Meriel had been the one who had kept him in the family loop, with letters, phone calls, and then emails and several visits out to see him on her own. Cat and Chris had been a couple of times, Simon once.

Simon did not know about Australia either.

She scooped stud-mix into a bucket, worrying. How could she tell either of them, today, that they were leaving Lafferton for half a year? But if not today, when? There was never going to be a good day.

“Let me carry that.”

“I’m fine.”

“Just stubborn.”

“And I wonder where I get that from?”

They smiled at one another quickly and then Meriel stood between them, Cat felt her presence as strongly as if she could see her. Tell me what to do, she asked. Help me out here, Ma.

The grey pony was waiting. Cat unlatched the gate and pushed him gently away to let her pour the food into the metal holder. The hens scratched round his feet waiting for any grains that fell, though few ever did.

“Why you saddle yourself with all this I’ll never know. As if a husband and three children and half a general practice were not enough.”

“As if.”

She handed him the empty bucket and bolted the gate. Then she said, “There’s something else.”

He waited in silence, giving her no help. From the farmhouse she heard Felix let out a long wail, of rage rather than distress.

“Well?”

“We’re going to Australia. We’ve found a couple who will take over the practice and Derek will do locum. We’re going for six months. It—”

Richard Serrailler began to walk away from the gate so that she had to scurry to catch up with him.

“Dad?”

“Catherine?”

She felt six years old again.

“Say something, for God’s sake, tell me what you think.”

“I think your children will run wild.”

“You know what I mean.”

Silence.

“If it’s too soon c if you’d rather we didn’t go, of course we wouldn’t dream of it. Or maybe you could come with us.”

“I think not. I will have a busy winter. The journal continues. There will be a great deal of work for the lodge.”

“But you’ll be on your own. Of course you’ll be busy, of course you have friends, but you won’t have Mother or us. Family.”

“Oh, come,” he said, glancing at her slyly. “I shall have Simon.”

Sixty-seven

“Guv? The pub’s the Flaxen Maid, it’s on the Golby Road. Victim is male, twenty-two years old, stab wounds to the neck and chest. Ambulance on way. Uniform got here in ten, only they’d made off, natch— someone took the car reg though.”

“Be nicked. Is the place clear?”

“Yeah, everyone scarpered when it started up. Landlord is Terry Hutton. Says it was pretty quiet tonight.”

“Does he have any take on it?”

“Nah. Or if he has, he’s watching his back. My guess is it was someone who knew the bloke was in here, knew it was quiet, came in, picked a fight, got him to come outside c that was it.”

“The usual. Check up, see if this Hutton knew who was drinking in his pub, whether they were local. House to house then. Witnesses outside? Forensics might get something if he was in a hurry. We’ll talk to the dead man’s family and friends in the morning. Have they been informed?”

“Yes, and they’re taking his mother and brother to the hospital now.”

“Make sure there’s a trace on the car and pump the landlord again. Try and get some names. If he was a regular then who did he talk to, who did he drink with. We’ll pull anyone in tomorrow.”

“Guv.”

Simon put the phone down. Another young man dead. Another fight over drugs or money or just possibly a woman and knives out. It was routine. Patient detective work would turn up the likely suspects, routine inquiries and a bit of luck would track them down and, between them, questioning and forensics might possibly score a hit. No, make that probably. It looked like that sort of case. One of police life’s less interesting. So what was “interesting”? he thought, clearing up a couple of mugs and a plate and taking them into the kitchen. The Ed Sleightholme case. Seven children, if not more than seven, abducted and murdered and their small bodies hidden on stone ledges at the back of caves. Interesting?

He loaded the china into the dishwasher.

An hour earlier, he had left his sister’s farmhouse, driving too fast, shaken at her news and unable to cope with it in the aftermath of the funeral.

“You’re making more of a song and dance than Dad did.”

“That figures.”

“For God’s sake, Si, it’s six months, we’re not emigrating. Get over it.”

Cat had been angry because she had been upset. It had come out in a rush and he had been too appalled to react calmly. He didn’t want to stay in alone. The stabbing at the Flaxen Maid pub didn’t warrant the overtime attention of a DCI even if he had wanted to work. Yet an absorbing job was the thing he needed.

His father came to his mind, dark suit, black tie, grey hair brushed back, basilisk-faced, cool and polite in his greetings to those who had gone back to the farmhouse. What had he felt and thought as he had stood next to his wife’s coffin with its single small circlet of white flowers?

Simon had scarcely been able to bear the sight of it. He had loved his mother more than anyone apart from his sisters, the living Cat, the dead Martha. He had never fully understood Meriel but he had admired her unreservedly, enjoyed her company, laughed at her, teased her. She had driven him mad and irritated him; he had felt sorry for her, wanted to defend her, and after an hour or two, had usually needed to get away from her. But his love had never faltered or been in question. And she had loved him. He often thought no one else ever had or ever would love him so absolutely, though her love had not been uncritical.

He had thought that she was immortal.

His drawing of her was on the wall. Others were in his bedroom, and more in portfolios in the chest. He had loved to draw her elegant, but at the same time, gentle beauty. He wished he could have drawn her as a young woman. Photographs had never done her justice, and in any case, she had hated the camera.

He looked at her. She was serene and calm, her head slightly to one side. He had drawn it the previous year as she had sat in the kitchen one winter afternoon bringing her garden diary up to date, with the low sun filtering in through the window. When he closed his eyes, he was there. He could smell the faintly scented China tea in the cup at her elbow.

His eyes pricked with sudden tears.

He felt like going out and getting drunk. But he was not a man who had mates to call on for that sort of expedition. His brother-in-law would be busy at the farmhouse, Nathan either still working or back home with his pregnant wife. Drinking alone was not Serrailler’s idea of fun.

And then he knew what he wanted to do; the idea dropping cleanly, satisfyingly into his mind. He was surprised by it.

Sixty-eight

“I confess I feel unequal to any more funerals,” Jane Fitzroy said, holding open the door of the fridge. “Max Jameson, which was desperate—six people were there and two of them were your sister, because she was his GP, and me. My mother, for which she left explicit instructions—no religious service, no prayer, no readings, no music. Have you any idea how bleak that sort of thing is in a crematorium? Your mother’s today which was triumphant but draining. I haven’t any more emotion left. I do have eggs, cheese, some rather nice home-baked ham from the farmers’ market and the makings of a salad. And a decent bottle of wine.”

Simon looked at her. How could she be a priest, a clergywoman—whatever she liked to be called? She wore pale blue jeans and a white shirt with a frill down the front. Her hair was longer than when he had first seen her. Earlier, during the funeral, it had been tied tightly back and then coiled into a black silk scarf. Now it was loose and brilliant in the light through the kitchen window. She wore no make-up and looked twenty.