“I think we both know they will tie up.”

“Yes. In which case…”

“How long before it becomes public?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Strictly speaking, there’s no necessity for it to become public until Naylor’s been granted leave to appeal. And that won’t be until the police have finished their investigation. Even then, the grounds for the appeal needn’t be disclosed-or Paul named-until the appeal’s actually heard. But most police forces leak like a sieve. This is sensational stuff. Sooner or later, the press will get wind of it. And my bet would be sooner.”

“But we have a few weeks at least?”

“Oh yes. A few weeks. The police will probably drag their feet. They’re going to look pretty stupid when this comes out. But then who won’t? Nobody can crow about it, can they? Not even Nick Seymour. He turned out to be right for the wrong reason. The only one who’ll end up smelling of roses is…”

“Naylor.”

“Yes. Some randy little housebreaker who happened to…” Another deep breath. Another summoning of inner reserves. “But he is innocent, isn’t he? He’s spent three years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. We owe him an apology, don’t we? We who went to such lengths to ensure he’d be convicted.”

“We thought he was guilty.”

“Yes. We thought. But now we have to think again.”

“Witnesses said they heard him confess.”

“Police stooges. I knew that’s what they were even if you didn’t.”

“What?”

She smiled at me, as if pitying my naïvety. “A part-time barman at a Bermondsey pub who probably had a record as long as your arm and a remand prisoner hoping for a light sentence. They weren’t exactly disinterested. I’m afraid the police have a tendency to improve on reality in cases like this. It catches up with them, of course, when it turns out they fitted up the wrong man. But I doubt either witness will ever be charged with perjury. That could get very messy.”

“You’re saying some of the evidence against Naylor was fabricated?”

“It must have been. For the best possible reason, of course. To ensure he didn’t get away with murder. The only snag is… he wasn’t the murderer.”

“Good God. And I…” My mind was a jumble of all the things I could have said in court that might have altered the outcome of the trial. The guilt spread thin and far. And now it lapped at my feet.

“Don’t reproach yourself, Robin. Maybe you could have been more forthcoming. But I didn’t want you to be, did I? I as good as asked you not to be.” We looked at each other and seemed to acknowledge, without the need of words, the waste and folly we’d both been lured into. Paul had lived a lie for three years. And to greater or lesser extents, we’d lived it with him. “It would have been justified-it would have been right-if Naylor had been guilty. But he wasn’t.”

“What can we do?”

“Nothing. We must let the law run its course. It could be six months or more before an appeal’s heard. Until then, Paul can’t be charged with anything. He can’t even be held in custody.”

“You’re not suggesting he might make a run for it?”

“No. I can’t believe he would have confessed in the first place if he didn’t intend to go through with it. But he’s got a long gruelling wait ahead of him. And then there’s Naylor to consider.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if the police can’t pick any holes in Paul’s confession, the prosecution will have to accept that Naylor’s innocent. Which means they’ll offer no evidence at the appeal. If they declare that as their intention, Naylor may be released on parole before the appeal’s heard. If I were his solicitor, it’s what I’d be pressing for.”

“So?”

“Think about it. Naylor set free. And Paul not yet arrested. It sounds like a dangerous situation to me.”

“Surely Naylor wouldn’t be so stupid as to take revenge on him.”

“I hope not. Though why I should…” Whatever she’d been about to say, she evidently thought better of it. She looked away and shook her head. “We don’t know Shaun Naylor at all, do we? We don’t know a single thing about him. He’s a total stranger to us. Yet there’s no part of our lives he hasn’t touched. Or ruined.”

“But he didn’t murder your mother. Paul Bryant did that.”

“Yes. And when I think of how charming he always seemed… How smart and respectable… Worming his way into our lives. Flattering us into such a high opinion of him. I was glad-I was grateful-when Rowena said she wanted to marry him. Can you imagine? I was actually pleased for her. And all the time…”

“I think he really did love her.”

“Good. Then I hope he misses her as much as I do. I hope the damage he’s done hurts him as deeply as it hurt her. And I hope it goes on hurting him. For the rest of his life.”

She pressed her fingers to her forehead and sighed. I wanted to put my arm around her then and offer her what comfort I could. But I sensed she wouldn’t welcome it. Nor did I expect her to take up the suggestion I was about to make. But still it needed to be made. “Sarah, if you’d like me to… break the news… to your father…”

“No. You’ve done enough already.” She meant it appreciatively, I think. Yet still, despite everything, there was a hint of accusation in the remark. And an echo of the temptation I’d briefly felt myself. “Couldn’t you have persuaded him to keep his mouth shut?” she seemed to want to say. “For all our sakes.” But it was a pointless game to play. Like an exile’s nostalgia for his homeland, its lure was also its torment. There could be no going back. “I’ll phone Daddy myself,” she said in dismal finality. “As soon as you’ve gone.”

It was strange, I reflected as I drove back to Petersfield, how time alters the way we feel. If Paul Bryant had turned himself in to the police before Naylor’s arrest in July 1990, his prompt surrender wouldn’t have deflected our wrath. We’d have wanted him punished to the limit of the law. Waiting three years while an innocent man languished in prison should have magnified his offence. Yet instead it had somehow mitigated it. There was a tendency, which Sarah and I had both displayed, to blame Paul’s victims for the delusion he’d let us labour under. It was absurd and contemptible, of course. As if Louise had invited her murder. Or Naylor his wrongful conviction. And yet it squirmed there, at the back of the mind, seducing us in moments of weakness with the promise that our responsibility for a monstrous miscarriage of justice could be passed off onto others.

But it wasn’t the worst evasion we could be reduced to. There was something more desperate still. The thought that could never be spoken but was bound to be shared. It would have been better if Paul had owned up straightaway. Obviously. Self-evidently. But since he hadn’t, since every solution to the problem he’d handed us was now second best, mightn’t it have been preferable-or at least less awful-if he’d never confessed at all?

It reminded me of an apocryphal tale I’d once heard, based on the famous massacre of the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae. The people of Sparta took such pride in their soldiers’ self-sacrifice-“Go tell the Lacedaemonians that we die here, obedient to their wishes”-that when one of them who’d survived the massacre by an honourable fluke returned to his wife and children, he was turned away and cast out as a stranger. His failure to have died was an embarrassment to them. Just as Louise Paxton’s and Shaun Naylor’s failure to have played the parts allotted to them was an embarrassment to us. But, unlike the Spartans, we couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist. Paul Bryant wasn’t going to let us.

Three days passed without news of any kind. My determination to let the Paxtons confront their difficulties without interference from me was sorely tested, but it held. Even though the silence from Bella in particular assumed an ominous significance in my mind. Then, on Wednesday afternoon, Sarah phoned me at the office.