Detective Inspector Meehan was having a difficult day. The Duty Prosecutor thought the case against Michael Martin was evidentially weak but that was because, Meehan had belatedly discovered, his Detective Sergeant had missed out one page of the toxicology report in the evidence file. Just as he had put that right, the Duty Prosecutor had managed to get himself stung by a bee, suffered a severe anaphylactic reaction and had been carted off to hospital. The Crown Prosecution Service was sorting out a replacement but had warned him it might take another hour and his time was running out. Meehan could only hold the teacher for twenty-four hours without a very good reason for needing more time and yet he knew in his bones something had always been very wrong with this case.
When the CPS finally rang back, he found Anna Murray on the other end of the phone – the person least likely to be impressed by his argument.
‘There’s a hole in this file a mile wide,’ she said before he had a chance to say more than hello. ‘There’s all their new thinking on the timing of the lethal effects but you’re still relying on the original analysis of the poison by the old methods. His lawyers will say you can’t change the rules on one and not the other.’
Meehan knew the lawyer in question was Leo Avery, who had never been known to say anything nearly so clever. ‘So what are you suggesting?’
‘That you need new samples.’
‘I need to dig them up?’
‘If you haven’t still got original tissue samples in good condition, then yes. You need an exhumation order.’
Meehan looked at his watch. ‘In that case, I’ll need an extension. It’s coming up to the twenty-four hours.’
‘Frankly, I think you’re out on a limb here. He’s not going to run away.’
‘If I get the order, can I hold on to him until the forensics come through?’
‘I very much doubt it but call me if you get it in time.’ She hung up.
He stared at the phone, resisting the temptation to throw it at the wall, then he called downstairs and set things in motion. He looked at his watch again and began working it out. Something in him did not want to let Michael Martin go, even if he could be rearrested later. He wondered if the news that Martin’s wife and child were going to be dug up might be enough to shock a confession out of the man. Leo Avery seemed at least halfway to believing in his own client’s guilt. There wasn’t quite enough time but Avery might just allow him the few extra minutes he needed for the questioning and Martin himself certainly had no idea about proper procedures.
The front desk buzzed him to say the lawyer had arrived.
‘Show him to the interview room,’ Meehan said. ‘Don’t bring Martin up yet. I’ll have a quick word first.’
He walked in with a forced smile and a quip ready on his lips about the mess Leo had made at the third green last weekend, but there was a tiger waiting for him in the room. Rachel Palmer, crouched and ready to spring, looked at her watch and said, ‘You have exactly eight minutes to charge my client or release him, Meehan. Which is it going to be?’
Mike didn’t say a word until they were in the car. ‘Thank you,’ he said as they drove away. ‘I thought you had given up on me.’
She looked at the harsh lines on his face. ‘So did I.’
‘What changed your mind?’
‘That can wait,’ she said. ‘We need to talk to Gally.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Her mother took her away. We have a very short time to sort this out because the only thing holding Meehan back is a technicality.’
‘What’s that?’
Rachel hesitated, understanding how upsetting this would be. ‘He has to get permission to exhume them.’
‘Oh no. He mustn’t do that. I don’t want them disturbed, not now.’
‘You don’t have the power to stop him. He just has to persuade a magistrate.’ She glanced at him. ‘There’s a chance Gally could cast some light on this. It looks like our only way forward but I haven’t a clue how to persuade Meehan to listen to anything she might come up with.’
When Rachel had left for Yeovil, Ferney had gone back to the barn. He approached it carefully but the tractor and the mechanic had gone. He was going through Gally’s rucksack, looking for anything that might have her address in it, when a soft series of notes began to sound. A mobile phone was ringing in the side pouch.
He pulled it out. The screen said ‘Lucy’. A voice said, ‘Jo? Is that you?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘She’s not here.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m a friend of hers. She left her phone here.’
‘Where’s here?’
‘Pen Selwood. It’s a village in—’
‘Oh my goodness, is that Ferney?’
Ferney wondered if he should admit it, but there was something in her tone that sounded more like relief than suspicion. ‘Yes.’
‘Oh, that’s amazing. She was out of her mind and then we took her to the seaside and that seemed to help, then I showed her your photo and that helped even more, and then she started telling us all about some man called Guy who seemed to matter. Then her mother came and took us all away in the car and she went peculiar again and now she’s taken her off to some clinic and I think they’re going to do something terrible to her brain and—’
‘What clinic? Where?’
‘It’s near Newton Abbot and it’s called the Maple Tree Clinic and there’s a doctor there who’s going to force her to have some sort of horrible treatment so you’ve got to do something about it.’ She paused. ‘You will, won’t you? She wanted me to find you. That’s so lucky. I thought she might still have the phone with her – that’s why I called it. Listen, I’m sorry I was nasty to you but she’s talked about you now and I believe you and I think it’s just the most beautiful story and you’ve got to help her. You will, won’t you?’
‘Go back a bit,’ Ferney said. ‘You were at this place by the seaside and you said she got better. Where was it?’
‘Um, just up from Torcross? In Start Bay?’
That meant nothing to him, nothing that would explain why she had started talking about Sir Guy. ‘I don’t know it.’
‘It’s near Dartmouth?’
‘No.’
‘The beach is called Slapton Sands.’
And then it made sense to him and he felt his spirits lift because all at once, he could see the shape of it. ‘And Slapton village, is that about a mile or so inland from there?’ he asked.
‘That’s right.’
‘Is there still a big chapel in Slapton – a chantry?’
‘There’s a big old tower and she knew it. She said you were there for the opening.’
‘All right, Lucy. Listen to me. What have they said they’re going to do to Gally?’
‘To Gally?’ Lucy tried the name on for size. ‘To Gally. Okay. Her mum said they would have to section her. That was the word. We can’t let them do that but I don’t know how to stop them.’
Ferney was waiting when Rachel brought Mike back from Yeovil. He was keyed up and scarcely able to wait for them to get inside the house.
‘They let you go?’ he asked as Mike walked into the kitchen. The teacher was withdrawn, grey-faced, hardly even aware that this boy was intruding in his house. He seemed to find it hard to answer.
‘I got him out but we’ve only got twenty-four hours’ grace,’ said the lawyer. ‘We’re back in there at five o’ clock tomorrow come hell or high water, and that’s our last chance. I’m pretty sure they’re going to charge him. We need Gally. We need to understand the poison she used.’
‘And I need you,’ Ferney said. ‘Gally’s in trouble.’ He explained the phone call from Lucy. ‘So here’s the deal. You help me and I’ll help you. You stop them doing whatever they’re planning to do, this sectioning thing, and I’ll talk to her. I’ll take her back to it to see if she can help.’
‘Calm down,’ said Rachel. ‘Sectioning doesn’t mean cutting into her brain, it just means using a section of the Mental Health Act to keep her in there against her will.’
‘And doing what to her?’
‘Drug treatment, electroconvulsive therapy – that sort of thing.’
‘And that’s better, is it? She doesn’t need it. She needs me to explain to her what’s happening, that’s all.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Rachel. Her phone rang. ‘Oh lord,’ she said, looking at the screen. ‘It’s my office.’ She put it to her ear. ‘Hello? Yes, Pauline, I know. I’m sorry but you’ll have to cancel her. Yes, I’ll be out tomorrow morning – at least I expect so. I may have to go to Devon.’ She listened again. ‘Well, just tell Leo not to bother his little head about that. It’s my client, not his. I’ll sort out who pays the bill later. No, tell him I’m quite capable of handling it and anyway, he hasn’t been charged yet.’ She listened again. ‘Then tell him he can stuff himself,’ she said and put the phone in her pocket. She looked at them. ‘Okay. It’s time for some very plain speaking. I am going to suspend what’s left of my disbelief. I just need to know I’ve got this right. Ferney, you died here. Gally gave birth the same day. She gave birth to a girl who was your child, Mike? You two called your daughter Rosie but when she was still tiny, you realised she was Ferney? Am I right so far?’
Mike could only nod. Rachel went on. ‘Rosie began to show signs of great distress. When she turned two, she started self-harming. Ferney, you’ve more or less told me that she – you – let’s just say Rosie for simplicity – was being driven mad by the whole thing? The mess of being the wrong sex and the wrong relationship?’ She saw there were tears in Ferney’s eyes.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I seem to be the only one capable of speech around here so I’ll just carry on, shall I? In the end, Gally decided to stick to some old agreement that you two had and she killed herself and Rosie so that the two of you could come back for another go – a sort of “better luck next time” kind of deal. A bit harsh on Mike to say the least.’
‘She’s not harsh,’ whispered Ferney.
‘If you say so.’
‘I do say so. You think it would have been easier the other way, do you?’ He flung out his arm, finger pointed at Mike. ‘You think it would have been easier for him to live with me as his daughter? Me going mad with it? What would you have done?’
‘Not that.’
‘You don’t know that.’ He stopped and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. Yes. That’s what happened but she couldn’t find another way.’
Rachel stared at him. ‘I don’t know what to say to that,’ she said. ‘Anyway, we have to persuade Gally to remember enough about how she did it to get Mike off the hook. After all, we do know that whatever she mixed up must have taken effect a lot quicker than the police are now suggesting. That is the very slender hope on which everything now rests and because it seems to be the only game in town, I’m going to take a huge professional risk and pick you up at eight o’clock tomorrow morning so that we can go down to Devon and see what she has to say.’ She looked hard at Ferney. ‘So yes, we need you with us. You are going to help, aren’t you?’
‘On condition that you help me get her back here, safe, into this house, to be with me. That’s the way it has to be.’
‘That’s blackmail and it’s an absurd thing to ask.’
‘It’s not up to you, it’s up to Mike.’
Rachel looked at Mike, who closed his eyes. ‘Mike’s helped you all he can,’ she said flatly. ‘He’s in a lot of trouble because of you. You should give something back.’ Then in a moment of inspiration, she added, ‘That’s what Gally would say, isn’t it?’
Ferney’s head dipped in the suggestion of a nod and she stared at him but he said nothing else.
‘I don’t think we can do anything more right now. I’ve got to go. Lulie needs her supper. Ferney, are you going home?’
‘I’ve left home. I’ve told them. I wrote a note.’
‘Won’t they be straight round here?’
‘Oh sure. They care so much they’ve gone to Doncaster for the racing. Don’t worry, I’ve got somewhere to go.’
‘Really?’ But she was distracted, thinking of time and Lulie and school finishing, so she took him at face value as he pedalled away.
She had only been gone five minutes when Ferney came back, rapped on the door and came in before Mike had a chance to get to it.
‘We’ve got some things to sort out,’ he said, standing in the kitchen.
‘Oh?’
‘You think you have rights to Gally.’
‘She’s my wife.’
‘She was your wife. She’s not now.’
‘Maybe what matters is what she thinks about this, not you,’ said Mike.
‘She’s feeling guilty about you,’ Ferney admitted. ‘That makes it worse. She needs my support every second of every day to see her through this. She needs life to be simple – her and me.’
‘I can look after her. I did before. You could let us have this time. What have I got? Thirty more years if I’m lucky? You’ll have her again after that, for ever and ever according to you.’
‘Sit down,’ said the boy. ‘Sit down and listen to me.’ Great age filled him out and Mike did as he was told. ‘You think we’ve got all the time in the world, do you? What a world it’s turning into. You’ve got only one life sentence in it. I may have it for as long as it lasts and that’s supposed to be some sort of blessing, is it? Every day, that looks like a worse and worse deal. You can be vaguely sorry that the ice will melt and the sea will rise and the summer will boil us and the winter will freeze us and we will have to fight over the food that’s withering in the fields and water that’s draining away. You can be sad for a future world and you know you will never see it and you won’t have to deal with it, but I will and she will. Have you thought about that? We won’t have the convenient escape of death. And you would deny us the chance to have one more good life together, would you? Even without all that it’s harder and harder, not knowing how long it will take us to find each other, not knowing if we’ll be the right age and if the police and the whole snooping world will let us be together.’
‘The right age? You think I’m too old for her? You know very well age has got nothing to do with it. She’s not really sixteen. I don’t think I’m too old for her.’
‘Too old?’ said Ferney incredulously. ‘I’m not saying you’re too old for her. I’m saying you’re far, far too young.’
That was when Mike finally got it, and in that moment something inside him shifted from hopeless hope to plain hopelessness. He sighed and nodded and let go of his flawed claim. ‘All right then,’ he said in the weariest of voices. ‘I see.’
The boy stared at him and Mike stared back. ‘Look after her,’ he said. ‘That’s what matters. Are you hungry?’
‘Yes.’
‘So am I.’ He went to look in the cupboard. ‘There’s eggs and beans. That’s about it.’
‘I’d prefer beans and eggs, if that’s all right with you.’
Mike gave a surprised laugh and something eased in the atmosphere between them.
When they had finished eating, he went to take Ferney’s plate and stopped. ‘What’s this?’ he asked, picking up the ancient label lying on the table where Rachel had left it.
‘I think it’s off the old picture.’
‘Which one?’
‘The one I left to Gally in my will.’
Mike shook his head and put it back down.
It wasn’t like having a guest in the house, more like a visit from the landlord. Mike was woken in the morning by a series of bangs and went downstairs to find Ferney standing on a chair in the kitchen inspecting the ceiling with a hammer in his hand.
‘There’s a wedge in that beam, do you see?’ he said. ‘It works loose and you get a shake in the floorboards upstairs. Just needs knocking back in once in a while.’
‘How long is a while?’
‘Twenty years maybe.’
‘But the builders did all that when we came.’
‘They freshened up her make-up,’ said Ferney, ‘but she’s still got the same old bones,’ and that didn’t disturb Mike. He felt as if something that had loosened the previous evening had shifted further out of the way in the night. The boy was busy round the kitchen, cooking him scrambled eggs without asking, and he didn’t even mind that.