Like Brain, Winterman had also stayed up longer than he had intended. Mrs Griffiths had retired early, and he had spent the evening with Mary, discussing possibilities for their joint future, reaching no firm conclusions. Winterman felt pinioned by the past, desperate for another future to begin but unable to see how he could make it happen.
He was due for another trip to London the coming weekend, the first since he had moved back out here. He would make his usual dutiful visit to Gwyneth, to the hospital where she was being cared for, where, as always, she would fail to recognise him or know he had been. Then he would catch a bus up to the North London cemetery where Sam was buried. It somehow seemed a fitting place – overgrown, filled with decaying Victorian Gothic, a small enclave of calm and birdsong in the middle of the bustling city. He would sit there for a while. Finally he would get another bus back to Liverpool Street, and begin the long journey home.
After Mary had gone upstairs, he had sat for another hour or so in the cramped sitting room, feeling in need of a drink but knowing there would be nothing in the house. He told himself he was thinking, mulling over the options, but he knew his mind was blank. There were no options.
He was about to retire to bed himself, resigned to the spartan anonymity of the small spare room, where he heard the gentle knocking at the front door. Baffled as to who might be calling at that time, he made his way into the hallway to open the front door.
'Sir.' It was Brain, as enthusiastic and indefatigable as ever. 'I didn't want to knock too loudly in case you'd gone to bed.'
It took Winterman a moment to process the statement. 'So why knock at all?'
'I think I might need your help, sir. But I didn't want to wake you if you'd already gone to bed.'
'No, quite right.' Winterman was still not fully taking this in. 'Help with what?'
Brain quickly explained about the call from Callaghan. He had half-expected that Winterman would dismiss the matter, but in fact Winterman seemed to take it more seriously than Brain himself.
'The call was cut off? Callaghan put the phone down?'
'He might have done. But it was very sudden. I hadn't realised he'd gone at first.'
Winterman was pulling on his boots. He peered past Brain through the open door. 'Rain's not stopped?'
'Harder than ever.'
Moments later, they were in the Wolseley heading up towards the north end of the village, past the cottage where the first child's body had been found, past Fisher's empty cottage. They turned left, the road running alongside the railway line for half a mile past a row of railway cottages, then into the more salubrious area of Victorian and Edwardian villas.
Callaghan's house, tucked behind its garden walls and neatly trimmed hedges, showed no sign of disturbance. Lights were burning in several downstairs rooms.
'I hope it wasn't some kind of joke.' Brain followed Winterman up the path to the front door. The rain was coming down even harder. They were both bent double against the wind-swept downpour.
'Does Callaghan strike you as the type to make jokes?' Winterman reached the front door and, in one movement, pressed hard on the bell and, with his other hand, slammed the knocker down against the door.
There was no reply. Winterman pressed his ear to the door's panelling in the hope of detecting some movement within. He looked back at Brain and shook his head before pounding the knocker even harder against the wood. He tried the door handle, but the door was, as he had assumed, firmly locked.
'We'll never get this open. Looks like oak. Let's try round the back.'
Brain nodded, impressed at Winterman's decisiveness. He did not appear to be worrying, as Brain himself would have done, about the possibility that they might shortly be faced by an irate Professor Callaghan disturbed from his slumbers.
Winterman opened the wooden gate that led to the back garden. He noted, without surprise, that despite Callaghan's earlier claims there was no lock on the gate.
As soon as they entered the garden, Winterman knew something was wrong. Light spilled out on the neatly trimmed lawn through a pair of French windows standing wide open to the rainy night. He moved till he was standing directly opposite the open doors, keeping well back from the cone of light in case of any danger from within.
He could see an ornately decorated reception room. Not the room in which Winterman and Hoxton had first interviewed Callaghan, but similar in its style and anonymity. At first, Winterman thought the room was empty. Then, stepping forward, he saw a figure spread-eagled on the floor.
He moved cautiously towards the open windows, alert for any movement from within. There was nothing except for the ceaseless beating of the rain. Winterman gestured for Brain to join him and stepped carefully over the threshold.
The windows had been open for a while, and the carpet and parquet floor inside were soaked from the rain. The room itself was immaculately tidy and showed little sign of recent human habitation.
Except for the body.
Callaghan was spread face down across the carpet in front of the sofa. A pool of blood was expanding from beneath his head, staining the edge of the carpet deep red. There was a bullet wound in Callaghan's temple, a further splashing of blood across the base of the sofa. Winterman had little doubt he was dead.
'Try not to touch anything,' he said to Brain. 'You stay here.'
Brain looked apprehensively behind him at the dark garden. 'You think whoever killed him might be still be here?'
'That rather depends on who killed him.' He pointed towards Callaghan's right hand. A revolver lay on the wooden floor, its position suggesting it had slipped from his fingers.
'You think he killed himself? But what about the intruder?'
Winterman shrugged and stepped cautiously across the room, taking care to disturb nothing. He gestured for Brain to stay where he was.
Winterman slipped on one of his pairs of fine cotton gloves, and, taking care not to obscure any fingerprints that might be on the door handle, he eased open the door into the hallway beyond. The light was on in the hall, and Winterman could see that the front door at the far end was firmly bolted. It took him only a moment to check the other ground floor rooms – the reception room where he had previously met Callaghan, another drawing room, a study, a cloakroom and a kitchen. There was no sign of anyone else.
The telephone was on a table by the front door. He lifted the receiver and confirmed it was still connected. He had assumed Callaghan's call to Brain had been terminated by the line being cut but it appeared not. He dialled the operator and asked to be connected to Police HQ. It took him a few moments to explain the situation to the duty office.
'Get a team out here as quickly as you can. And make sure you inform DS Spooner,' he added, unsure even as he spoke quite why he felt it was so important for Spooner to be told straightaway. Not for the first time, his instincts were jumping ahead of his rational mind.
He replaced the receiver and ran up the stairs to check the bedrooms on the first floor. One was clearly Callaghan's own, another presumably used by the still-hospitalised William. Three more were apparently unused, alongside a bathroom and separate lavatory. All were empty.
It was only a cursory examination, and Winterman supposed that someone might conceivably still be concealed about the house. But he felt a strong conviction that, other than himself and Brain, there was no living soul there. If an intruder had indeed been in the house, he must have left through the window through which the two police officers had entered.
Winterman's unease was growing. He had a sense – which he realised had been there since Brain had first described the call from Callaghan – that they were being played. That this was some kind of endgame, even though he had no idea even what kind of match had been played.
'I've checked the house,' he told Brain. 'There's no one inside. And I've called HQ. They're sending support straightaway. You wait here till they get here.'
It took Brain a second to register the significance of what Winterman had said. 'You're not staying here, sir?' He glanced once again out at the garden, clearly contemplating the implications of staying in the house by himself.
'You'll be fine, Brain.' Winterman's mind was already elsewhere. 'The others will be here before you know it.'
'But where are you going, sir?'
'There's something I need to check.' Winterman was already moving towards the open window.
'Can't you wait till the others get here, sir?' There was a note of pleading in Brain's voice, though he was doing his best to conceal it.
Winterman looked back for a last time before stepping out into the wet night. 'I'm sorry. But I don't think I can take the risk.'