I screamed, of course, and of course the sound came out thin and reedy. When you’re afraid, your vocal cords tighten up, Kate’s voice said in my head and I tried very hard to relax, to take a proper breath and let myself go, but nothing happened.
On the sofa, Webster rolled his eyes. ‘Really, there’s no need for that.’
‘What – what are you doing? Why are you here?’ Fear first, then anger, predictable as the seasons. The very fact that it was predictable made me even more furious. ‘You broke in.’
‘No. Nothing is broken.’ He smiled. ‘I haven’t committed an offence.’
‘Try burglary,’ I snapped, fumbling in my bag for my phone, to call the police on him once and for all.
The smile widened. ‘Now, Ingrid, you should know better than that. Unless I have the intent on entering the building of committing theft, grievous bodily harm or damaging property, it’s not burglary.’
‘But—’
‘Entering a house and sitting in it is trespass, which is a civil matter. You’re welcome to sue me.’ He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his thighs, his face alight with mischief. ‘Anyway, don’t you want to know why I’m here?’
‘First I want to know why you were sitting here in the dark,’ I said tightly. ‘I presume it was because you knew it would scare me.’
‘No, it was because your neighbour was on the prowl.’
‘Which neighbour?’
‘The dumpy little girl from downstairs.’
‘Helen?’ I let my phone slide back into my bag, distracted. ‘What do you mean by on the prowl?’
‘She came up the steps and looked in through the window. She spent quite a lot of time doing that, actually.’ Webster frowned. ‘I don’t like her. I assume she heard me moving around. I wasn’t very keen to attract her attention.’
I had started to shiver, shock kicking in now. ‘You really scared me, John.’
‘Not my intention.’
‘Just an unexpected bonus, maybe.’
‘How can you say that?’ He leaned back and stretched his arms out along the back of the sofa, luxuriating in the moment. ‘I’m only here because you wanted my help. I’m doing my best to be discreet. Have you forgotten that someone is trying to hurt you, Ingrid?’
‘No. I haven’t.’
‘So we need to take care about who sees us coming and going. That’s just common sense.’
It seemed completely insane that John Webster was lecturing me on my personal safety. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I’ve got some good news and I wanted to share it with you in person.’
‘What you think of as good news isn’t necessarily what I think of as good news.’
‘You’ll like this. I’ve found your homeless man.’
‘Really?’ I pulled out a chair from the table and sat down, interested now in spite of myself. ‘How did you manage that?’
‘Bit of shoe leather, bit of imagination, a little bit of tailoring the truth to suit my purposes – which are, of course, your purposes. I spoke to a lot of people who are involved in providing services to the homeless, and I spoke to a lot of homeless people. Eventually I found someone who had given him a hot meal at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.’
I knew that park was a regular haunt of the homeless; there was nothing remarkable about that part of his story. It was all too close to me, though: Lincoln’s Inn Fields was behind the Royal Courts of Justice, abutting Lincoln’s Inn where many barristers’ chambers were based, halfway between where I lived and the Temple. I walked through it from time to time. London was vast and sometimes it felt like a village.
‘How did you get them to trust you?’
‘I told everyone he was my brother.’
‘But you didn’t have a name for him. And the police couldn’t find him. I’m sure they looked in places like Lincoln’s Inn Fields.’
‘I had two great advantages over the police. One, according to you, I look like him. Two, I was prepared to lie. In the family, we always called him Jason but, how sad, he stopped using that name when he left us behind.’ Webster brushed an imaginary tear away. ‘It would break my mother’s heart if she knew.’
It was a mark of how rattled I was that I said the first thing that came into my head. ‘Do you actually have a mother or was there some sort of egg-hatching involved in how you came into the world?’
‘I did have a mother once.’
‘What happened to her?’
He looked perplexed. ‘I have no idea. She wasn’t very interesting.’
If I had thought he was saying it to impress me, I wouldn’t have found it particularly shocking, but he wasn’t. He had dismissed her from the brief list of things he cared about. It was typical Webster: icy, calculating, unsentimental, utterly contrary to everything that most people held to be a basic truth. I wondered if she missed him, or if she was relieved that he wasn’t in touch with her any more. I wondered if she had ever known what he was. It was hard to imagine Webster as a baby, or even a small boy. I pictured a miniature version of him setting fires and torturing animals, wearing the sharp tailoring and expensive cashmere overcoat he was sporting on my sofa, and it almost made me laugh.
Webster looked suspicious. ‘What have you been up to, anyway? You look different.’
‘Different?’ I managed not to put a hand up to my mouth, though my lips still tingled.
‘Where have you been?’
‘I went to speak to Guy Lanesbury’s family.’
‘Alone?’
‘Adam came with me.’ I felt the colour rising in my cheeks and cursed silently: there was no way that Webster would miss that …
‘So you kissed and made up.’
‘What?’
He looked as close to puzzled as he ever allowed himself to appear. ‘The last time I saw you, we discussed the argument that you’d had with him. You were on no speaks, if I recall correctly.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Well, we both know it is, but we also both remember you lied about it.’ Webster smiled, not pleasantly. ‘Did you talk about Flora?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’ The question cracked through the room like a lasso that tightened around me.
‘Because we were having a pleasant time and I didn’t want to ruin it.’
‘And you thought talking about Flora would ruin things? You don’t have a lot of faith in DC Nash, do you?’
‘No, that’s not—’
‘There’s something so beautifully stupid about the way you conduct yourself, Ingrid. You’re bristling with hostility towards me, even though I just want to help you. And here you are, hanging around with Nash, afraid to even ask him what he really thinks of you.’ He was pale, his eyes glittering with anger. ‘I can’t understand why you don’t expect more from him, and your moronic fiancé. You’re so willing to be judged by them and found wanting. It’s almost as if you know you don’t deserve anything more.’
‘I know what I deserve and I don’t want your advice.’ I said it quietly, as a statement of fact. ‘But I do want your help. You came to tell me you’d found the homeless man, and I’m grateful. Who is he?’
Webster shut his eyes and took two or three deep breaths, getting himself under control again. When he opened his eyes, he was back to what passed for normal.
‘His name is George Reese.’
‘I don’t know that name.’
‘I didn’t say you would.’
‘Okay,’ I said slowly. ‘So why did he push Belinda under a lorry?’
‘That I can’t tell you.’
‘John, I—’
‘I said I’d found him. I didn’t say I’d talked to him.’
‘Why not?’
‘He was in no fit state to have a conversation, I’m afraid. Poor George is a heavy drinker.’
‘Right.’
‘And someone gave him a very generous present of a litre of vodka.’
‘Someone. You.’
Webster smiled.
I felt heat rush into my face again, but it was anger this time. ‘You could have killed him.’
‘He can take it. Besides, it made him much easier to handle.’
‘What have you done?’
‘Nothing. I just put him in a safe place. I didn’t want him to wander off. You know what the homeless are like – you can never lay your hands on them when you need to.’
‘Where is he?’
‘It’s very hard to describe.’
‘Try,’ I said.
‘I think it would be easier if I showed you. But that means you’re going to have to come with me.’ He stood up and I found myself shoving the chair back as I got to my feet too, poised to run. ‘Ingrid, really, don’t annoy me. Do you want to speak to this man or not?’
‘I do, but I don’t want to go anywhere with you.’ I was trembling.
‘You can’t expect me to bring him here.’
‘Let me call Adam. He can come with us.’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Please.’
‘It would be a little inconvenient for him to do that. I might get in trouble. It’s not strictly legal to keep someone locked up, you know, even though I did it with the best of intentions.’ He was closing the gap between us slowly, almost imperceptibly: if I hadn’t been so aware of the danger he represented I might not even have noticed. ‘No, Ingrid, you’re the one who wants to speak to George. If you want to talk to him, you need to come with me.’
‘You can’t make me.’
‘Well that’s not true.’
The fear swelled and rose within me like water on the verge of boiling over.
‘But I don’t have to force you,’ Webster went on. ‘All I have to do is point out that no one else knows where George is. No one is looking for him except you. If he never resurfaces, who will raise the alarm?’
‘I could.’
‘But you wouldn’t.’ He looked amused. ‘You don’t even know if I’ve given you his real name or not. I could have lied about that too. But here’s something that’s not a lie. At the moment, George is fast asleep. When he wakes up, he’s going to think all his dreams have come true, because a kind benefactor has left him several bottles of vodka within easy reach. Now, I imagine his tolerance is higher than yours or mine might be, but everyone has their limit. If you want to get to George before he drinks himself to death, I suggest you stop wasting time and come with me.’