‘Mr Pearson? You fell asleep for a moment.’

‘Right. I’m sorry. These witnesses who came forward—who are they? Greens, hunt saboteurs, pot-smoking hippies? I take it they’re friends of Christie’s. How reliable are they?’

‘Totally. No greens or hippies. They’re all people of good standing. Respectable local professionals—a doctor at Brooklands Hospital, a head teacher, the psychiatrist at the secure unit who treated Christie.’

‘His own psychiatrist?’

‘All of them saw him in the South Gate entrance hall when they heard the shooting. He was only a few feet away.’

‘They recognized Christie? What about the earlier witnesses?’

‘Unreliable. One or two people saw him running across the car park, but by then everybody was running away.’

‘So . . .’ I leaned back in sheer fatigue and stared at the heavy ceiling. ‘If Christie didn’t kill my father . . . ?’

‘Someone else did. Brooklands CID are working twenty-four hours a day. We’ll find him. Go back to London, Mr Pearson. You didn’t really know your father. It’s too late to start creating a whole lifetime’s memories of him.’

‘That’s a little callous, Sergeant. There’s always been a space in my life, and now I’m trying to fill it. One last thing. I saw you in Geoffrey Fairfax’s office after the riot at the police station. He read my father’s will and took me through his estate. When I left, you were heating milk for Mrs Christie’s daughter.’

‘So?’ Sergeant Falconer watched me in the coolest way. ‘I was part of the child protection unit assigned to Christie’s next of kin.’

‘In Fairfax’s office?’ I raised my hands to the air. ‘He claimed that he no longer represented Christie. But he’s still giving shelter to a murderer’s wife.’

‘Mr Fairfax had helped her before. With pocket money, hotel charges. He paid for her to take her baby on holiday. It’s called charity, Mr Pearson. The better-off people in Brooklands still try to help the less fortunate.’

‘Decent of them. Though Geoffrey Fairfax doesn’t strike me as the charitable type. Territorial Army, riding to hounds, shotgun next to his desk. From what I saw, he’s a bit of a fascist bully-boy. How on earth did he represent someone like Duncan Christie?’

‘Solicitors represent the strangest people, Mr Pearson. There’s no conflict of interest.’

‘Exactly. Fairfax knew that Christie wouldn’t be charged.’

‘What are you suggesting?’ The sergeant lowered her voice. ‘A stitch-up involving the court?’

‘Not a stitch-up. But Fairfax was confident that the case against Christie would be dropped. Otherwise he would have passed my father’s estate to another firm of solicitors.’

‘So how did he know?’ Sergeant Falconer spoke in an offhand way, but with careful emphasis. ‘Mr Pearson?’

‘I can’t say. But something about all this strikes me as more than a little odd . . .’

Sergeant Falconer stood up as her mobile rang. She answered it briefly, then spoke to the constables by the door. Returning to me, she smiled and briskly beckoned me to my feet.

‘Go back to London, Mr Pearson. See your travel agent. I’m sorry about your father, but if you stir things up enough you’ll create a hundred plots and conspiracies. Mr Pearson . . . ?’

I watched her as she waited for me to reply. She was almost trembling with impatience for me to leave. Somehow I had unsettled the ramshackle construction that she had built around herself in Brooklands, a card castle of compromises and half-truths that threatened to collapse onto her. Already I sensed that she was as much a pawn as I was. Geoffrey Fairfax had wanted me to see her in his office pantry, just as he had wanted me to see Mrs Christie sitting in the reception area.

Snapping her fingers, Sergeant Falconer turned away from me as an unmarked blue van halted outside the courthouse. The driver signalled to the constables on the steps. Doors slammed in a nearby corridor, and a group of short-sleeved ushers moved swiftly down the hall, sheltering a man whom they propelled towards the entrance.

I recognized Duncan Christie, face still bruised and unshaved, tieless white shirt buttoned to the throat, arms gripped by the ushers. For all the urgency, Christie seemed relaxed, smiling around him with the good-humoured arrogance of a millionaire footballer acquitted of a shoplifting charge. Behind him was his wife, still in her red serge jacket, torn lapel held back by a safety pin. Sergeant Falconer dived into the scrum, held Mrs Christie and steered her down the steps.

But at least Christie had noticed me. As he approached the van he shook himself free from the ushers about to bundle him through the side door. Ignoring his wife, he seized Sergeant Falconer’s arm and pointed to me as I stood alone outside the courthouse.

I WALKED BACKto my car, waving away the traffic warden who had placed a penalty ticket under the windscreen wiper and was waiting to see how I would react. For once, I was thinking about matters even more urgent than parking fines. As I started the engine I had already made my decision. Rather than return to London, I would become a temporary resident of Brooklands. These suburban streets beside the Metro-Centre and the M25 were the gaming board that my father’s killer was still moving across. I was suspicious of the police, who would soon lose interest in the case. They had arrested the wrong man, and could easily do so again. Sergeant Falconer had done her best to confuse me, but the Metro-Centre seemed to disorient everyone in its shadow.

I might have been alone on the steps of the courthouse, but I had one important ally: my father. By drawing closer to him I would begin to see Brooklands through his eyes. I would live in his flat, cook in his kitchen, and even perhaps sleep in his bed. He and I were together now, and he would help me to find his murderer.

I was going home.

I moved away from the kerb, my eyes on the rear-view mirror. Thirty yards behind me, also parked on a double yellow line but free from the attentions of the traffic warden, was a familiar Range Rover, bull bars and hubcaps splashed with the best of Surrey mud. Out of curiosity, I made a sharp U-turn, and drove back past the courthouse.

Geoffrey Fairfax sat behind his steering wheel, head partly hidden inside a copy of Country Life, a solicitor keeping careful watch over his client.

7

SNAKES AND LADDERS

THE SNAKES ON THE Brooklands board were only pretending to be asleep, and the ladders led anywhere.

I unlocked the front door and stepped into the darkened flat, lowering my suitcase to the floor. Around me were the few rooms, the now silent spaces of my father’s life, even more unfamiliar than they had been four days earlier. I felt like a student returning after a year at a foreign university, unsettled by the strange shapes of the rooms in the family home.

No one was here to greet me, uncork a bottle of champagne or hand me the keys of my first sports car. But there was a welcome of another kind. I recognized my father’s scent on the air, an old man’s soft breath, the sweet tang of tobacco steeped into the curtains and carpets.

A presence I scarcely knew was already arraying itself around me. Should I sleep in my father’s bed? I hesitated before entering his bedroom. Sleeping on his mattress, my head on his pillow as I dreamed of him, was too close for comfort. I left my suitcase in the hall and drew the curtains, aware that too much daylight would unnerve the ghosts.

In the bookcase beside the bed was a shelf of logbooks tracking his transits of the globe. There were biographies of test pilots of the 1960s, privately published by long-ago aircraft companies—Fairey, De Havilland, Avro—signed and dedicated to my father: ‘For Stuart, who always kept flying speed . . .’