I could have stopped in Sapperton on the way back to Petersfield and visited Rowena’s grave as well as her mother’s. It would only have been a few miles off my route if I’d gone through Gloucester. As in normal circumstances I would have done. But these weren’t normal circumstances. So I headed south, through Monmouth and the Forest of Dean, joining the motorway at Chepstow. Crossing the Severn Bridge, I knew better than to glance to my left. Just in case I should see a lone figure standing on Sedbury Cliffs at the end-or the beginning-of a journey. Instead, I kept my eyes fixed on the road ahead. And didn’t lift my foot from the accelerator.

Most of last summer appears now wholly inconsistent with everything that preceded it and was to follow. At the time, though, my life seemed set on a definite course which, if not ideal, was at least acceptable. Wrangling over small print delayed finalization of the Bushranger deal, but after Adrian and Jennifer had flown to Sydney twice and Harvey McGraw had dragged himself away from a hospitality tent at the Oval Test Match long enough to swagger round the factory with a retinue of financial advisers, the remaining difficulties were ironed out and a definitive set of terms put together. Adrian let it be known that we’d take a formal and final vote on the offer at a board meeting scheduled for the twenty-third of September.

Since there wasn’t any doubt about the outcome, I laid my own plans. I spent a few days in Brussels early in September, treating various former colleagues to lunch. The consensus among them was that the Director-General could be induced to have me back on virtual parity with the post I’d left in 1990. The official line would be that I’d reluctantly done my bit for the family firm following my brother’s death, but it was now back on its feet and I was therefore eager to return to the fold. As admissions of defeat went, mine seemed likely to be virtually painless.

And so no doubt it would have been. But for the intervention of events I could never have foreseen. From a quarter I thought I’d heard the last of. Even though the world hadn’t. Sarah’s predictions were already being borne out in one form or another. The victims of the Kington killings clearly weren’t going to be allowed to rest in peace. An interview here. An article there. A slow dripfeed of curiosity and scepticism to keep the subject stubbornly alive. But not in my heart. I’d buried it. Beneath a dead weight of abandoned uncertainty. Yielded ground. Surrendered memory. The past sloughed off. Surely now I was beyond its reach. Safe and secure.

But no. I wasn’t. Not at all. That wet Friday evening, the tenth of September, it stretched out its hand to tap me on the shoulder. I turned to meet it. And in that instant it reclaimed me.

“Paul?”

He was standing behind me, close enough to seem threatening. Yet in his rain-beaded face there was no hint of violence. Only sorrow and anguish. Previously he’d always been smartly turned out. Now his suit was drenched and crumpled. His shirt gaping at the neck, his tie askew. And there was at least two days’ growth of stubble on his chin. His features were familiar yet not completely recognizable, as if he were some less favoured elder brother of the man Rowena had married, stern and prematurely aged, stooped beneath an unendurable burden.

“This is a surprise, I must say.”

We were in the factory yard, only a few yards from the spot where he’d waylaid me in June. The rain and low cloud were hastening the dusk, but it wasn’t yet dark, as it had been then. And Paul’s mood was utterly different. He moved and spoke slowly, as if his brain distrusted his commands and subjected each of them to scrutiny before putting it into effect.

“How are you?”

“As I am,” he mumbled.

“What can I do for you?”

“Listen to me. That’s all. Somebody has to.”

“Well, I…”

“Can we go somewhere?”

“Er… Yes. Of course. Where would you-”

“Anywhere. It doesn’t matter.”

“There’s a pub down the road. We could-”

“No. Somewhere we can be alone.”

“All right. But-”

“Just drive me somewhere. Out of town. In the open. Where I can breathe.”

In view of what had happened the last time we met, I should have felt nervous about being alone with him. But his manner somehow overcame all such concerns. He seemed so weary, so utterly drained, that it wasn’t possible to be afraid of him. Quite the reverse. I pitied him, sensing the grief and despair that had dragged him down to this shabby shuffling mockery of the confident young man I’d first encountered in Biarritz. I wanted to help him. And I knew I could trust him.

We drove out through Steep, past Greenhayes and up the zig-zag road to the top of Stoner Hill. Before we reached the summit, I pulled into one of the lay-bys beneath the trees, where the wooded depths of Lutcombe yawned beneath us through the branches. Night had all but fallen now. Only the dregs of daylight hovered above the hangers. Raindrops fell in random percussion on the roof of the car. Headlamps glared and slid across the windscreen as vehicles passed us. I watched Paul wind down his window, put out his hand to wet his palm, then rub the moisture across his face.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I haven’t been all right in a long time. Years, I suppose.”

“Surely not years. When Rowena was alive-”

“It started before she died. Don’t you understand?” He broke off, then resumed in a calmer vein. “No. Of course you don’t. That’s why I came here. To make you understand. I’m sorry for what I did to you. I should have hurt myself, not you. But at least it solves the problem of who to tell. It means you deserve to hear it first.”

“To hear what?”

“The truth I’ve been dodging and evading all these years.”

“What do you mean?”

“I killed her, you see.”

“Nobody killed her, Paul. We can debate where the blame rests. But ultimately it was her decision.”

“I don’t mean Rowena.” I sensed rather than saw him looking at me across the gloom of the car. “I mean Louise.”

“Sorry?” I was instantly sure I’d misheard him. Or failed to comprehend some metaphor. Whatever he meant, it couldn’t be literally that.

“I murdered Louise Paxton. And Oscar Bantock too. At Whistler’s Cot. On the seventeenth of July, nineteen ninety.” An approaching pair of headlamps lit up his face in pale relief. He was staring straight at me. With a solemnity that somehow forced me to believe him. Even though I didn’t want to. Even though I hardly dared to. “I’m the man who should be serving the life sentence passed on Shaun Naylor. I’m the real murderer.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Oh yes. I’m serious. The lies are over now. I’m done with them. With Rowena dead, there’s nothing worth lying for. So I may as well tell the truth. And face the consequences.”

“You really mean this?”

“Yes. I mean it. Shaun Naylor didn’t murder Louise. Or old Oscar. I did.”

“But… you can’t have.”

“How I wish you were right. But I did. Worse still, I let an innocent man go to prison in my place. I told myself he didn’t matter. Some low-life petty criminal society was well rid of. My conscience was up to that. But Rowena was different. I married her because I thought, if I could take care of her, if I could make sure nothing bad ever happened to her again, that would somehow compensate for depriving her of her mother. But I didn’t take care of her, did I? I just made it worse. So much worse she couldn’t face the future shackled to me. And was prepared to go to any lengths to escape it. You said I didn’t kill her and, technically, I didn’t. But in every other sense I did. I should be grateful, really. It proves there is something my conscience can’t bear. I’ve wrestled with it these past few months. I’ve lain awake night after night trying to find some other way out. But there isn’t one. I’m certain I’ll have no peace until I’ve confessed to the crimes I’ve committed. And paid the penalty. It’s as simple as that.”