Oxygen was a hell of a chemical, when you thought about it. In the fifteen minutes after the pressure on his chest was removed, so he could breathe properly again, Adam was transformed into a different person. We had helped him into the house with his arms draped over our shoulders, moving through a space that smelled of ancient wellington boots and the waxed jackets that hung on a row of hooks. I stopped in the kitchen and looked around. An Aga threw off vast amounts of heat. It was a big room; the table in the middle was surrounded by nine or ten shabby chairs. The walls were dark yellow and lumpy with old plaster. The room was cluttered with the sort of junk that accrues over decades rather than months: pots and pans, newspapers and magazines, an old radio, jelly moulds, dressers full of mismatched china, a stopped clock, letters and cards, dried flowers, bruised windfall apples and a cat bed felted with white hair. It was cosy and domestic and a world away from the horror in the courtyard.
‘Should we stay here?’ I said hopefully.
‘I think he needs to lie down. There’s a sofa in the sitting room,’ Christopher said.
He guided us down a narrow, dark passageway that led to the front of the house and a square, stone-flagged hallway with a round table in the middle of it. The main staircase was at the back of the hall, facing the unused front door.
‘It’s the door on the right,’ Christopher said with an effort. He was taking most of Adam’s weight.
I pushed open the door and found a chintzy sitting room, furnished with deep couches and antique furniture marked with smoky water-rings. The room smelled sour and brackish, like an unemptied ashtray, and it was cold.
‘I can light the fire,’ Christopher said as Adam collapsed on to a battered green velvet sofa.
‘That sounds like a plan.’ I was shivering now.
‘Get yourself a drink. There’s a tray in the corner. Brandy is the usual spirit of choice on these occasions and I’m sure Adam would appreciate one.’
‘Do you want something?’
‘I’ll have a whisky.’ He grinned at me. ‘We’ve earned it, don’t you think?’
I did think. I went and poured the drinks, not really sure how much to slosh into each heavy cut-glass tumbler. There were no mixers. In this house, we drink our spirits neat, I thought, and tried not to giggle. That was the after-effect of shock, hysteria bubbling up to the surface.
Out in the courtyard, John Webster was locked in a dark, unheated stable.
‘We need to call the police,’ I said.
‘I’ll do that now.’ Christopher was crouching at the fire, moving logs around with his bare hands as the flames began to build, with the insouciance that comes from lighting fires every day. ‘This will take a little while to get going but it should be okay now.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t worry.’ He stood with his back to the fire. ‘You did well. I’m impressed.’
‘Don’t underestimate her,’ Adam said, and reached out to take my hand.
‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’ Christopher looked from him to me and back again, but whatever conclusions he drew, he kept them to himself. ‘Back in a minute.’
I knelt beside Adam. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Feeling better every second.’ He drew me down and kissed me as if to prove it. His mouth tasted of alcohol. His hand was tangled in my hair, and at that moment I wished more than anything that Mark had stayed in Canada so I could have given Adam a fair chance. As it was, I was going to have to let him down gently, but now didn’t seem like the right moment.
‘Okay, I accept you’re feeling better,’ I said when I could speak again.
He gulped some brandy and winced. ‘That’s the stuff.’
‘If you say so. It’s not my drink of choice. I’d rather have a cup of tea.’
‘Get it down you.’
I got up and started wandering around the room, looking at the paintings on the walls. They were murky with dirt but good. A collection of tiny snuffboxes filled one table. The whole house had the feeling of somewhere people had lived for generations.
‘Does Christopher live here on his own?’
‘Think so.’
‘That’s a shame. It’s a big place for one person. Isn’t he married?’
‘No idea. You can ask him yourself.’ Adam eased himself upright with a wince. ‘Can you sit down? You’re making me dizzy.’
I had stopped at a table covered with photograph frames. Dust felted the table between them, as if no one had bothered to clean properly in a while. Couples gazed out of silver frames in sepia, from generations that seemed impossibly remote. There was a younger Christopher in a wedding picture, handsome in colour despite a dated haircut. His wife was small, delicate, and looked very young. At the front there was a photograph in a silver horseshoe frame: a teenage girl, round-faced and pretty, leaning against a chestnut pony with perky ears. There was something about it that caught my attention. I picked it up to have a closer look, and heard Christopher coming back.
‘I’ve called them and they’re on their way. I’ve asked for an ambulance too, to get you checked out, Adam.’
‘I don’t need it. I’m fine.’
Christopher grunted as if he didn’t agree. ‘Don’t expect an instant response. We’re off the beaten track here.’ He looked at me. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes, very.’ I lifted the glass. ‘This is really helping.’
‘Take a seat,’ he said, smiling, the kind and gracious host, as if everything was completely normal.
I sat in an armchair with high sides and looked at the fire. Flames were beginning to lick up the chimney and the first hint of heat reached me. The air in the room was so chilled it was practically solid, and I thought it would take me hours to get properly warm, if I ever did.
‘Is he secure?’ Adam asked Christopher again, who nodded.
‘I wasn’t going to get close enough to him to tie him up, but I’m pretty confident he can’t get away.’
‘How much do you know about what’s been going on?’ I asked Christopher. ‘Do you know who John Webster is?’
Christopher looked at Adam. ‘I knew you were coming because Adam had told me. I knew that other bloke wasn’t invited. He seemed like a dangerous sort of chap to be knocking about so I wanted to get him squared away.’
‘He’s one of the people who’s been targeting Ingrid and the other lawyers who worked on a rape trial a few years ago,’ Adam said. ‘Ingrid discovered a connection to a website where people were discussing miscarriages of justice. Justice Is Blind.’
Christopher shrugged. ‘Never heard of it.’
‘The guy in your stable block seems to have manipulated some people with a grievance in order to terrorise Ingrid.’
‘What does he get out of that?’
‘Fear,’ I said. ‘He wanted me afraid. That’s how he gets his kicks. He’s not like a normal person – he wants to be able to manipulate me. He wants to find my breaking point and push me beyond it.’
‘Sounds like a charmer.’
‘He’s a killer,’ Adam said grimly. ‘You can’t trust him. You can’t turn your back on him for a second. He murdered one of the people he was working with – a woman named Tess.’
Christopher blinked. It seemed to take him a moment to find a response. ‘Even though they were working together?’
‘He had no further use for her.’
‘He didn’t murder her.’ I was reluctant to defend John Webster, but in fairness I had to. ‘She fell. It was an accident.’
Adam went on as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘And he killed one of Ingrid’s colleagues. Shoved her into a road under a truck. He made it look as if it was a homeless guy called George, but it was actually him all along.’
‘Okay,’ Christopher said.
‘You’ve got to hand it to him – he’s clever. He’s been pulling Ingrid’s strings – and mine, if I’m honest – for weeks.’
‘And he followed you here. Why was that?’
‘He’s obsessed with Ingrid. He wants to kill her.’
‘No. He wanted to save me,’ I said slowly, turning my glass in my hands, ‘and I didn’t listen to him. I seem to make a habit of trusting the wrong people.’
There was a short silence before Adam leaned forward with a wince and a hand to his chest. ‘Ingrid, my love, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘When we got here, I didn’t want to get out of the car,’ I said. ‘I was scared. I didn’t really know why – nothing had happened. Every instinct I had was telling me I was in danger, and it took me a while to realise why.’
‘Any chance it could have been the psychopath who was right behind us?’ Adam’s eyes were troubled. ‘Look, you’ve had a bad day. A shocking day. Of course you’re jittery. But you’re safe now.’
He was absolutely sincere, honest to the bone, and if we had been on our own I might have been reassured.
‘It was when I saw Christopher that I got scared. I didn’t know him but I knew I’d seen him somewhere before.’ I turned back to Christopher. ‘You’re on CCTV. You were the man holding your mobile phone up to film Belinda’s body after she died.’
‘I think it’s understandable that you’re upset,’ Christopher said, ‘but that’s insane.’
I looked again at the shape of his head, the distance between his nose and mouth, the weak chin that slipped into a sagging neck. Unmistakable.
Impossible.
‘Ingrid,’ Adam said, ‘Christopher is helping us. He’s a friend. You can trust him.’
‘I wasn’t sure. And then I wasn’t sure if you knew, Adam. I thought you might be genuinely on my side. But I’ve just been listening to you telling Christopher what I know so he doesn’t put his foot in it – all that detail that he shouldn’t care about, like the name of the website, and that Tess is dead, and that I believed she’d been working with John. You must have been very worried Christopher would let something slip if I talked to him about it. So much so, that you let something slip yourself.’
He had gone very still. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘How did you know George’s name?’
Adam opened his mouth to answer me, and closed it again.
‘You shouldn’t even know he exists. The police never tracked him down. I know I didn’t tell you I’d met him, and John definitely wouldn’t have told you he’d located George, so how did you know it?’
He shook his head. ‘I – I probably heard you say it.’
‘No.’ I half-smiled. ‘I know I never mentioned his name to you, because I was worried about what you’d think of me for letting Webster kidnap him.’
Adam was looking bewildered.
‘Your trouble is that you’ve always gone a bit too far,’ I went on. ‘You didn’t want to leave anything to chance. You put George by the side of the road because you weren’t absolutely sure that I would connect what happened to Belinda with John Webster, and you needed him to be a suspect. I don’t know how you were planning to make sure I saw the CCTV – you were lucky that I gave her my umbrella, so I was one step ahead of your plans at that point. I suppose the scaffolding incident was supposed to ram home the idea that I had been the real target. I played right into your hands, every time. When I felt threatened, I called you, which was what you wanted – you used that to create the phone message that brought John Webster back. Every time you thought things were moving too slowly you raised the stakes again.’
‘No.’ Adam leaned back. ‘This is ridiculous.’
‘The blood in my bed was clever. You needed to get rid of Alison Buswell because you wanted to be the only police officer I called. You set me up to look like a fantasist and a fake. And of course it made me more scared than before, more needy. You were always there when I needed pointing in the wrong direction. I involved you in my life and I invited John Webster into my home at exactly the moment you wanted him there. I’m not surprised you think you can convince me I’m wrong. I’ve been sitting here thinking about what an idiot I’ve been, all along.’
‘What do you mean?’ The hurt was audible in his voice.
‘You couldn’t wait to go and see Guy Lanesbury’s parents because I was useful cover for you. You wanted to know where Guy was, because he was on your list of targets but he’d disappeared – you couldn’t track him down. And then afterwards you were livid that he was out of reach. You couldn’t disguise that you were upset, so you pretended you were struggling to control your feelings for me. That did confuse me, I’ll admit.’
‘Ingrid, this is madness.’ He looked devastated. ‘I thought you and I – I thought this was real. I know you’re scared but how can you be so cruel? I would never, ever hurt you.’
‘It’s very convincing, Adam, but don’t bother. It’s not just a suspicion, or a feeling, or a man who looks like someone I saw in a half-second of video. You shouldn’t know about George, and you do. There’s no explanation for that. It’s a cold, hard fact.’
His face changed from one moment to the next, the hurt and sincerity switched off. In its place came a kind of calculating anger. He looked nothing like the man I had trusted and liked, and thought about loving. ‘So? From here, it looks as if you’ve rather run out of options. What are you going to do about it?’
I stared at the floor as if I didn’t have any idea, my shoulders slumped like someone who had given up hope. Then I threw the contents of my glass straight into Christopher’s face. He wasn’t expecting it and from the noise he made, and the way his hands went to his face, most of the brandy had hit him in the eyes. I ran past him, heading for the door. I was in the middle of nowhere with no car and no phone but I did have the best weapon available that I could think of – if I could only make it to the stable block to let John Webster out. He had promised me I would beg for his help, and he had been right; I was absolutely prepared to beg if that was what he wanted me to do.
A perfect plan, if I’d made it to the door, but Adam had recovered just a little too well from the crash, and for the second time that evening I was just a little too slow. He came off the sofa in a low dive and caught me around the knees as I reached out for the door handle. I pitched forward and hit my head on the door, and by the time I’d recovered from that, he was kneeling on my back.
‘I … can’t breathe …’
‘Too bad,’ he said, and leaned on me some more, and blackness slid across my field of vision as I struggled to stay alive, somehow, until I couldn’t fight any more.
As I said, oxygen is a hell of a chemical, but you only really realise that when you’re running out of it.