1

‘There is no God,’ murmured Anselm.

‘You’re going a bit far, there,’ replied Bede, Larkwood Priory’s tubby archivist.

‘No, I’m not. This is one of those moments of insight that sent Nietzsche over the edge.’

Anselm stared in horror at the open pages of the Sunday Times, laid out for all to see, on a table in the monastery’s library. The title ran: ‘The Monk who Left it All for a Life of Crime’.

‘Bin it.’

‘I can’t and won’t.’

‘Why?’

‘The Prior said not to.’

‘But it’s … embarrassing.’

‘It’s about you. The Superman. It’s about Larkwood. It goes into one of my binders.’

Several brother monks had already read the article. Only ‘article’ didn’t do justice to the author’s exertions. It was more of a biopic. A careful examination of the unusual twists and turns in a strange man’s life. Anselm had come running to the library after hearing a few loud guffaws in the calefactory.

‘Bede, everything’s out of proportion.’

‘You can make annotations, giving the right dimensions.’

‘Get stuffed.’

Anselm leaned over the table, his wide eyes skimming down the columns of print, culling facts and quotations. French mother, English father. Quirky at school. According to John Wexford, headmaster of the day, Charming fellow, but he could never see the wood for les arbres. Graduate in law from Durham University. Called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn. No academic distinctions to speak of. A barrister for ten years in the chambers of Roderick Kemble QC.

Bede’s chubby finger appeared.

‘This is my favourite,’ he purred, stroking a paragraph. ‘Let’s read it quietly together.’

They did:

‘A rare breed of man’, argues Kemble, one of London’s most distinguished criminal lawyers. ‘A loss to the Bar when he became a monk. I’ve rarely come across such a remarkable combination of brilliance, sound judgement and disarming humility. The top corridor of justice is a colder place for his absence.’ Great men have great flaws, I suggest. Kemble frowns, obliged to acknowledge a certain kink in the character of his former protégé. ‘Well, as the Good Book says of King Solomon – another fine jurist – he loved many strange women.’

‘I’ll never forgive you,’ breathed Anselm and, addressing Bede, ‘He’s joking.’

‘Manifestly.’

With an oath, uttered in French, Anselm moved onto ‘the hidden Larkwood years’ and the ‘quiet eruption of unreported forensic activity’. Each investigation was explored in some detail, culminating in a hymn of admiration. To give it prominence Bede cleared his voice:

‘“After the closure of each case, this reticent sleuth returned to Larkwood, refusing interviews, disdaining praise. But justice had been done in places beyond the reach of the law. He resumes a quiet life tending bees. To this day he repudiates any—”’

‘That’ll do.’

‘It only gets better. Try this—’

‘Belt up.’

They were quiet for a moment while Anselm chewed his lip. The call from the Sunday Times had come without warning. Having pieced together some old and scattered headlines, a journalist with an eye for the unusual had glimpsed the larger canvas. He’d called wanting an interview. In the nicest possible way, Anselm had declined to oblige, following which he’d assumed the matter had died a quiet death. He hadn’t imagined that the journalist might contact key witnesses, let alone examine his life prior to Larkwood. There was one small mercy.

‘Thank God he didn’t speak to one of my old clients.’

‘On reflection, perhaps you were right,’ came Bede, purring once more.

‘What about?’

‘Nietzsche.’

Bede turned the page ceremonially as if it were a revered text. The chubby finger tapped a name in the article’s concluding paragraph.

‘Mitch Robson.’ Anselm murmured the name.

The insurance man who’d run a jazz club. The trumpet player who’d tweaked the rules of harmony. His two acquittals at the Old Bailey on charges of theft were memorable high points in Anselm’s career. A man of good character had been scandalously blamed for the slipshod accounting system of a ruthless employer. The lambent phrases (used twice) returned to Anselm’s mind. In a fancy, he glimpsed the jury’s indignation. He’d passed it on like an infection.

‘Don’t be churlish,’ scolded Bede in reply. ‘He speaks movingly of your gifts … your high character.’ The archivist paused to salt the wound. ‘You were close once, it seems.’

Anselm snatched the paper. He couldn’t bear the commentary any longer. He read on, with growing dismay:

Despite this double vindication, Mr Robson remains aggrieved. ‘The law doesn’t always mesh with reality,’ he explains at home, an old pleasure wherry moored on the Lark. ‘One moment you’re driving on the right side of the road, and the next you’re in court battling to put your life back together. Thankfully, I knew Anselm. He winkled some justice out of the system.’ Mr Robson is not surprised that his one-time advocate became a monk, or that the monk then returned to the quest for justice. ‘He’s somewhere between this world and the next. That’s why he sees a little bit further than everyone else. That’s why anyone in a hopeless situation should give him a call. There’s no one quite like him.’ Mr Robson is right. And surely that makes this reclusive monk one of the more unusual detectives in England.

Give him a call? thought Anselm in disbelief. I’m not free to do anything. He appraised his brother monk, seeking sympathy and a recognition that things had got out of hand.

‘C’mon, Bede, this makes me into something I’m not.’

‘Undeniably.’

‘Let’s put it where it belongs.’

‘Okay.’

‘In the bin.’

‘Nope.’ Bede rose and carefully folded up the paper. ‘No can do,’ he said, locking it beneath one chunky arm. ‘This is history. My job is to preserve it for the instruction of future generations. A cautionary tale, perhaps.’

‘I’m not sure I like you, frankly,’ whispered Anselm. ‘I do my best, you know, for the sake of the Kingdom, but I’ve always thought there’s something … Vichy about you. You’re an ally of dark powers. Just wait till your name appears in print.’

‘That day will never dawn.’ The archivist had reached the door. He turned and gave the newspaper a reproving slap with the back of his hand. ‘Like most of us at Larkwood, I keep out of the public eye. It’s called being a monk.’

Anselm stared out of the window. He could see fresh green treetops behind the blue slate of Saint Hildegard’s where the apples were pressed and the mash recycled into a hideous chutney reserved for communal consumption. Bells rang, punctuating moments of importance, but Anselm didn’t move. His mind meandered through remembered conversations. He picked his way over the rubble of another life, listening intently to guarded disclosures. At one point he groaned out loud, wryly noting the curious symmetry between his former life as a barrister and his present existence as a monk: so much of what he’d been told lay protected by a solemn promise of confidentiality. He could never repeat anything he’d heard until it was already public knowledge; he couldn’t voice any previous suspicions until they’d been openly confirmed. His role as a listener was a kind of prison, shared with the person who’d sought his counsel. After an hour or so, he left the library and went to his cell. He had letters to write, beginning with a few ill-chosen words for Roddy Kemble and ending up with a salvo to the editor of the Sunday Times to the effect that the hidden life is best left hidden.

2

The first letter arrived for Anselm’s attention on Tuesday morning. Three more came on Wednesday. Eight on Thursday. Twenty-six on Friday. By the following Monday, Sylvester – Larkwood’s frail Doorkeeper – had been obliged to fill an old shoebox, obtained for that purpose and stored in the nearby mail room. He glowered at Anselm when he appeared, all sheepish, to collect the morning’s intake.

‘I’ve got better things to do than heave that lot around.’

‘I didn’t write them, Lantern Bearer; I merely receive them.’

‘I can’t hold the fort and fool around in reserve. There are external lines, internal lines, buttons and switches. What am I to do if one of the phones rings?’

‘What you normally do, with that same, touching patience.’

Sylvester sniffed, nodding at a vacant chair. Larkwood’s receptionist was one of the community’s founding fathers, a thatcher who’d helped restore the ruin donated to a group of winsome ascetics after the Great War. The oral tradition regarding his contribution to the English Gilbertine revival was unequivocal: he’d talked twice as much as he’d thatched. The written account was mercifully threadbare, largely because Bede hadn’t yet turned up with his files and folders.

‘No one writes to me any more,’ he moaned.

‘Why’s that?’

‘Pushing daisies, the lot of ’em.’

‘Too busy, I suppose.’

‘Mmmm.’

Anselm took the shoebox.

‘You’re the last of your kind,’ he said, sincerely. ‘A scout among cubs.’

Like Merlin, Sylvester youthened with age. It was impossible to judge his years. His flimsy hair was gossamer white, his bones protruding and somehow soft.

‘What do they all want, anyway?’ The old man peered at the sealed envelopes with the same curiosity that sent him on tiptoe to any closed door.

‘Help I can’t give,’ replied Anselm, wondering if today’s requests would be any different. ‘So far, I’ve been asked to find a cat, contact the dead, tackle the Chinese on Tibet … you wouldn’t believe the range of things that blight people’s lives. Thanks to a throwaway line in that article, the friendless and cornered think I’m some kind of magician. A link between earth and heaven. What can I do?’

‘Go to the Prior.’

‘Why?’

‘I just remembered. He wants to see you. And don’t forget Baden-Powell: “Be prepared.” He’s got the Moses-eye.’

Which was Sylvester’s way of saying the Prior had that sharp look of vigilance that appeared when he feared someone might go astray: in the instant case – Anselm surmised – through a venture into self-engendered public acclaim.

‘I’ve been waiting for this,’ muttered Anselm, rising. ‘He thinks I’ve had a hand in that blasted article. He thinks I might take it seriously … that I might even dance around my own image and likeness. I’d better explain.’

Anselm set off for the Prior’s study. When he reached the arched door to the cloister, he swung around to face the old scout: ‘If I’m not back in half an hour send out Peewee Patrol.’

During a moment of shared reflection the Prior had once declared that Anselm would always be freed from his monastic routine to help people who’d fallen between the cracks on the pavement to justice. The promise was, however, grounded upon three unspoken principles. First, an element of secrecy, in that Anselm was expected to work behind the scenes and without public acknowledgement; second, any such release would be the exception rather than the rule; and third, the kind of case he’d be allowed to accept belonged to a limited class: grave matters that touched upon the community or, by extension, people known to it. Such conditions kept Anselm firmly lodged in the cloister rather than the world. It did not take a Desert Father to recognise that the Sunday Times article had offended the first of these principles. Anselm had become a household name, if only for Sunday morning, but that was bad enough. The Moses-eye had grown increasingly troubled throughout the week following publication and Anselm, drawing up a chair, knew exactly what the Prior was going to say.

‘I tried to put him off,’ began Anselm. ‘It’s the last thing I expected to happen, but you can’t stop these people. They’ve got to find something to fill out the paper. They chose my past.’

The Prior, lodged behind his desk, adjusted round, cheap glasses. They were almost alone. To one side stood a headless statue that had been unearthed by a plough in Saint Leonard’s Field. Old parts of monastic history were forever turning up like this – smashed decoration, sections of pillars, capitals: the waste of a once violent, reforming zeal. The figure seemed to watch with a patience acquired over centuries.

‘And now I’m receiving letters from people who need a solicitor, the police or a doctor,’ continued Anselm. ‘They’re from decent folk who think I can do something these others can’t. And, of course, it’s just not possible. I appreciate that. It’s not my place in life. It’s not Larkwood’s, either. I’ll be telling them all that they need to understand the limits of—’

‘A letter came for me, too,’ interjected the Prior, the Glasgow grain shining through the Suffolk sheen. He held up an envelope. ‘They can’t go to a solicitor. They can’t call the police. It’s too late for a doctor. They think you can help them. I understand why. I’m minded to agree.’

Anselm took a mental step backwards.

‘You’re not vexed about the article?’

‘No.’

‘The attention it’s attracted?’

‘No.’

Anselm lifted the shoebox into view. ‘The requests for help?’

‘No, though Tibet will have to wait.’

The Prior pushed back his chair and walked to a window overlooking the cloister Garth. His voice was uncharacteristically ponderous, as if he were speaking to the generations of monks who’d come and gone, shuffling beneath the arches down below. Anselm listened, like Sylvester at a door.

‘I’ve been brooding on something I’d never thought possible,’ said the Prior. ‘It’s about the very identity of this monastery. Larkwood doesn’t exist for itself or any number of pilgrims. We provide a place where anyone at all can look clearly – at themselves and the circumstances they’ve left behind. They discover a kind of flickering light.’ He paused significantly. ‘There are many who might never come here. I’d like you to take that flame beyond the enclosure wall.’

Anselm sensed the Prior had much more to say; that he’d been turning over the mulch in his mind and come to a decision with implications beyond the request in the letter on his desk. Anselm listened with subdued anticipation.

‘There comes a time in a monk’s life, Anselm, when he can go back to the world he left while somehow remaining apart and different. He’s travelled that most difficult of journeys. He’s become something of a recollected man, a sort of birdwatcher attuned to the mysterious forest of the human heart. He returns to the familiar as a kind of stranger; an outsider within the ordinary. He can enter deeply into what he once knew, only deeper than before. He can see things to which he was once blind. He can hear things to which he was once deaf. And, most importantly of all, he hasn’t the faintest idea that he hears or sees anything in a way different to before. He just finds himself bemused in a place he once recognised without complication. But it’s that … being puzzled which permits him to probe the hearts of men and women, seeing what they would hide, even from themselves. He has an eye for the bright and the dark, for he has seen the light and shadows in himself, and not turned away.’

This was considerably worse than the Sunday Times. Anselm shifted uncomfortably. Something didn’t feel quite right.

‘Of course,’ continued the Prior, ‘this is a journey you have yet to travel.’

Anselm made a thin smile.

‘You’ve only just taken to the road. But I’ve been persuaded that in certain circumstances, it is right to learn en route.’ The Prior turned from the window, smiling indulgence and the natural worry of a father. ‘You’ve always been a lawyer in a habit; a man of two worlds. It’s only right that you should serve them both, and sooner rather than later. So I’ve decided to formalise things, for the benefit of people who’d never come to Larkwood but would turn to you when all other doors are closed. Henceforth you are at liberty to accept cases from anyone who contacts you, subject, of course, to the exercise of sound judgement. I’ll try and help in that regard. You must always give priority to those on the margins of hope.’

Anselm didn’t know what to say. For a man bound to monastic life the decision was momentous with significant repercussions. The exception had just become the rule.

The Prior returned to his desk and took the letter out of its envelope. ‘Do you need time to reflect upon what I’m asking or a shove to get on with it?’

‘Is there a middle road? Something vague and indecisive?’

‘No.’

‘Fair enough. I’ll take the shove.’

3

Without further ceremony, the Prior handed the letter to Anselm. There was no address, no name and no date. The author had used a typewriter. Anselm angled the page to the light, reading under his breath.

Father Prior,

I read with interest the article about Father Anselm. As it happens, I’ve followed his career wondering, on occasion, why his services were not more widely available and why his clients were only friends or those with a special connection to his past. What of those who are strangers to your world? People on the margins of hope? People with nowhere to turn because no one would believe them? Are they to be forgotten?

‘That’s an interesting point,’ observed Anselm. He’d also noted that phrase about hope; it had burned Larkwood’s protector.

‘I know,’ replied the Prior, still feeling the heat.

Anselm continued to read:

I write on behalf of Jennifer Henderson. When she was alive she made no cry for help because she didn’t see the danger. Neither did I. Nor did anyone else. We didn’t read the signs properly. Now it’s too late. She’s dead. There’s no point in going to the police because there’s no evidence, and without evidence there’s no suspect and no crime. So I come to you speaking for her. Find out what really happened on the day she died. Her husband knows only too well. That’s why he snapped in Manchester and ended up in prison. You’ve got two weeks before he’s released. What does the future hold? It’s obvious: he’ll snap again. Only this time he might just take his own life. Why not help him, for the sake of the living and the dead? Why not extend Larkwood’s reach?

That was the end of the letter. Anselm turned the page, looking in vain for some stray clue to the writer’s identity.

‘You know who the husband is, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘It’s Peter Henderson, the philosopher from Cambridge, the celebrity commentator. Always on television and the radio. Question Time and the Moral Maze. Did you follow the case?’

‘No more than anyone else.’

Anselm thought for a while.

‘I met her once … years back. She was in hospital having some routine tests. I was filling in for the chaplain. I told you when I got back … don’t you remember?’

The Prior didn’t. But that was no great surprise. His memory was strangely selective, favouring the details that everyone else tended to forget. Anselm made a forgiving sigh and then read the letter once more. Looking up, he said:

‘Is this why you’ve extended my mandate? This plea on behalf of the forgotten?’

‘Yes.’ The Prior gave a self-reproving laugh. ‘It was Mr Robson who first set me thinking, when he spoke out for the hopeless. And then I received the letter … from someone I’ve never met and who, like Mr Robson, doesn’t know our ways. But from that place of unknowing they raised the most important question of all: the scope and nature of Larkwood’s reach. Isn’t it strange: if you’d asked me yourself to be released without restriction, I’d have said, “No”. It took a vindicated man and a stranger to show me that the time for change was upon us both.’

There was nothing more to be said. The decision had been made. Anselm had already embarked upon a changed life. As if nudged to start work, he examined the author’s phrasing.

‘This is an allegation of murder.’

‘It is.’

‘Only the word itself isn’t used.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘Which means they’re not sure.’

‘Yet sure enough to write in the first place.’

‘They suspect Peter Henderson but they don’t accuse him. Which means they’re not sure of that either. They’re a disturbed bystander who can’t make sense of a woman’s dying. They can’t accept that no one’s to blame.’

They were quiet, watching each other, and then the Prior leaned on his desk, fingers knitted.

‘Normally, when it comes to legal exegesis, I’d defer to your better judgement.’

‘I make no lofty claims—’

‘But on this occasion I sense you’ve latched onto what is important, while missing the importance of it, do you get my meaning?’

The Prior made it sound like a surprising achievement.

‘Not really.’

‘Look at the wording again,’ said the Prior. ‘They may well be a confused bystander, they’re also a sure voice, inhibited by an understanding and respect for the law. They don’t accuse anyone, because they don’t have the evidence. They don’t allege murder, because they know it can’t be proved. The importance of the matter is this: they still know that Peter Henderson killed his wife. They want that rare justice which lies “beyond the reach of the law”. This is why they’ve come to you. No one else would even try to help them. Perhaps no one else could.’

Anselm wasn’t so sure the Prior’s reading of the text was entirely different from his own. The Prior had identified a note of certainty, Anselm an agonised hesitation. They were separated by a hair. On either understanding the author wanted Anselm to prove that Jennifer Henderson had been murdered: whether that end was achieved by confirming a belief or dispelling a doubt hardly mattered. Anselm’s mind began to wander:

‘They’re holding something back.’

‘What?’

Anselm had seen the lie. ‘They knew Jennifer Henderson was in danger but they didn’t take it seriously. They failed to act. And now they live with a secret guilt. They want it purged.’

Anselm thought of his shoebox and the little heap of despair, mischief and last-ditch pleading. Only someone with nothing to lose would write to a Monk who’d Left it All for a Life of Crime. In there, folded neatly, were serious attempts to hit back at the sadness and tragedy of life; attempts to bring someone on side who might make a difference. Anselm felt curiously light-headed. Through an anonymous letter, Larkwood’s Prior had heard those joined voices.

‘There’s more than guilt here,’ corrected the Prior. ‘There’s pity, too. They might speak for Jennifer but they also care for Peter. They’ve seen the signs, and understood them. Now he’s a danger to himself.’

‘And this time they’ve decided to act,’ agreed Anselm.

‘Exactly. So get started immediately. On their behalf. You might want to thank Mr Robson first. He helped me to understand how I might best direct your talents.’

Anselm said he would, colouring slightly – for praise and indebtedness made him restive – and then, with a tentative exploratory voice he ventured a novel idea:

‘Normally I operate alone, but on this one occasion do you mind if I bring Mr Robson on board as an assistant … if he’s willing? In the circumstances, I think it would be more than fitting.’

The Prior approved, but when Anselm had reached the door on his way out, he called him back.

‘Bring Larkwood’s flame into this family’s hidden tragedy … only be careful.’ He’d been arrested by an afterthought of great importance, something he should have seen earlier and mentioned at the outset, only, being a Gilbertine, he’d come to it by accident and at the last moment. ‘Bring the flame but take care not to burn yourself or anyone else. We view this troubled world by a wavering light. Don’t impose the truths you think you see.’

Bemused by this obscure warning, Anselm straddled his scooter thinking of Peter Fonda in Easy Rider, the outlaw who joined up with another fugitive to discover the taste of freedom. On reaching the public library in Sudbury he consulted the newspaper archives and did some adroit Googling, research that generated a handful of photocopies and print-outs that he placed in his leather satchel, a childhood relic more proper, now, to the discerning bohemian than a monk who wrestled with crime. Wanting an appreciation of the wider issues, he glanced at an entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, only to confirm his initial expectations: the ancient Greeks had thought of everything (though – and this was new to Anselm – the first suggestion of a code of conduct for health professionals was to be found in Egyptian papyri of the second millennium BC).

Back at Larkwood, brooding on the healing craft, Anselm mumbled his way through Vespers, afterwards pushing food around his plate in the refectory while Father Jerome read out some twelfth-century text entitled ‘Awareness in the Heart’. Unfortunately, Anselm was so taken by the title that he couldn’t follow the reading itself. The very notion intrigued him, suggesting as it did a kind of insight parallel to scientific enquiry. The heart as the seat of conscience. He was still turning over the phrase throughout Compline, during Lauds the next morning, and while he walked along the west bank of the Lark, his feet wet with dew. Two miles upstream he saw the pleasure wherry and slowed, wondering how best to express himself. If Anselm was going to start a new life, he wanted a clean slate.

4

The Jelly Roll was moored to a wooden landing stage. A black canvas sail hung lowered, leaving the stout single mast among taut cables, their clean lines sharp against the morning sky. The hull was black with a white nose, the long cabin section a rich cedar brown. Anselm came on board by a companionway that divided the living quarters in two, descending the few steps to a door that had been left ajar. He pushed it gingerly and entered.

The interior was beamed and low. Drawers and lockers separated cushioned benches, all built into the surrounding wood panelling. Brass instruments of navigation, almost certainly of no use on the Lark, adorned one wall. At the far end a row of copper pans hung above a devastated kitchen. Sunlight broke through small round windows, igniting months of dust.

‘Good morning, Mitch,’ said Anselm, when he’d reached the middle of the cabin. ‘It’s been a long time since we talked about right and wrong. In those days it was about notes. And bending old rules. Bop and be-bop. You favoured them. I didn’t. Shall we delve a little deeper, now?’

He was talking to the figure slumped in an armchair. A silver trumpet lay on a nearby table, along with a bottle of water and a torn packet of aspirin. Mitch had come back late from his club, it seemed. Too tired to get undressed, he’d blown himself to sleep. Anselm looked around. There were no signs of wealth. No hint of ill-gotten gains. The room glowed with old wood, crafted when people still went to work by foot; when shire horses nodded along the churned-up Suffolk lanes; that simpler, ruder time.

‘C’mon Mitch,’ said Anselm, loudly. He gave the sleeping man a nudge with his foot. ‘It’s time to wake up and face the day.’

The two men eyed one another across the years.

‘I never thought I’d see you again,’ said Mitch, with his soft Northumberland lilt.

He’d showered while Anselm made strong coffee. Seated now at a table, they found themselves evoking other, less fraught meetings, held long ago in Anselm’s chambers. They’d talked about Earl Hines over damning evidence: heaps of paper demonstrating slow but sure enrichment. The first time around, forensic accountants had calculated that £113,268.32 had disappeared in settlement of small, bogus claims. No one had signed them off. Though one of a team, only Mitch Robson had worked on each of the cases in question.

‘I read about you in the Sunday Times,’ replied Anselm. ‘I thought we might tie up a few loose ends.’

After the second trial, concerning the alleged theft of £174,189.84 from a previous employer (by identical means), Anselm had never set foot in Mitch’s club again. He’d let their friendship wither without saying why. Professional etiquette had prevented him from speaking plainly, as friends must. He couldn’t say that he’d blushed at the improbability of his closing speech, when he’d twice blamed missing secretaries and the honourable dead (juries like to think the upright had merely concealed their corruption). He couldn’t say that he’d never accepted either of the rogue verdicts.

‘Where do you want to start?’ teased Mitch. ‘Where we left off?’

‘No. To put our parting in context, I need to go back to the beginning … to when I first came to the bar. Will you bear with me?’

Mitch gave a willing nod. He had the worn look of a man who lives by nights, not altogether caring what happens during the day. His hair was silvered, cropped close to the scalp. He was dressed in black: a rumpled T-shirt and faded jeans: the uniform of musicians and vendors of Socialist Worker, devoted acolytes of art and protest. His face was lined from too much frowning. All those high notes, fancied Anselm. Or maybe it was the worry. He was pale, too, from only working when the sun went down. Brown eyes flickered with curiosity. Anselm said:

‘When I first entered a courtroom, I thought that winning a case was all that mattered. If I lost, well, it was just hard luck; or maybe I just needed to learn a few clever moves … you know, the tricks of the trade. It took me years to realise that winning had nothing to do with finding the truth. More often than not I went home pretty sure the jury had got it right. But sometimes, especially during a winning streak – like with you – I was convinced they’d got it wrong. And these were golden moments, because I’d pulled off the impossible. I’d persuaded twelve decent people that in the exceptional circumstances of this most difficult case, two and two make five. I’d done nothing wrong. I’d followed the rules. But I’d ended up as part of the crime. I went home with a taste of ash in the mouth. This wasn’t why I’d come to the Bar. Not to win a game. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?’

Mitch gave the matter careful consideration. Then he reached for his trumpet and played an Ellington refrain, forte: ‘I’m Beginning to See the Light’. He was a cautious man. Even now he wasn’t going to incriminate himself.

Anselm continued:

‘You, Mitch, belong to the ash. That’s why our friendship ended. But I’ve come back because I’ve selected you for a special role. On the scale of criminals I helped along the way, you are roughly in the middle. You’re an average player. And that makes you a fitting symbol for the rest … for all the people who walked free but should have been sent to Wormwood Scrubs.’

Mitch couldn’t think of a rejoinder so he just worked the valves. In a way, it was a gesture of appreciation; and sarcasm.

‘I’ve got a proposal for you,’ said Anselm. ‘But first I need to ask a few questions, starting with the obvious. Why steal the money? You needed nothing.’

‘There Was Nobody Looking’. Mitch had blown another Ellington line, pianissimo this time.

Anselm persevered: ‘The police couldn’t trace a penny. Will you tell me where it all went?’

Mitch gave a shrug and played ‘Undecided’, a Dixieland standard, but Anselm cut the tune short: ‘Have you gone clean? I need to know for sure. No fooling around this time.’

Mitch thought about the question long enough to persuade Anselm that he was being serious, and then he began ‘Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now’.

It was one of Fats Waller’s funny promises. And an appropriate note to end on.

Broadly speaking, these guarded ‘replies’ had completely exceeded Anselm’s expectations. He’d foreseen a spat and some trading of insults. But instead, Mitch had cut to the chase with a candid confession making sure, however, that it could never be used to initiate a fresh prosecution. He’d been honest, retracting with the Gilbertine the lies he’d told the lawyer. As if acknowledging that the first half of this peculiar conference was over, Mitch put his trumpet down and said:

‘You mentioned a proposal.’

The sun had climbed high, moving shadows round the boat as if to rearrange the furniture of light and dark. Something important had changed. Nothing looked the same. Mitch swallowed a couple of aspirin and finished off the bottled water. He was smiling faintly. A kind of forgiveness had come to his pleasure wherry. And he was important now. He was a symbol.

‘Up until this morning I was a beekeeper,’ explained Anselm. ‘I also picked apples, washed bottles, and waxed floors. On occasion, I was released to help those who’d come unstuck with the law. This arrangement has come to an end. You are partly responsible.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. You invited readers of the Sunday Times to contact me should they find themselves in a hopeless situation. That’s a large category of people and a surprising number took up the offer. My Prior thanks you. He’s also asked me to respond in the name of the community. For me, it’s a new beginning. And like everyone who starts a new venture, I want to clean up the past. I’d like you to help me.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes.’

‘As a symbol?’ Mitch was amused, failing to appreciate that Anselm wasn’t even remotely smiling.

‘At Larkwood we use lots of symbols and rituals to express things that can’t be put into words. We also use them to enact important changes in direction.’

‘You have something in mind?’

‘I do.’

‘And?’

‘I want you to help me solve a case, just one example of the need for justice. I’d like you to contribute something to the system you flouted. Because whether you like it or not – remorse and forgiveness aside – the law is our only means of restoring order to a disordered world.’

Mitch was no longer flippant. The creases in his pale face, the lines of worry or concentration, had deepened.

‘There’s an element of reparation, too,’ persisted Anselm. ‘Call it a fine, but I want you to meet any expenses. And since you twice before took me for a ride, I’d like you to provide the transport. We’ll use the boat as our office. That’s everything. If you think about it, I’m not asking much.’

‘And what’s in it for you?’

‘Like I said, you represent all the others, from the greatest to the least. All the liars, thieves and killers. Back then, I could only offer a route off the charge, not knowing whether it should stick or not. Now, with your help I want to uncover the truth regardless of what anyone says and whatever the cost or implications. Working with a former client who should have been convicted will be my one small act of reparation. It’s not much either, but it’s something. That’s what symbols are for.’

When the silence grew heavy, Mitch went to the kitchen and made more coffee. He was quiet and absorbed, mulling over Anselm’s outlandish proposal; reviewing their friendship, the sudden break, and now this surprising offer of reconciliation. Before each jury the greater part of Anselm’s speeches had dwelled upon good things, things known to be true: Mitch’s blameless past, a jazz club that raised thousands for charity, the history of glowing commendations from his bewildered employers. All that good faith had survived. It was still there. The only shadows – back then and now – had fallen from the two indictments. When Mitch came back to the table Anselm spoke again. There was a need for absolute candour:

‘I’ll be honest, Mitch, I’m hoping that once you become involved in the search for justice, once you’ve seen how we need rules to protect and save, you’ll answer for yourself without hiding behind a trumpet. I’m hoping you’ll tell me why you stole the money and what you did with it. I’m hoping you’ll hand yourself in and face the consequences.’

‘As a symbol for all the others?’

‘No. For your own good.’

The grooves along Mitch’s forehead buckled and Anselm wondered if there wasn’t an element of bitterness in those crooked shadows; a deep and abiding disillusionment. Mitch’s brown eyes rose inexorably, settling onto Anselm with a kind of livid pity. Or was it frustration? An exasperation with do-gooders who don’t understand their own rhetoric? He seemed to accept a challenge: there was tension in his voice, born of the longing to be proved right:

‘Maybe at the end of this expedition into joint atonement, you, too, will learn something about law and the complexity of life, and how rules don’t always protect or save.’

Anselm held Mitch’s gaze: there was fire in there, and resistance. The spat and the insults weren’t that far away after all. Anselm said, lightly:

‘I take it you accept my offer?’

Mitch’s anger subsided. He slumped back in his chair, regarding Anselm with an old familiarity. They’d spoken like this about bop and be-bop. They’d said hard things to one another; unforgivable things. And then Mitch had got charged. They’d spoken politely about the evidence, never once exchanging a cross word. Everything had gone smoothly. Smiling mischievously, he reached for his trumpet. Assenting to Anselm’s proposal – and looking forward to the rewards of conversion – he closed his eyes and belted out ‘Oh When the Saints’.

Anselm was jealous. He coveted the wherry and its place on the Lark. He’d always been drawn to rivers and the sea and their shared element, water. It was cleansing but dangerous, sure but unpredictable. At night, listening to ‘Sailing By’, he rode imagined waves, feeling the swell of the deep, wondering what tomorrow might hold. Humming the tune, he followed Mitch on deck to a bench on the prow. The morning glow had vanished off the fields. Cattle tugged at the grass. Fish snapped into the air.

‘I have a case already,’ said Anselm, watching ringlets spread and vanish. ‘There’s no evidence of any crime. Finding out what happened will require both grit and imagination.’

‘What do you expect from me?’ said Mitch, uncertainly. ‘I’m just a musician.’

‘And I’m just a monk. Perhaps you could improvise with the facts.’

They watched the cows slowly eating, sticking close together as if they might get lost.

‘But you’re not just a monk, are you?’ qualified Mitch, to distinguish the conductor from the player. ‘You’re a detective.’

This time Anselm was the one with a lined brow, shadows cut into skin that had once been smooth and free from cares. He almost felt the Lark lift with anticipation.

‘I’m not sure the term meets the demands of the moment,’ he said, rather quietly. ‘Think more a solver of puzzles. A troubled explorer in a wilderness of moral problems.’

5

Michael moved resolutely down the stairs of the guesthouse, past the dining room and out through the front door. A cold wind struck his face like a wave on a desolate beach. Orange-rimmed cloud, violet to black, smeared the vast expanse above the complaining sea. Michael didn’t linger. He had a job to do. He’d picked his target during the previous days’ dawdling, after confirming that the corner shop was still there, flanked by a pub and lighthouse. He’d checked the opening and closing times. He’d found out when the streets were deserted. The informer had told Michael to practise.

Look into the eyes of someone you love. Turn out the light with a flick of a switch.

Someone you love. There was no one to hand. But Michael had a loved memory of a loved place. A tiny shop two hundred yards from the shore. He’d first gone there with Jenny when she was a child … after he’d come back from Northern Ireland. A sign on the window had warned customers that the proprietor used the old imperial weights and measures. Pounds and ounces. A Union Jack had been drawn on the bottom as if it were the seal of Her Majesty. There’d been two counters inside, one for children, the other for adults. To the left, jars of sweets containing Liquorice Allsorts, sherbet lemons, wine gums and sticks of bright pink rock. To the right, carved pipes, pouches of tobacco, cigars, cigarettes and matches. In the middle, a kindly man with a wide smile, always wondering which way to go. Michael had smoked in those days. A pipe. To give age to his permanently young appearance. Jenny would drag him along the pavement, one step ahead, her mind on the large jars of many colours. Even in those days she’d held his hand very tight, as though fearful something bad might happen if she let go. They’d enter the shop, Jenny facing the tobacco, Michael facing the sweets. The kindly man, hair short, sleeves rolled up, all homely in his long brown apron, would hesitate, not knowing who’d speak first. He seemed to be teetering, his face alight with expectation.

‘A box of matches, please,’ Jenny would say.

Followed by Michael: ‘And two ounces of jelly babies.’

He’d expected crossfire … Jenny right to left, Michael left to right, but they’d tricked him. When he got used to the pattern, they’d swap it round, just to knock him off balance. Just when he was sure the child at the tobacco counter wanted matches for her father, she’d ask for bonbons, sending him the other way, like a goalkeeper wrong-footed in a penalty shoot-out.

‘Don’t let go, Daddy,’ she’d say, as they stepped into the street, failing to appreciate that she, now, was trapped by a choice between two directions: the security of her father’s touch or having a free hand to dip into the paper bag. Back then, the choices had been so much simpler. It hadn’t mattered if you got it wrong.

The shop was still there. The kindly man was now a kindly old man. He stood in the doorway watching life go by. There were trestles on either side of the entrance holding crates of fruit and vegetables. The windows were clean, the frames painted white. Inside – Michael had only glanced while scouting from the other side of the road – there was only one counter. The tobacco side had gone. It was all sweets now … but still in those big jars. The shelves along the sides and the back were crammed with them. Jenny would have loved it.

You have to be calm.

Michael rounded the corner. The sea lay behind him, restive, advancing, withdrawing, endlessly rolling forward and sweeping back. Ahead were the lighthouse and the pub. Dwarfed and open for business stood Number Nine St George’s Green. The locals had bought their fruit and veg for lunch. The kids were now at school. The streets were empty. The old man had just stepped back inside, limping slightly, an empty crate between his hands. He was still wearing a brown apron.

His eyes are full of surprise … you can see it, just before you kill him. It’s the look of a newborn … and you can’t hesitate. You turn out his light.

The gun chafed against Michael’s spine. The flush of sweat on his brow had dried in the cold morning air. His heart was beating hard, hitting out at the ribs, wanting to escape and pump life into another less tortured body. Michael crossed the road, looking right and left. The old man was bending down, placing the crate beside the wall. In seconds he’d stand upright, place a hand on his back and slowly turn around – Michael had watched him, he knew the man’s routine – and Michael had to get there at the moment he turned. Moving with determination – not speed or nervous haste but with a cold purpose – he stepped onto the pavement, one hand slipping through his open overcoat and reaching behind his jacket. His fingers slid into position just as the old man looked over his shoulder. He didn’t show a hint of recognition. Just a faint glow of surprise.

6

‘Does the name Peter Henderson mean anything to you?’ asked Anselm, documents in hand. ‘Philosopher. A regular on the Moral Maze. Radio 4.’

‘Nope.’

‘He was once billed as a new voice in search of a new morality: someone trying to find a modern classification of right and wrong that doesn’t appeal to the failed systems of the past. That’s what he said in the Radio Times, anyway.’

‘I like him already.’

‘You’re not alone.’ Anselm held up a photograph taken from a university website. ‘He’s based at University Campus Suffolk where he holds a Chair in Contemporary Ethics. Prior to that he was at Cambridge. Speaks with a refined vocabulary that often hides the unsettling implications of his argument.’

And when it didn’t, he wouldn’t flinch from politely desecrating people’s sensibilities. Anselm had once heard him outline the circumstances in which the torture of children may well be a moral obligation. He’d brought the same challenging candour to a number of other questions … political assassination, animal rights, global warming, terrorism …

‘He’s a sort of Jack Bauer of the Academy,’ postulated Anselm. ‘Only he doesn’t shout and shoot. He just quietly thinks. But the conventionally minded are scared rigid of what he might say next.’

‘Jack Bauer? You’ve seen 24? In a monastery?’

‘No. Someone told me about him.’

Anselm walked to a cork noticeboard on the wall and pinned up the photograph. Stepping back, he appraised the man’s features: a high, rounded forehead; black, unruly hair; dark stubble; hungry eyes; a confident smile.

‘I recognise the face,’ said Mitch. ‘I don’t remember why.’

‘Maybe because he ended up on the front page for his behaviour rather than his ideas.’

Anselm remained standing. He’d mastered his brief. The facts were straightforward.

‘A few months back he was in the BBC studio in Manchester for a recording of the Moral Maze. One of the other panellists quipped that making an appeal to Peter Henderson’s conscience was rather like searching for Atlantis. It might not exist. Ordinarily, the soft-voiced philosopher would have hit back with some cleverness. But not this time. He stormed out of the studio.’

Fate or chance – explained Anselm, authoritatively – has a way of goading the man who’s ready to fall. Gives him an otherwise innocent nudge to push him over the edge. It can be anything … a pencil that snaps on touching the paper … a diligent traffic warden … a tube of toothpaste without a cap. In Peter Henderson’s case, a few of them lined up to bring him crashing down, acting in concert with a sort of malicious delight.

‘He was striding towards the station when his passage was blocked by council workmen replacing some brick paving outside a baker’s shop. He couldn’t get round immediately because the remaining section of pavement was occupied by a pushchair and a young mother who’d dropped her shopping bag, spilling the contents everywhere. On the road itself an articulated vehicle was making a delivery. So he had to wait. According to one of the lads with a shovel, Peter Henderson swore violently and then his eye latched onto a boy who was watching him from inside the baker’s. Two customers testified that a staring contest ensued with Peter Henderson glaring through the window in an aggressive and threatening manner. If only the HGV had pulled away at that moment. If only the young mother had parked her pushchair just a little to one side. Peter Henderson would have walked to the station and taken the next train to London. As it is, he snapped and was taken, in due course, to the Crown Court.’

Anselm came over to the table and picked up a newspaper report.

‘He was brought before Her Honour Judge Moreland. A friend of mine, as it happens. Recently appointed.’

Anselm read out her judgement in the kind of voice he might have used if he’d ever been elevated to the bench – slow, ponderous and vaguely sad:

You are a well-known figure. You stand high in the public eye. You have – by fortune, talent and ambition – assumed a position of considerable importance in the civic life of this country. Even an eleven-year-old boy recognised your face. You have made moral problems and their analysis your special territory. You have not flinched to make stirring judgements about the actions of politicians and churchmen. You have sentenced many to ignominy, arguing that example is the touchstone of integrity. For this reason your own conduct falls under special scrutiny. Everyone understands the frustration caused by street works, spilled shopping and snagged traffic. We can all imagine that being recognised in the street might not be a welcome adjunct to celebrity. Everyone in this courtroom cannot but fail to have profound sympathy for your personal circumstances. But your response to these trials was nothing short of astonishing. You picked up a brick. You hurled it through a window at a child who dared to face you down. You broke his jaw and collar bone. You might have killed him. You traumatised all those present. You damaged property. You have, in passing, shattered your reputation.

Mitch thought for a moment while Anselm placed the report back on the table. ‘Is this the new right and wrong?’

‘I doubt it. He asked for no mercy.’

‘Bloody right. Didn’t deserve any.’

‘He did, actually. But to understand why, you have to go back to the days when he’d just begun to make a name for himself. Before he’d found notoriety.’

Anselm picked up another photograph, copied from a newspaper article.

‘This is Jennifer,’ he said, pinning the picture beside that of her husband.

She had that alarming vulnerability captured by Degas. The same athleticism. A certain tiredness linked to fabulous energy. Her facial bones were clean cut, her eye sockets deep and dark. Anyone sitting in the back row couldn’t fail to notice her.

‘Started out as a dancer with the Royal Ballet but packed it all in just after she’d won her place. A career cut short. According to some, a Fonteyn in the making.’

‘Why stop?’

‘Motherhood. Shortly after meeting Peter she had a boy, Timothy. Never performed with the company again. Stayed at home looking after her son while Peter’s star rose higher in the firmament. School runs and the like until, ten years later, she opened a dancing school in Sudbury – nothing high powered, just something for the kids to do after school and at the weekends, but serious enough to pull in a brass band for a summer show. We’ll never know Jennifer’s true ambitions because things didn’t work out as planned. She put herself on the programme to give the mums and dads an idea of where the hard work might lead if Jack and Jill ever took dancing seriously.’

‘What happened?’

Anselm became ponderous. ‘It had been a long time since Jennifer had captivated an audience. Maybe she got carried away. Maybe she’d failed to measure her steps. Whatever the reason, she fell off the stage and broke her back.’

‘And?’

‘She was paralysed from the chest down.’

Mitch didn’t respond, but the control revealed something deep and compassionate, the knowledge of pain that brings everyone together when a tragedy occurs.

‘Aged twenty-nine,’ said Anselm, as if Mitch had asked a question.

Peter – by now a celebrity – abandoned his media commitments and took an open-ended sabbatical from teaching. He became her nurse, on hand by day and night.

‘I imagine both of them thought that things wouldn’t get any worse,’ surmised Anselm.

‘They couldn’t.’

‘Well, they could and they did. After eighteen months or so, Jennifer was diagnosed with bowel cancer.’

‘Cancer?’

‘Advanced and terminal. Five months later, she died at home … on her birthday.’

Mitch grimaced. ‘So that’s why he snapped.’

‘So it seems, though – curiously – not straight away. He returned to the classroom and the studio and then, two years later and out of the blue, he almost killed a boy who wouldn’t look in the other direction.’

Her Honour Judge Moreland had ordered the preparation of pre-sentence reports from a psychologist, a doctor and a social worker. All of them maintained that the only explanation for the defendant’s behaviour was the tragedy that had engulfed both him and his family. But Peter Henderson himself had refused to endorse the conclusion. He’d refused to cooperate with the court’s attempt to find a meaning for his outburst of violence, maintaining a studied silence on all questions of importance. He’d simply wanted to be sentenced for what he’d done without reference to any mitigating factors.

‘His most vocal supporter was Emma Goodwin, Jennifer’s mother,’ said Anselm, selecting a cutting from a veterinary surgeon’s website. ‘She spoke to the experts and eventually to the court. She appeared frequently on the television, in the papers and on the radio. Sympathetic to the victim, she nonetheless stressed the extraordinary pressures to which Peter had been subjected, emphasising his contribution to the thinking life of the country, his dedication to her daughter and his devotion to their only child.’

Having added the portrait to the others on the noticeboard, Anselm paused to consider the picture. She had a sympathetic face, with the fine bones of her daughter. She had the same smooth forehead, too, and the deep-set eyes. Being imaginative, Anselm saw not an animal doctor but a choreographer, one of those artists of the human body who know how to move people around; how to get them into position, making it look completely natural. She’d been adroit with the press and the court. No doubt she’d nudged others around, too. Cutting short this interesting but irrelevant meditation, he turned to Mitch and said:

‘A quieter presence was Emma’s husband and Jennifer’s father, Michael Goodwin. Couldn’t find a decent photograph anywhere. He’s always got his head down. A broken soul, I suspect. Grief’s like that. Hits people in very different ways. Emma became energetic whereas Michael sank deep into sadness. The most he could do was hold his wife’s hand while she spoke for Peter and pleaded for mercy.’

Mitch made another grimace. ‘But he nearly killed a child.’

‘Judge Moreland’s observation before she sent him to prison.’

The presentation over, Anselm sat down and helped himself to cold coffee. But then, being a man who liked to put things in perspective, he said, ‘There was a memorial service for Jennifer in Polstead, a pretty village near Ipswich. Do you know it? Famous for its cherries … Polstead Blacks.’

‘No.’

‘Famous, too, for the Red Barn Murder of eighteen twenty-seven.’

‘Never heard of it.’

Anselm gave the soft tut of a disappointed local historian. ‘A young girl eloped with her tomcat boyfriend,’ he explained, patiently. ‘Or so it was thought. But the stepmother – another tenacious woman; another Emma Goodwin – dreamed that the girl had been killed and buried in a grain storage bin at the rear of a barn. So the dad – a quiet molecatcher – took his spade and went to have a look, and sure enough, he found his daughter’s body. The authorities tracked down the missing lover, tried him and hung him from the gallows in Bury St Edmunds. Used his skin to bind the court proceedings. Scalped him, too, and left his body to a dissecting class from Cambridge. All of which is by the by, save to say that a murder can be solved even when there’s not a trace of evidence on the table. All it takes is someone who can dream about the truth.’

Mitch watched Anselm expectantly, glancing occasionally at the photographs on the board; the close family bound by fidelity and tragedy.

‘And this is the case you want to solve?’

‘Yes.’

‘But there’s no crime. It’s just a really sad story.’

‘That’s what everyone thinks,’ agreed Anselm. ‘But then, thanks to you, someone wrote a letter on Jennifer’s behalf, marked for my attention. Gives her side of the story. Changes your understanding of why a man might throw a brick through a window.’

7

The Spinning Mule had once been the comfortable residence of a wool merchant. He’d run a smallish operation transporting rolled fleeces to chosen weavers along the Lark. Hence the landing stage at the end of his garden. Following the decline of textile manufacturing, the house had passed through several hands until a couple with vision and a passion for real ale had stumped up a deposit to buy the place. They’d sold the rights over the river to Mitch, along with the mooring and an access route, providing their neighbour with a glorious location to dock his floating home. The small talk over, Mitch read the letter sent to Larkwood’s Prior.

‘You take this seriously?’ he said, on finishing.

‘I do.’

In the absence of mischief and malice, Anselm didn’t think an allegation of murder could be easily ignored.

‘Peter Henderson will be released next week. Between now and then I hope to find out if the accusation is anything more than fanciful.’

Mitch folded up the letter, listening carefully while Anselm continued his exposition. The view of the media and the courts was that Peter Henderson enjoyed the unqualified support of his dead wife’s family. Not one of them had ever raised a word against him. When he fell to be sentenced, no friend or neighbour seized the opportunity to yell from the gallery or feed a line to the press. But someone had now broken rank.

‘They belong to the inner circle,’ said Anselm. ‘They have the confidence to speak in Jennifer’s name. They knew her well enough to say that she had no appreciation of the danger to which she was exposed. They know sufficient, with hindsight, to recognise that the risk to her life was plain to be seen. And now they’re telling themselves that they should have seen it coming; that they should have done something to protect her. The implication is that Peter Henderson murdered his wife.’

They were seated at a small table in a quiet nook far from any windows. Warm light flickered on the flagstones. The walls carried prints of paintings, evocations of rural life when windmills ground local wheat into flour. Horseshoes and black implements from a farrier’s yard had been fixed to the beams and stonework. Anselm pursued his point:

‘You can’t kill someone without the dead body answering back. There are signs left as clues for the trained eye. Sometimes they’re minuscule. But they can’t be removed. It’s a real problem.’

‘So what are you saying?’

‘Someone very powerful in our society helped Peter Henderson.’

‘Who?’

‘A doctor.’

Mitch arched a brow. ‘You mean that Peter Henderson came to a chummy arrangement with a GP to finish off his wife?’

‘Just look at the implications of what we know already,’ rejoined Anselm, patiently. ‘Jennifer Henderson is dead. Someone says she was murdered. If that is true, then a doctor must have written out a false death certificate attributing cancer as the sole cause. Any expression of doubt would have generated an investigation by the coroner, which would have opened the door to the police. For all I know the doctor was blackmailed, threatened or tortured according to a new morality – I really don’t know. The fact is – accepting the allegation in this letter – Jennifer Henderson was buried, along with the true cause of her death. Only a doctor has that kind of power. And it saved Peter’s skin. As the author of the letter says, without evidence, there’s no crime; without a crime, there’s no suspect.’

Mitch savoured his beer as if it was a touch too bitter. ‘Doctors can be fooled, you know. There are some pretty weird herbs in an English country garden.’

‘And they all leave weird signs on a body.’

Mitch didn’t seem impressed, but he moved on. ‘If he killed his wife, why throw the brick?’

‘That’s the key question. The experts only gave half the answer because they only knew half the facts.’

‘You have something to add?’

‘Yes. In my line of work, one gets to recognise … the signs … though, interestingly enough, you come out of it strangely unmarked.’

‘Well?’

‘Guilt. I’m not talking about the shame stoked up during infancy by your parents, that unhinged priest or the culture you’re born into, I mean the primitive reaction to what we do; that turning in the stomach … it’s impossible to avoid.’ Anselm drank some beer. ‘Peter Henderson was accused on air of having no conscience. He walked out of the studio. And then he found himself trapped. All he could do was look around. And what did he see?’

‘A kid with nerve.’

‘No, Mitch,’ replied Anselm, confidently. ‘He saw himself.’

‘Come again?’

‘A window is like a mirror. It is unforgiving. Peter Henderson was staring at the man who’d killed his wife. That’s why he reached for the brick. He couldn’t take the shattering simplicity of self-accusation.’ Anselm came closer to the table. ‘It’s why I don’t think the writer of the letter is mistaken. The allegation of murder is the only compelling explanation for Peter Henderson’s behaviour. That’s why he rejected any mercy from the court. He wants to pay because he knows he’s guilty … only he can’t own up. The price is too great. How do you explain yourself to your son?’

Mitch nodded thoughtfully. ‘So you’ve all but wrapped it up, then. Two years ago Jennifer Henderson is murdered by her apparently loving husband, assisted by a compliant doctor. All you need to do is find out how and why, and that will give you the evidence, and the evidence will give you proof of the crime.’

Anselm returned the nod, noting – uncomfortably – that Mitch’s summary had a slight jingle about it, as if the configuration of data had been ever so slightly predictable. The Prior seemed to appear at Anselm’s shoulder, congratulating him once more on failing to appreciate why the important is important.

‘Would you like me to improvise with the facts?’ offered Mitch, sympathetically.

Anselm didn’t. ‘Please do,’ he said, warmly.

Mitch picked up the letter and read it once more as if to make sure of where he was going. Then, placing it to one side, he said: ‘I see the plan for a second murder.’

8

It was almost midday. Time for a pint before lunch. Only Michael had no appetite. He walked along Southwold beach close to the daisy chain of small, wooden beach huts. They were brightly coloured, the paint fresh or peeling, the aggression of the sea air seeming not to tolerate any intermediate state of decline. The wind pulled at Michael’s hair and lifted the flanks of his overcoat. He was rehearsing – yet again – his encounter with the proud trader.

*  *  *

‘Can I help you?’

Michael stared at the kindly old man, unable to respond.

‘You can have some of these tomatoes, if you like. Half price. Local produce. No chemicals.’

He wore a cloth cap the colour of heather in bloom. It threw a mauve shadow over his face from the fluorescent strip lighting in the middle of the ceiling. But Michael could still see his eyes. They were brown with green specks. His life wasn’t passing across them. Just a faint hope that he might sell some of the veg that were losing their sheen.

‘They’re fruit, not vegetables. Did you know that?’ He smiled as he’d smiled long ago. ‘Everyone thinks that tomatoes are vegetables. I put them with the fruit and everyone tells me I’m losing my marbles. But I’m sharper than they are. Tomatoes. They belong to the nightshade family. Originally from Peru … not these, of course. I get them from a market gardener near Bramfield. He actually talks to them. Says “Good morning”. Are you all right?’

Michael swayed, his hand still behind his jacket.

‘Problems with the lower back?’ The old man removed his cap and slapped his thigh. ‘Me, too. I wear a corset now. Still gives me gyp. Especially getting out of bed. You have to put up with it. None of us are getting any younger. Some carrots? They’re a vegetable. From Iran. If you plant them side by side with the tomatoes, the tomatoes go raving mad. Odd, isn’t it? You don’t look too good, to be honest.’

Michael steeled himself and with one, swift movement he gave a tug and whipped out his hand.

The old man frowned and said, ‘Fruit or veg?’

They both looked at Michael’s outstretched arm, his fingers gripping a wallet pulled from his back pocket.

‘A box of matches.’ Michael’s voice was low and it cracked.

‘Sorry. Don’t sell them any more.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. I used to … before my wife got cancer. She’s fine now. It wasn’t the matches, of course. Benson and Hedges. Her lungs were smoked like kippers from Craster.’

‘Sherbet lemons,’ whispered Michael.

‘Sorry?’

‘Sherbet lemons. Two ounces.’

‘Good God … but I’ve gone metric. Well I never. You’re one of the few Englishmen to cross the threshold since we surrendered to Germany. I held out for as long as I could but in the end they took me to court. Not the Germans. The council. Do you want to sit down?’

They both looked at Michael’s shaking hand.

‘No, I’m fine.’

‘If I’d been in Number Ten, we’d’ve stayed imperial. And I’ll tell you something else. I’d’ve kept the ten-bob note and the shilling, too … along with the tanners and threepenny bits. But I’m just a nobody. I don’t even run Number Nine St George’s Green any more. They confiscated my scales. Said I’d have to go to Brussels to get ’em back. Two ounces of sherbet lemons coming up. And don’t you worry: I could judge the weight in my sleep. There’ll be no charge. Hang on a minute … you don’t take them for old gyp, do you? I’ve never heard of that one. Beats a corset, I can tell you.’

Waves rushed onto the shore, stealing back the broken shells and sand.

Michael had been examining the replay ever since their friendly confrontation. Like Foreman watching Ali after the Rumble in the Jungle, he was trying to work out what had gone wrong. The whole thing was meant to have been over and done with in a jiffy. Hand in, hand out … nice and steady.

You move quickly. There’s nothing to hold you back.

But there was. He’d been stopped in his tracks. As he’d reached the pavement, feet away from the unsuspecting patriot, Michael had shifted zones of time and place. He no longer saw the old man in a brown apron …

He was at a farm gate in a remote valley, part of the Blue Stack Mountains of Donegal. He saw the rutted pathway winding down to a stream lit by a summer moon. He saw the cottage surrounded by ling and bell heather. He saw the smoke rising from a stub of chimney. He saw the low orange light giving shape to a small window. He saw the two other gates – three in all upon the track – between him and the man whose death could change everything for the better. Instantly – with an explosion of speed and remembered anxiety – he was on the far side of all the barriers … at the farm door … it was opening … he saw the puzzled dog at the far end of the corridor, he heard the thunk-thunk of a grandfather clock, he heard the moan of a kettle …

‘Can I help you?’

The farmer had used the same words as the trader … he’d looked at Michael with that same strangely infant surprise, and all at once Michael was back on the pavement in Southwold, arm behind his back, one hand on his wallet.

‘You can have some of these tomatoes, if you like.’

The beach huts had names. Enticing names, commemorating a loved one, proclaiming a creed, giving a view onto life, tantalising the curious with an enigma. Private jokes, too, Michael suspected. The huts fronted the beach, seeming to talk to the sea and the children on their knees in the sand. Jenny had liked to read out the names, walking a few steps and then stopping, ignoring the pull from her father’s hand. Michael had gone half mad. It had taken an age to go anywhere. He’d had to find roundabout ways of getting from one end of the beach to the other. He wanted that time back, now; to linger and hear her voice: ‘QUEENIE … SUMMER’S LEASE … ALBERT …’

Michael’s eyes blurred. Tears spilled onto his cheeks. He looked around at the deserted beach, the immense blue sea, the chain of huts on either side. He felt utterly alone … abandoned. Jenny had gone, leaving behind the sound of these other names. His voice burst from his lips. ‘Why? Why? Why?’

Why had Jenny ever met Peter? Why had she fallen? Why had she been left … a crumpled marionette?

‘LIFE’S A BEACH.’

Only it wasn’t. After leaving hospital Jenny had looked just the same. All the strings had been in place. None of them had been tangled or frayed. But there was no life in them. Her limbs wouldn’t move. God had refused to pick up the handle to which all the threads had been attached. She’d just been dropped in a heap among the toys that weren’t much fun any more.

‘RETURN TO SENDER.’

Michael read the nameplate out loud several times, joining his voice to the memory of Jenny’s. After reflecting for a long while, staring at the blue lettering above the entrance to the hut, he moved on, wiping his face on a sleeve. At last he recognised what had gone wrong the night before. There was no point in watching the replay any more. He knew what he had to do. He had to go back …

Michael had come to Southwold intending to stick on the surface and go through the motions … touch that gun … get used to its weight again … feel a trigger on his index finger. Fend off any memories. He’d planned to rehearse the operation: to walk through the streets while armed (not an easy task when you think everyone can see what you’re doing, when you expect to be stopped by the police at every corner); to approach a target as if it were Peter; to pull out his wallet instead of the gun. He’d hoped the shaking would stop after a week or so. That he’d manage to defeat the old hesitation, the crippling last-minute wavering that he’d been warned to avoid. But he couldn’t even bring his arm from behind his back … because every time his hand went near the Browning, he was back in Donegal, by the first of three gates.

But now he understood.

If he was going to hold that gun again, he had to deal with 1983. He had to go back to that shocking meeting with a traumatised, sobbing priest in Belfast … where it had all begun. He had to walk down that rutted pathway to the farm. He had to face everything that his later breakdown had concealed. It was the only way to steady his hand. Ultimately, as a final blazing purification, he would have to listen to the tape. He’d have to press play. He’d have to hear the clang of a pot or a pan.

By the same token, if he was to pull the trigger, looking Peter straight in the eye, Michael had to revisit his memory of Jenny’s voyage from distress to calm and the anger he’d felt at Peter’s treatment of his daughter. It was the only way to summon the belief that he must act once again against his most basic inclinations … with the same depth of conviction that had enabled him to creep along a furrowed trail in the Blue Stack Mountains.

Michael paused. He was astonishingly calm. The recognition of what he had to do – handling the past in order to handle the future – had brought a numbing inner peacefulness. He breathed in the moist air. He gazed over the sea, listening to the rush of shingle, the sand and stone sucked off the shore. He turned round and stared at the beach hut immediately behind him. He frowned as if a foreign voice had interrupted a dream:

‘WHOA STOP.’

9

‘You once said that evidence has more than one interpretation, do you remember?’ Mitch was leaning back, sitting slightly to one side on the short bench. ‘That we had to move the facts around to build the most convincing picture, using every piece on the table?’

Anselm remembered using the image. It had been a favourite. Now it made him flinch. He’d made so many false pictures in the name of justice. He’d even preferred some of them to the truth. They’d been far more credible.

‘First, we’ll assume that Jennifer Henderson was murdered,’ said Mitch, warming to the game. ‘But second, we’ll suppose it wasn’t Peter who killed her. And third, we’ll suggest that the person who did is the author of this letter.’

Anselm spoke from behind arched hands. He didn’t know whether to be bored or annoyed. ‘Go on.’

‘We’ll now imagine that Peter knows this author. We’ll call him X. We’ll further imagine that Peter knows what X has done because, in a way, X did it for Peter. You see, Peter the philosopher can argue that killing is necessary – even a moral obligation – but he couldn’t actually do it himself. So he turned to someone who could. A relative. A friend. Someone who didn’t like the idea of the cancer and what it can do.’

‘What about the doctor?’

‘He didn’t like it either.’

‘So they’re agreed, all three of them? Peter, the relative or friend and the doctor?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is ridiculous.’

‘Do you mind if I finish?’

‘Sorry, carry on.’

Mitch took an injured breath: ‘Now, Peter has just brought national attention to himself by nearly killing a bairn in a Manchester bread shop. Like you say, his conscience has accused him. He’s wondering if the cancer should have been left to do its worst. But X doesn’t agree. And he’s seriously worried that Peter might fall to pieces. He might talk. Which means our killer has to kill again.’

‘This is complete nonsense.’

‘It’s what the letter might mean,’ replied Mitch, testily. ‘If this guy runs the risk of being exposed, he’ll have to act first. So what does he do? First off, he sends a letter to a well-meaning monk who’ll come running to the destitute and abandoned, because, frankly – thinks X – these otherworldly types are pretty easy to wrap around your finger. He’s confident the monk will believe whatever is written to him in confidence.’

Anselm mustered some patience. ‘I don’t see how a letter to Larkwood might silence Peter.’

‘It wouldn’t. That’s not the point. The only reason you’re drawn into the scheme is to provide an explanation for Peter’s later disappearance.’

‘Disappearance?’ Anselm tried to sound engaged.

‘Yes.’ Mitch was unmoved by Anselm’s tone. He’d played to many a sceptic audience. ‘Just look at the wording. There’s a flaw. It’s the insinuation of time pressure. You’ve only got “two weeks”. After that Peter Henderson walks free to end his own life. It was written to twist your Prior’s arm. To make him put you on the case. Because X wants a man like you to go searching for evidence of Jenny’s murder … because he knows it isn’t there. But it also reveals the wider game plan: what he intends to do as soon as Peter gets out of prison. For now he just wants to get you digging, knowing that all you’re going to find is evidence of a man’s unredeemed regret. Reasons to substantiate the suicide that hasn’t happened yet.’

‘And then what?’

‘When Peter Henderson goes missing and everyone wonders why, you turn up on cue with an envelope and your explanation. Short version: “His behaviour matches the allegation of murder in the letter. He threw that brick out of guilt. I got involved because I feared he might take his life out of remorse.” The Detective Inspector nods and when you’ve gone he says to his team, “We’d better have a word with the doctor.” Which they do and, as you’d expect, the doctor says, “She died of cancer. I should know.” And so they all head back to Martlesham for some instant coffee. Six months later, the police are still looking for Peter’s body and maybe a note for Timothy. But it’s Jennifer’s story all over again. There’s no murder to investigate. The file lies on a different kind of desk. Missing persons. Downgraded in importance. Everyone gets on with their lives … except for a rogue cop with scruples. But X has thought of him, too. And he’s not overly concerned. Because after some soul searching the doubter joins his colleagues in the canteen. Why? He sees the light: there’s no one to catch. Jenny’s killer went and topped himself.’

With that snappy conclusion, Mitch reached for his drink, took a mouthful and waited.

‘Completely fascinating,’ applauded Anselm, dutifully, marvelling – genuinely – at the breadth of Mitch’s imagination. ‘I’d never have been able to come out with that lot in a million years. But – no offence – we’re engaged in a serious investigation and I think we’d better stick to the notes on the page.’

‘I just played it as I saw it.’

‘Absolutely,’ affirmed Anselm. ‘But we’ve got to be practical. Frankly, it’s not that kind of case.’

The jazzman didn’t reply. He wasn’t offended. Improvising was a hit and miss activity. You put yourself on the line and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Instead he suggested lunch. He was always hungry after a performance. Even a bad one.

The sausages were excellent (enthused Anselm). Home-cured pork, prime cuts. At Larkwood there was a consensus that the bulging chipolatas served on feast days contained eyelids, earlobes and nasal hair collected from makeshift abattoirs throughout East-Central Europe. A ghastly image of the production process came suddenly to Anselm’s mind and, transfixed, he dropped out of the conversation, leaving Mitch to ruminate over the death of Jennifer Henderson. When Anselm came around, the jazzman was still chewing over the same theme: why murder a paralysed woman with terminal cancer? What was in it for the killer? What was in it for the doctor? All they had to do was wait. Her death was already guaranteed.

‘What motive could they possible share?’ wondered Mitch.

His tone was disingenuous, as though he had a good idea, but Anselm didn’t favour him with the invitation to speculate. He said: ‘I appreciate that’s the question investigators always pose but in my experience people do very strange things for even stranger reasons. Best leave motive till last. For now let’s stick to the facts. Plain, boring facts.’

‘But no one’s going to give us any. You said so yourself. They’ve closed ranks.’

Anselm had already considered the matter. Perhaps it was his monastic training, but notwithstanding the acclaim set forth in the Sunday Times, he didn’t especially rate his own importance, let alone his abilities. If Anselm was the last resort – he’d concluded – there must have been a first one.

‘The writer of the letter believes that Jennifer Henderson was murdered. I’m inclined to think that they are not alone. My guess is that someone did, in fact, go to the police. I refuse to believe that Jennifer Henderson died without anyone raising the alarm … even timidly. So that’s where we begin … where the timid left off.’

10

Anselm had first met Detective Superintendent Olivia Manning at the outset of her career, an opera buff who couldn’t understand Anselm’s obsession for jazz. They exchanged CDs in the hope of finding common ground. The venture failed and, in time, they stopped meeting for coffee or lunch. Things that might have happened didn’t happen. But not just because of their differing tastes in music. Fate or chance – those goading imps who’d vied to ruin Peter Henderson – placed them on opposing sides in a string of significant trials. Trials Olivia had cared about and lost. Trials that Anselm had won. Sitting in her office on the second floor of Suffolk Constabulary HQ in Martlesham, they’d steered away from victory and defeat; and what might have been.

‘So you’re a detective, now?’ she asked, wryly.

‘I prefer “fretful explorer into the dark places of the human conscience”.’

After digesting that mouthful, Olivia’s expression seemed to quip, ‘Did you bring a compass?’ but she held back. After all, her old adversary had become a monk. He’d placed the search for truth above all else.

‘I ought to have cautioned you,’ she said, feigning regret. ‘But you know the score. Just remember anything you say from now on may, and will, be given in evidence.’

Olivia hadn’t changed much. Her hair was still short and jet black though responsibility had turned a few strands into silver. They fell from the crown like neatly trimmed piano wire. Long black eyelashes moved slowly as she spoke. Her voice was hard without being harsh.

‘You’ll be listed in Yellow Pages?’

‘No. I’ll rely on word of mouth.’

‘A public service?’

‘Yes.’

‘For those who can afford it?’

‘No, for those who can’t.’

She made a shrug, but the indifference wasn’t entirely convincing. Sensing an open door and a softening of memory, Anselm spoke plainly, addressing the past and the future: ‘This time I want to do something completely different. I don’t want to shift evidence around trying to make a pretty picture. I want to get it absolutely right … even if no one likes what they see. This time the client is the situation. I’m no longer taking sides, not for any price.’

Anselm produced the letter. He explained its background and his thinking. He made no reference to Mitch’s fantasy that the author had tasked him to uncover evidence to support a verdict of suicide; that another murder had been planned. This was not the time for laughter, even for the purpose of completeness. The real problem with this case was not a fresh, unfolding drama, but the stale and settled history. The past had been left undisturbed for years. It had become compressed and solid. Anselm’s difficulty was to find a crack on a seemingly smooth surface.

‘I’m imagining that back then someone approached the police. Since they’ve never made any public declaration, I’m guessing they wanted an off-the-record meeting. I’m hoping they had an irrational distrust of junior detectives and came to someone senior. Someone with the power to act behind the scenes. Someone who shut the case down because there was no evidence of any crime.’

Olivia’s stern face slowly relaxed and, for a moment, Anselm thought they were in a wine bar near the Old Bailey. They’d just exchanged confidences, shyly: Tosca by Puccini for Lady in Satin by Billie Holiday; different takes on love and dying. Things hadn’t quite worked out. It had been difficult explaining why because a murder trial had lain between them. This time, the vibes felt promising. Olivia couldn’t quite suppress her amusement. She, too, had been warmed by the remembrance of wanting to be understood and to understand, recalling, too, the unexpected disappointment. And now, when the shape of their lives had changed beyond recognition, they were moving in the same direction.

‘I know who wrote the letter,’ she said, smiling.

Had there been a wine bar in Martlesham, they might have gone there to reclaim even more of the past; to toast (perhaps) a strange and unforeseen fulfilment. Instead, Olivia made tea. She’d always had a passion for tea, keeping in her locker a private stock of mysterious blends from Asia and the Orient. Her interest bordered on the religious. She’d tasted aspects of revelation.

‘A couple of years back I got a phone call from a man who wanted to see me on “a matter of some delicacy”.’ Olivia used two fingers to open and close the quotation marks. ‘They didn’t want to talk on the phone so I suggested they come here for a meeting.’

‘Who was it?’

‘Nigel Goodwin.’

The first name meant nothing to Anselm and his face said so.

‘Jennifer Henderson’s uncle,’ explained Olivia. ‘The brother of Michael, her father. Estranged brother, I should say. Turned out they hadn’t seen each other for years. There’d been some sort of dispute or breakdown in the past that had never been resolved. Your territory, I imagine, not mine.’

‘Then why come to you?’

‘He was also Jennifer Henderson’s godfather. She’d died three days earlier. He wanted to know if the police had the power to request a post-mortem examination notwithstanding the existence of a death certificate. Whether it could be done without the consent of the immediate family. Whether it could be done secretly.’

‘No, no and no,’ replied Anselm with a flourish, though not entirely sure about questions one and two. He reflected for a moment. ‘A post-mortem?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he say why?’

‘No.’

‘A solicitor could have answered his question. Why come to you?’

‘He wanted to make an allegation without making an allegation. To report a crime without naming a crime. He was distressed. As was his wife. I got the impression she had something to say … that she wanted to interrupt and give her point of view. But she just sat there, letting her husband do the talking. He’s a man who’s used to running the show.’

Anselm drank some Gorreana, a tea from the Azores. Olivia had branched out from the mysteries of the East; she’d looked closer to home for enlightenment. The thought came to Anselm like a welcome distraction, because in this desperate meeting between godfather and police officer lay the first and last opportunity to obtain concrete evidence of any crime before the burial of Jennifer’s body. It would have been there … faint abrasions on the neck, a chemical in the blood … however it was done, there’d have been some signs of forensic significance; and those indicators would—

‘You can’t act on this kind of thing,’ she said, quietly, following Anselm’s thoughts. ‘He had a suspicion … but it was based on nothing he was prepared to reveal. He wasn’t even involved with the Henderson family. He was a stranger to everything that had happened after Jennifer’s accident. I sensed he was kicking himself for not having sorted out the problem with his brother.’

‘As if that might have made a difference?’

‘Perhaps.’

Anselm placed his cup on the edge of Olivia’s desk. As with Tosca, he couldn’t see what the fuss was about. Perhaps his palette lacked refinement. That’s what Olivia had managed to say when Anselm had given back the recording. He’d lost the booklet that had come with the box. Worse, a killer had been acquitted earlier that afternoon. He’d shaken Anselm’s hand afterwards and asked if he could have one of the autopsy photographs.

‘He should have spoken up while he had the chance,’ continued Olivia, trying to reach the brooding monk; she’d lost him, suddenly, and felt the separation. ‘If he’d said something specific before the burial, I could have responded appropriately. But he said nothing. And he’s saying nothing now. He came to me in secret and now he’s come to you in secret. But behind all this is a simple, tragic, all too human story. It often happens when people enter retirement. They look for something to do. Something meaningful. And Nigel Goodwin … he’s a distant uncle who feels he let his niece down. She was sick and he didn’t pull his weight. To make up for his absence while she was alive, he’s become her saviour in death. He’s lost his way.’

Anselm retrieved the letter. He looked at the words without quite reading them.

‘This is not a case you or I can investigate.’ Olivia was leaning on her desk, hands joined, her almost black eyes levelled upon him. She was saying to Anselm what she’d probably said to Nigel Goodwin and his subdued wife. ‘There’s no evidence and no crime. Just a broken husband.’

The killer had got off because Anselm had found a small hole in one of the prosecution’s forensic reports. An innocent slip. He’d picked away at it with smart, technical questions, making it seem far bigger than it really was. The distinguished author had been outraged and the jury had confounded righteous indignation with the bluster of incompetence. Now, remembering that great triumph, Anselm vowed to trap his man. There was no forensic evidence against this other killer, no hole in the paperwork, nothing for a scornful barrister to pick wide later on. And that was all to Anselm’s advantage.

‘Have you heard of the Red Barn Murder of eighteen twenty-seven?’

Olivia blinked slowly. ‘Yes. The case began with a dream … a nightmare.’

‘And the evidence came afterwards,’ observed Anselm. ‘Sometimes we just have to persevere, especially when we can’t sleep easily any more.’

Olivia walked Anselm to the main entrance. She’d given him Nigel Goodwin’s address. She’d warned him not to expect much when he got there. They stood beside each other in the sunshine, wondering where the years had gone. They spoke of judges, counsel and detectives, people they’d both known, seeking points of contact. There weren’t many, because Anselm had been out of the field for a long time. It was like they were trying too hard to be nice. Time seemed to run out and anyway, Mitch was right in front, waiting in his rusted Land Rover.

‘I want to make up for the cases I should have lost,’ said Anselm, abruptly.

Olivia made another unconvincing shrug. ‘Then you’ve a lot of work to do.’ But then she seemed to turn a page, more interested in what was to come than in what had already happened. ‘Why not just … do your best, again?’

Anselm could settle for that. He said goodbye but then surrendered to an afterthought.

‘Just out of interest, is Nigel Goodwin a doctor?’

Olivia made a slight start, impressed that this ‘fretful explorer’ had discovered a man’s profession through the simple exercise of his imagination. It was a promising beginning.

‘He is, actually. But I wouldn’t trust him to treat the common cold.’

The condemnation unsettled Anselm. It had been harsh, suggesting there was more to this man than troubled grief. Mitch (emboldened, now) begged to differ. Clunking through the gears, he improvised once more and Anselm, disinclined to put much store on his assistant’s judgement, stared out of the window, barely listening. His mind soon drifted away from the inept doctor to the haunted brother, the quiet man with the lowered face in all the photographs. What had happened to Michael Goodwin that he’d chosen the shadows? Grief, on its own, wasn’t a sufficient explanation.