So, once more, like a laboratory mouse in a maze, I was back where I’d begun. I stood on the riverside path opposite the Garden House Hotel, imagining Louise walking towards me through the chill October mist as she’d walked towards Paul through the warm June sunshine. I went to the gallery where they’d met that momentous March night and strolled past the pale still lives that had succeeded Bantock’s blood-bright daubings. I paced the courts of King’s College and wondered why I couldn’t see her, as Paul had, rounding a corner or looking down, half in fear and half in temptation, from a high window. But the past didn’t lie like the yellowing leaves about me, waiting to be gathered. It kept its distance. One step behind. Or ahead.

I got back to Greenhayes on Thursday night, at a loss to know what I should do next. But there, obligingly, the answer was waiting, among the bills and junk mail on the doormat. A visiting order from Albany Prison, authorizing me to pay a call on Shaun Andrew Naylor of E Wing any afternoon during the next four weeks. There and then I decided to go the following day. Delay wasn’t going to make the encounter any easier. Urgency just might.

It was another apple-crisp autumn day, with the Solent like a millpond and the cosy countryside of the Island bathed in golden light. But Albany was still a prison with a high wall and a locked gate. And the cramped foyer I waited in with the other visitors still contrived to preserve, like an essence in the air, the closeness of confinement, the claustrophobic reality of long-term imprisonment. Naylor had served just over three years of a twenty-year sentence. Standing there with the wives, girlfriends, mothers and children, I began to wonder, for the very first time, what it was like to face such a future when you knew-as nobody else did-that you were innocent, not guilty, not the right man; that you were going to spend a third or more of your life rotting in this place or some place like it as a punishment for something you hadn’t done.

Two o’clock came and the other visitors went in. There was a delay, they told me. Naylor hadn’t known I was coming and had to be fetched from the gymnasium. I read the signposted Home Office prohibitions for the nth time, stared out at the blue sky and the traffic moving on the Cowes to Newport road, struggled to remember what Naylor looked like and tried to decide what to say to him. Then, after twenty minutes that had seemed like hours I was called.

A prison officer took me through two time-locked closing doors, up a flight of steps, through a metal detector and into the visiting room. Which, to my surprise, was comfortably furnished and pleasantly decorated, with potted plants and pictures on the walls that somehow made you forget the bars on the windows. Family groups sat at well-spaced tables in peach-upholstered chairs, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes, chatting and smiling. While in the farthest corner from the supervising officers’ desk sat one man without companions. And he was staring straight at me.

A stone heavier perhaps and longer-haired than when I’d studied him in the dock at his trial, Shaun Naylor looked bemusingly fit and well, his eyes clear and intense, his gaze direct and mildly challenging. He was wearing the regulation outfit of blue denim trousers and striped shirt, cuffs rolled high above the elbows to reveal gym-honed biceps and forearms. He finished a cigarette as I approached and stubbed it out in the ashtray without taking his eyes off me. He didn’t smile or get up or even uncross his legs. He just waited, like a man who’d learnt the necessity of patience, like a man with time to spare-even for me.

“You came, then,” he said quietly as I sat down. “Didn’t think you would.”

“Didn’t Mr. Sarwate explain? I-”

“Oh, he explained. Still didn’t think you’d show up, though. These places put people off.”

“Well…” I glanced around. “Facilities here seem quite… reasonable.”

“Yeh. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Different story back there.” He nodded towards a door behind him, the door to the rest of the prison.

“Yes. I imagine it is.”

“That’s all you have to do, though, ain’t it? Imagine. You don’t have to live it.”

“No. Well, of cour-”

“Get us a cup of tea, will you?” He pointed over my shoulder to a serving hatch. “Two sugars.” Obediently, I went and bought him a cup. When I brought it back to him, he uttered no word of thanks, merely took a gulp and said: “It ain’t so bad here. I don’t get as much harassment as… other places. My first night at Winson Green, well, I thought it was going to be my last. Anywhere. They beat the shit out of me. Literally. Cons don’t like nonces, see.”

“Nonces?”

“Sex offenders. We have to be segregated. That’s why I’m here in the VPU. Vulnerable Prisoner Unit. Locked away with the child molesters. You know? Really nice people. But I can’t complain, can I? Being a rapist and a murderer. I’m getting off lightly. Don’t you reckon?”

“It’s not for me to-”

“You know I didn’t do it. You met her that day. You must have known what she wanted. Is that it? Have you got it in for me because you missed out on a sure thing?”

It was the tiny fragment of truth in his question that angered me more than the suggestion itself. “If you’re trying to antagonize me, Mr. Naylor, you’re going the right way about it.”

“That right?” A sneer quivered across his lips. “Well, if you came here expecting me to beg, you’ve had a wasted journey.”

“I came here at your solicitor’s suggestion, in the hope you might be able to-”

“Tell you who tipped off Vince? Yeh, he said. He also said the police think you did.”

“Yes. They do. But I’m sure you don’t.”

He lit another cigarette and took a long draw on it, then said: “Tell you what. Agree to alter your statement. Agree to say you knew all along she was on the pull that day. Then I’ll give you what you want.”

“Are you trying to blackmail me?”

“Nah. You’d know if I was. That’s just an offer. A fair offer. Causes you no grief. It’s only the truth anyway.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Come on. You know what she was after. I could tell when I heard you give evidence. You’d seen the signs. Like me. Oh, you hadn’t done anything about it. Too well-bred, I suppose. But you knew what her game was, didn’t you?”

“No. I didn’t. What was her game?”

“You want me to tell you? You want to hear me say it? OK. She was seeing how far she could go. Seeing how far she enjoyed going. And that was quite a way. She wanted a stranger to do the things to her she’d never dared ask her husband to do. Or her lovers. She was after some rough trade. And I gave it to her. You bet I did. A classy lady, no holds barred. Too good to refuse. A real bargain, I reckoned. But it didn’t turn out to be much of one, did it?”

“Obviously not.” Remembering Sarah’s suggestion, I added: “Tell me, did she mention anybody else to you that day?”

“No.”

“Some man in her life who’d ditched her or… let her down in some way?”

He looked nonplussed. “She didn’t say nothing like that.” And it was clear to me he didn’t have a clue what I was getting at.

“Never mind, then,” I concluded lamely.

He grinned cockily. “I’m going to get out, y’know. Never thought I would. Never thought the bastard who croaked them would cough. But he has, hasn’t he? Pretty soon, everybody’s going to know I didn’t do it.”

“You don’t need me to change my statement, then.”

“It ain’t vital, if that’s what you mean. But Sarwate thinks it’ll help, so… I said I’d talk to you.”

“Who tipped off Cassidy?”

Naylor smirked and picked a flake of tobacco from his tongue. “Not so fast. You going to change your statement?”

“Perhaps.”

“I need a promise.”

“They come cheap. What if I gave you one, then broke it?”