Written in Blood

Hunting in Full Steel

It was the start of a new week and the weather had changed completely. Warmer, with a mizzle of rain. A sly day, as they say in Suffolk. When Troy entered the office Barnaby was on the phone. The sergeant saw immediately what was going on. The chief’s expression was one he recognised, blank, self-controlled, constraining with some force the response he thought appropriate to the occasion.

‘I am aware of that, sir ...

‘Yes, I shall be talking to him again this morning ...

‘It’s hard to say at this stage ...

‘I’m afraid not ...

‘Naturally I will ...

‘I have already done so ...

‘I’m sure we all hope ...

‘No. At least nothing I’d care to put on the table ...

‘I am pursuing—’

Troy heard the crash as the interrogator slammed the phone down right across the room. Barnaby replaced his own receiver without any visible signs of irritation.

‘Being leaned on from the top, chief?’

‘The head lama himself.’

‘Spit in your eye don’t they? Llamas?’

Barnaby did not reply. He had picked up a pencil and was doodling on a large note pad.

‘Jennings’ solicitor, is it?’

‘Just earning his hundred fifty an hour.’

‘They got it sussed - lawyers,’ said Troy, unbuttoning a cream trench coat of martial cut embellished with epaulettes, buckles, a belt of highly polished leather and pockets so wide and deep they could well have contained reinforcements from the US cavalry.

‘Whoever loses they win. Crafty buggers.’ He shook out the coat and placed it on a hanger, smoothing the fabric out and fastening the buttons.

‘You’re wasted here, sergeant. You should have been a valet.’

‘Load of rear gunners. I suppose it’s pressing trousers all day.’

‘Well, when you’ve finished faffing about, I’m in dire need of a caffeine shot.’

‘I’m as good as gone,’ said Troy, who was indeed already opening the door. ‘Do you want anything to eat?’

‘Not right now.’

Barnaby was pleased with himself for not feeling peckish. Perhaps his stomach was adapting. Shrinking to accommodate the modest input that was now its daily portion. Of course, it could be that it was still only half an hour from breakfast time.

The kitten had, as usual, been present and making a nuisance of itself. After a polished performance of naked greed and winsome precocity it had climbed on to Barnaby’s knee, displayed its bottom, sat down and massaged his trousers with its claws. All this to the sound of excessive purring.

‘Why is it always me?’ A cross demand to the room at large.

‘He knows you don’t like him,’ replied Joyce.

‘Dim then, as well as hoggish.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that.’

This morning, perhaps recalling his previous manhandling over the marmalade, Kilmowski contented himself with simply looking at Barnaby’s breakfast plate, looking at Barnaby, sighing a lot, yawning and turning round and round. Eventually, waiting till his wife’s back was turned, Barnaby gave the kitten a small piece of bacon. Followed by a bit of rind for its cheek.

Joyce said: ‘Why don’t you just put him on the floor?’

The coffee arrived. Troy backed into the room with a tray holding a large Kit Kat and two cups and saucers. He put one of these on the desk before metaphorically licking a finger and holding it to the wind.

The atmosphere didn’t seem to be all that bad. Not when you took into account the recent bollocking from the chief super. These were notorious. Poisonous bloody things, likened, by one recipient, to having your head forced down a blocked-up toilet.

Yet here was the DCI, barely minutes after the affray, swigging his drink and doodling with his pencil as if it had never happened. You had to admire him.

Troy, silently doing just that, wondered what was on the note pad. Barnaby was working with close, tiny strokes as if filling something in. Probably plants. Or leaves. The chief was good at that. Nature drawing. He said it helped him concentrate.

Troy unwrapped his chocolate, ran his thumbnail down the silver paper, snapped the biscuit in half. Then, munching, he eased his way around Barnaby’s desk for a quick shufty.

He hadn’t been far out. Primroses. Beautifully done, just like in a book. Tiny flowers softly shaded with grey, leaves with all the bumps on. Even dangly roots, thready and slightly tangled.

Troy felt envious. I wish I could do something like that, he thought. Paint or play music or write a story. Admitted, he could paralyse club cronies with a well-told joke. And his karaoke ‘Delilah’ at the Christmas party had been described as shit-hot. But it wasn’t quite the same.

Seeing the chief’s cup empty he tidied it away, saying, ‘You come to any decision about Jennings yet, sir? Whether he’s still in the frame?’

‘I doubt it. We’re checking out the story he told about Hadleigh’s antecedents. If Conor Neilson had been leading the sort of life described he’d almost certainly be known to the Garda.’

‘Plus it’s an uncommon name.’

‘Not over there it isn’t. And this stuff from forensic is not encouraging.’ He indicated several glossy photographs and closely typed back-up sheets. ‘Jennings’ prints are in the sitting room, on various pieces of crockery, the ashtray and the front door. Nothing upstairs—’

‘There wouldn’t be. The murderer wore gloves.’

‘Don’t interrupt!’

‘Sorry.’

‘Then there’s the problem of his shoes. No fibres from the stair or bedroom carpet. No blood or other substances. No skin particles. They’re absolutely clean. And you know as well as I do you can’t do a job like the one we’re looking at and take nothing from the scene. They’re working on his suit at the moment but I can’t say I have high hopes.’

‘Bit of a blind alley, then?’

Barnaby shrugged and put down his pencil. Troy had been quite wrong in thinking that the chief superintendent’s sarcastic volley had been easily put aside. Though years of practice and a reasonably equable temperament enabled Barnaby to maintain an imperturbable facade he was, in fact, not unperturbed at all but experiencing the beginnings of a dark depression. A grey dried-upness of the mind.

The reason for this was not unknown to him. He had been indulging in the very thing against which his warnings to others had always been so stringent. Ever since the interview with St John - which meant virtually from the outset - his perception of the case had been subtly narrowing. Whilst giving lip service to this or that possibility he had, gradually, become convinced that it was with Jennings alone that the solution lay.

Either Max had killed Hadleigh and run away or he possessed some knowledge that would provide the key that could unlock the mystery. In any event Jennings’ capture and the conclusion of the case had, in Barnaby’s imagination, become so powerfully intertwined that he was now finding it extremely difficult to accept the fact that the first was quickly seeming to have little or no bearing whatsoever on the second. Which left him precisely where?

Well, once he had accepted that Jennings was telling the truth, there were three options. The first, that Hadleigh had been murdered by a passing opportunist who had then left with a suitcase full of women’s clothing but without a Rolex watch worth thousands seemed barely credible.

The second was that he had been killed by someone known to him either in his feminine persona or casually as a homosexual partner. Remembering Jennings’ description of the dead man’s view of sex as an itch to be scratched in degrading places with degrading people this idea was depressing in the extreme. It meant they could be looking at someone who’d known Hadleigh for five minutes, maybe followed him home from some impersonal encounter, sussed the set-up and returned at a later date to see what was in it for him.

The length and breadth - not to mention the expense - of setting up the sort of open-ended investigation required should this be so meant it had virtually no chance of being undertaken. The case would remain a matter of record and permanently unsolved unless, and it could be years later, some sharp-eyed operative had their memory jogged and spotted a significant-looking connection or heard an echo. Sometimes it happened.

Option three, you worked further on what you’d already got, which was massively less complicated. If the door-to-door results were anything to go by, Hadleigh had remained aloof from village matters, received no visitors and mixed socially only with members of the Writers Circle, one of whom was in fruitless love with him. Barnaby scribbled their names beneath his primroses.

Brian Clapton. He could be further leaned on, which procedure would no doubt bring about some pathetic smutty little confession involving after-dark peepshows and furtive onanism.

Of Rex St John’s innocence Barnaby was convinced. His story of Hadleigh’s visit was confirmed by Jennings’ revelations regarding their past connection. And St John’s distress and remorse - intensifying daily, if Mrs Lyddiard was to be believed - was surely further verification. And he was an old man. Pretty fragile to have delivered that series of immensely forceful blows.

Although fully aware of the dangers of allowing sympathy for any particular personality to cloud his judgement, Barnaby was still inclined to view both Sue Clapton and her friend Amy as completely uninvolved.

Honoria Lyddiard was something else. Physically more than competent to carry out the attack she was also psychologically capable, having the conviction, common to all fanatics, that their every thought, speech and action stemmed directly from some fundamental holy writ. Once a necessity for punishment had been established her sense of duty would allow her to inflict it without a qualm. But this crime - Hadleigh’s mashed-up skull was suddenly, vividly present - was not some cool affair of obligation. This was red-hot rage, way out of control.

Which left him with Laura Hutton who believed herself to have been betrayed. A motive there all right. One as old as time. Barnaby recalled his two interviews with her; the anguished wails of pain and tears of sorrow. Could this flood of misery have been partially instigated by remorse? He decided to talk to her again . As far as he knew she was still unaware of Hadleigh’s homosexuality and that her supposed rival did not really exist. These two revelations, if delivered in the right way at the right time in unfriendly, unfamiliar environs, could well bring about a genuine result. For it would surely take a much harder nut than Mrs Hutton to remain impervious in the face of the knowledge that she had committed a spectacularly gruesome murder for nothing.

Barnaby’s attention was caught by a strange scraping sound as Troy cleared his throat preparatory to speech.

‘Either cough, speak or sing, sergeant. I really don’t mind which. That sounds like someone swinging on a rusty bog chain.’

‘Just that it’s twenty-five to, sir.’

‘I’ve got eyes.’

Troy opened the door and a murmurous buzz from the incident room filled the corridor. Barnaby heard it without enthusiasm. Thirty men and women awaiting instruction. Inspector Meredith would be present: sharp-eyed, snake-hipped, snake-headed, with his painted-on black hair and golden origins. Listening. Falsely respectful, offering ideas with mock tentativeness. Biding his time. Youth and high-riding ambition on his side.

‘Right,’ said the chief inspector. He picked up the SOCO file, dropped the pencil in his frog mug and got heavily to his feet. ‘Let’s go and pool our ignorance.’

Brian was still in a state of shock. His hands and feet, even his skin, felt numb. He had a throbbing pain behind his eyes that came and went with the force of a blow, as if his skull was being rhythmically struck. Getting out of the car, propelling himself, zombie-like, to the staff cloakroom where he now stood, he realised he had no recollection of driving to school at all.

He had been like this, more or less, since the photographs arrived. Since Sue had gone upstairs to find unwanted socks and he had torn the envelope half across in his eagerness to get at the contents.

At first, impossible as it might seem given the appallingly explicit clarity of the pictures, Brian had not understood quite what was going on. For just a microsecond he had stared at Edie’s face, which peered fearfully back at him over someone’s bare shoulder, without recognition. Her eyes were wide and staring and her teeth sank into her bottom lip as if to trap a cry. Brian, even while feeling touched that she should have sent him a likeness of herself, could not help feeling slightly disturbed at the dramatic intensity of the pose.

Explanation quickly followed. The next picture showed white buttocks mooning high, if a trifle flatly, in the air. A third displayed Brian’s profile grinning in an exultant, wolfish way as he apparently forced the thin, childish figure trapped beneath him. There were half a dozen more. The last was the worst. It showed Edie sitting on the very edge of the settee in an attitude of absolute despair, her face buried in her hands. Brian, naked in the attitude of a conqueror, stood over her.

He cried out then, awful, unclarified terrors confusing his mind, and dropped them all. Swept the photographs from the table on to the floor. He remembered that moment. He had been about to reach out and comfort her. How could such a gesture of compulsive consolation be made to look so threatening?

At that point Sue came clogging down the stairs. Galvanised by the fear of discovery, Brian scrabbled up the photographs, lifted the lid of the Aga and stuffed them inside. Knowing they must burn, he still stood there until they caught fire, blazed up, then folded softly into pale grey flaky layers. By the time Sue came in he was back in his chair and feeling as if a ten-ton truck had driven straight through him, leaving a jagged great hole behind.

Later, alone upstairs, Brian made some attempt to struggle out of the swamp of alarm and revulsion that was paralysing all coherent thought. It proved amazingly difficult, perhaps because he already had an inkling of the conclusion to which a rational assessment of the situation must inevitably lead.

All this while he was reliving the evening at Quarry Cottages. Kept seeing himself as through the camera’s eye, drinking, prancing about, disporting his body with amorous abandon. For all he knew they had photographed him writhing in agony during his riveting struggle with the jeans.

Which brought him to the all important question, who did he mean by ‘they’? Someone had been hiding with or without - oh God, please surely without - Edie’s knowledge. The pictures jumped gleefully to mind again. Untruthfully violent, unspeakably obscene. They had not been ordinary snapshots. There was something blurry and one-dimensional about them, rather as if someone had been photographing a television screen. The paper on which they were printed was different too.

Brian didn’t know whether to be more or less devastated by the fact that the envelope had contained no letter, directive or mention of further contact. In all the films he had seen featuring any sort of blackmail those on the receiving end had been given strict instructions to remain close to the phone and on no account to contact the police.

Brian’s tormentors need have no fear of that. At the very thought of an official interrogation his viscera, already jelly-soft, started sliding and slopping uncontrollably about. He felt sick and cold and also very angry. Schooled though he was in the repression of all emotion, but especially any of an anti-social nature, Brian wept with frustration.

Eventually he dried his face and beard. It was then nearly six o’clock. There was no way he could sit there and sit there then go down and have his supper and watch the television and go to bed and lie there and lie there. He would go mad. He had to do something. To take, however briefly and spuriously, the reins of his wretched existence back into his own hands. He dragged on an old jacket, the one he used to clean the car, and his hat with the let-down fleecy ear flaps, then ran downstairs, shouted something incomprehensible to Mandy through the sitting-room door and left the house.

Outside it was dark and foggy. Footsteps rang out on the hard ground some time before the walkers themselves loomed and melted away almost in the same instant. Commuters edged their cars homeward, searching in the foglamps’ glare for a familiar landmark or driveway. The lights around the Green were visible only as pale little smudges hovering in midair. The moon was a disc of dirty ice.

Brian was surprised afterwards with what a quick certainty his feet made their way to Quarry Cottages. Only once had he stumbled, falling into the gutter. A move which struck him as so symbolic of the whole sorry situation that he almost started to cry again.

When he could dimly see the outlines of the cottages Brian slowed up and approached the area where he guessed the paling fence to be. He walked on tiptoe. Every room in the Carters’ house had the lights on. The windows, honeycombed by many little panes, glowed. Four square yellow eyes watched him out of the fog. Next door was dark.

Brian recalled standing there twenty-four hours ago - no, tell a lie, twenty-one. The emotions he had felt then faded to nothing beside the despairing lack of fortitude and terrible giddiness that engulfed him now. His mouth filled up with a sour liquid and he spat into his handkerchief. Quietly, so as not to disturb the dog.

Having arrived he had no idea what to do. Edie would be in there if, as was usual, she had travelled home on the school bus. And perhaps Tom. But what of the muscularly advantaged Mrs Carter? Conine the Barbarian.

How little, Brian now realised, he knew of the family’s domestic arrangements. Did Edie’s mother go out to work? Maybe she was a victim of the recession and had lost her job. Could such a misfortune conceivably be behind what Brian was now forced to view as a mere twisted parody of romantic dalliance? If so, what could the reason be but to make money?

Momentarily this understanding made Brian feel better. Self-preservation he could understand. It was certainly a kinder motive than wanton sport. And he could see how the idea that his interest in Mrs Carter’s daughter was perhaps a little more personal than was strictly proper could have arisen.

For instance, it was possible that, in spite of constant vigilance, he had let the mask of professional director slip at some time. Anyone as perceptive and intelligent as Edie would certainly have noticed and Brian could just hear her, quite understandably, boasting a little about it afterwards.

Mrs C might well have put two and two together, creatively accounted the result as five and spotted an opportunity of sticking a nought, or even two, on the end. It certainly wouldn’t be much more. They were small-time, sad people - low achievers, without vision.

Even so, assuming the worse (i.e. five hundred), it would not be easy to raise. Brian ran over his options. He could abandon his car and claim the insurance. But that meant notifying the police and they would probably find it and let him know, then he’d be committing fraud if he persisted. Perhaps he could damage it. Or leave it on a railway line.

Startled at the speed at which he seemed to be desecrating the Claptons’ twin icons of law and order, Brian turned to the less dodgy notion of borrowing against the house. He had a thirty-year mortgage with twenty still to go, had never been behind with his payments and, as far as the Abbey National were concerned, must surely seem like a good bet for a top-up.

Option three: his parents. Brian, instantly a small boy again, rehearsed his mother’s opening lines.

‘You’re not in any trouble are you, dear?’

And Brian, standing roughly in relation to trouble as might a pebble to the Boulder Dam, would reply, ‘Of course not, Mummy.’

He knew nothing about his parents’ financial affairs. His father had never discussed such matters. But surely Mr Clapton senior must have some sort of nest-egg? A small emolument to show for the years of drudgery at his boring little clerical job in the city. Or maybe there was an insurance policy that could be realised. Of course Brian would pay them back.

But there would be endless questions. And what reason could he give? Not improvements on the house, for that could be checked-up on, and would be too. Brian’s parents, though timidly hesitant where the wide world was concerned, could be doggedly persistent when it came to the business of their close relations. Still, he could sound them out, perhaps under the guise of concern for their future financial wellbeing.

If all three sources failed he would be left with the bank, who would quite possibly cough up but would demand outrageous interest. But - wait a minute ...

How about Sue? She was a proper author now. Going to be in print. Didn’t they get given money even before publication? The writers’ group were always going on about it. Jeffrey Archer’s advance. Julie Burchill’s advance. Telephone numbers. Noughts so numerous they ran off the front of the cheque and had to go swanking round the back.

Brian’s breathing quickened. Nerve ends danced and jangled beneath his skin. He told himself not to get carried away. This was, after all, his wife’s first book. She couldn’t expect VIP treatment before they’d seen how successful Hector would turn out to be. Even so, there would be something. And, Christ knew, she owed it to him. Not only had he been keeping her for years but it was entirely her fault he had ended up in Quarry Cottage in the first place.

Brian screwed up his eyes and peered intensely into the fog, trying to discern signs of movement behind the windows. He removed his misted-up glasses and rubbed them on his jacket cuff. His teeth started to chatter and his beard to drip moisture. Then he sneezed.

Immediately the night was rent with the sound of ferocious barking. In an uncannily precise replay of the previous Thursday evening the cottage door swung open and a figure stood in the opening. On this occasion the spillage of light was almost non-existent, for the looming shape filled every inch of vacant space as if it had been inflated. History was repeating itself and, sure enough, the second time as farce. It was the giantess herself. She let out a coarse animal cry:

‘Whaahferkoodoonaer?’

Brian immediately retreated quite a long way, covering the distance in a single backward leap of admirably fluid grace. Then he turned and ran blindly up the muddy track, stumbling over stones, slithering over iced-up puddles and occasionally being slashed across the face by whippy twigs.

Now a loudly clamouring bell returned him to a wretched present. It was time to abandon the safety of the staff cloakroom for the terrors of the gymnasium. About to leave, Brian caught sight of himself in the mirror and stared, aghast. Hair sticking out everywhere, eyes bolting, teeth chomping and nibbling at his lower lip. He looked like some weird variety of marsupial in the final stages of delirium tremens.

He bathed his face, patted it dry with a paper towel, smoothed his damp hands over his head and toyed briefly with the idea of not turning up. He could send a message that he was ill, which was no more than the truth. But he simply had to know what was going on, to find out what their plans were.

He forced himself out into the corridor down which he had once skipped so lightly and swallowed hard to keep his gorge from rising. The phrase ‘choked on his own vomit’ came to mind. It had always struck him as singularly silly. Who else’s vomit could one possibly choke on?

Here were the doors already. The top halves were inset with thick, bubbled glass. Opaque but the shape and outline of those within could be seen, especially if they were in motion. Brian brought his face to the glass and squinted. Nothing. It was unnaturally quiet, too. Usually he would hear laughter and coarse shouts of aggro long before he’d reached the place itself. A great wash of relief left him trembling all over. He was reminded that the idea of blackmail was entirely his own. As for sending the photographs, that was probably no more than a malicious joke intended to frighten him. To get their own back for some imagined slight. Whatever the reason, they seemed to have chickened out. Best to make sure though. He pushed open the door.

Everyone was there. Down at the far end by the parallel bars. They were sitting cross-legged with stern, carved faces like warrior braves at a council of war.

Brian remembered explaining once that an empty space could be anything the actor cared to make it. Today there was no doubt about its function. It had become an arena.

As he began to make his effortful way over the vast expanse of gleaming parquet Brian’s legs seemed to be attached to lead weights. He marched on and the gap between himself and the others seemed hardly to shrink at all. But finally this mysteriously slow and humiliating journey came to an end. Resisting the craven urge to tuck himself on to the more harmless tip of the semi-circle, in other words next to little Bor, Brian sat down alone and en face.

He immediately regretted this realising, just too late, that he had surrendered a great advantage. Namely the opportunity to look down at everyone from a five-foot-six vantage point. Still, he could hardly scramble up again.

Brian took a deep breath and tried to select from the frantic and tumultuous chatter in his head a few pertinent and cutting opening remarks. He still hadn’t looked at anyone, which he recognised as another mistake, for the longer he refused to do so the more silly and cowardly must he appear.

Denzil said, ‘You got here, then?’

‘Yes, oh yes.’ Brian laughed. At least that was his intention. But it was a poor patched shred of a thing. A mere tatter of the old hyuf, hyuf.

He braced himself to meet their collective regard, but at the last moment his nerve failed and his eyes slid across to where Edie sat, close to her brother, her face hidden against his shoulder. They were completely still, but Brian felt their concentrated self-perpetuating energy. They were all the same, waxing fat on group bravado. His mother would have called it ‘egging each other on’.

‘Well you lot,’ began Brian and was shattered at the lack of authority in his voice. He sounded like a querulous child. He gave a little neigh, hoping thereby to release a deeper and more commanding timbre. ‘What’s all this about?’

Then, when no one replied: ‘If it’s some sort of joke I must confess I don’t think it’s very funny.’

‘Joke, Brian?’ Denzil frowned deeply. The movement tugged at the skin on his shaven skull and the spider wriggled. ‘Joke?’

‘Seems to me,’ said Collar, ‘there ain’t nothing even remotely funny about raping a fifteen-year-old girl.’

‘Rape!’ Brian nearly fainted. He remained upright only by placing his hands flat on the floor behind him and transferring his weight. There was a roaring in his ears and, though the beginnings of anger kept him conscious, his heart felt as if it was being sucked out of his chest by a vacuum pump.

‘That’s ... Not ... True ...’

‘You seen the evidence ain’cha?’

‘The pitchers.’

He would never stop seeing the pictures. Her anguished triangular face staring directly at the camera. The slender figure crouching submissively on the edge of the settee as if awaiting further punishment. Brian recalled with much bitterness his earlier conclusion that Edie couldn’t act for toffee.

‘Edie? Look at me. Please.’

As if even the sound of his voice was a threat she burrowed even more deeply into the protective crook of her brother’s arm. They sheltered together like orphans.

Brian, consumed with exasperation, cried, ‘There was no rape. It wasn’t like that.’

‘You calling her a liar?’ asked Collar. ‘On top of everything else what you done.’

‘No. Well. Yes, actually.’

‘Oh sweet Jesus.’ Edie began to cry. Soft moany little warbles, like a wounded pigeon. Her brother stroked the fiery floss of her hair, glaring at Brian in disgusted disbelief.

‘Edie ...’

‘Leave her alone,’ said Tom, his glance as cold as charity. ‘We’re looking after her now. I’m only sorry I never saw the need of it before.’

‘We had no warning, Brian, you see,’ said Denzil. ‘No hint that you were like that.’

‘I am not like that!’ The calm contempt in their eyes, their brazen hypocrisy, was driving him mad. When he tried to speak he almost gagged. ‘I would never have ... She asked me round ...’

‘You do that, Edie?’

‘Ask him round?’

Her response, though muffled in the folds of Tom’s coat, was perfectly audible. ‘He just turned up.’

‘See? You’re out your cranium, Bri.’

‘You’ll be saying next,’ Denzil spoke through bared teeth, ‘that you’re going to refuse to compensate her for that terrible ordeal.’

Brian saw Edie whipping off her top, rolling down her tights, guiding his tentatively erect member with expert fingers, striking a match against her thumbnail.

‘Too bloody right I am,’ he cried.

‘That’s not very nice,’ said Collar. ‘Swearing.’

‘Funny sort of example for a teacher to set.’

‘Yeah, but he’s a funny sort of teacher.’

‘All them extra-curricular activities.’

‘That he don’t wanna pay for.’

‘’Course it’s entirely up to him.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘If he can handle the consequences.’

‘Now let’s talk about this calmly and with—’

‘He can handle anything.’

‘A natural leader.’

‘A born leader.’

‘Plenty of bottle.’

‘Where it matters.’

‘That’s not the way I heard it.’

‘So. How does five thou strike you, Bri?’

‘Five smackaroonies.’

‘Five grand or all those juicy Awayday piccies turn up on Hargreave’s desk.’

‘He’s fallen over.’

‘I have not.’ Brian picked himself up. Lifted his skin-and-bone haunches and adopted a trembly negotiating posture identical, had he but known, to that of the chacma baboon on finding itself up a similar gum tree. ‘Look - can’t we talk this through? Go over the pros and cons, as it were.’

‘Them two words could be seen as highly insulting,’ said Tom. ‘Given the present circs.’

Brian mentally re-ran his last speech. He could see nothing in it to cause offence. Perhaps they were playing with him. Setting out to deliberately mishear or misinterpret everything he said as the secret police in totalitarian states were said to do. He really didn’t think he could bear that.

‘Don’t try trashing us about.’

‘Or pretending you got no money.’

‘’Cause this is serious shit we’re talking here.’

‘I certainly haven’t got that sort of money.’

‘You can raise it.’

‘Your sort always can.’

‘What do you mean - “my sort”?’

‘Middle-class wankers.’

Brian closed his eyes to shut out, if only momentarily, the sight of them. He found it almost impossible to believe that something so unspeakably dreadful was taking place. Brian was not a brave man. He could not even read the word ‘ordeal’ without a symbiotic flutter in his chest. Now as his bowels gave a slow cold churn he squeezed them tight, praying they would not leak. So much for grace under pressure.

‘Now listen, Cuntface,’ Denzil was saying in an easy, conversational manner. Brian assumed an expression of unearthly alertness. ‘See this?’

Denzil clenched his fist and the blue dots in the loose crinkly skin of his knuckles stretched themselves to read ‘GT BTN’.

‘Now you know,’ quavered Brian, ‘violence doesn’t solve anything.’

‘Don’t see how you make that out,’ argued Denzil. ‘You mess with his sister. We screw you to the wall. You leave her alone. Problem solved.’

‘But you can’t live like that,’ cried Brian, who would have been charmed by such disreputable logic had it surfaced in an improvisation.

‘You know a better way?’ asked Collar, with apparently genuine curiosity.

Brian stared around the ring of severe young faces and recognised his cause was hopeless. No point in searching for a flicker of sympathy or a weak link. As a last resort he started to whine.

‘What have I ever done to you?’ Silence. ‘Except to try and open up your pathetic lives a bit.’ The silence became slightly unpleasant. ‘Show you a more glamorous world. Introduce you to—’

Tom cut Brian short by raising his own right hand in a formal and very serious manner. He looked implacable and right and deeply authoritative.

‘There’s nothing else to say. We want half now, by which I mean tomorrow afternoon. And half Friday.’

‘And suppose I get it,’ said Brian, knowing he supposed the impossible.

‘We give you the tape.’

A tape! Of course. That explained the blurred prints and funny paper. Then, understanding this, various other incidents suddenly became significant. Her refusal to put the lights off. The music, which he had thought so romantic, was probably necessary to cover any sound from the camcorder. Oh! Edie of the sweet ginger ruff. Snake of my bosom. Viperette.

Hang about. Brian recalled the day, two terms ago now, when he had brought his brand-new Sanyo along to video rehearsals and it had disappeared. Could this possibly ... ?

‘What machine did you—’

‘We got a contact in Slough.’ Denzil had a nasty habit of running the tip of his tongue over the palm of his hand then stroking his scalp, repeating the movement over and over again. Brian had often wondered what his hand must taste like at the end of it.

‘He runs a little business.’ Collar took up the story. ‘Educational films.’

They all looked at each other and then at Brian in a way that made it clear the meeting was at an end. Brian got up and prepared once more to travel that vast Sahara of sand-coloured interlocking blocks of wood. He had finally reached the door when Edie called his name.

‘Yes.’ Brian wheeled around and began to hurry back, suddenly light of foot. ‘Yes, Edie - what is it?’

Edie, who had been fishing inside her Green Bay Packers jacket, now produced what looked like a piece of rag but was Brian’s underpants. She threw them on to the floor. They were inside out and a thin, brown smear was clearly visible. The idea came to Brian that he would turn and walk away. Show his contempt by leaving them. Then he wondered if the group might tell everyone. Perhaps even pass them round. He bent and picked them up.

This time he had barely reached the halfway mark when the call came. He didn’t turn round. Just stayed quite still, heart pounding with premonitory fright, stuffing his Y-fronts into his trouser pocket.

The voices started again. All of them at once. Not harsh and sneering as they had been before, but wheedling, seeming to beckon in a friendly way. Joshing him.

Brian, finding himself as he thought on the cutting edge of mass ridicule, almost ran the last few steps. Grabbing the handle, he swung the door open.

‘Don’t,’ Edie cried. ‘Brian? Don’t go.’

Now she was hurrying towards him, seizing his arm, persuading him towards her. Brian sensed rather than saw the rest of them, approaching in a clump behind her. Within seconds they were all about him too, urging him back into the centre of the room in a vigorous but jovial manner, little Bor actually tugging at his hand.

‘Whatcha think, Bri?’

‘Was it good?’

‘He really fell for it - didn’t you?’

‘He was in a recruitment mode in every sphere.’

‘In every cocking sphere.’

‘Can’t see it in the play, though. Can you, Bri?’

‘Nah. Can’t see this ...’ Suddenly Denzil had in his hand a flat black shining case. He started throwing it up into the air, spinning it, catching it again. Winking at Brian. ‘Actually in what you might call “the play”.’

‘You’re not mad are you, love?’ Edie linked up just as she had when they were drinking the Thunderbirds Mixed and smiled into Brian’s face. An open, guileless smile, full of confidence, expecting praise. ‘It was only an impro.’

Only an impro. Only an impro. Brian trembled and shook in an agony of hope and bewilderment and rage. Surely it could not be so. They would never have the wit or imagination or discipline to dream up and carry through such a scenario. They were too stupid. Thick. Cretinous. Moronic. Hateful in their vacuous self-esteem. Loathsome in their self-congratulation.

‘You said we could do our own. Don’t you remember?’

‘Last week.’

‘No harm done, ay Bri?’

Christ, they’d be asking him next if he couldn’t take a joke.

‘And we put a twist in the tail - like you said.’

‘A coody theatre.’

‘To “astound and amaze”.’

‘I know what he’s worried about.’ Denzil threw the tape. Brian snatched at the air and seized the box.

‘Is this the ... ?’

‘That’s it.’

‘The one and only.’

‘Refuse all substitutes.’

Brian unzipped his windcheater and put the tape inside. There was a long pause then, when Brian did not speak the circle around him started to break up. Denzil moved away to the parallel bars, released one of the ropes and started to swarm up it. The others, at a loose end, stared at Brian as if awaiting direction. They appeared, now that the fun was over, about to slip into their usual state of misanthropic lethargy.

‘We got half an hour yet, Bri.’

‘Don’t call me “Bri”.’

‘What shall we do, though?’

‘Do what you like.’ Brian felt the tape, the one and only, hard and safe against his concave chest. ‘Drop dead for all I care.’

He never intended to enter the gym again. All the stimulating and creative work that had taken place there was as ashes, dirty ashes, in his mouth.

‘Aren’t we rehearsing, then?’ asked little Bor.

‘I must have been mad to have ever wasted five minutes let alone five months of my life on any of you. Or to have thought that the stinking squalid sewers that pass for minds in your tiny pointed heads could ever begin to understand the first thing about literature or music or drama. I suggest you all crawl back to the gutter where you so obviously belong. And as far as I’m concerned you can stay there and rot.’

The briefing had been an arid business. Barnaby, having no definite lead, genuine insight or any sort of meaningful inspiration, was not a man to bluff and bluster his way towards giving the impression that he did. Nor did he blame the fact that he found himself thus high and dry on his team. That there were many officers, some far senior to himself, who would not have hesitated to do so was hardly a consolation.

Everyone had by then read the transcript of Jennings’ interview. The immediate response divided the incident room fairly cleanly down the middle. Half thought the story too far-fetched even for Brookside or EastEnders and the rest were moved and intrigued by the darkly predictive nature of the tale and the way it shed light on their previous understanding of the murder victim.

But if Barnaby had hoped for the sort of positive feedback that would shunt his inquiry on to a more fruitful and revealing track he was unlucky. True the room was full of silent support. The wish to contribute, perhaps even to brightly shine, was plain enough and the frustration at being unable to do so equally palpable. It was clearly killing Meredith.

Eventually Detective Constable Willoughby wondered aloud if Jennings might not himself be Neilson and had told the story to direct the investigation away from the successful figure he had now become. Admittedly there appeared to be an age discrepancy but he himself had established that and could well be lying.

Barnaby pointed out that the author’s CV was well documented and easily checkable and that he thought this probably made Constable Willoughby’s suggestion something of a no no. He did not put this at all forcefully - the lad was brand new and only eighteen - but Willoughby, though managing to nod calmly in response, thereafter was seen to fall quietly apart.

‘We shall have to start winding down here pretty soon if no new information emerges. We can’t have thirty people twiddling their thumbs. Some of you will have to go back to your divisions at the end of the week. Watch the board for names. We can always jack things up should the tide turn.

‘As for today, I’d like everyone who was present on the evening Hadleigh died re-interviewed. And before you do so go over their previous statements, including Hutton and Clapton’s follow-ups, until you know them inside out. Look for the smallest discrepancy or contradiction, especially self-contradiction. It’s six days since they talked to us. They’ll not only have forgotten most of what they said but they’ll have remembered things that they may well regard as irrelevant but which might be very relevant indeed to us. Don’t forget that though opinions won’t stand up in court they can sometimes point the way to stuff that will. Try and establish an atmosphere where errors can easily be admitted or minds changed. It’s often the fear of looking foolish that stops people backtracking and keeping what could be valuable information to themselves.

‘I want you to try and get behind what has been said already. Apparently straightforward remarks can often conceal something more complicated. Compare different people’s version of the same event. And easy does it. Five of the six people you’ll be talking to will have committed no offence whatsoever.’

Unnecessary to add it could well prove to be six out of six. Everyone knew how much real meat was on the plate.

‘I’d also like information about the day leading up to the meeting which, until now, has not been fully explored. Something untoward may have occurred but not been thought worth mentioning.’

At this point a uniformed sergeant asked if any decision had been reached regarding Max Jennings.

‘He’ll be released later this morning. I’ve nothing to hold him on.’

‘I was wondering, sir.’ Inspector Meredith spoke with a politeness so mannered and artificial he could have strayed in from a Restoration comedy.

‘Yes?’

‘I was going over both of Clapton’s statements last night.’ Well, bully for you, Ian. ‘Could I ask if you yourself have any ideas as to what he might have been doing between eleven and midnight on the night of the murder?’

‘Sergeant Troy seems to think he was hanging around a house in the village where a young girl, one of his pupils, lives.’

‘I see. Thank you, sir.’

Meredith had the extraordinary ability to write his thoughts across his face with absolute precision and without moving a muscle. What he was presently thinking was, ‘You should have mentioned that without being asked. Who now is hugging information to themselves?’

Troy said, almost matching the frozen politesse: ‘There is a note to that effect on the back-up file, sir.’

After the outdoor team had gone about their business Barnaby withdrew to his desk at the back of the room. No need to seek the sanctuary of his office now for peace and quiet. The telephones, so clamorous a mere seven days ago, rang only intermittently. Occasionally someone used a computer, but to check facts rather than add new information. A good two thirds of the machines were idle. A winding down of energy was visibly taking place, a procedure satisfyingly normal at the successful conclusion of a case and depressingly frustrating otherwise.

Barnaby switched on his own monitor and brought up the detailed notes from Amy Lyddiard’s interview. But he had hardly started to read when a call came in from the Garda in Dublin. This was far from being a rare occurrence. Contact was maintained almost daily, often in connection with the movements of known or suspected terrorists. But now the call was in response to Barnaby’s request for information on Liam Hanlon’s former companion and procurer.

The bottom line on Conor Neilson was about as final as you could hope to get. A man going under that name for the past twenty years, which was as long as the police had known him, had been fished out of the Liffey eighteen months previously. His feet had been jammed into paint kettles filled with cement, his throat had been cut and his ears sliced off. He was known to have links with protection rackets, drug-running and prostitution.

Barnaby, asked then if this was the man he was looking for, said he wouldn’t be at all surprised. Further details were promised by fax and the chief inspector thanked his informant, gave assurances that the matter was not urgent and rang off. It seemed to him that what he had just heard brought a dreadful symmetry to the matter under investigation. That two men, yoked together against a background of violence from their earliest years should, quite unconnectedly, end so.

Barnaby, disturbed and restless, got up and started to move about. Images proliferated in his mind. A little boy weeping through a mess of freshly bleeding offal. A man, blown apart by a shotgun, lying in an unknown grave, his mouth stopped by earth. Another standing upright, drowned, a great gash across his neck. Around him a floating stain suffused brown water and the gills of his wound, fish belly pale, gradually widened. Last and perhaps most terrible (Barnaby had fetched up opposite the Ryvita panels), were the battered remains of Gerald Hadleigh.

Old tags, quotations, half-remembered lines haunted Barnaby - thicker than water ... who would have thought the old man ... of coral are his bones ... blood-boltered Banquo smiles ... as old as Cain ... every tear from every eye ...

He couldn’t stop staring at the photographs.

Directly after leaving the gym Brian also left the school premises. Pleading stomach cramps, he arranged for someone to double up on the only teaching period he had that afternoon and decamped. He couldn’t put enough distance between himself and that terrible place where he had been so thoroughly eunuchised.

He was wondering if he could possibly work it so that he would never have to go back. There were barely three weeks to half term. He could fake an injury. Or develop his present supposed malady to a degree which would leave him virtually bedridden. If he could stretch this out to mid-June the little bastards would all have left. And it wasn’t as if he’d lose any pay.

On the other hand (Brian braked carefully, drawing up at a red light) was there not perhaps a more positive way of looking at this diabolical misadventure, so spitefully thrust upon him? He had more than once read interviews with well-known actors and writers who had been forced, frequently quite late in life, out of some mundane occupation by an accident of fate, then found their true vocation. Why shouldn’t this happen to him?

Of course the theatre wasn’t an easy way to make a living. There would be difficult times, no doubt. Periods when he’d be resting. But how much better to be out of work doing something you really enjoyed. All he had to do was break in. Brian saw himself directing not hulking, talentless adolescents but a group of dynamically motivated young actors in a rehearsal room at the Barbican or Stratford. A parp parp reminded him the lights had changed.

He drove on, dreaming. The VW, like a tired beast of burden at the end of the day, wended its way home. They were on the outskirts of Midsomer Worthy when Brian, in the midst of assuring Kenneth Branagh that no, he had not made a mistake in tackling his first Lear so young and that together they would not only crack it but triumph, was recalled to the present by the sight of a small crowd gathered round the notice board in the middle of the Green.

Debarred by a couple of inconsiderate motorists from parking outside Trevelyan Villas, Brian fetched up almost parallel to the little gathering, got out of his car and noticed that quite a large proportion of it was staring in his direction. Intrigued, he looked carefully both ways and started to cross the shiny wet tarmac to see what the matter was.

As he did so Gerald’s murder came into his mind. It had been days since he had given it so much as a thought and he only did so now because it occurred to him that something relative to the case might have been pinned up on the notice board. A ‘Have You Seen This Man’ notice for instance. Or an identikit poster of someone the police would like to interview.

The crowd parted biblically as Brian drew near. Some people turned away, others distanced themselves. One man leered and winked and Brian, puzzled, stared back. The board was covered with photographs of himself and Edie. They were all in transparent plastic covers to protect them from the elements and firmly secured by drawing pins. Though Edie’s face was not visible the rest of her more than made up for it. Brian had been granted no such anonymity.

He stared at this lubricious display, resting a hand on the edge of the board to support himself. There was a roaring in his ears and he felt weirdly disoriented, as if on the verge of going under an anaesthetic.

The leering man said, ‘Are you OK, mate?’

Brian did not hear. Slowly he tried to remove the pictures, but his fingers, large and thick with cold, could get no purchase on the drawing pins. He attempted to prise one out with his thumb but only succeeded in bending the nail savagely backwards, causing great pain. Eventually he just tore the things off, leaving shreds of plastic and triangular paper corners behind. He scrunched the photographs up, stuffed them into his pocket, turned and walked straight out into the road, which was fortunately empty. Then he made his way blindly towards the house, unaware that the bundle of villagers was following.

The gate seemed stuck. Brian pushed hard and noticed something behind it, blocking the way. It was his typewriter. He squeezed through the gap and bent down to pick it up. The latest episode from Slangwhang was still in there, sticking damply to the roller.

Now Brian could see all sorts of other things strewn over the straight and narrow path leading to the front door. Tapes, books, clothes. Records in bright sleeves. His silver cup for elocution. Ties, shoes. Oliver, his Gonk.

He moved slowly up the path, still carrying his Smith Corona. He picked his way carefully, but still managed at one point to tread hard on the bright, sweetly smiling faces of the Nolan Sisters. Rain began to fall.

He put the machine down on the step and searched for his key. It would not fit the Yale lock, which he now noticed was unusually bright and shiny. He moved sideways across the garden, muddying his trainers and trouser turn-ups, to tap on the sitting-room window.

Sue, her hair tied back with a velvet ribbon, was sitting at a table, painting. The oil lamp had been lit and her profile, serenely engrossed, was clearly outlined against a soft, golden haze.

Brian rapped again. The rain was coming down in earnest. His audience, standing around on the pavement, turned its collective coat collar up. One woman shook open a transparent plastic hood and covered her hair.

Sue dabbled her brush in a jar of clear water and wiped it on a cloth. Then she got up in a calm, unhurried way and left the room. Brian ran back to the front door. There was a soft little click as the letter box was lifted and an envelope fell on to the mat outside the door.

He snatched it up and, sheltering as best he could under the narrow lintel, tore it open. The message inside was brief. In future his wife would be communicating with him only through her solicitor, whose address and telephone number were enclosed. For the next few days at least Amanda would be staying with her grandparents.

Brian splashed his way back to the window and rapped for a third time. But Sue, staring fixedly well above his head, was already drawing the curtains.

‘How do you feel?’

‘OK.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re shaking.’

‘Only outside.’

‘Can I get you something?’

‘I’m all right, Amy, honestly.’

Sue turned away from the shrouded window. Amy got up from the old rexine pouffe which had been pushed into one of the alcoves. She had been tucked away there since the first enquiring scrape of Brian’s key at the brand-new keyhole.

Realising her hands were still clenched, Amy slowly opened them and stretched her fingers. Then she looked concernedly across the room to where Sue was standing very upright, holding her shoulders rigidly, like a soldier on parade.

‘Do you think he’ll try the back door?’

‘Perhaps. It’s bolted.’ Sue’s voice was husky, as if she had a cold.

‘Windows?’

‘Locked.’ She made a strange sound which could have been a cough or the beginnings of an exclamation. ‘Don’t worry. He can’t get in.’

‘I’m not worried.’ That wasn’t quite the case, though it would be true to say Amy was certainly a lot less worried than she had been when Sue had rung up nearly an hour ago and demanded that she come straight round. Honoria had answered the telephone and had been so taken aback by the urgent and uncompromising manner in which Sue had spoken that she had done little more than pass the message on. Amy had left immediately.

Arriving at her friend’s she had found Sue in the front garden throwing shirts and pyjamas all over the place. Then she had gone back inside and Amy had followed, skipping and jumping over an assortment of garments.

‘What on earth’s the matter?’ she had cried as soon as the door was closed. ‘What’s happened?’

Sue was panting slightly. She held out her arms, as if to prove to her own satisfaction they were really empty, then said, ‘All gone.’

‘What are all those things doing outside?’ Amy tried to take Sue’s hand but it was snatched away. ‘Please, Sue - tell me.’

‘Had the locks changed. A man came from Lacey Green.’ Sue stared around with stern purposefulness as if she were taking an inventory. Amy did so too. It seemed to her that several things were missing, although she could not have quite said what they were.

‘Of course it will be temporary. My solicitor told me. Things will have to be sorted. But I’m entitled, he said. And why not? Earned it, I’ve earned it. They’ll be at his mother’s. Staying. See how she likes it. Jumping. Feet on cushions. Cartoons. Thump thump thump thump thump thump. Thinks they’re angels. Do no wrong. See how she likes it. See how she—’

‘Sue!’ Amy gripped Sue’s shoulders. ‘You sent for me. And I’m here.’

‘Amy ...’

‘It’s all right.’ She kissed Sue’s icy cheek and felt a muscle twitch and jump. Sue eased herself out of Amy’s arms in an indifferent way, as if resigned to the impossibility of comfort. Amy said again, very gently, ‘Tell me.’

Sue told her. Amy listened, her bottom jaw hanging in disbelief, eyes round as saucers.

‘On the village notice board?’

‘Yes.’

‘But ... who put them there?’

‘God knows. I saw them on my way to play group.’

‘Where are they now?’

‘I told you.’ Sue sounded slightly impatient. ‘On the notice board.’

‘What ... still?’

‘Yes.’

‘You left them there?’

‘Yes.’

‘All day?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ahhh ...’ Amy covered her mouth to check she was not sure what. A squeal of excited disbelief. A cry of horror. A whoop of satisfaction. Imminent laughter.

As they stared at each other, the frozen surface of Sue’s face started to loosen, crumple, then fall into soft weary folds. She surrendered to a storm of tears. Amy guided her to the sofa, where they both sat down.

‘Angry ...’ wept Sue. ‘So angry.’

‘I should just think you are.’

‘Years of all that ...’

‘There, there.’

‘Non-stop sneering.’

‘I know.’

‘How stupid I am. Not pretty, not sexy. Can’t cook, can’t drive. My painting’s rubbish. I’m a rotten mother—’

‘You’re a wonderful mother.’

‘And all the time ... all the time ...’

Amy waited until Sue became less distraught, then passed over a large silk handkerchief which had belonged to Ralph.

‘Have a good blow.’

Sue trumpeted softly and dried the veil of moisture that had completely covered her face.

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t say that.’ Amy reached out and retrieved the ball of wrinkled sog. ‘It’s good to cry.’

As Amy put the handkerchief away and watched Sue become more composed she wondered what would happen next. Had Sue asked her round merely for sympathy and moral support? Or to assist in some specific plan? Whatever it was was fine by Amy. Now that the first ripple of amazement on hearing of the notice board’s farcical and outrageous montage was fading she became aware of her own anger, burning fiercely on Sue’s behalf.

‘Is there anything you want me to do?’

‘Just wait with me until he comes.’

‘Of course I will.’ Amy imagined Brian’s fury should he happen upon this latest news bulletin before arriving home. Always sanctimonious, his ability to instantly rewrite anything that showed him to a disadvantage would surely be strained here to the absolute utmost. And when habitual self-deceivers were forced to face the truth about themselves the consequences could be extremely dangerous. And not just for wild ducks in the attic.

‘Do you think you might weaken and let him in? Is that why you want me to stay?’

‘No.’ Sue spoke from the kitchen, where she was filling her painting jam jar with water. She came back and put it on the table before lighting the lamp. ‘I just want someone here.’

‘Is he violent?’

‘Only inside.’

It was Amy who saw Brian, earlier than expected, getting out of his car and trudging across the Green. By then Sue had finished setting the scene of quiet, creative solitude that her husband observed through the sitting-room window.

Amy held her breath when Sue responded to his urgent rapping by slowly rising, picking up an envelope, leaving the room and, on her return, slowly drawing the curtains.

Amy could not help noticing that, though Sue did this in a calm, controlled way, her head was tilted back at quite a sharp angle. Amy guessed that this was because Sue was afraid to look at Brian, but she was wrong. The truth was that Sue made this avoidance not out of fear but from the certain knowledge that if, even once, she had stared directly into her husband’s eyes she would not be able to stop her fist crashing straight through the glass and into his stupid face.

After a dietetically correct lunch Barnaby returned to the incident room. Although it was barely three o’clock several members of the outdoor team were clocking back in, though Sergeant Troy was not among them. He had been detailed to harass Brian Clapton further, on the principle that the devil a suspect knew was more likely to slip past his defences than a devil he didn’t. Especially if that first devil was already able to scare the shit out of him.

Barnaby was on the point of going over the statement Amy Lyddiard had made in his office for the third time. His previous reading had reactivated that earlier irritating niggle that there was something buried in there that did not quite add up but had not revealed precisely what it was.

He wondered if she had contradicted a remark made earlier, on the morning the murder investigation had begun. That interview would be under ‘Lyddiard, H’, for it was Honoria who had spoken at such domineering and bombastic length. Amy’s contribution, as Barnaby remembered it, had been fragmentary to say the least.

Leaving his own screen, he applied himself to the nearest vacant keyboard and began his search. As he tapped away he was momentarily distracted by thoughts of his bête noir, who had elected at the morning’s post-briefing sort-out to revisit Gresham House. To Barnaby’s deep chagrin the malicious impulse which had prompted him to encourage Meredith to pursue the matter of Honoria’s fingerprints the other day had sharply backfired. The man had returned with the news that, although Miss Lyddiard would, under no circumstances, visit the station, she would be prepared, provided he himself was present at the procedure, to co-operate in this matter at her home.

Barnaby screwed his eyes up against the green dazzle. He recalled Honoria’s responses as completely negative and, as he ran through them, it seemed that he was right. Amy had asked a single tremulous question and offered one contribution and that domestic.

‘I made us a drink, cocoa actually—’

At which point she had been rudely cut short by her sister-in-law. Barnaby saw no significance in this. The interruptive mode of speech was natural to Honoria and he felt it hardly likely that a description of cocoa-making would reveal anything of moment.

The chief inspector slid his mouse about, scrolled back, then highlighted the context of Amy’s remark, starting with his own question to Honoria.

B: Did you retire straight away?

H: Yes. I had a headache. The visitor was allowed to smoke. A disgusting habit. He wouldn’t have done it here.

B: And you, Mrs Lyddiard?

A: Not quite straight away. First I—

Barnaby pushed his chair back in such a hurry it crashed into the desk behind and the policewoman sitting there jumped, staring at him in surprise. Mumbling an apology, he got back to his own machine and quickly found what he was looking for. It was right at the beginning. He had asked Amy if they had gone directly home from Plover’s Rest after the meeting and she had replied:

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

Well, it was a discrepancy all right, but a very small one. Very small indeed. In fact, if it were any smaller ... Barnaby felt his growing excitement dim before it had a chance to really get going. For what was in a word? Especially one as flexible as ‘retire’. To some people it could mean disappearing into the bathroom for a good long soak, to others slipping away to the den, pouring a stiff one and putting on the headphones. Why shouldn’t Honoria have used it to mean going into her study to read?

But it said here she had a headache. Barnaby cursed himself for not being more specific. If only he had phrased his question more precisely. Did you go to bed straight away? Or even, did you go upstairs? Then, providing of course Amy was telling the truth, he would have caught Honoria out in a deliberate lie. Barnaby was mildly disconcerted to realise how pleased he was at the thought and how much he would have enjoyed confronting her with it.

He ran through both statements again, but there was nothing else that could explain his previous sense of unease. That tiny contradiction was the grit in the oyster.

He sighed, closed both files and opened Laura Hutton’s. Quickly scanning through the first, unrewarding meeting he turned to the follow-up, where she had drunk too much and wept and railed against the man who had, as she saw it, wilfully refused to care for her.

Barnaby read very closely, his concentration narrowed till it all but blotted out the room. As before he looked for incompatible, conflicting or just plain careless remarks. Unfortunately, by the very nature of her admissions, everything she described - the visit to Hadleigh’s house in the summer, the theft of the photograph, her love-lorn nocturnal ramblings - were all unverifiable.

There was a rattle of china, a pleasant smell of coffee and a cup and saucer were placed upon his desk.

‘Ah.’ Barnaby identified the bearer of his refreshment. ‘You’re back. What news from the Rialto?’

‘Gone over to Bingo, last I heard.’

‘Don’t try my patience, sergeant. I’m not in the mood.’

Troy, wearing his what-have-I-said-now? expression, sat down and unwrapped a Walnut Whip. ‘A right time I’ve had.’

‘With Clapton?’

‘Without Clapton, more like.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Went to the school and found he’d left early. Went to his house and the wife says he’s at his mother’s. Go to his mother’s and what do we find?’

Mr Clapton had opened the door and had been so devastated by the sight of a police car parked directly in front of his gate that, even though Troy was not wearing uniform, he had found himself seized fiercely by the arm and forcibly dragged into the house in a nice reversal of the usual procedure.

As the door was slammed behind him, Mrs Clapton appeared. Gift-wrapped in shiny nylon, she was wringing her plump hands and crying, ‘He won’t come out of the toilet.’

And he wouldn’t either, in spite of Sergeant Troy’s repeated knocks and crisply worded entreaties, spoken in a very loud voice over pop music pounding away downstairs.

When the sergeant had eventually given up, Mr and Mrs Clapton saw him off the premises as far as the gate. As he was getting into the car some people walked by and Mrs Clapton called out in a loud voice, ‘We’ll certainly keep our eyes open for him, sergeant. It’s very sad when anyone loses a little dog.’

Troy told the story well and Barnaby laughed.

‘Do you want me to get a warrant, chief? Bring him in.’

‘Perhaps tomorrow.’

‘I’ve found out what “Slangwhang” means.’

‘Slang what?’

‘You know - his daft play.’

‘Oh yes. How did you do that?’

‘Looked it up in the dictionary.’

‘You’ve—?’ Barnaby stopped himself - immediately but, he saw, not quite in time. Christ, what an incredibly patronising thing to think, let alone say. ‘Sorry, Gavin. Really.’

‘S’ all right.’ But Troy had gone very pink. ‘Understandable. I’m no scholar, as you know. We got it for Talisa Leanne. For when she has homework, like.’

‘So what does it mean, “slangwhang”?’

‘Noisy or abusive talk. He’s a pretentious git. That the right word?’

‘Dead right.’ Barnaby finished his drink, pushed his cup aside and was about to go into his mini-discovery on the Lyddiard front when several more men returned.

He saw at once that the crew brought no further revelations. They looked dull, bored and mildly resentful, as people do who have spent several hours getting nowhere and could have told you this would be the case before they started.

Detective Constable Willoughby approached Barnaby’s desk and was relieved when Troy got up and walked away, for he had suffered more than once from the sergeant’s abrasive manner. Barnaby indicated the vacant chair and Willoughby sat, placing his hat carefully on his knees and his notebook carefully inside his hat.

Barnaby prepared to listen with a mixture of sympathy and irritation. There weren’t many pro cons as tender round the edges as this one. The lad would either have to buck his ideas up or get out of the Force. Barnaby suspected it would come to the latter and only hoped this wouldn’t be by way of a nervous breakdown.

‘I’ve been talking to Mr St John, sir, as instructed,’ began Willoughby. ‘He hasn’t anything to add to his account of Hadleigh’s visit, or the evening and its aftermath. But there was something he noticed during the day, though I’m afraid it’s very trivial—’

‘I’ll decide what’s trivial, constable.’

‘Yes, sir. As he was seeing Mr Hadleigh off the premises Miss Lyddiard came out of the gate at Plover’s Rest and cycled away.’

‘Do you have a time for this?’ Barnaby picked up his pen.

‘Eleven thirty. Mr St John remembers because he lost exactly half an hour from his writing period. She came back on two occasions that afternoon. If you recall, Borodino is almost precisely opposite—’

‘Yes, yes. Get on with it.’

‘Hadleigh didn’t open the door, but that apparently was not uncommon if people knew who it was on the step.’

There was a pause. Willoughby, having reached his conclusion, started running his fingers round the rim of his cap, then gripped the peak tightly. In no time at all the silence became unbearable to him.

‘He’s a character isn’t he - St John. As for that dog ...’

‘Thanks, Willoughby.’ Barnaby smiled in a distracted way across the desk. ‘Well done.’

‘Oh.’ Willoughby stumbled to his feet and tucked his hat beneath his arm. The notebook fell out. He bent down and retrieved it, his face glowing with pleasure. ‘Yes sir. Thank you.’

Barnaby was not listening. Sitting back, eyes closed, he was already transported to the Green, Midsomer Worthy as it might have looked that cold, deep frosted morning on the last day of Gerald Hadleigh’s life. He imagined a certain amount of excitement would have been present at the prospect of meeting a famous author. Food no doubt had to be prepared and packed up ready to go over to Plover’s Rest. By mid morning the owner of this delightful residence would be disturbing an old man who only wanted to be left in peace to get on with his spy story. At eleven o’clock a woman, weeping her heart out and filling a basket with soggy tissues was due to be interrupted by an equally unwelcome visitor. After their meeting this person had gone straight to the home of Gerald Hadleigh. Finding him absent she had returned later. And then a third time.

Barnaby opened his eyes. His heart gathered speed as a possible reason for this oddly persistent behaviour occurred. He made himself wait a moment, breathing slowly and deeply until he felt more composed.

Laura might still be in the shop. He looked up the number and punched it out. She answered straight away.

‘Mrs Hutton? Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby. I was wondering if you would do something for me.’

‘I was just going next door for a drink. Is it urgent?’

‘Yes,’ said Barnaby. ‘I rather think it is.’

Amy was in her room working on Rompers. She had been up there since five o’clock and so far had not been troubled either by a tinkling bell or any vocal demands.

At the moment she was worrying about her prose style, which was beginning to sound rather too cosily familiar. But was it, wondered Amy, chewing the tip of her Biro, worth constantly searching out fresh adjectives? Wouldn’t readers feel more at home with tried and true combinations? And this was not, she argued, simply an excuse for authorial laziness, for surely there were certain pairings so felicitous that even the most gifted scribe could hardly be expected to improve upon them.

A quick glance at the dawn sky from any bedroom window showed rosy fingers at their very best. Black hair, in certain lights, definitely took on the glossy hue of a raven’s wing. And where was the besotted eye that did not shine exactly like a star when alighting on the object of its affection?

Amy was slightly comforted in the knowledge that this waning of writerly confidence was not entirely unknown even among the most successful. Max Jennings had described how he always started a new book convinced that this time the relationship was going to be one of unalloyed bliss and that they would be walking off into the sunset hand in hand with never a harsh work spoken. But it never happened. Long before the end of Chapter One they’d be back in the thick of it, screaming, swearing and throwing plates.

Amy sighed, gathered her thoughts and applied herself once more. The scene on which she was working was a dramatic one. Araminta had escaped from Black Rufus by leaping from his droshky (suitably clad in a Donna Karan jump suit) into a drift of newly fallen snow. Emerging, she had been reluctantly compelled to abandon her mock-ermine Versace throw with genuine amber toggles and rhinestone hood and was now fleeing across a frozen lake pursued by bloodhounds. Amy chewed her pen some more. Decided bloodhounds were a bit tame and substituted wolves.

She had no problem empathising with her perilously placed heroine, for she herself was shivering in a sub-zero temperature. She got up and placed her mittened hand on the rusting radiator. Rather pointlessly, for it had been stone cold all day and, sure enough, remained so.

Amy jumped up and down a bit, the thick ridged soles of her fur boots bouncing on the threadbare rug. She blew on her fingertips and rubbed her cheeks hard, but the friction only made them sore. She decided, bearing in mind Honoria’s promise that the heating would definitely be looked into, to go down to the library and have a word with her sister-in-law.

Amy made her way along the landing, her passage marked by dark, heavily varnished portraits of grandly robed Lyddiards going back to the sixteenth century. Her own particular aversion was a hawk-faced judge who looked as if he not only derived great pleasure from passing the death sentence but for two pins would roll up his sleeves and carry it out.

Honoria was at her desk severely engrossed in matters dexter and sinister. She looked aloof and far removed from worldly things. Though the one-bar electric fire was on, the big, high-ceilinged room felt almost as cold as the one upstairs. Amy hovered in the doorway but without attracting any response.

‘I say ...’

‘Blood and bone.’ Honoria was mumbling to herself. ‘That’s what counts. Blood counts. Bone counts.’

‘Honoria?’

Honoria looked up. Her eyes burned into Amy’s yet appeared not to see her.

‘It’s terribly cold. Could I—’

‘Go away. Can’t you see I’m busy?’

Amy went away. This was plainly not the time to ask if Honoria had ordered the coke. Or if she would be prepared to down tools and bend the Neanderthal boiler to her will. As she crossed the ancient flagstones in the hall Amy stopped to pull out a couple of weeds that had seeded themselves between the cracks. The garden it seemed was trying to enter the house and, in this weather, who could blame it? She tried the cellar door, but it wouldn’t open.

Amy frowned and tried again, sure that the door was simply stuck, for she had never known it to be locked. However after two more good pushes there seemed little doubt about it. Amy hesitated and wondered if she might not just make herself a nice hot-water bottle and sit with it on her lap. But then soon she would have to come down and start preparing dinner and she could hardly carry it round the chilly kitchen.

Honoria having made it plain she did not wish to be disturbed, Amy set off to find the bunch of internal house keys herself. Sometimes they hung on an iron nail in the lumber room, sometimes they were in the drawer of the kitchen table, occasionally Honoria put them down and completely forgot where. Once Amy had found them in a flower pot in the greenhouse.

Today they were not on the nail. Amy felt her way along the bench of drying dahlias and bulbs and old seed packets without success. She was moving Honoria’s upright bicycle out of her way when she saw the keys lying in the bicycle basket.

The one for the cellar was an old-fashioned iron thing almost as long as her hand. She fitted it into the lock, where it turned smoothly. She switched on the light, which was so dim it made little difference and, holding the rail tightly, made her way down the steps.

The boiler took up so much space there was not much room for anything other than its food. A heap of coal, a smaller heap of sticks, piles of old newspapers and parish magazines tied with string. Boxes of cardboard or wood, some rags and a can of paraffin.

Amy approached the monstrous apparatus - vast, round-bellied, black with age, neglect and bad temper - with some trepidation. Pipes sprouted from the back and writhed away through the cellar ceiling. There were three dials with red pointers like those on a speedometer. They all registered 150. She gave the glass an authoritative tap. The readings fell to 98.

Amy laid her hands gingerly on the metal. It was barely warm. She opened the door and peered inside. As far as she could make out there was a pile of ashes and little else. She took the raker, a piece of metal the size and weight of a crowbar but shaped like a long T, and poked about, activating one or two pallid sparks. Then she tore up several pages of the parish magazine and laid a few thin strips across the sparks before they expired. The paper browned, crisped, flamed.

Amy flung on some more paper and took a few sticks from the pile. She laid them carefully on top and picked up several more in readiness should the first ones ignite.

It was then she noticed there was something underneath. More paper? A label certainly - bright yellow with blue lettering: Hotel Masima, Tangiers. Amy swept the sticks aside. More labels, almost covering the top of a brown suitcase.

She dragged it out, laid it flat and pressed the catches. The lid sprang open. Amy knelt down, ignoring the grit and dirt beneath her knees and examined the contents. A black suit and veiled hat, lingerie, including a suspender belt and filmy stockings, high-heeled shoes. Two plastic tubs holding costume jewellery and cosmetics. And a shoe box crammed with photographs. How absolutely extraordinary.

She took a handful of the photographs out and started to look through them. Some were in colour, others black and white. Many featured a blonde-haired woman both on her own, with a couple of friends and playing with a dog. There was a relaxed holiday air about the snaps and several had actually been taken on a beach or around what appeared to be a hotel swimming pool. Two men wearing the briefest swimwear imaginable stood in front of a splendid boat.

And there was Ralph. Even in the poor light there was no mistaking his vivid smile, dark curls and direct gaze. He was with a crowd of people apparently at some sort of party. Certainly an air of jollity prevailed. They were all sitting round a table covered with glasses and bottles and paper streamers. Perhaps it was someone’s birthday. The picture was a large one taken by flash. Ralph was wearing a square-necked, short-sleeved white cotton top, part of the Royal Navy’s summer rig.

Amy peered more closely. There was something about the person next to her husband. A handsome man with blurry features, hair all over the place and a flower stuck behind his ear. Amy climbed the cellar steps and held the picture up to the light and gasped in disbelief. It was Gerald!

Full of excitement she ran into the hall. Words and phrases chattered in her head, primed her lips. ‘You’ll never guess ... the suitcase ... you remember ... Mrs Bundy said ... someone has put it ...’

Honoria was standing, motionless, in the doorway of the library. The words curdled in Amy’s mouth. She knew and understood the situation immediately. A pulse of apprehension fluttered, gained strength, then started to beat forcefully at the base of her throat.

For no reason the phrase ‘save your breath’ came into her mind. Might as well save your breath. She started to inhale slowly and deeply and exhale shallowly as if the air about her was already in short supply.

Her mind was cleanly split. Half ran underground, chattering with fear, making no sense. The other summed up the extreme danger of her position and hunted for a way out. Front door locked, bolted, not opened for years. Back door locked, bolted, would never have time to undo. Must not, must not be forced back down cellar steps to die like a dog. Ground-floor windows locked but she could break one and climb through, bleeding but alive. Alive.

The dark mass across the hall shifted slightly. Hardly a step, more a bulky cleaving of the air. The movement brought Amy’s heart into her mouth.

Stairs. Same distance for us both. I’m smaller, younger, lighter, faster. Get to my room. Bolt the door. Open the window. Scream.

She tried to remember what you did before a sprint. Bend the knees? Up on the toes? It was vital that she got it right. It could mean the difference between ... it could make all the difference.

But then all thoughts of preparation fled, for Honoria did something far worse than just redistribute her weight. She started to laugh. A soft, growly, vibrating thrum like the warm-up of a powerful engine, followed by a series of harsh barks. These were punctuated by honking noises when Honoria ran out of oxygen and snorted more in through her nose.

Amy ran. Hitting the stairs. Up the stairs. On to the landing. Down the landing. Honoria close, so close behind. Panting, lumbering, grabbing handfuls of emptiness but once, when Amy stumbled, brushing the hem of her skirt.

Beneath their feet the ground flew. For Amy, reft of breath, all thought was stripped away. She was no longer even conscious of running, for other darker rhythms had taken her over. Into her room. Fall on the door. Close the door.

Too late.

Amy heaved and pushed but Honoria’s iron foot was already implacably there. She did not push, for there was no need. Or apparently any hurry. Several seconds passed before she started to speak. Before she pushed her snout into the gap and contorted her mouth to spew out her dreadful revelations.

And Amy was forced to listen, for she dared not lift her hands from the door to cover her ears. Nor could she move away. Soon she was crying out at the horror of it but Honoria merely raised her voice, drowning the sounds of Amy’s anguish.

And then, quite suddenly, the streaming poisonous flux dried up. And, shortly after, Amy’s lamentations ceased. She listened intently in the silence, leaning hard against the door, praying that the terrible force on the other side would not decide to do the same. Her face was screwed up grotesquely with physical effort and her cheeks shone with tears.

Honoria punched the door with all her might. Amy hurtled away, falling on her back, and Honoria walked into the room. She stood, looking down at Amy. Honoria’s rough, high-coloured slabby countenance was ghastly pale. Her eyes slithered and slipped about in their sockets or rolled so far back that only the whites showed. Glistening strands of spittle swung from her lower lip.

Amy scrambled up and moved away in a crablike manner, knowing that she must keep looking directly at Honoria, for that was what you had to do with wild things. Lions, tigers, mad dogs. Then they didn’t spring. The pupils of Honoria’s eyes were dark red. Her gross shadow stretched across the wall, the head lolling and wagging.

Amy fetched up against the sash window. She put her hands behind her and felt the cold glass and crumbly paint on the surround. If she could only open it. That would mean turning her back, but only for a second. And where was the alternative?

Amy swung round, reached up and started tugging at the catch. It was rusty and very stiff. She had to push and pull it hard to work it loose. Once she glanced over her shoulder. Honoria stood there, watching, wrapped in a terrible silence.

The window flew up with a crash. Clean cold air swept Amy’s face. She put her hands on the sill and leaned out, looking down the long drive and through the open gates. Far below stretched an expanse of stone slabs.

As Amy stared down at their hard unyielding surface she remembered Mrs Bundy, doing the rough. Describing, as she scrubbed, what Gerald had looked like. What it had looked like.

Amy, feeling dizzy, closed her eyes. The stones rushed upwards. Slammed into her soft body, broke her bones. Sickened, she pulled herself upright and turned round.

Honoria said, ‘Jump.’

Amy gasped aloud in horror and disbelief.

‘Go on.’

Of course she would want that. The case and all that it contained burned and Amy dead. What could suit her better? And a suicide would be perfect. Grief over her husband’s death, I’m afraid. She never got over it. Talked about ending her life quite often, but I never really thought ...

A bitter wind stirred Amy’s hair. Ralph was in her mind and in her heart. Neither of them were believers. But what, Amy now wondered, if the believers had got it right and that, after the dreadful tumbling through that dark, yawning space, the slamming impact and spreading of tender flesh and breaking of bones, she and Ralph would be miraculously once more conjoined. How wonderful, how truly wonderful that would be. But Amy could not believe it. For her it wasn’t true and there was no way she could make it so. The real truth was that she and Ralph would never meet again. Amy felt such extreme pain at this realisation that it was as if she had already fallen.

‘Jump.’

‘No!’ Amy’s profile was transformed into a hard, angry silhouette. ‘I’m not doing it for you.’

Honoria glowered and her feet kicked and pawed savagely at the floor. She looked brutally sure of herself, less mad, much more frightening.

‘I shall fight,’ said Amy. ‘And it will show. They will find you out.’

‘Do you think I care.’ Honoria’s voice was thick with contempt.

‘You will care,’ shouted Amy, ‘when you are in prison for years and years shut up in a cage with the sort of people you despise.’

‘You’re an even bigger fool than I took you for. Once your death is accomplished I shall seek my own. What else have I to live for?’

The appalling desolation behind this remark, springing from a hatred of life that Amy could not even begin to comprehend, evoked unwilling pity. For the first time she was moved to use her sister-in-law’s name.

Honoria crossed swiftly over to Amy and spat in her face. Then she spun Amy round, seized her wrists and wrenched her arms together behind her. Amy kicked out backwards. A high strong kick like a spirited horse. It connected with Honoria’s shins and hurt Amy’s heel even through her boots.

Honoria began to drag her captive towards the open window. Amy’s arms felt as if they were being torn from their sockets. She dug her heels in, rucking up the carpet but, like a chicken on the way to market dangling from tied legs could do little to help herself.

When they reached the window Honoria pushed Amy violently against the frame. The sash bar struck her hard on the nose and blood flowed into her mouth. Now she was being forced to the floor. Amy planted her legs astride, made them rigid and strong, braced the front of her thighs against the sill. Honoria let go of Amy’s wrists, put both of her hands on Amy’s shoulders and bore down with all her might. Amy’s knees gave way with a crack.

Honoria grabbed the neck of Amy’s sweater, bunching it up, pushed Amy through the window opening and half across the sill. Amy threw up her arms and gripped the sash, digging her nails into the wood. Honoria stopped pushing and began to prise loose Amy’s fingers.

It was then that a vehicle appeared on the drive. Amy saw the headlights and yelled out. Screamed over and over again. Great shrieks so loud that her head filled up with the sound and rang like a bell.

Honoria hauled her back inside. Amy fought maniacally - kicking, punching, scratching. Fought with all her substance and all her strength. Far away she heard the sound of breaking glass. Honoria heard it too. Amy could see by the change in her expression. An acknowledgement that time was running out. Her hands closed around Amy’s throat, the thumbs pressing into the windpipe. A spasm of mad joy made her body tremble and marked her face with a profane radiance.

Amy choked. She could hear humming, like the wind through telegraph wires, and saw redness everywhere. The pressure on her ears was terrible. The inside of her head expanded, pushing harder and harder against her skull until at last it gave way and she fell into the dark.

It was past midnight. Barnaby was in a private room at Hillingdon hospital staring out over the parking lot which, even at that hour of the night, was half full. He had been there for five hours. Unnecessarily, if he was honest with himself, for she wasn’t going to run away. And she wasn’t going to die. Thank God. Two bodies in one evening were more than enough.

They had been putting the first into the mortuary van as he pulled up outside Gresham House. The second, so much lighter, lay in its zippered polythene sheath in the hall.

Barnaby could see it as he got out of the Orion, for the huge doors, against which so many twigs and leaves had been piling themselves on his first visit, now stood wide open.

Laura Hutton’s Porsche was parked at an oblique angle halfway round the back, as if she had drawn up carelessly in a tearing hurry, skidded in a half circle then rammed on the brakes. The keys were still in the ignition. Later Troy had driven it back to the little jewel box of a house and put it in the garage.

There was a sound from the bed, where Amy lay looking very small beneath tightly stretched, fiercely tucked bedclothes. Audrey Brierley sat close by, her white-gold cap of hair shimmering beneath the bedside lamp like a pearl helmet.

A staff nurse came in to take Amy’s pulse and blood pressure. Amy had been sedated, but lightly, and the nurse’s ministrations woke her up. Much as Barnaby wanted to talk he couldn’t help feeling a pang of sympathy. After shining a light into both her patient’s eyes the nurse said everything was fine and went briskly off, her shoes squeaking on the linoleum.

Amy stared at Audrey Brierley, who gently took hold of her bandaged hand. ‘It’s all right, Mrs Lyddiard. You’re all right now.’

Barnaby picked up a chair and carried it over to the bed. He positioned it carefully. Not too near but not too far away, for he feared her voice might not carry.

‘Hullo.’

‘Hullo. It’s you.’

‘Again.’

He was right. It was little more than a whisper. He sat down and they smiled at each other. That is, he smiled. The corner of Amy’s lips twitched very slightly, then gave up. And was it, he thought, any wonder? He began to speak, keenly aware that his opening words were hardly likely to improve matters.

‘I’m afraid your sister-in-law is dead, Mrs Lyddiard. She took her own life. There was nothing anyone could do.’

‘She said ... she would ... after ...’

These few words seemed to exhaust her and she closed her eyes again. Barnaby sat in silence for a short while but then continued, for he was anxious she did not drift back into sleep.

‘I’ll be as brief as I possibly can. We can talk at greater length when you’re feeling better.’

‘Hurts ... to talk ...’

‘Of course. I thought I would give my ideas on what I think has been going on and you can just stop me, shake your head or whatever, if I’ve got it wrong. How does that suit?’

When she did not reply he began to speak, keeping his tone carefully prosaic, as if anything could reduce the impact of what he had to say.

‘Honoria Lyddiard, until last Monday, had no idea that Gerald Hadleigh and her brother had ever met. But in Laura Hutton’s kitchen she discovered a photograph of them both, together with some other people at a restaurant. Very excited by this, and eager to discover the whys and wherefores, she went straight round to Plover’s Rest, but Hadleigh was out, calling on Rex St John. She tried twice more during the course of the day, but without success. Eventually, no doubt unable to wait until the morning, she returned late that same night.

‘But the visitor was still there, so she stayed concealed in the trees behind the house, until she saw him drive away. Then, I suppose after knocking and getting no response, she went in. Knowing Miss Lyddiard’s passion for correct behaviour we can only guess at the driving curiosity which got her, when she couldn’t find Hadleigh downstairs, upstairs and into his bedroom. Then, and I don’t quite understand how, I feel there must have been some sort of hiatus before they actually spoke. Enough time anyway for her to take in the photographs, some of which we now know were pretty explicit, and the clothes—Yes?’

‘He ... Gerald ... was in ...’

‘The bathroom?’ Amy nodded. ‘She told you?’

‘Yes.’

She told me everything. And spared me nothing. The vile words gathered again, infesting Amy’s mind and fouling the calm, quiet room.

If you’d loved him enough he wouldn’t have died. She knew now what Honoria meant. It seemed that years ago, when Ralph was in the navy, he had been unfaithful. Because she hadn’t loved him enough he had loved someone else, who had given him the terrible disease that was to kill him. And Honoria knew this because the Spanish doctors had told her. But she had naturally thought it was a woman.

Gerald had been terribly drunk. When he came out of the bathroom and found her holding up the photograph of the group at the club at Marrakesh he had jeered and laughed. Then he had given her all the sordid details. How he and Ralph, who had never met before that night, had gone outside into the back yard and had sex, turn and turn about, up against the wall. How Ralph had loved it. Gone out again later with someone else. No wonder he’d ended up with Aids.

That was the moment when Honoria had struck. Seized the nearest heavy object and smashed it into Gerald’s head, not just once but again and again until there was nothing of him left. Then she had stuffed the clothes and photographs into a suitcase and taken it away so that no connection between the obscene mess on the floor and her beloved brother could ever be made and because she was a law unto herself.

‘It certainly wasn’t Hadleigh who infected your husband, Mrs Lyddiard,’ said Barnaby. He had asked for a blood test directly after speaking to Laura Hutton and received a negative result. ‘You had no idea what was wrong with him?’

‘No ...’

Honoria didn’t tell me because she hoped I’d got it. Hoped and prayed that Ralph, before he died, had passed the sickness on. Watched and waited for the signs. Didn’t tell me in case I sought help or, worse, was tested and found fit and well. In which case she would have killed me herself. Because that was the faithful promise she had made before God.

Weak tears started from Amy’s eyes and WPC Brierley pulled some tissues out of a box on the locker. Barnaby decided to leave it there. By the time he had got his overcoat buttoned up and put his scarf and gloves on Amy seemed once more to be on the verge of sleep. He switched off the bedside lamp, leaving only the glow of a blue night light.

As they walked off down the corridor Audrey said, ‘When will you tell her the rest, sir?’

‘When she’s up to it. I’d say she’d had enough for one night.’ As they passed through reception he looked at the hospital clock. It was almost one thirty. ‘And I think that goes for all of us.’