The 10.40 left in six minutes. The queue was long and I was at the back of it and by the time I got aboard the train I could hardly move. Needing a seat and somewhere relatively quiet, I pushed my way through to first class and took one of twenty seats that were available. When the conductor came by I paid him an excess that would have got me to Barcelona and back.
I didn’t care, though. I had to get to know her. To find out what had really happened to Cherie, to Carolyn Oliver as she was. I had to go back to go forward.
I’d remembered to charge my phone at Sharon’s the night before and I was glad. I spent a long time on it, finding the numbers I needed, getting through to the people I wanted to speak to. I told them all that I was investigating a string of murders in the capital and was coming up to check out a Chester connection. I may have used a more official tone of voice than I usually do. I may have mentioned that I was working alongside Chief Inspector Ken Clay and Detective Inspector Andrew Gold. People may have assumed that I was a police officer myself.
The journey took two and a half hours with a change at Crewe. When I walked into the station hall at Chester I put down my case and pulled out my phone again.
‘John Hammond.’
‘Mr Hammond, it’s William Rucker. I’m at Chester station.’
‘On time? A bloody miracle. I’d assumed you’d be late. Can you wait twenty minutes?’
‘I can, but if you give me directions I’ll happily walk and meet you there. I’d like to walk, in fact.’
‘Oh, well then. Thanks, it’ll save me ten minutes actually. It’s Woodvale Road. Right out of the station, over the footbridge and right again. Walk about half a mile and Woodvale’s on your right once more, just after a Barclay’s bank. Number 214, you’ll find it just after the road starts to bend. If I’m late, there’s a pub practically opposite.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you there.’
It was a raw, windy day, the temperature a good three degrees lower than it had been in London. I was wearing an inexpensive, not-very-well-fitting suit that had been sitting in a bag in the boot of my car for some time, as had the brown knitted tie that was around my neck. I’d bought the suit ten years ago when I’d wanted something to wear for work, something that I wouldn’t mind getting torn or sweat-stained. I wore it when I was in court, or interviewing relatives or when I didn’t need to blend in. It was the kind of suit a copper would wear.
I did as John Hammond told me, crossing a footbridge and walking up a slight incline opposite a big green space. Cars and lorries thundered by me on the road to my left but I still got a feeling of relaxation from the streets and shops that I passed. It just wasn’t London. It was different, even though it looked quite similar to parts of the capital, any of the roads leading out of the centre of Hammersmith for instance. Tree-lined but urban. Maybe it was the people. They weren’t bound up so tight. An old lady passed and rather than looking to be in constant fear for her life, she said hello. A teenager pulling on a roll-up nodded to me as he slouched by. I smiled back, a little too late, then turned to see a taxi stopping to let a cyclist turn right against the traffic. I blinked and looked again. No, the cyclist was waving thanks; it really had happened.
I turned onto Woodvale Road and saw that it was a pleasant enclave complete with a deli and a butcher and a cafe up ahead filled with curled wickerwork chairs. I had a thought. Surely, as an expectant father, I should come and live somewhere like this. Where people didn’t seem to actively loathe members of their own species and I could afford a house and a new car and a garden for the kid to play in. Quality of life, it was far greater here, wasn’t it? I saw myself saying hi to my neighbour, asking him if he wanted anything from B&Q. My arms filled with a cold terror. I could never do it. I passed the cafe and saw that the wickerwork chairs – wickerwork for godsake – had pink padded seats. And the deli, it was one of those poncey ones with nice jam, not an Italian with Parma ham and Vin Santo. Where would I buy my roasted artichoke hearts? I couldn’t help wondering: why did all these people, who had one life each, live here? Not in Barcelona or New York, Berlin or Paris? What did they do if they wanted to go to the new, must-see contemporary dance group from Uzbekistan? Or eat in some TV chef’s new restaurant? Wasn’t life hurtling past them like an express train when you’re on the local service? I shook my head. Life did that in London too. You just had the tube to annoy you, the congestion charge to bitch about, house prices to laugh at, and just enough burglaries and muggings to read about or endure that you didn’t notice.
Number 214 Woodvale Road was a semi-detached house of red brick in a row of identical properties. It was two-storey, Thirties, and looked to have three bedrooms. It was a normal house, or rather would be when the builders had finished with it: planks were laid along the drive leading in through the front door, one of which was being used by a builder pushing a barrow load of cement. I could see more men inside. I turned from them to the windows of the top floor, noticing the blackened brickwork around the edges of the sills, like mascara that’s run. The windows themselves were newly installed, a simple design made of UPVC.
‘It was completely gutted,’ a deep, powerful voice behind me said. ‘The upstairs at least. The poor bugger never stood a chance. We tell people about those things, you know? Electric blankets. Cross that with smoking in bed when you’ve had a few like he did and you may as well jump in front of a train. The result’s the same. DC Rucker? Hammond, John Hammond.’
I turned and shook hands with Chester’s assistant chief fire officer and then followed him as he negotiated the planking and general debris to get to the front door of Number 214. John Hammond was a tall man in his late forties, carrying a lot of weight around the middle. He was an ex-fireman I guessed, who didn’t get as much exercise as he used to, though he was still a powerful presence. His face was long and heavy, the skin thick as a Wellington boot, a broken nose flattened onto it like a wad of Plasticine. Ex-rugby man too, I said to myself, as we stood in the hallway of the house.
The walls around us had yet to be plastered and the floor we were standing on was concrete.
‘Don’t need to ask what it’s about.’ Hammond’s voice was loud enough to address a conference. ‘Chester CID got in touch yesterday and I showed them round last night. Connected to the women being killed down in the smoke?’
‘We’re pretty certain.’
‘That’s what they told me. You London fellas needed to come and look for yourselves, then? Didn’t trust our lot?’
‘I just thought it was worth checking out.’
‘Don’t blame you, it’s your job not theirs. I never let anyone else investigate anything for me. Anyway, you got any questions before we start or do you just want to go up?’
‘One,’ I said. ‘Why’s it been so long? Six years before the place was done up?’
‘The daughter,’ Hammond said. ‘She only just sold it. The house wasn’t written off after the blaze, it didn’t need demolishing. I wrote the report. The girl’s uncle was in charge of it until she came of age and he said to just leave it. We made sure it wasn’t going to fall down and then got it boarded up. Neighbours weren’t happy but there was nothing they could do. Shrewd move as it turns out with property prices shooting up the way they have. Not like in your neck of the woods but they’re still rising. She’d have made a killing on it.’
I trailed after the fire officer through the downstairs rooms, a plumber at work connecting water pipes in the stripped kitchen. There was no sense of atmosphere in the place, nothing to give away what it had looked like when the Olivers had lived there. Upstairs was the same. Apart from the scorched brickwork round the windows there was nothing to show what had happened there. Nothing to show what had gone on in the days, months and years before the blaze. As we stood in the empty, echoing master bedroom, Hammond showed me where the bed had been and told me what had happened. What he thought had happened.
‘The guy was on his own,’ he boomed. ‘His wife was dead, you know that?’
I nodded.
‘Colleagues said he was pretty down, had been for a while. Anyway, his body was too charred for the forensic bods to tell much but we found a bottle of whisky by the bed, the remains of one. There were beer cans downstairs, eight if I remember right. Empty. It was a Saturday night, January, and we think he just had a binge and fell asleep, the blanket on high and a fag in his hand. Neighbours called three nines but by the time the engines got here it was all over.’
‘And you’re certain about the electric blanket and the cigarette?’
Hammond shrugged. ‘The fire definitely started from the bed. We found the remains of the blanket, and while we can’t say if it was faulty because of the condition it was in, it was an old one. You’ve got to go with what you’ve got when you’re trying to figure these things out.’
‘Of course. But was he conscious at all during the fire? Where was the body found?’
‘In the bed, what was left of it.’
‘Isn’t that a little odd? Wouldn’t he have at least tried to get out, once he realized his bed was on fire?’
‘If he realized. In answer to your question I don’t think he regained consciousness. He was out cold from drink don’t forget but, anyway, there’s the smoke. Mattresses, blankets, they can smoulder for a long time before they go up.’
‘I see. So, no suggestion of foul play then?’
‘None that we could find, though I can’t rule it out. You very seldom can with fire, it’s a weapon anyone can come by. Someone could have put something in his whisky to help him sleep, could have left the cigarette burning when he was sparked out. It’s possible. No one saw anyone leaving the house, though, so what can you do?’
I nodded. ‘Suicide?’
The fire officer smiled. ‘That’s what buying an electric blanket is.’ I smiled back. ‘It could have been but I doubt it. It’s not exactly a foolproof method. The possibility of severe pain puts most people off it. There’s easier ways.’
‘And the daughter, where was she?’
‘At her uncle’s, thank God. He was taking her off walking or something early next day so she’d stayed over with him. She was lucky.’
‘Or she was clever,’ I said. ‘Clever enough to set this up so that no one ever found out.’
‘The daughter?’ John Hammond stood tall and put his hands on his hips. He was amazed. Chester CID had obviously kept him in the dark. ‘But she was only, what, fifteen at the time? Why on God’s earth would his daughter have wanted to do something like that?’
The fire officer and I chatted away a little while longer. When he asked if I had any more questions I said just one: how do I get to Stevenson Fisher High School? John Hammond told me and I thanked him for his time. I walked up Woodvale Road until I came to a crossroads, where I took the left fork. After five minutes I came to the edge of a small park. The modern, boxshaped mass that was Stevenson Fisher loomed up on the other side of it.
I was early for my meeting, having expected the tour of the Olivers’ house to take longer than it had. I spent the time sitting on a bench in the park, chatting to another old lady, who offered me some of her bread so that I could feed the pigeons too. As I did so I thought about what John Hammond had told me and wondered – could it really have been an accident? If it had been, then maybe that explained the force of the girl’s venom, directed now towards me. She’d been denied revenge once, she wanted to make it count this time. It was possible but I doubted it. She’d either tampered with the electric blanket and got lucky or set the blaze herself. On a dark night in January she’d probably have been able to get out the back way without anyone seeing her. What hit me was the timescale. The fire had happened a long time after I’d found her for her father. Carolyn Oliver had had to endure another year and a half’s abuse before she’d managed to pluck up enough courage to end it. I couldn’t help being hit by sympathy for her. Sympathy. For this person who had done what she had to Ally.
It was exactly five minutes to three when I pushed open a pair of heavy double doors and was assailed by a smell which, while made up of many different elements, from canteen food to floor polish, said only one thing to me: school. It brought Jen Ballard to me and I remembered another time I’d sat next to her. At the Charter Day Dinner. She’d looked suddenly beautiful and I’d wanted to ask her to dance later but was too embarrassed: she wasn’t one of the cool girls the cool guys danced with. I shook my head and let the doors swing closed. Before I’d taken more than two steps I was stopped by a blonde fifteen-year-old wearing a grey skirt and a burgundy sweatshirt with a Stevenson Fisher badge over her left breast. What’s the other one called? I might have asked her, twenty years ago. Even though the sweatshirt was quite shapeless the girl still managed to make it look slutty, a fresh coating of lipgloss sealing the effect.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked, her hands behind her back.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But shouldn’t you be in a lesson?’
The rest of the hall was deathly quiet.
‘Got thrown out,’ the girl said, ‘for being a naughty girl. This is what we get, have to mind the doors. Who are you? New teacher?’
It was better than being thought one of the parents. ‘No,’ I laughed.
‘It’s just the suit. It looks like a teacher’s. But you’re not?’
‘I’m here to see the deputy head. Mr Fanshawe.’
‘What a shame. I wouldn’t have minded having you. You could have smacked me any time.’
‘And no doubt you’d have deserved it. But Mr Fanshawe’s office – fancy showing me the way?’
‘If you like. What you seeing Fanny for? You been a naughty boy too?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘though I’m thinking about it. This way is it?’
I followed the girl down a corridor to the left, trying not to smile every time she looked back over her shoulder and grinned at me. We turned a few corners, the lemon yellow walls lined with the results of a painting competition. The girl stopped at a door and knocked and we were greeted by a harassed, bobbing man in a crumpled beige jacket and green trousers. He motioned me into the room.
‘Thank you, Natasha. You’ve been very helpful.’
‘My pleasure.’
‘I’m sure. Next time try to be as attentive to Mr Cruikshank, then you won’t have to stand in the hall all afternoon.’
‘If Mr Cruikshank looked like him I would be.’
‘Thank you, Natasha,’ the deputy head said again. He shut the door of his small office and turned to me. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘No problem. Being flirted with by attractive schoolgirls doesn’t hurt the ego any.’
‘I remember. It’s when they stop that it hurts, something all male teachers have to come to terms with sooner or later. Some years ago for me. Now the likes of Natasha Girton just get on my nerves. Me on hers too, no doubt. But anyway, sit down. Tea?’
‘Would be great. Thank you, Mr Fanshawe.’
‘Sam,’ the teacher said. ‘Call me Sam.’
Unlike John Hammond, Sam Fanshawe wasn’t a big man. He was a little over five-seven, with wavy unkempt hair that was receding and should probably have been cut a lot shorter by now. Sam had a disparate, jabbing energy that seemed to move in six directions at once as he looked for the kettle, turned for the teapot, then fumbled with a milk carton. He seemed like a nice guy, though, something I could tell before I’d even met him. The girl in the hall had called him Fanny but she’d sounded like she tolerated the deputy head. From Natasha it probably meant a lot. Sam Fanshawe’s next question, however, was not one I wanted to be asked.
‘You don’t mind if I take down your warrant number, do you? I wouldn’t ask but the head insisted. She’s a bit of a fussbudget I’m afraid, though I would say that, wouldn’t I? She got the job, not me.’
Sam Fanshawe was laughing, embarrassed by his request, but he stopped when he saw the expression on my face. I told him that I wasn’t a policeman and before he could get me out of the door I told him who I actually was. Not going into too many details I told him what connection I had to Carolyn Oliver, a former pupil at Stevenson Fisher, and to her father who had been a teacher there. Sam Fanshawe was silent as I went through it, blanching when I told him of the discoveries I’d made. He remained silent for a minute or so after I’d finished.
‘He was a friend of mine,’ he said eventually, his eyes hazy.
‘Brian Oliver?’
Fanshawe nodded, closing his eyes for a second. ‘Hannah was too. His wife. She taught English here. He was economics. They were both friends. Such a damn shame. And now their daughter, she’s doing this? Carolyn? Are you absolutely sure?’
‘Positive. She told me for one thing.’
‘And it’s because you found her for Brian? She blames you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She was pregnant.’ I hesitated. I hadn’t told Sam Fanshawe about his friend’s abuse of his daughter. ‘She lost the baby on her return and was told she couldn’t conceive again. She blamed her father and me, as well as developing a hatred of pregnant women. Pathological, I guess you could say. It’s possible that her first murder occurred while she was actually right here in Chester. That of her father. She might well have been responsible for the fire that killed him. I doubt we’ll ever know for sure.’
‘Wouldn’t the police have discovered that at the time?’
‘Perhaps, but perhaps not. There wasn’t much evidence and I believe that Carolyn is a very resourceful woman. Did you teach her?’
‘Yes,’ Fanshawe admitted. His eyes were cast upwards, his head moving slightly from side to side. Trying to remember if there had been any signs. I thought he was going to say something more but the words tailed off before he could utter them.
‘What was she like?’ I prompted him.
Again Fanshawe shook his head and then he shrugged. ‘She was a quiet girl,’ he said eventually. ‘Quiet, withdrawn. She might have been resourceful like you say but if she was I never saw any sign of it. Sorry, but that’s the best I can come up with. I wish I could say more. It’s background on her that you want, isn’t it? So that you can find her?’
‘That’s right. Anything you tell me might be useful. And about her parents.’
‘Of course. Well, as I say, Carolyn was quiet. Diligent, got her work in on time. I teach science when I can find the time. Carolyn was one of those invisible students. The sort teachers pray for and then get bored with. The bright ones and the bad ones make the hours go more quickly, you see. We tend to let girls like Carolyn drift along, I’m afraid. We shouldn’t but we do. They get Cs and Bs and then you find yourself sitting in front of their mums and dads at parents’ evening, trying to remember who the hell you’re talking about. If it weren’t for the fact that she was the daughter of friends, I’d probably be sitting here now telling you I’ve no recollection of the girl. Although, no, I probably would have remembered after what happened.’
‘You mean the fire? That killed her father?’
‘The fire, yes. But not just that. Before. The fire didn’t surprise me, though you telling me it could have been the girl’s doing is a shock. No. Before then. I mean Carolyn had always been a shy thing but then, well, she just disappeared into her shell.’
Sam Fanshawe stopped speaking, suddenly realizing that he had a cup of tea in his hand. He put it down with an irritated jerk to his left and then looked away from me. His eyes were damp and his breath was coming in short bursts. I thought he must have known about the abuse Carolyn suffered, or at least suspected, and that he was being assailed by waves of backdated guilt. I wanted to ask him but I knew I was on dodgy ground; he could tell me to leave in a second. He looked at me, and smiled and I realized that, no, he hadn’t been thinking about his friend’s treatment of his daughter. He waited while footsteps disappeared down the corridor outside.
‘They were a wonderful couple,’ Fanshawe said. ‘I have to admit it. The school’s golden pair. Brian and Hannah. Brian came in – when was it? – eighty-one. Before then, well, I had my sights set on Hannah. It wasn’t that she was the most beautiful girl but there was something about her, she was just such a lovely woman. Sunny, lit this place up like a torch. I can’t have been the only chap who had a crush on her. It was probably unrealistic anyway but it soon became a no-go when Brian turned up. You could tell what would happen straight away and it wasn’t long before it did. And you couldn’t be jealous, they were just so perfect for each other. They had a kind of aura you couldn’t get inside. Brian absolutely adored her, you could tell that a mile off. Sometimes you’d be embarrassed to be with them. Not because they’d be smooching or anything. You just knew that, as soon as you left, they would be. They seemed to be waiting to be alone. Then they had Carolyn and they seemed even closer. She was the spit of her mother. When Hannah died, well, you didn’t need to be a psychologist to guess what would happen to Brian.’
We were interrupted by more footsteps, which turned into a knock at the door. The school secretary with some forms for the deputy head to sign. I was disorientated by what Fanshawe had told me. The picture of Brian Oliver didn’t fit. Not with the picture I had now. I thought of how he’d conned me. It was obvious that I wasn’t the only one. I felt the need to enlighten my host, but I didn’t know if I had the right.
‘How did she die?’ I asked, when the door was shut. Was it MS, like Brian Oliver had told me, weeping at my desk?
’Hannah?’ Fanshawe reached for his tea. Almost diffidently he said, ‘Oh, she drowned.’
‘Drowned? Where?’
‘North Wales, somewhere. It’s very accessible from here. One of the rivers up there. They’d gone up there for the day, to a beauty spot I believe.’
‘What happened? Did she fall in?’
‘No,’ Fanshawe said. ‘No. She went into the river on purpose.’
‘How come?’
‘Well, it’s been a long time and I’m not sure of the details. Oh, what am I saying? I know exactly what happened. It’s as if it happened last week. They were walking along a path when Hannah said she was cold.’
‘They?’
‘Brian and Hannah.’ Fanshawe sighed. ‘And Carolyn. They hadn’t gone far so Brian offered to go back to the car, to fetch a coat.’
‘And?’
And he went. He went to get it. But before he did, he told Carolyn not to go near the water. She was what? Five or six. I remember him insisting to me. The river was in spate and he told her quite clearly not to go anywhere near the water.’
‘But she did?’
Fanshawe nodded. ‘Apparently. No one knows how, of course, but she must have got too close and she fell in. Into the river.’
‘And Hannah tried to save her?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And she drowned?’
‘She got Carolyn to the side, onto a rock. It must have taken a mighty bloody effort because the river was high. That’s where Brian found the little girl, clinging on. But Hannah, she couldn’t hold on herself. She was swept away. Brian was only gone ten minutes. When he came back, it was over.’
I looked at the deputy head. I was confused. ‘I don’t understand. If Hannah was a grown woman, how could she save her daughter but not make it herself? A rock you say? If the girl could hold on to it, why couldn’t she hold on too?’
Fanshawe was startled, shocked. As if the answer were obvious. Then his face changed as he realized what he hadn’t told me.
‘She was pregnant,’ he said. ‘Eight months pregnant. With their second child. She can’t have been able to hold on, though she must have tried.’
‘And Carolyn saw this?’
Fanshawe didn’t answer. ‘There was a weir a little way downstream and more rocks. Hannah was swept down onto them. That’s where Brian found her. She was…she was… I’m sorry. She was in quite a state, the baby and everything. It must have been a terrible sight.’
‘Yes.’
‘I wasn’t there, of course, but I could almost see it in Brian’s eyes, reflected there. I went round to see him that night, as soon as I heard. And quite frankly it was one of the worst nights of my life. The look on his face. I can’t describe it to you. All I can say is that from that moment on it never, ever, left him.’
‘Did you see Carolyn?’
‘That night? No,’ Fanshawe said. ‘She was up in her room. I asked Brian if she was all right but he didn’t seem to hear me. He just kept saying, “I told her. I told her.” I could tell that he blamed her. I wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t, that she was only a child, but he was in such a state. I think he found it very difficult to be with her after that. I mean, with her every day. As I say, Carolyn looked a lot like her mother. I think Brian kept getting reminded.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And so did she. He reminded her almost every night. He reminded her over and over again.’
When I left Sam Fanshawe, after thanking him for his time, I told him to write down my warrant number. My old warrant number. Your head will never check, I told him. Fanshawe agreed that I was probably right and he did what I said. He fussed around for the right book to put it in and I bit my lip. I still hadn’t told him about the abuse his friend had inflicted on his daughter. I didn’t much want to – the episode seemed to have affected him a lot as it was – but I didn’t like to think of him reading it in the paper in a month from now, and realizing that I’d kept it from him. As he shook my hand at the door I filled him in, told him how Oliver had dealt with his wife’s death. The breath went out of Fanshawe and he looked nauseous.
‘I didn’t know,’ he just managed to say.
‘I’m not saying you did.’
‘I knew he wasn’t a perfect father after what happened. That she wasn’t loved, Carolyn, not at all.’ He shook his head. ‘And you know what? And this is terrible: I’m not surprised. You’re telling me what my friend did to his daughter and I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t have been then, not really. What does that say about me? Christ.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’ve only just realized. All these years. I got images of Hannah being swept away every time I saw Carolyn, every time I saw her empty, expressionless face. She wasn’t just a quiet girl, Mr Rucker. There was something about her. As if she were empty inside, a machine almost. I never liked her and I thought it was just who she was. But it wasn’t. Every time I marked her neat, acceptable, average bloody homework I remembered what Brian had told me. He told her not to go near the water. He told her. I blamed her for what happened just like he did. She was six years old and I blamed her too.’
Back on the train I sat in first class again. I was the only person in the entire carriage and I was glad. As the inky silhouette of the countryside ran past my eyes, taking me back to the city, I let everything I’d heard run through my mind. I was left with a shivering, traumatized, terrified little girl sitting alone in her room, needing someone to soothe the images out of her brain. Those first hours were probably the most important, the most damaging of all. I remembered something Cherie had told me while she had my balls in her hand and was trying to make me share her pain. She had no toys, no dolls, nothing. I called John Hammond and he confirmed it. Nothing was found in the girl’s bedroom after the fire but a bed. Not even a poster on the wall. Hammond had assumed her father had taken them down to decorate or something. But he hadn’t. Brian Oliver, in his anger, in his bitterness, had taken everything away from his daughter. Everything, no doubt, but the pictures in her head.
I called Sharon and told her I’d be staying at mine tonight. She said she understood and asked me how I was. I said fine and hung up but what I really felt was flat and tired. Worst of all, helpless. Helpless because there was nothing I could do for the little girl in the room on her own, dreading the sound of footsteps on the stair. It was over for her. She was dead. I had to push her from my mind. I had to do everything I could to try to stop the thing that she’d turned into, stop it before it found out about Sharon, or else invented a reason to kill another woman. I’d always intended to find Cherie before the police did. Now I knew that I had to. It wasn’t just that she might get off in court. I knew Andy would be working on Sharon, trying to get her to act as some kind of bait. I had to find Cherie before that happened. How I did it was another matter.
I thought about it for three hours, staring out into the rushing darkness. I didn’t have a clue. I had no idea at all. It was a race, between Clay and myself. He had an F1 team behind him. I had a knackered old Mazda. I couldn’t think of any way to beat him. I carried on racking my brains, though, and didn’t stop once I was back at my flat, staring out onto the street at Fred’s.
And that’s when the answer came to me.
I picked up my phone on the second ring.