sue said, ‘I think that’s the post.’

Brian did not move. Sue hesitated. As head of the house he always picked up the post. It might be something important. But to her surprise he said, ‘Well, go on then. No doubt it’ll be more bills. You eat me out of house and home the pair of you.’

Forbearing to mention that invoices for provisions rarely arrived via the Royal Mail, Sue went into the hall. There was one letter - a long, white envelope, immaculately typed. She took it into the kitchen and Brian held out his hand, murmuring wearily. ‘Let’s have it, then. Might as well hear the worst.’

‘It’s for me.’

‘What?’

‘From London.’

Sue, sick with anticipation, stood holding the envelope. It was not big enough, not nearly big enough, to contain her drawings and manuscript. She eased up the flap with trembling fingers, drew out a sheet of stiff, headed paper and read, frowning. And read again. Then, with one swift collapsing movement, she fell into the armchair.

‘Now what?’

‘It’s from Methuen.’

‘Who?’

‘Methuen - children’s books.’ Brian looked cross and bewildered. ‘I sent them a story and drawings - “Hector’s New Pony”.’

‘You didn’t tell me that.’

‘They want to publish it. Ohh Brian ...’

‘Let’s have a look.’

Reluctantly, as if letting the piece of paper out of her possession even momentarily might instantly devalue its contents or, worse, render them null and void, Sue passed it over.

After a quick, efficient scan Brian handed it back, saying, ‘As I thought. Trust you to get the wrong end of the stick. It doesn’t mention publishing at all.’

‘What?’ His wife studied a letter suddenly, mysteriously, bereft of promise. ‘But the editor says—’

‘She merely suggests a meeting.’

‘Lunch.’ Sue sounded surprisingly firm.

‘OK, lunch,’ said Brian snappily. ‘They obviously see some vague merit in the sketches and are offering some encouragement. I think you’d be very foolish to read more into it than that.’

Sue went over the letter for the fourth time. It was true that it did not actually contain the word ‘publication’. Even so ...

‘I’m only saying that,’ continued Brian, ‘because I hate to see you getting all worked up only to be disappointed.’

Sue did not reply.

‘They must do this sort of thing all the time. Keep tabs on people they think might have a bit of talent.’

‘I see.’

Sue saw exactly. She lowered eyes brimming with excitement, so as not to annoy him further but could do nothing about her joyful countenance.

‘No wonder this place looks like a squat,’ Brian squeezed himself out from behind the narrow table, ‘if all you’re doing all day is messing around painting.’

Sue watched him in the sitting room struggling into his tartan lumberjacket and checking his Puma bag before making for the front door.

‘Brian?’

Grunt.

‘Why are you walking like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘As if your knees are tied together.’

‘Don’t be so bloody rude.’ Brian turned and glared at his wife; the tips of his ears burned fiercely.

‘Well. You are.’

‘I hit my knee on the car door, if you must know.’

When he had slammed off Sue sat motionless until she had heard the VW drive away, then she stood up, flung her arms open wide and let out a great cry. Jumping out of her heavy clogs she began to dance. Around the kitchen, into and out of each corner of the sitting room, up and down the stairs, to and fro between the bedrooms.

And as she danced, she sang. Nonsense words, old songs, new songs, bits from Hector’s story, jingles from commercials, half-remembered poems and nursery rhymes, snatches of operatic arias. She sang her Methuen letter and the Guardian headlines and all the ingredients for a Leek and Potato Soubise.

Sue’s old brown skirt whirled around, her hair flew and when, physically exhausted, she fell into the old kitchen armchair, her mind danced on.

What am I going to do. I can’t just sit here, quietly, inside my skin. Not on a day like this. Within minutes, once more full of energy, she jumped up and went to stare out of the window.

She had never in her life seen such an utterly beautiful day. Rain, like rods of silver light, hammered on the glass. The sun had started to shine. There were even a couple of Watteau-ish clouds, snowy and scallop-edged, all puffed up like inflated bloomers. Moving away, Sue caught sight of herself in the mirror and stopped still.

Her cheeks glowed like peaches and her eyes shone. Her long, milk-chocolate hair, usually so stringily forlorn, was a polished curtain of shot silk.

‘What nonsense,’ she said, laughing. ‘It’s nonsense.’

She moved away from the lying glass and sat quietly down again, trying to be sensible. She was strangely certain of a momentous difference in herself. What it was she could not fathom for she had completely lost touch with any ability to analyse. But that it had occurred she had not the slightest doubt.

The nine a.m. briefing, though short, was packed with interest. The outside second shift, swigging coffee and looking blearily pleased with itself, had come up with a real result.

Several highly priced companions of the night, working only from their apartments (‘Very concerned I got that straight they were,’ said Detective Sergeant Johnson), would, if requested by telephone, visit lonely businessmen in their criminally expensive suites at the Golden Fleece Hotel to offer all the comforts of home.

Most of these canny professionals knew each other, at least by sight, and kept a wary eye out for anything new in the way of competition. A couple of them had seen the woman described by their interrogators on several occasions.

‘How can you be sure it’s the same person?’ asked Barnaby.

‘She fits the description very closely, sir,’ said Johnson, producing a slim roll of statement forms from his jacket pocket. ‘Even down to the little hat with the veil. Always wears black, apparently. A Mrs ...’ - he unrolled a form - ‘Fionnula Dobbs admits to seeing her at least half a dozen times covering a period of some months. Each instance in the hotel lobby. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the Fleece, sir?’

‘Only if someone else is paying.’

‘Quite. Well, the lobby’s very plush. Lots of deep sofas and armchairs, tables with newspapers and magazines and a posh bar opening off. The lady was usually sitting quietly, reading something or other and drinking coffee. Minding her own business as you might say.’

‘Smoking?’

‘Um.’ He blushed. ‘Didn’t think to ask that, sir.’

‘Go on.’

‘The girls seem to have thought her, though quite attractive, a bit long in the tooth to be any sort of serious competition. In any case the Fleece keeps a very sharp eye out for prostitutes trying to work the premises. The barman’s convinced she wasn’t on the game. Says she approached no one, and if a man spoke to her he was politely rebuffed. The staff change over at ten this morning, though I shouldn’t think,’ concluded the sergeant, ‘the new lot’ll have anything more interesting to add.’

‘None of the women you interviewed actually spoke to her?’

‘No. There’s an acknowledged drill to their visits which the hotel’s very strict about. Once on the premises the girls go straight to the clients’ rooms then, having done the business, it’s straight out again. Any attempt to fraternise and they know they’ll be banned.’

Having completed his input Sergeant Johnson placed the statement forms in a neat stack beside the nearest computer.

‘Is that it?’ asked Barnaby. Seemingly it was. ‘Nobody knows anything about her? Where she comes from? Goes to?’

‘I’m afraid not, sir.’

‘Well, we can’t leave it there. You’ll have to keep after the bar staff. Ask around. People always know more than they think they do. Right,’ he looked around the room, ‘anything else?’

If he was disappointed in the resulting silence it didn’t show. However all was not lost, for barely had he drawn breath ready to discuss the occupations of the day when Inspector Meredith spoke.

‘Actually, sir ...’

Barnaby looked sharply across the room. He was not fooled by the modest curve into which Inspector Meredith’s slender form had settled. Or by the falsely hesitant verbals and unassuming downward tilt of the reptilian head. He studied the immaculate line of Meredith’s parting with distaste. The man’s hair was plastered to his skull like some thirties’ gigolo.

‘Yes,’ said Barnaby tersely. ‘What is it?’

‘Merely an idea—’

‘Would that be the idea you had last night when I asked you if you’d just had an idea and you said “No, sir”?’

‘Well ...’ Meredith smiled and shrugged his elegant shoulders. ‘I thought it best to check my facts first. I needed to re-read Mrs Jennings’ statement. And work on from there.’

‘Work on?’ Barnaby spoke softly but there were few present who did not feel the wind of change. An ominous tightening of the atmosphere. Inspector Meredith was one of that few. Sublime in his ignorance, he continued.

‘Yes. You were cursing the elusive Jennings and the fact that all the information we had picked up led nowhere. But I had this niggling feeling that there was a name somewhere that had been overlooked and I was right. That name was - Barbara!’

At this triumphant conclusion he glanced smugly round the room as if expecting, at the very least, a round of applause. Then, stimulating the silence with a jaunty back flip, he explained, ‘The secretary.

‘Unfortunately I only had her Christian name. Tried to get the rest from Mrs Jennings, who wouldn’t play, then from the servant, who didn’t know. So I thought of his publisher. Seemed to me they were bound to have had dealings. I was lucky. Though it was late they had a book-launch party on and people were still around. Her surname, Cockaigne, was an unusual one and they were able to tell me she lived in North London. From then on it was a piece of cake. I rang and got an answerphone. Now, and this is where it gets really interesting—’

‘I hope you’re not going to give the entire plot away, Inspector Meredith,’ said Barnaby in a voice that reverberated like a hammer striking frozen steel.

The general assembly was by now slipping into its moon boots and ear muffs. Troy, leaning against the Ryvita panels, closed his eyes with pleasure as Meredith went bombasting on and thought, What a scrote!

‘The drill on the tape is that she’s away for five days, OK? And I don’t believe that is a coincidence. She’ll have left an address with someone - a friend or neighbour - in case of an emergency. People always do. Find her, chief inspector, and it’s my belief you’ll find Jennings.’

The silence which followed this improvisation went on for quite some time. Barnaby appeared almost distracted. Frowning, he moved his papers to and fro in an aimless heap. Eventually he said, in a matter-of-fact tone:

‘Let me try and explain to you, inspector, how we work here.’ He directed a glance of freezing disdain in Meredith’s direction. ‘We work as a team. I cannot over-emphasise the importance of this. Indeed you will find it a common element throughout the Force and I must say I’m amazed it was not drawn to your attention at Bramshill. It makes for speed and efficiency, you see. Often it saves lives. Of course we are all individuals, some perhaps more so than others, but when we have a little insight we don’t run off and hug it to ourselves, follow up on our clever little tod without telling anyone and then produce our conclusion while hogging centre stage like some spoiled kid at a party.’

‘I was only try—’

‘I haven’t finished!’

‘Oh.’

‘Dissemination of knowledge at every level and between every authority is vital. You only have to look at the Sutcliffe cock-up to see what happens when men of a rank to know better start playing Hooray For Our Gang instead of Pass The Parcel.’ He paused. ‘You’re looking somewhat perplexed, Meredith. Didn’t you get to hear about the Yorkshire Ripper in your ivory tower? Your intellectual eyrie in the sky?’

‘Of course I did.’

‘Then you’ll know that women died unnecessarily because information was not quickly and properly conveyed.’

‘I thought that was a technical mix-up. Incompatible computers.’

‘Not entirely, by a long chalk.’

‘Still it’s not as if ...’ Meredith tailed off, shrugged and said, ‘They were tarts, weren’t they?’

Barnaby stared across the room, his face momentarily distorted with disgust and disbelief. He said, ‘I’m not quite sure I heard you correctly, inspector.’

‘Prostitutes.’ Meredith looked around for confirmation. ‘Isn’t that right?’

The chief inspector’s large, grizzled head sank a little between his heavy shoulders. His neck all but disappeared.

‘Just remember what I said. All information, all ideas and insights, however slight, however cock-eyed, get tossed into the pool. That’s what briefings are all about.’

‘If you say so, sir.’

‘I do say so, inspector. And you’d better believe I’m saying so or you’ll find yourself off this case and back on a six a.m. shift for the rest of your stay here, which, I can assure you, we all hope will be extremely brief.’ He stood, very suddenly for such a heavy man, then, propelled by anger and abhorrence, quickly left the room.

Troy followed, catching up with his boss in the corridor. ‘Bloody fascist.’

The sergeant responded, with some hesitation, ‘He is the chief constable’s nephew, sir.’

‘I don’t care if he’s the smile on the queen’s backside. He starts that caper here I’ll cauterise him.’

Barnaby slammed into his office. Troy took the door in his face, stilled the shivering glass panels with the palm of his hand then entered, as unobtrusively as he knew how. He gave it five hundred before clearing his throat.

‘Want me to have another go at Clapton this morning, sir?’

‘No. He’ll keep. We still haven’t talked to Amy Lyddiard. It’s hopeless at the house with that Dobermann of a sister-in-law. Go and collect her, would you? Gently does it. Tell her it’s for fingerprints.’

After Troy had left he sat staring at the wall wondering how he had come to miss Barbara. There was a time when he missed nothing. Certainly nothing as clearly under his nose as this had been. It was not even a matter of sloppy reading. Christ, he had done the interview where her name had come up himself. Thick as thieves, Ava Jennings had said they were. He remembered the exact words. Thick as thieves.

Barnaby cursed Meredith with his sharp eyes and sharp mind and sharp, upmarket connections, then cursed himself for meanness of spirit. He felt old and heavy and tired. Not to mention in dire need of further sustenance.

Sue, still pneumatically propelled on waves of exhilaration, floated between the twin pineappled pillars of Gresham House, up the drive and round to the servants’ entrance. In her excitement she tugged the old-fashioned bell extremely hard and rather a lot of wire came out, refusing to return when she released the engraved metal pull.

Sue let it dangle. She waited, smiling, while the sodden leaves from the wisteria dripped on to her uncovered head. Her arms still ached slightly from delivering Rex’s shopping, which had included quite a lot of heavy tins. She had been relieved to find him in improved spirits. Still fretting over the possibility that he may have played some unwitting part in Gerald’s death, but determined not to be overwhelmed by the suggestion. He was even talking about going back to work.

Amy, wearing rubber gloves and with a head scarf over her curls, opened the door. Sue stepped inside. The two women stood looking at each other.

‘What is it?’ Amy cried. ‘What is it?’ Then, seizing her friend’s hands, ‘You’ve heard from Methuen!’

‘Yes.’

‘Sue - how marvellous!’

‘They want me to go to lunch.’

‘Lunch! Ohhh ...’

‘I’ve been dancing all morning. Up and down the stairs, all round the house, in the street.’

‘Of course you have.’ Amy beamed, said ‘Ohhh’ again, gave Sue a great hug and dragged her by the arm towards the kitchen steps. ‘You must come in.’

‘But what about ... ?’

‘Taking a catalogue back to Laura’s.’

Amy had been polishing silver, which lay, in a heavy box lined with frayed green baize, on the old deal table. There was a saucer of rosy paste and several black-stained cloths. The air had a sweet chemical scent.

Sue sat down and started laughing in a rather delirious way, breaking off now and again to say, ‘I don’t know what to do with myself’ and ‘I think I’m going mad.’

Caught up in all this exhilaration, Amy, crying ‘Don’t set me off’, was promptly set off. Covering her mouth with her hand and choking with gaiety she gasped, ‘If you don’t look at me ... I’ll be all right ...’

And that was how they eventually calmed down, by staring determinedly at a point beyond each other’s shoulders. Amy wiped her face and said, ‘We should celebrate. But there’s nothing to drink in this place. Not even cooking sherry.’

‘Funny you should say that ...’ Sue produced from her shopping bag a white cardboard box, a bottle wrapped in tissue paper the colour of methylated spirits and a corkscrew. ‘Voila!’

She slipped a rubber band off the box and lifted the lid to reveal a large, gooey chocolate gateau. The bottle contained white wine from the Côte de Gascogne. Sue attacked the green plastic seal with the tip of the corkscrew.

‘It’s to share around the play group really. After all, if it wasn’t for them there’d be no Hector.’

‘Poor little mites. They’ll be paralytic.’

‘The mothers, silly. There’s squash for the kids.’ Sue reached out for a knife.

‘Not that one. It’s still got polish on.’

Amy assembled a bread knife, two plates and two forks and fetched a couple of wine glasses from a cabinet in the drawing room. They were thick with dust so she rinsed them in tepid water under the tap.

The village store did not go in for top-flight patisserie. The cake tasted pretty synthetic and the wine slightly warm, yet every mouthful was ambrosial. Amy, chasing a final flaked almond around the margin of her plate, said, ‘That was wonderful. I hope it all didn’t cost too much.’

‘Nearly six pounds.’

‘Sue.’ Horrified, Amy laid down her fork. She understood only too well the gaping hole such an amount would leave in a skin-tight budget. ‘How are you going to manage?’

‘Don’t know. Don’t care actually.’

‘But it’s your Sainsbury’s shop tomorrow. Look.’ She laid slightly chocolately fingers on Sue’s arm. ‘Let me treat you. I’ve still got some money left from—’

‘No, Amy. Why should you?’

‘Because I’m your friend.’ Sue stubbornly shook her head. ‘A loan then. And when you’re R and F you can pay me back.’

‘I don’t think it’s an unreasonable amount to spend. Not to celebrate such a brilliant piece of news.’

‘Of course it isn’t.’

‘Some men would have taken their wives out for champagne and a slap-up meal.’

‘Indeed.’ Amy hesitated as to how to continue. She had no wish to carry on a conversation along unhappy lines. On the other hand Sue seemed to be, quite justifiably in Amy’s opinion, somewhat aggrieved. She also sensed a wish to dwell further on the subject of domestic injustice.

‘What did Brian say when you told him?’

‘That they had no intention of publishing. They had perhaps seen some slight merit in my sketches and were keeping vague tabs in case I came up with something worthwhile in the future.’

‘What absolute and utter rubbish!’ Amy was so angry her face had gone bright red.

‘It is,’ said Sue. Then, after a slight pause, ‘Isn’t it?’

‘The mean-spirited little toad.’

‘I didn’t believe him.’

‘I should jolly well hope not. If that was all, they’d have sent the drawings back with an encouraging letter asking you to keep in touch.’ Sensing a slight diminution of the radiance opposite she followed through with an interrogative clincher. ‘Right?’

‘Right.’

‘That’s settled then. Now - what are you going to wear?’

‘God knows. Everything I’ve got’s held together with Sellotape and willpower.’

‘We’ll go round the charity shops. They have some lovely things. And this time it’s a loan and no argument. You must look nice.’

‘Thank you.’

‘After all, she might take you to the Ritz.’

‘W-e-l-l.’ Unaccustomed as she was to literary lunches this did strike Sue as flying a trifle high. ‘Probably not the first time.’

‘You must tell me every single thing about it. From the minute you set foot in the restaurant till the minute you leave. What the place is like, everything you eat and drink, what the waiters are like and the other diners—’

Sue started laughing again. ‘I’ll never remember all that.’

‘Right up to the time you help her into a taxi.’

‘Why will I have to do that?’

‘Oh, she’ll be well away by then,’ explained Amy airily. ‘They all drink like whales.’

Sue regarded Amy’s amused, animated, totally involved expression and warm brown eyes with feelings of deep affection and gratitude. The old saw which promised that when in trouble you soon found out who your friends were had never struck her as all that profound. Of course, in a crisis, people rallied round, sometimes out of genuine concern, more often perhaps because they welcomed the opportunity to become briefly involved in lives crammed with more dramatic incident than their own. But how much harder was it to truly rejoice in another’s good fortune, especially when your own had been so savagely cut short.

‘It’ll be you next time.’ Sue stretched out her hand, slipping it, for comfort, into Amy’s. ‘Once you’ve finished Rompers they’ll all be fighting over it.’

For a moment Amy did not reply. She appeared withdrawn and a little sad. Sue wondered if Ralph had come into her mind. If Amy was thinking how pleased he would be to know that she was writing a book. She went on quickly, ‘And I’ll be able to help. I’ll get an agent - you always can once you’ve signed a contract - and I shall insist they take you on as well.’

‘Oh, Sue ...’

They both fell silent, acknowledging the splendour of the new situation. The glorious difference between yesterday and today. And when I wake up tomorrow, thought Sue, it will still be real. No one can take it away from me.

‘Gosh - I’ve been so carried away I’ve not told you what else has happened.’

‘Something happened here, too.’

‘Amy - what?’

‘You first.’

‘OK. I’ve been really worried about Rex. I rang two or three times and got no reply, so I went round and discovered him in an appalling state.’

Sue described her visit. Amy listened closely to the very end then said, ‘But surely it can’t be true. I mean - that Max Jennings murdered Gerald.’

‘That’s what I said. Famous people just don’t do such things.’

‘For a start the police would have arrested him. It would have been in all the papers.’

‘I tried to convince Rex there must be a rational explanation. He was ... dying, Amy. Actually dying of shame. It was dreadful.’

‘You must have worked a miracle. I saw him on the Green this morning with Montcalm.’

‘Yes. And he’s going to try writing again, which will help. But he won’t be his old self till they find out who really did it.’

‘Mrs Bundy said yesterday they were looking for a suitcase.’

‘What, one of Gerald’s?’

‘Yes. Brown leather. Apparently whoever killed him took it away.’

‘That definitely points to a burglar. I must tell Rex. It will cheer him up.’

Sue began repacking the cake. Amy tried to stuff the cork back into the wine bottle.

‘Do they know what was in it?’

‘The entire contents of a chest of drawers,’ replied Amy, ‘according to Mrs B. She went on about it at great length.’

‘I’m surprised Honoria didn’t shut her up.’

‘Reading her runes elsewhere. Got it!’ Amy spoke too soon. The cork popped straight out again, shot across the room and rolled under the cooker. As she bent to fish it out she spoke again, this time with her voice all squeezy. ‘I’ll give a hand with Rex. Visit him, I mean. And maybe we could ask Laura.’

‘Ah - that’s the other thing I meant to tell you. She’s moving’

‘Moving?’ Amy was washing the cork under the tap. ‘Moving where?’

‘Doesn’t know yet. I went round last night. I was so worried about Rex and desperately needed to talk to somebody. I could have saved myself the trouble. She was in ever such a funny mood. To tell you the truth, I think she’d been drinking.’

‘I’m not surprised. This awful business is enough to drive anyone to drink.’

‘Don’t worry about that Amy,’ (the cork was proving twice as awkward the second time) ‘tell me your news. I have to go in a sec.’

‘Well, it was yesterday. Just gone one.’ Amy spoke so seriously and looked so perturbed that Sue, who had got up after packing her basket, sat straight down again. ‘Honoria came in complaining that lunch was late. And maybe because I was extra cold or lonely or unhappy or hungry or depressed I finally told her I’d had enough.’

‘Amy!’

‘And that I was going to leave.’

‘You didn’t.’ Sue gazed at her friend in deep consternation, as if surprised to find her still alive. ‘What did she say?’

‘It was awful. She started going on about how she’d get the heating fixed and give me more money for food. Then she said I couldn’t go because she had promised Ralph she’d look after me.’

‘Oh, deep dread.’

‘Exactly. And it was so weird because I could see it wasn’t the truth. I don’t know why she really wants me here—’

‘Unpaid slavery—’

‘No. Well, perhaps, but that’s not the main reason. I’ve got a feeling that I have something she wants. I can sense her watching me. Sometimes, when I’m working in the house or in the garden, she’ll come up so quietly, like she did yesterday, and I won’t know she’s there. It’s really frightening. She’s waiting for something, Sue. And she doesn’t want me to go until it’s happened.’

‘But you must go.’

‘Yes. I have plans. Remember those ads I told you about - in The Lady? I’m going to start replying. Thing is, can I give your address? I don’t want her to know.’

‘Of course you can.’ A vista of loneliness opened suddenly in front of Sue and desolation briefly marked her face.

‘Don’t look like that, love. We’ll write. All the time.’

‘Yes.’

‘And I’ll need to come back often. To visit Ralph.’

A couple of hours later, Barnaby, awaiting the arrival of Mrs Lyddiard, was jotting down a few notes. Pointers to questions rather then the questions themselves for, although he could be relentlessly inflexible when the need to pin down was urgent, he preferred to work in an open-ended, even slightly meandering way, casting his net wide. Visitors often left his office after having been quite shrewdly interviewed feeling they’d enjoyed nothing more than a pleasant conversation.

Barnaby was patient in the way an animal squatting silently outside the lair of its prey is patient. And he was genuinely curious about people, unlike Troy, who was not interested in anyone for their own sake, but merely for what they could contribute to the matter in hand. Barnaby’s method got results. People told him things they hadn’t meant to tell him. Sometimes they told him things they didn’t even know they knew.

Audrey Brierley looked around the door and asked if he would like a drink of something. Almost at the same time Sergeant Troy arrived with Mrs Lyddiard. Barnaby ordered two cups of tea and put his calls on hold. Troy quickly worked out that he was de trop and took himself off to the incident room.

The chief inspector hung up Amy’s coat, offered her the most comfortable chair and came out from behind his desk to sit on the settee. They stirred their drinks in silence, Amy looking round the room with shy interest.

‘This is just an informal chat, Mrs Lyddiard. As we were not able to talk the other day.’

‘Yes, I’m afraid Honoria—’ Amy broke off, realising she was about to be disloyal in front of strangers. She swallowed some tea. ‘This is delicious. Thank you.’

‘What I really wanted to ask about,’ continued Barnaby, when both their cups were empty, ‘were your impressions of that last evening at Plover’s Rest. If you enjoyed it, for instance.’

‘Oh I did,’ exclaimed Amy. ‘It was great to meet a real writer.’

She enthused, as he remembered Mrs Clapton had done, over Jennings’ courtesy, helpfulness and apparently genuine interest in his audience’s accomplishments.

‘I was really sorry when it was over. I think we all felt inspired.’

‘Did you get the impression that Mr Hadleigh enjoyed it?’

‘It’s hard to say. He was very quiet.’ Amy put her cup and saucer carefully on the carpet. ‘Poor man.’

‘Are you aware that he and Max Jennings already knew each other?’

‘Yes. Rex told Sue. He’s been terribly depressed about it all. Feels responsible. Ermm ... have you ... ? That is ... if you’ve exonerated Max - if he’s in the clear - it would help Rex so much. To know, I mean ...’ Amy tailed off, hoping she had not committed some misdemeanour by asking.

‘I’m sure the problem will be resolved.’ Barnaby smiled to soften any suggestion of a rebuff and moved on. ‘After the meeting I understand you and Miss Lyddiard went straight home.’

‘Yes. I made us some hot drinks then went upstairs to work on my book. Honoria took hers into the study.’

‘What’s your book about?’

‘Oh.’ Amy flushed with embarrassment and pleasure at being asked. ‘What isn’t it about? High finance, drug smuggling, lovers lost and found, a priceless black Russian pearl, a kidnapped foundling.’

‘It sounds irresistible.’

‘I’m banking on it.’

Amy, more relaxed now, was sitting back in her chair. Barnaby noticed she was wearing the same shabby trousers and butterfly cardigan that she had had on the other day. Her boots were very worn and one of the seams was splitting. He wondered what her financial position was. Pretty parlous, surely, to be prepared to live at Gresham House.

‘Do you find the writing group a help?’

‘Up to a point. We read our stuff out but then, none of us being very experienced, we’re at a bit of a loss to know what to do next.’

‘What did you think of Hadleigh’s writing?’

‘A bit thin. He worked very hard on his stories but, even after several drafts, there didn’t seem to be anything much in them.’

‘And your impressions of him as a person?’

‘I can’t tell you anything definite, inspector. I just didn’t know him well enough.’

‘Indefinite will do.’

This time Amy paused for so long that Barnaby thought she had decided not to answer. When she did speak it was plainly with great reluctance.

‘He reminded me of a character I saw in a film, a long time ago. An elderly man - the film was in flashback - who had been traumatised as a boy. He had been used by two grown-ups of quite different social classes - this was in Edwardian times - to pass love letters between them and the discovery of this, plus the dreadful aftermath, ruined his whole life. His face, all his movements, had a dreadful, frozen lifelessness. As if every bit of him was mortally impaired.’ Amy frowned deeply, her pretty face marred by pity and distress. ‘Gerald was like that.’

‘How very sad,’ said the chief inspector, meaning it. Then, risking alienation, ‘But how interesting.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Amy, looking somewhat shamefaced. ‘I used to wonder about him a lot. Writers are awful. So nosy. I’d make up different pasts for him. Different histories.’

‘But he was quite forthcoming about his background, I understand.’

‘Oh, I didn’t believe any of that.’

‘Really?’ said Barnaby, leaning very slightly forward.

‘It was so sparse. Like one of his stories. True life’s all muddle and mess, isn’t it? You can’t just list a few neat things and say, “This is who I am”. It was as if’ - Amy tuckered her brows again - ‘as if he’d learnt it.’

Even as Barnaby smiled and nodded he wondered why he was feeling quite so pleased with this conversation, for there was little new in it. He decided it was because he enjoyed looking at, and listening to, Mrs Lyddiard. Her sweet round face and mop of curly hair reminded him of his wife, though Amy was ingenuously friendly where Joyce was tartly subtle.

Amy got up to put her cup and saucer on the desk and noticed the large, leather-framed photograph with its back to her.

‘Do you mind if ... ?’

Barnaby said, ‘Of course not.’

She turned the frame round and said, as everyone, without exception always did, ‘Good heavens. What an absolutely beautiful child.’

‘She’s grown up now.’

‘And that’s your wife?’

‘Yes.’

‘Easy to see which side—’ Amy broke off, crimsoned and covered her mouth with her hand. ‘Gosh, how rude. I’m so sorry. What must you ... Oh dear. I don’t know where to ... Ohh ...’

Barnaby burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it. Her confusion was so overwhelmingly complete it was comical. Then he stopped, for she was clearly genuinely upset.

‘Please, Mrs Lyddiard, don’t be put out. If I had a fiver for every time I’ve heard that remark I could retire tomorrow.’

‘You’re just saying that to make me feel better.’

‘Not at all. The first occasion was the midwife.’

Amy seemed almost about to smile, changed her mind and went back to her chair. More to ease the moment than because he was really interested, Barnaby asked if she had children. Amy shook her head.

‘For a time it didn’t seem important. We were very happy and it seemed enough. Then, when I was in my late thirties, I started having second thoughts. But Ralph dissuaded me.’ She pressed her hands together, the fingers interlocking with tension, tugging against each other. ‘I thought afterwards he must have had some sort of premonition. Perhaps knew, even then, how ill he was and didn’t want to leave me with a young child. But he was wrong. I’d give anything now - anything - to have a part of him still with me.’

Barnaby nodded with a sympathy that was far from feigned. He could not imagine, could not bear to imagine, life without his daughter. They might not see, or even hear from her, for weeks on end, but he had to know that she was out there somewhere. Living, breathing, breaking hearts.

‘He had cancer.’ Amy sounded introspective and so distant she might have been talking to herself. ‘That is, he had chronic hepatitis that wasn’t diagnosed and treated in time. We were so far away from a hospital you see. Or a good doctor.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘All the awful people who live forever. Murderers and terrorists. Army generals who won’t let food trucks through, while Ralph ...’ Tears started from Amy’s eyes and she brushed them fiercely away. ‘The dearest man. It’s so unfair. Honoria blamed me.’

Barnaby released a sound of demurring protest reinforced by a disbelieving movement of his head.

‘It’s true. She said the most terrible thing, the cruellest thing. I’ve never told anyone - not even Sue. He’d been unconscious for days in that hospital in Spain and we’d been taking turns to sit with him. I’d been resting and I was going back along the corridor towards his room when Honoria came out of the doctor’s office. She gripped my arms - I had the marks for days - and screamed in my face. “If you’d loved him enough he wouldn’t have died.” It was the most dreadful shock. I didn’t know he’d gone, you see. It happened while I was asleep. It was the only time I’ve ever seen her show any emotion.

‘She’s taken him back now. The headstone has his name and a single space for hers. His room with all his childhood things is permanently locked. She’s always in there. I hear her sometimes reading out his letters or school reports. But none of that matters really. I sit by his grave and talk to him and we’re as close as we ever were. All the rest is trimmings.’

After she had finished speaking Amy sat in silence for a while. There was an almost inaudible click as the minute hand on the clock jumped round and a faint humming from the overhead fluorescent light. But in spite of the brightness of the room and the constant shrilling of telephones and the human clatter just beyond the thin walls, Amy was aware that she felt very much at ease.

‘I can’t imagine why I told you all that.’

‘Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger.’

‘That depends on the stranger, surely. You seem to have a gift for it, inspector. Perhaps you should join the Samaritans.’

‘No patience. They’d be jumping off high buildings in droves.’

Amy was surprised. He had seemed to her endlessly patient and attentive. But perhaps that was just part of his technique. An enforced physical stillness to encourage revelation. Certainly he seemed to have taken rather a lot of notes. She began to feel slightly ill at ease and was quite relieved when he buzzed for the nice policewoman with the shining hair.

‘We would like, Mrs Lyddiard,’ said Barnaby, unhooking her coat from the curly hat stand, ‘some fingerprints from you. Purely for purposes of elimination. They will not be put on file or kept longer than is absolutely necessary.’

‘That’s fine,’ said Amy.

‘What do you think our chances are of obtaining your sister-in-law’s?’

‘Absolutely nil. She’s a law unto herself, Honoria.’ Barnaby shook hands. As WPC Brierley and she were leaving he said, ‘Take Mrs Lyddiard out via the incident room.’ He smiled at Amy. ‘You might be interested to see how the wheels go round.’

‘Indeed I would.’

Amy followed the policewoman down the corridor determined to make a mental note of everything she saw. She would buy a folder and mark it Police Research. Readers were said to love authentic detail and already Amy’s mind was conjuring a scene in which Araminta - after many tortuous travails - finally collapses on the steps of a station not a million miles removed from Causton CID. There, after being comforted and refreshed, she would pour out her incredible story. Probably to a large, burly man who would hear her out in close and sympathetic silence.

The telephone call from the day-shift barman at the Golden Fleece came shortly after one of the mingiest, stingiest lunches Tom Barnaby had ever eaten. He had been frightened into this austere reckoning when, tired of waiting for the lift, he had wheezed his way up a single flight of stairs to reach the canteen. Having attained the final step he found himself overwhelmed by a terrible choking sensation as if his windpipe had been clamped. There was a zinging in his ears and the hand that gripped the stair rail was not only curiously numb but - he squinted, trying to bring it into focus - curiously on the move.

Though these extraordinary physical sensations lasted only a few seconds it had been long enough to concentrate his mind marvellously on the virtuous section of the menu. Consequently an egg salad now nestled in his stomach alongside a slimmer’s yogurt and a cube of fatless cheese that had looked and tasted like yellow india rubber. (At least he now knew what to give up for Lent.) All this plus two slices of crispbread. Not that these had been crisp any more than they even remotely resembled bread. More like soggy sawdust held together by pockets of air. A clear case for prosecution under the Trades Description Act.

‘Are you all right, chief?’ Troy prised himself away from Audrey Brierley’s desk and sauntered over. His eyebrows were raised in mild inquiry, which was as near as he ever came to demonstrating concern.

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Indigestion, is it?’

‘You have to have eaten something to get indigestion, sergeant.’

Troy laughed in the careless way young, healthy, slender people have. ‘That’s very good. I must remember that. Tell Mor.’

‘She must really look forward to your return, Gavin.’

‘Yeah, I think she does. Usually has a go at me, though, about not going straight home.’ Like most of the men, and some of the women, Troy unwound after his shift with a few jars in the Police Club.

‘You’d think she’d be grateful. I’ve tried to explain it’s for her that I do it. If I took all the stresses and strains of this job back to 18 Russell Avenue she’d complain fast enough. I dunno ...’ He swivelled a chair round and sat down more comfortably. ‘Women. No sooner am I in the door than she starts. Jobs usually. When am I going to fix the bathroom tap, kitchen cupboard, landing light? I’m bloody wacked on my day off. All I want to do is kip. After I’ve cleaned and polished the car.

‘You daren’t open your eyes. The second the old lids roll back she’s off. Latest thing is, why don’t I ever talk to her. I said, I never talk to you, Maureen, because I can never get a bloody word in.’

Sensing a lack of interest from the far side of the desk, Troy asked if anything helpful had come out of the interview with Mrs Lyddiard.

‘Nothing I latched on to at the time. But I had the feeling after she’d left that something was said that rang false. I don’t necessarily mean that she was lying - just that there was some discrepancy. I’m just about to read through it again.’

But, almost before he had finished speaking, the phone rang and the resulting conversation put all thoughts of Amy’s interview from his head.

Garry Briggs, the day barman, was unsure whether the scrap of information he could add to that of his colleagues was worth passing on, but he had seen the woman they were all being asked about leaving the hotel car park, on more than one occasion, in a black Celica. Barnaby asked Mr Briggs if he had noticed who was driving at the time.

‘She was.’

‘Are you sure? If this is the vehicle I’m thinking of the windows would be dark.’

‘Positive. Saw her getting in and out. Always on her own.’ When these remarks were received in silence he added regretfully, ‘I did say it wasn’t much.’

The chief inspector thanked him and hung up. Sergeant Troy, quietly attentive, was leaning forward, hands resting lightly on his knees. He said, ‘So she had the use of his car. Which means she wasn’t a casual pick-up.’

‘Find Laura Hutton’s statement, would you?’

Looking slightly puzzled, Troy did so. Barnaby read it quickly through while punching out her number. She picked up the phone immediately but asked if he would ring back.

‘I’m showing an estate agent round at the moment.’

‘It won’t take a second, Mrs Hutton. It’s about the night you saw this woman arrive at Plover’s Rest. Do you remember—’

‘Good God, man, of course I remember.’

‘What I’m asking is,’ he glanced down at the form, ‘you said she knocked at the door.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Did you see anyone open it?’

‘Well ... Gerald.’

‘But did you see?’

‘No. The porch is in the way.’

‘Did you hear the chain being taken off, perhaps?’

‘Not really. The taxi’s engine was running.’

‘Just one more thing. When you looked through the window—’

‘I’m not discussing this matter any more. I’ve told you - there’s someone here.’ She banged the phone down.

It didn’t really signify. Barnaby, mentally transported to the cottage, stood precisely where Laura Hutton had stood, in the soft earth of the flower border, and peered through an imaginary gap in the velvet curtains. He recalled the shape and furnishings of the room.

‘What’s all this in aid of, chief?’

Barnaby did not reply for some time. Just sat, his eyes focused on the past, tapping at the statement absently.

‘We’ve been taking things at face value, sergeant.’

‘How’s that then?’

‘Obviously one has to do this at the beginning of a case, but I have foolishly let things run on.’

‘You mean in respect of this woman?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wouldn’t say that, chief. We’ve followed the usual procedures. We already know a little bit more about her. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before she’s found.’

‘I doubt if she will ever be “found”, Gavin. I doubt, in fact, if she exists at all.’

‘But all these people have seen her.’

‘I believe that what they have seen is Gerald Hadleigh.’

‘Hadleigh?’

‘That’s right.’

There was complete silence after this. Troy searched for the correct response. Or at least one that would not make him look an absolute prat. But the truth was that this bizarre possibility had simply not occurred to him and, far from now appearing quite likely, the more he thought about the idea the barmier it seemed. In the end he said, simply, ‘What makes you so sure, sir?’

‘Various things, but primarily aspects of Hadleigh’s character. This immense reserve, for instance, that everyone who has met him comments on. His secrecy. I’m obviously guessing blind here, but he may have regarded this woman as his true self and the suave, retired civil servant as a false persona. This would make all the lies he seems to have told comprehensible.’

‘Freaky deaky.’ Troy flashed his Glad To Be Normal button. ‘Just a tarty old drag queen then.’

‘I was thinking of transvestism, which is a much more complicated business. The majority are heteros, often with wives and families. The condition is a psychological one and may not affect their sex lives at all.’

‘It’d bloody affect mine,’ said Troy. ‘Maureen came to bed in pit boots, Y-fronts and a jokey moustache I’d be right out the window.’ He paused, shocked into temporary silence by the very thought. ‘So what do they get out of it then? I mean - queers dressing up, OK, it’s sick,’ - he pulled a face of grotesquely exaggerated repulsion - ‘but if they’re playing the girly part in these gruesome fuckarounds, well ... there you go. But for a straight bloke to do it just to sit around in a hotel lobby - what’s the point?’

‘Simply to be accepted in public as a woman.’

Simply? What was simple about stapling your balls together and calling yourself Doris?

‘They have their own clubs as well. Places where they can meet. But the real challenge is to walk down the street without anyone having the faintest idea that you aren’t exactly what you appear to be.’

‘You seem to know all about it, chief,’ said Troy. Then, watching his back, ‘No offence.’

‘Cully had a friend that way inclined. At Cambridge. She talked about him a lot.’

‘Right.’ The sergeant erased, with some difficulty, a lovely face from his mind’s eye. ‘He certainly seemed to have kept it under his saucy black hat. Not easy in a sharp-eyed place like Midsomer Worthy.’

‘I presume the way it worked was, he’d get all togged up then into the garage via the kitchen and drive straight off.’

‘Having first opened the garage doors.’

‘Well, as the general idea was to avoid drawing attention to himself, Gavin, I think we can safely assume he would have first opened the garage doors, yes.’

‘So, when the car was stolen, he’d be right up shit creek.’

‘Which is why he didn’t go to Uxbridge station to report the theft.’

‘But didn’t Laura Hutton say this woman knocked and someone let her in?’

‘I see that as an extra precaution. Although it was late, and the taxi had taken him right up to the house, at the moment he alighted he must have felt extremely vulnerable. Those halogen lamps are hellish bright. What if someone had chosen that moment to walk by? Or been peeping out from their net curtains?’

‘Or, as things turned out, hiding behind a bush.’

‘It’s common sense to assume that, if you see a person knock on a door and then disappear inside a house, the door has been opened from the inside. But we now know that Mrs Hutton did not see that actually happen.’

‘Hang on though ...’ Troy screwed up his face again, this time in concentration. ‘Didn’t she see this woman and Hadleigh through the window? Drinking wine or something.’

‘No. She saw only the woman.’

‘But Hadleigh’d hardly be drinking a toast to himself.’

‘I think that’s just what he was doing. There’s a mirror over the fireplace. Why shouldn’t he be raising a glass in self-congratulation after having made it safely back?’

‘Yeah. Actually ...’ Troy abandoned the sentence but nodded, indicating that he understood completely. Tell the truth, he himself had more than once, whilst waxing and buffing his newly-bought, secondhand Ford Sierra Cossie, raised a can of ice-cold Carling’s and winked at the drop-dead stud reflected in the wing mirror. A thought displaced this attractive recollection.

‘No wonder Laura Hutton thought the woman reminded her of somebody. It was Hadleigh, not that painting. But if all this happened the night before the murder, where’s the kinky gear?’

‘Presumably in the suitcase.’

‘Wow.’ Troy barely breathed the exclamation. His mind was running every which way. ‘That’s why the chest of drawers was always kept locked.’

‘I should imagine so.’

‘But - not at the time of the murder?’

‘One of the things I discovered from Cully is that this need for cross-dressing often coincides with periods of extreme stress. And we know that Hadleigh was suffering in just such a way directly before he died.’

‘So - about to slip into the frillies, he was interrupted ...’ The words tumbled over each other. Troy got up and started walking around, as drawn to this new scenario now as he had previously been wary. ‘Which would explain why he had got undressed but not into his pyjamas. Hang about, though - would he even think of doing this while someone was still in the house?’

‘I would have said not. But we must remember that he and Jennings go back a long way. For all we know the “unpleasantness in the past” that Hadleigh referred to might have to do with this very thing.’

‘Perhaps Jennings was threatening exposure?’

‘Unlikely. What would be the point? It’s not as if Hadleigh’s breaking the law.’

‘True. The worse that could happen is a few funny looks from the locals. All he’d have to do then is pack his stuff and go back to the Smoke. Nobody cares up there if you’re buggering the goldfish on your night off. Even so,’ Troy stopped his pacing and sat down again, ‘must be relevant, all this clobber. Otherwise why would the murderer take it away?’

‘If it was the murderer.’

Troy stared at his boss in puzzled disbelief. ‘Who on earth else could it have been?’

‘Someone perhaps who loved him.’

‘Not with you.’

‘And didn’t want him mocked and jeered at, even in death.’

‘Laura?’

‘It’s the only name that springs to mind. It’s not entirely out of the question that, seeing how strangely he behaved throughout the evening, she may, in spite of her denials, have gone back to the cottage to see if he was all right.’

‘Found him dead, stuff spread about everywhere ... Could be. Jesus.’

Troy ran his fingers through his hair several times and with such vigour it stood on end. ‘Every time we discover something on this case it leaves us worse off than we were before. Now we’ve got at least two Hadleighs, both of which look to be completely unreal. Do you think he’s a headcase?’

‘I really don’t know.’

‘It happens. I saw this movie - woman had three separate personalities. None of them clocked what the others were up to.’

‘I know exactly how they felt,’ said Barnaby.

When Sue got back to the house after play group a hand delivered envelope was lying on the mat. It was not very clean and the torn flap had been stuck down with Sellotape. The pencilled words ‘For Brian’ were scrawled across the front. She put it on the kitchen table, propped up against the sauce bottle, where he couldn’t miss it.

Mandy got in first. Once upon a time, in the days when she had been daddy’s pet, she’d have waited for him and they would have driven home together. Now, even though she hated being the odd one out, she preferred to travel on the school bus. Packed in like lively sardines; wriggling, screaming, giggling, smoking, sitting on each other’s laps. Mandy, always on the very edge of the shoal, would laugh at all the jokes until her lips and throat ached, whether she got them or not. Sometimes she laughed too soon and they’d know she was putting it on.

Tonight, rather than laughing with them, they had been laughing at her. Three or four of the bigger girls, halfway down the bus, kept turning and staring in Mandy’s direction, whispering to each other, then cracking up. Edie Carter leading them on.

Mandy hated Edie worse than anyone. Hated her sly, white triangular face and piled-up tangle of flaming hair and slanty eyes. And Tom was worse. Always making dirty remarks in a very soft, curling voice that made them sound even dirtier than they were already.

The status quo apropos Mandy’s previous position in class had now been quite restored. Her connection with the murder having been examined and milked dry she was of no further interest to anyone. Even the most unpopular girls in the class barely spoke and Haze Stitchley had gone back to ignoring her completely.

A dozen got off the bus at the Green, linked up in twos and threes and hurried off. Though only four o’clock it was nearly dark and there was a cutting edge to the wind. Mandy raced up the garden path and into the house, banging the door behind her. She dropped her bag and coat on the sitting-room floor and switched on the telly. The fire was a depressing heap of smouldering paper and twiggy sticks beneath a tottering pyramid of coal.

Mandy remembered this time yesterday, when she had been sitting in a big, soft armchair in her nan’s cosy lounge. She had barely fallen into its downy embrace before a tray containing a monster iced Coke, buttered crumpets and chocolate-fudge Swiss roll had been placed in her lap together with the TV remote control.

Her nan and grandad didn’t drone away about school, asking dreary questions about her day and how she was getting on. Just let her eat and drink and zap through programmes to her heart’s content. Unlike her parents they really seemed to want her to be happy. Mandy wished she was there now.

Barging into the kitchen she said, ‘What’s the matter with the fire?’

‘It’s sulking.’

‘But you know I get home at four.’

‘I do, Amanda,’ Sue lowered her Guardian, ‘but I don’t think the fire has quite got the message.’

Mandy stood gaping at her mother. Instead of being on the flit, hovering somewhere between the cooker, sink and table, as was usual whenever anyone entered the kitchen, Sue was sitting by the Aga with her legs up at an angle. Her ankles were crossed and her feet, in their thick, felted fisherman’s socks, were perkily tilted in the air.

Mandy went to the table. At her place was the usual home-made gravelly finger of oaty molasses-flavoured goodness, a piece of fruit and a glass of apple-juice concentrate diluted one to twenty.

‘I got chocolate cake yesterday,’ said Mandy.

‘I had chocolate cake myself, this morning.’

‘Great! Where is it?’

‘I’ve eaten it. I bought it to share with the play group. We were celebrating.’

Sue waited, to give the lines, Oh, really, mum? Gosh, how interesting. What were you celebrating? Do tell me all about it, plenty of time to waste their sweetness on the desert air. Then she took her feet down and turned to face her daughter.

‘I heard from Methuen this morning.’

‘Who?’

‘They publish children’s books. I sent them my story about Hector. The editor wants me to have lunch with her. In London.’

‘Big deal,’ said Amanda.

‘I think so,’ replied her mother.

Sue got up, opened the fridge and got out a wine bottle. There wasn’t much left, but what little there was she poured into a tumbler that had been resting on the floor beside her chair. Then she threw the bottle into the pedal bin, returned to her seat and disappeared behind the arts page of the newspaper.

Her eyes prickled and the print was definitely on the swimmy side. In fact one feature heading (‘A Hundred and One Dalmatians; the Influence of Pointillisme on Dodie Smith’) actually seemed about to dissolve. But Sue scrunched up her eyelids and swilled the tears back into her head by sheer force of will. It was nothing but foolishness to be cast down. After all, Amanda’s response was no more than she, Sue, had expected.

Sue laid her fingers briefly on her breast, where the precious letter lay, folded small inside her bra. She had rung Methuen’s about an hour ago. At first she had talked too much from nervousness and wine, but then, fearing they might think her wildly unstable and change their minds about the book, she had clammed up entirely. She had hardly been able to choke out an acceptance of the first date suggested. When she tried to make a note of this, the pen had twice slipped from her fingers and she’d had to put the phone down while she crawled around looking for it. The editor, who sounded very kind, and neither impatient nor amused at Sue’s ineptitude, then gave her the name of the nearest tube and directions on how to find the building, It was only after Sue’s palsied hand had clattered the receiver back onto its rest that she realised the thirteenth was only four days away.

‘I got buttered crumpets as well last night.’ Amanda affected to gag on the cookie. ‘My nan says I need—’

‘I don’t give a stuff what your nan says. She wants to try managing on my housekeeping. You’d be lucky to get a glass of water and a cream cracker never mind a buttered bloody crumpet.’

There was a long silence. Neither of them could quite believe their ears. Mandy gawped, mouth hanging open, sticky brown tongue clearly visible. Sue retired once more behind her screen, proud that, though her heart was riven with tremors, the sheets of newspaper remained completely still. She thought, I must be drunk. Was it possible that in vino veritas was not just some bibulous old soak’s tarradiddle but a matter of simple fact? And that, beneath the self-preserving layers of submissive docility, slept a person capable of extreme nastiness? Oh God, prayed Sue, I do hope so.

She lowered the Guardian. Amanda had gone. Scooby Doo had come. As now had Brian, kicking his boots against the front step in an attention-seeking, exaggerated way for all the world as if he had just bid hail and farewell to Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

He came into the sitting room, grumbled at Mandy for throwing her things on to the floor, laughed over-heartily at Scoob then strode straight through the kitchen into the toilet. Here he withdrew his penis, which looked and felt as if it had spent the previous twenty-four hours marinading in a jar of chili paste, with extreme care. He urinated, tucked himself tenderly away and zipped up very, very slowly. Emerging from the bathroom he stared, much as Amanda had done, at the sight of his spouse sitting (lolling might be more accurate) with her feet up.

Brian gave the room a sharp once-over but everything looked clean and tidy and tea was, as usual, on the table. Propped against his mug was a letter. Brian picked it up. As soon as he saw the writing he knew it was from Edie. His stomach heaved. Feeling both excited and alarmed he wriggled into the piney niche and forced himself to sit calmly and make some show of eating.

The food nearly choked him. The food and apprehension. Coming to the house! He’d have to put a stop to that. That sort of thing could lead to trouble. She was obviously desperate to see him again. Understandable. He was pretty keen to see her too. In fact, during a day spent teaching on automatic pilot (not that his class had noticed the difference) Brian had done nothing but dream of the future. He had already decided that, once he had obtained his freedom, they would be married. His parents would kick up of course, because of the social gap, but they’d come round. And eventually he would want children, though obviously he and Edie would be all in all to each other for a long time first.

‘There’s a letter for you.’

‘I do have eyes, thank you.’ Brian picked it up and pursed his lips, casually judicious. ‘Any idea who brought it?’

‘No. It was here when I came back from play group.’ Brian was quite proud of the cool way he dropped the bulky envelope into his cardigan pocket and carried on munching his banana and walnut bap while it lay there, sizzling.

‘Probably someone can’t make rehearsal.’

‘How’s it doing? Your play?’

‘Fine.’

Sue watched him poking food into the pink hole in the middle of his beard, then priss up his lips and use his little finger to dab at the tight corners, checking for crumbs.

‘I shall be going to London on Tuesday.’

‘London?’ He stared across the room without seeing her. ‘What for?’

‘My lunch. With the editor.’

‘Oh. Right.’ It was no good. He couldn’t wait. Not another second. Not another heartbeat. Certainly not as long as it took to get out from the table and hide himself away. ‘Could you do me a favour, Sue? Please.’

His wife could not conceal her consternation. She said, ‘Are you all right?’

‘Would you mind getting me some dry socks? These are soaking.’

She took forever. Twenty-four hours to drag herself to the edge of her chair. A week to attain the vertical. A month to make it to the door. Six more to cross the sitting room. A year to climb - God’s truth! - she was coming back.

‘Any special sort?’

‘No, no, no. No. You choose.’

Somehow he waited, fists clenched and his body in a tight little ball. Holding his breath like a drowning man conserving energy. Then, when he heard her clogs clatter on the floorboards overhead he tore at the envelope, his fingers all thumbs. And drew out the contents.

When Barnaby got back to Arbury Crescent there was a postcard from Cully - in black and white, of the Radziwill Palace in Warsaw. The greeting was, as usual, dryly noncommittal. Playing to great houses, invited everywhere. The weather was fine, Nicholas was fine, she was fine. Don’t forget to video The Crucible. Love Cully. Cross, cross, cross.

Barnaby wondered, as he so frequently did, just how much she did love them. Or even if she loved them at all. Surely, she must. You couldn’t devote years of protective tenderness and concern, gut-wrenching anxiety and supportive admiration to someone and not have that person reciprocate, if only to a modest degree, in kind.

But of course you could. Beloved children took their place in your heart carelessly for granted and your devotion as no more than they deserved. They did not see it for what it was, the best you could do, but merely as the least you could do. It was only the desolate and deprived, the youthful walking wounded amongst whom Barnaby spent so much of his time, who saw the truly colossal magnificence of such a gift.

Joyce watched her husband, frowning down at the postcard in his hand. He was wearing his ‘better than nothing’ look. Half resentment, half relief. The light caught his grizzled sideboards and his still thick, black and silver hair. Thirteen hours since he had left for work and she could tell from his absent and distracted movements that he was still there in spirit.

Some cases were like this. She simply lost him. Watched as he became subsumed into an alternative universe in which there was no honestly relevant part for her to play. It was not that he didn’t, quite frequently, describe to her what was engaging his attention. But there was no way that these occasions could be mistaken for discussions.

Lying back on the sofa, Tom would ramble on in a shapeless, repetitive manner, with his eyes closed, rather on the ‘how do I know what I think till I say’ principle. And Joyce would listen with attentive and sympathetic interest even as she remained aware that, for quite long periods, he would have forgotten her presence entirely.

She had, very early in their marriage, seen exactly what a policeman’s wife was in for. Loneliness, disorienting time patterns, stressful periods of isolation and the constant apprehension that today might be the day he would be brought home, like a Roman soldier, lying on his shield.

Wives had various ways of coping - or not - with all these aspects of police life. Joyce chose what seemed to her the safest, most pleasant and most sensible. Whilst Tom and, later, Cully remained the emotional lynchpins in her life, from the earliest days of her marriage she had looked constantly outwards, developing and sustaining friendships (virtually none within the Force) and working on the second most important thing in her life, her music. She had a lovely, rich mezzo-soprano voice and still sang frequently in public. Lately she had started to teach.

Her husband, having laid the brief communication from their daughter on the television set, was staring gloomily into a mirror over the fireplace.

‘What’s it a sign of when policemen start looking older?’

‘That their wives are extremely hungry.’

‘Is that a fact?’ He smiled at her in the glass, turned, made his way to the kitchen. ‘Did you get everything?’

‘Nearly. I bought fromage frais though, instead of double cream.’

Expecting a rebuke, she was surprised when he said, ‘Good. I won’t use butter either.’

‘Tom?’ He was wrapping a blue-and-white striped tablier around his middle and didn’t look at her. It barely met round the back. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Come on.’

‘What?’

‘Something’s happened.’

‘No.’

Barnaby set out his materials and batterie de cuisine. Copper bowl and pan. Whisk, kitchen scissors. Brown free-range eggs, smoked salmon, a day-old cob of French bread, pot of chives.

Best not to tell her. She would worry and fret and it wasn’t as if he was not already mending his ways. When the case was over he would go back to the doc. Get his progress monitored. Start taking proper care of himself. Maybe even do a spot of exercise.

‘Shall I wash the watercress?’

‘Pour me a drink first, Joycey.’

‘If you have it now you can’t have wine with your meal.’

‘I know, I know.’

‘She opened the fridge, which was half full of glasses. Tom preferred a cold container to cold wine, saying he never had the patience to wait for the latter to warm up sufficiently to release its scents and savours whereas, the other way, within seconds the wine was just right.

Joyce opened a bottle of ’91 Gran Vina Sol. Barnaby, scissoring open the salmon packet said, ‘If I can only have one glass you might at least fill it up.’

‘Any fuller and it’ll spill when you lift it.’

‘So I’ll lap. Which reminds me - where is our guzzly little scumbag?’

‘Tom!’ She put some bread in the toaster before turning on the cold tap and holding watercress in the clear stream. ‘You know you like him really.’

‘I do not “like him really”.’ He covered strips of fish with fromage frais. ‘I want him to pack his clobber in a red-spotted handkerchief, tie it on the end of a stick and sling his hook.’ Barnaby drank deeply. Only once but with great relish. ‘Ohh ... wonderful. This is wonderful. Try some.’

‘Hang on.’ She patted the watercress dry before sipping at her drink. ‘Mmm ... nice. But I preferred the other stuff. The one that smells of elderflowers.’

Barnaby whisked the eggs and tipped them into the pan saying, as he did so, ‘Watch the toast.’

When it was crisp and pale gold Joyce painted all the slices thinly with low-fat spread.

‘Aren’t you having butter?’ He tipped the salmon and chive snippings into the pan and agitated the wooden spoon, easing moist curls of scrambled egg from the sides and bottom of the pan.

Joyce said, ‘Seems a bit flaunty when you can’t.’

‘Don’t be silly. No point in both of us fading away.’

I can hack this calorie caper, decided Barnaby, sitting now at the table, his mouth full of peppery cress, creamy eggs and golden wine. It’s all a question of attitude. I’ve been looking at it from quite the wrong angle. Like a prisoner facing a life sentence. In fact the only meal you need to diet at is the one you’re eating. All the rest can be as fattening as you like. By the time he started on his huge, fat Comice pear and tiny shred of Dolcelatte he was feeling not merely resigned but almost content.

Joyce made some excellent Blue Mountain coffee and, after she had poured it out, stood behind her husband’s chair, slid her smooth, soft arms around his neck and laid her cheek against his.

Barnaby turned his head, showing pleasure, wamth, a faint surprise. They kissed at some length like dear, close friends who were in love. Which is what they were.

‘What’s brought this on?’

‘Good grief, Tom. Don’t make it sound as if there has to be an R in the month.’

What had brought it on? That rapid disclaimer against her concerned question? That lying disclaimer. For that something had occurred to make him aware of his own mortality she had no doubt. He would tell her eventually, when he thought the danger was past. He always did.

Joyce experienced a vivid recollection. Herself at nineteen. A first-year concert at the Guildhall. Afterwards, on the fringe of a milling crowd of students, teachers, proud parents and friends, a slim young copper, ill at ease and hopelessly out of place, clutching a bunch of flowers. Waiting with dogged patience for his turn to be noticed.

He was getting up now. Turning to take her in his arms. His eyes moved intently over her face, as if stamping every individual feature to memory. And asking a silent question. Joyce laughed and said, ‘If we were really imbued with the spirit of adventure we would fall to here and now on the kitchen table.’

‘Eh?’

‘I was reading this article on how to be sexually spontaneous. In the hairdresser’s.’

‘Who the hell wants to be sexually spontaneous in the hairdresser’s?’

‘Called “How To Keep Your Marriage Alive”.’

‘How to put your back out more like. No’ - they linked arms and made their way into the hall - ‘it’s the boring marital bed again I’m afraid, sweetheart.’

‘Dreary old missionary.’

‘You knew my faith when I proposed.’

After they had made love Joyce fell quickly asleep, her head on her husband’s breast, still cradled in his arms. Not wishing to disturb her he eased an extra pillow beneath his shoulders and half sat, half reclined, running over the events of the day, the previous day, the one before that. Searching his mind for connections and resonances, hidden meanings, false interpretations.

He did not dwell at any length on that evening’s debriefing, for it had been unprofitable to say the least. It produced only one new scrap of information and that from the outdoor team. In 1983 Beecham’s Removals had collected Gerald Hadleigh’s furniture and personal effects, neither from Kent nor London SW1, but from a storage depot in Staines.

This being the sum total on offer, Barnaby had then offered his notes on the interview with Mrs Lyddiard, plus his ideas on Hadleigh’s feminine alter ego, which had been received with a mixture of wary caution and polite incredulity. Indeed, as he described the psychological persona that he had so confidently constructed earlier in the day, he started to wonder himself if it was not so much imaginative as imaginary.

Eventually he slept, dozing and waking intermittently, disturbed by the wind howling through the trees and a branch tapping on the window. At one point, in that dark hinterland between sleeping and waking, he found himself walking down a narrow street of bulbous cobblestones illuminated sporadically by pools of ochre-coloured light. He was carrying something very heavy. His arms were stretched out parallel and this heavy object lay, a dead weight, across them. Not that it was dead in fact for there were shallow, panting sounds emanating from it.

He halted beneath an overhead iron bracket holding a funnel, from which the strangely coloured light was flowing, to take a closer look at his burden. It was a seal. Lumpen and graceless on land, its prickly grey-brown fur was dull and dry. The head hung loosely down. There was a strange mark - a ring of darker fur, like a collar or noose - about its neck. As he stood holding it, concerned and perplexed, it turned a pointed, doggy face and stared at him. The round eyes were also dull and covered with a gluey film. He realised, with a shock of horror, that it was dying.

He must find water. He started to walk as quickly as he was able. In his mind there was a picture, just around the bend of the street, of a river. He remembered the bridge, people fishing. He staggered along, knees buckling, sweat streaming from his face and hair. But, when he finally turned the corner, the river and bridge had disappeared. In its place was an open sandy plain on which strange animals roamed.

Barnaby looked into the seal’s clouded eyes. They seemed to bestow no blame for his stupidity, only to be consumed by a quiet and terrible sadness. He could not bear it and began once more to struggle on. The world was full of water. Surely soon he must find some.

The surface of the pavement had become transformed. It was now spongy and yielding and his feet sank further in with every step. It was cold too. He felt the chill dampness of it seeping over the edge of his shoes. There was moisture on his hands and he saw that silvery froth had formed around the animal’s mouth. The yellow lights were getting dim.

Then, just as he felt his back was breaking, he saw, shining at his feet, a puddle. He lowered the seal into it, feeling the muscles of his arms jump and quiver at the moment of release. The seal turned over and over in the water. Its fur sparkled, the eyes and whiskers shone. Then, as Barnaby watched, the beads of light on its coat and the reflected light in the puddle conjoined until the seal and the water were one oddly shaped mass of gleaming silver. Trees, tall as telegraph poles, sprang up all around. Faxes chattered in their branches and reams of paper tumbled down. A woman, veiled all in black, appeared and disappeared, rushing through the air, draperies flying, on a high swing. The mysterious silver shape was becoming transformed into something longer and more streamlined.

Watching this process, so entirely out of his control, Barnaby was overcome by a strong sense of hazard. And yet, when the metamorphosis was complete, the result could not have been more ordinary. A motor car. Pearly pale with an interior full of shadows. As Barnaby bent to peer inside, one of the shadows turned a smiling face in his direction. He knew at once that he had found Max Jennings. And awoke hours later, with a totally numb left arm, a ball of fur dossing on his chest and a clamorously ringing telephone to hear that it was true.