He’d picked it up on his way over. Found Harry Reynolds fumbling with a black tie. ‘Arthritis in the thumbs,’ he said. ‘What do they say – old age doesn’t come by itself.’The house smelled of apple pie. Harry gave him the Baikal and Barry gave him an envelope. ‘Get that to Tracy, will you?’ he said.

‘You could have given it to her yourself if you’d been here earlier. She’s in the wind now.’

‘Good. How much do I owe you for the gun?’

‘Treat it as a gift, Superintendent Crawford. A thank-you for the neglect you’ve shown me over the years.’

He left Amy’s room and didn’t look back. How could you look back? You couldn’t. One to the head, one to the heart. Bang bang.

‘Ivan,’ he said. Ivan stared at him, deer in the headlights, for a moment Barry thought he was going to turn round and run away. Or thump on the door of the prison and beg the wardens to let him back in.

‘Barry,’ Ivan said.

There you go again, Barry thought, calling him Barry. He felt the gun in his pocket. Barry took his hand out of his pocket, stuck it out in front of him. Slowly and hesitantly, Ivan took the hand. Shook it.

‘I’m sorry,’ Barry said. ‘I was harsh. My daughter loved you, I should have thought about that more.’

‘You’re apologizing?’ Ivan said uncertainly.

‘That flash-drive you lost? Barbara found it down the back of the sofa after you and Amy had been round for lunch one Sunday. She had no idea what it was, of course, doesn’t know the first thing about computers. I knew it was yours, stuck it in a vase on the mantelpiece. I just thought . . . I don’t know what I thought, suppose that I’d mess you about. I didn’t know it had all your clients’ details on it, that it was important.

‘Barbara didn’t tell me what happened,’ he continued, ‘I just thought the business had gone down. She didn’t tell me why, thought I’d think you were even more of an incompetent pillock than I already did. Mind you, you are an incompetent pillock,’ Barry added. He wasn’t a man for unqualified grovelling. ‘But,’ he said, ‘you didn’t deserve what happened.’

‘None of us did,’ Ivan said.

Barry got back in the car and drove away. Not interested in a dialogue. He didn’t tell Ivan that Amy had gone for good. Ivan could start again. Barry couldn’t. But first he had a funeral to attend.

Rex Marshall’s funeral was in the crematorium. The place was stuffed to the gunnels with the great and the good come to say goodbye to him. The coffin was the centrepiece, his gleaming police medals laid out on top of it. Wreaths and bouquets all lined up at the entrance to the chapel. Barry caught the scent of freesias, turned him funny for a second. He could see Ray Strickland standing at a lectern giving the eulogy – ‘. . . a senior policeman who never lost the common touch, a man of the people . . .’ Blah, blah, blah. The usual shit. Ray hesitated when he caught sight of Barry standing in the doorway.

Overweight men in expensive suits, underweight women in the kind of clothes Barbara would like to be able to afford, they all turned to look at what had made Ray stop mid-sentence. Barry caught sight of Harry Reynolds in the back row. Paying his respects. Making a point of not looking at Barry as he barged into the chapel and, marching up to the coffin, rapped on it hard with his knuckles. ‘Knock, knock,’ he said, ‘is there anybody there?’ A murmur of distress rose up from the people closest to the coffin.

‘Just checking,’ Barry said to a stout woman who was clutching a photocopied programme for the service. He grinned at her and she shrank from him in horror. He wrestled the programme from her hands. Order of events. It was cheap and flimsy, like something an amateur theatrical company would produce. On the cover there was a photograph of Rex Marshall in his prime. Barry tapped the photograph and said conversationally to the stout woman, ‘He was a right bastard. But then takes one to know one, that’s what they say, eh?’

All around him the great and the good began to protest, but in a muted way as no one likes to openly challenge someone who is clearly deranged. Out of the corner of his eye, Barry saw Harry Reynolds slink out of the chapel. No sign of Len Lomax anywhere. Barry was surprised he hadn’t been rugby-tackled by now but he carried on up the aisle, unimpeded. The grieving widow flinched as he approached and the – ridiculously young – vicar twitched as if he was considering confronting him. Barry grunted, ‘Don’t even think about it, lad.’

He reached the lectern and Ray, all conciliatory, hail fellow, well met, said, ‘Come on, Barry, be sensible. Take a pew and show some respect.’ Barry cocked his head to one side as if he might be weighing this up as an option but then he turned and looked out over the sea of the great and good and cleared his throat as if he was the toastmaster about to tell the assembled company to raise their glasses. He said, ‘Raymond James Strickland, I am arresting you for the murder of Carol Anne Braithwaite, the reckless endangerment of the life of Michael Braithwaite and the abduction of Nicola Jane Braithwaite. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

Ray didn’t even move, just stood there. Barry had half expected him to concertina down to the floor in shock, but he stayed where he was, eyes wide. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said.

Barry laughed. ‘They all say that. You should know that, Ray.’

Barry hadn’t thought much beyond this point. He had his handcuffs with him though – never without – and he slapped one cuff on Ray and the other on the brass rail that bordered the front of the lectern. Then he took his phone from his pocket and rang the station and asked for a couple of uniforms.

Everyone in the crematorium seemed to have lost their appetite for death. Barry watched as a couple of women in designer black picked their way from the chapel like gazelle that had suddenly found they had strayed into the lions’ enclosure. Then they all began to melt away. All the great and the good.

The vicar hovered like a nervous waiter and asked Barry if he could get him anything. ‘No, lad,’ Barry said, ‘but thanks for asking.’

‘Last men standing,’ Barry said to Ray.

‘Thirty-five years ago, Barry,’ Ray said. ‘It’s history, water under the bridge.’

‘I don’t understand,’ a soft voice said. Margaret, Ray’s wife. If he’d been in a kind mood Barry would have said, ‘Get your husband to explain,’ but he wasn’t in a kind mood, and so he said, ‘Your husband fathered a child on a prostitute called Carol Braithwaite and after he had murdered Carol Braithwaite he took that child – his daughter – and gave her away to your bosom friend, Kitty Winfield.’ The truth was going to come out anyway, might as well be Barry who told it. Speaking truth to power. That was what the Quakers said, he’d had to arrest a few in the eighties, peaceniks, yakking on about ‘direct action’ and Cruise missiles. For people who worshipped in silence they seemed to talk a lot.

‘Ray?’ Margaret said.

‘It wasn’t me,’ Ray said again, this time to Margaret. ‘It really wasn’t.’ He turned back to Barry and said, ‘You only saw half the story, Barry.’

‘Tell it to the judge, Ray.’

A lone uniformed constable arrived, could have been Barry thirty-five years ago. You’d do anything a superior officer told you to. Turn a blind eye? Yes, boss. Keep your mouth shut. Yes, boss. Three bags full, boss. A dogsbody.

‘Boss?’

‘Take this gentleman into custody, officer. He’s been charged with murder. I’m not coming. When you get to the station, go to my office. There’s a letter on my desk. I want you to give it to DI Gemma Holroyd and she’ll take it from there.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good lad.’

He drove to the moors above Ilkley, all the way to Upper Barden Reservoir. There wasn’t a soul around. The sky marbled with clouds, all tinged with opal. Like a painting, lovely. Barry imagined Carol Braithwaite rising. The Assumption. Carol Braithwaite hand in hand with Amy. Carol and Amy, one to the head, one to the heart.