"Yes. As I told you at the time." Hammond took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one.

Brannigan mentioned Stonley's cigarette stub. "I didn't say anything. I leave it to you. He's probably having a quiet smoke down in the engine-room now."

"The least of our troubles."

"That's what I thought." Brannigan offered to round up the boys himself. "While you and Mr. Fleming have a talk – if that's what you both want to do?" Hammond shrugged. "It's the object of the exercise. We can winkle Masters out of the captain's cabin and have a talk there."

The cabin was full of polished mahogany and red plush. Everything was battened to the floor. Masters who had been fantasising about a voyage in the China seas took himself off with some reluctance and joined Brannigan and the other boys.

Hammond went and sat on the bunk and Fleming took the ornately carved Spanish mahogany chair near the flap-down table. Hammond's cigarette was Turkish and heavy. He shook his head as Hammond offered him one. "So you and Durrant were the first on the scene?"

"Yes. We arrived within a few minutes of each other. It was a traumatic experience for the boy."

"I imagine he could take it better than most."

"If you were a schoolmaster, Mr. Fleming, you would be careful not to make snap judgments. You can't sum up a lad's character quite that fast."

"I take your point – but we're not here to discuss Durrant. How well did you know my son?"

"Obviously not well enough to read his mind." Fleming thought, 'You smooth, uncaring bastard… He forced down his anger. "You spoke to him sometimes?"

"Naturally. I'm – I was – his housemaster."

"Earlier, you said he was imaginative. In what way?"

"Each House puts on its own Christmas entertainment. His contribution to ours was commendable. We didn't use all his ideas, but we used some."

Fleming had a vague recollection of David's mentioning a Christmas play. Jealousy that this man knew more about it than he did stung him, wasp-like, and he had consciously to brush it aside. "I've read his essays. There was one about being a research scientist. What field of research?"

Hammond was surprised. "Good God, I don't know! Is it relevant?"

"To killing himself? No. To knowing him – yes. You spoke to him. He was in your care."

"As you keep saying."

"And will keep on saying."

Hammond thought, What do you want of me, Fleming – my own blood, too?… He felt very tired.

Fleming didn't know what he wanted of Hammond… a weak, grovelling confession of negligence – or a flare-up into belligerence so that all the anger could spill over into an elemental tearing of flesh.

"Why should my son commit suicide?"

"No reason. I don't believe he did."

The silence was long and heavy. The ship creaked a little as it moved. Voices speaking in Swedish came softly from a distance and then, like the gradual turning up of a radio, were loud outside the door. It was flung open, letting in the fresh salt air and a dazzle of sunlight. The young bearded Swede felt the mood of the cabin much as a seaman becomes aware of the brooding atmosphere of an approaching storm. He mumbled an apology. "I disturb you. I'm sorry. I go."

Hammond got up from the bunk. "You've as much right to be here as we have." He addressed Fleming. "Have you anything else to say?"

"At this moment – no."

He, too, got up. The air out there where the Swede stood had a sweet fresh sanity. In here it was rank and bitter with proximity. He waited until Hammond had gone out through the door and walked a little way along the deck and then he followed him at a deliberate distance.

Brannigan, anxiously observing, saw them as the stalker and the prey. Both men were pale-faced, but showed no other outward sign of stress. Brannigan went to meet them. He spoke to Hammond first. "You've helped clear matters up a little?" Hammond looked through him and didn't answer. He approached Fleming. "I'm sorry the party of Swedes disturbed you." The lie came out so palpably that he was sorry he had spoken.

Fleming's eyes rested on him contemplatively. "I am arranging to have legal representation at the inquest. A London solicitor – a friend of the family. She knew my wife and son."

"If you think it necessary…"

"I do. Who is representing the school?"

Brannigan gave the information reluctantly. "A local solicitor, with good background knowledge of the school and the circumstances."

"An old boy, perhaps?" It was a bullet fired at random and Fleming saw with surprise that it had struck its target. Brannigan, about to speak, was silenced.

"And the coroner… an old boy, too?" It was suave.

"No."

Fleming said, with deep sarcasm, "Pity – but you can't win them all."

Brannigan's resentment boiled over into anger. "Your implications are slanderous and totally unfair. For Christ's sake, we're not inhuman. What kind of reparation is there? What do you want us to do?"

The impossible, Fleming thought, give me David alive.

Six

JENNY SAW THE blue Fiat pulling up outside the flat, but paid scant attention to it. The street was used for parking, both by those who lived there and those who attended the local bingo hall on the corner.

She had spent two hours in the flat wondering if Fleming would turn up. His rather startled non-committal answer to her invitation the previous night had left her feeling raw and embarrassed. She had nearly opted to stay in the school, but had argued that it was her evening off and she was entitled to it.

Fleming wondered why she looked so disconcerted when she opened the door to him. She ushered him in with a rather fatuous, "So you've come."

"You asked me to."

"You could have refused."

"Why should I?" He went into the now familiar sitting room. He had seen this place – on and off during the day – as a refuge. Jenny as a person had withdrawn to some shadowy corner of his mind. Now once again she was flesh, human and humanising.

They stood and looked at each other. Her skirt was a dark maroon print with a frill around the ankles. A couple of inches of seam had come undone. He pointed to it. "You'll trip up with that."

"I'll sew it some time. The Fiat – it's yours?"

"Temporarily. It's on hire."

"It's as well you're fixed up. The Morris is in for its M.O.T. I came down by bus."

They sat opposite each other, cloaking a growing physical awareness with words. He told her about his visit to Preston in the morning and then Shulter's visit to him. "He was helpful. He drank with me in the bar of The Lantern while the autopsy was being carried out."

She edged carefully on to fragile ice. "Have you heard the result of the autopsy?"

"I phoned Preston before coming here. He was able to find out for me what I needed to know. There was no evidence of a homosexual assault." Repeating the words to Jenny now he felt the same relief that he had felt when Preston had told him.

Jenny said, "That's one worry the less – perhaps the sketch meant nothing after all."

"Oh yes, it meant something – but I'm grateful it didn't mean that."

He told her about the rest of the day and his encounter with Hammond and the boys. "Is Durrant schizoid?"

The question didn't surprise her. "I don't know."

"I see you're not leaping to his defence."

No, she thought, there are plenty of others to do that, including Hammond and Brannigan himself. They built a protective wall of excuses around him. "Why do you think he's schizoid?"

He told her about the interview on the ship. "Schizoid might be the wrong word – you're in the nursing profession, put me wise to the right one."

"Bloody-minded?"

"Hardly that simple."

She didn't agree. Any community of any size was likely to include the right-minded, the high-minded, the simple-minded and the bloody-minded. Durrant was probably no worse than a dozen others only his personality happened to jar on her more. She didn't like one or two of the high-minded ones either. It was easy to label Durrant schizoid, but perhaps hardly fair. Certainly it wasn't a professional evaluation. She knew nothing about it.