‘Yesterday, at your house, I found another canvas. It was unfinished, but it looked a bit like Abberton. There was a different name on the back: Blandford.’

‘What about it?’ Mary flicks ash on the carpet, rubs it in with her bare foot.

‘Is it . . . are the two pictures part of a series?’

‘Why do you want to know? Yes, part of a series,’ she says quickly. ‘Why?’

‘A series of how many?’

She lifts her chin: a defensive stance, designed to keep me at a distance. ‘I don’t know yet. I’ll see how far I get before I run out of steam.’

I’ve got no choice, not if I want to find out the truth. ‘Nine,’ I say. ‘Abberton, Blandford, Darville, Elstow, Goundry, Heathcote , Margerison, Rodwell, Winduss.’

Mary cries out, as if I’ve stuck a needle in her heart. Her body folds in on itself.

‘What is it, Mary? Why do those names frighten you?’

‘He told you, didn’t he?’

‘Told me what? Who are they?’

Her eyes glaze over. ‘I don’t know who they were,’ she whispers. ‘They never told us. Isn’t that funny?’

‘Were?’ The word falls through my brain in slow motion. ‘They’re dead?’

She makes an effort to pull herself together. ‘Gemma Crowther’s dead,’ she says.

‘What?’

‘Did you know she was out of prison?’

I didn’t want to know. I asked not to be told. I wrote that in my letter . . .

‘Ruth?’

‘No. No.’

In some parts of the world, they stone you to death for fucking another woman’s man.

Dead. Did Mary say that Gemma Crowther was dead?

‘I didn’t want to tell you like this.’ Her words come out jerkily. ‘When you came round yesterday, you were in such a state—I couldn’t tell you then. You were ranting about Aidan hiding in my house. You wouldn’t have listened. I’d spent most of the day with a detective from London. He’d just left when you arrived. Gemma Crowther was murdered, she was shot. Twice—in the head and in the heart.’

Gemma Crowther, murdered. Yes; it makes sense. People who behave as she did might well end up getting murdered. In the head and in the heart.

I’m trying to get a grip on what I’ve heard when Mary says, ‘If you still think it’s the truth you want, ask me who killed her.’

14 - 5/3/08

14

5/3/08

Olivia was looking out of her first-floor window as Simon and Charlie got out of the cab. By the time they’d paid, she was at the front door.

‘I don’t give a fuck about Martha Wyers,’ said Simon, by way of a greeting. Then, to Charlie, ‘Kerry Gatti’s who we should be talking to.’

‘Did you say Kerry Gatti?’ Olivia asked. She got no reply. ‘I don’t believe this.’

‘I say we go.’