GRACE OYEWOLE QC

Events that were investigated to the satisfaction of not one but two police forces in England and Wales. Are you sure you didn’t have a personal motive for pursuing the investigation?

HARRIET KEALTY

My motive was the truth. It’s always been the truth.

GRACE OYEWOLE QC

Commendable, I’m sure. So, you don’t feel your personal relationship with my client tainted your feelings towards him?

HARRIET KEALTY

No.

GRACE OYEWOLE QC

And what about your feelings towards Detective Sergeant Sabih Khan?

HARRIET KEALTY

Sabih? What do you mean?

GRACE OYEWOLE QC

Did you blame him for the events that led to your dismissal from Staffordshire Police?

ROGER SUMPTION QC

My Lord, I rise with great reticence . . .

GRACE OYEWOLE QC

We will have to come to these matters at some point, but if my learned friend feels now is not the time, I will oblige him by moving on.

JUDGE THOMAS

Please do, for the sake of harmony. But you are right to say we must return to these matters.

GRACE OYEWOLE QC

So, ignoring what some might have considered a conflict of interest, you continued your investigation. Where did you go next?

HARRIET KEALTY

I went to see Cynthia Hughes, the housekeeper. I thought she might be able to tell me more about the family and that she might share my concerns about the child’s welfare.

Chapter 11

There are places where time seems to get lost. It meanders down crooked lanes, seeps into ancient stone, and haunts shadowed alleyways, never passing, always lingering, holding a small part of the world in stasis. Ipstones was such a place. A small village hidden in the Staffordshire hills, found by few who weren’t looking for it. Harri went there soon after her meeting with Dr Abiola, when she’d discovered the poem on her windscreen. She drove the meandering journey to a place that hadn’t changed much in two hundred years.

St Leonard Church, an imposing red stone building, looked as though it had weathered a thousand storms. It stood to the north of the village, and Church Lane flowed south from it, like the curved root of a tuber. Harri drove through the village, passing quiet residential cul-de-sacs that branched off the main road. She parked in a lay-by beside St Leonard and indulged in her habit of reading the headstones in the churchyard as she walked along the lane. She was often moved by how much love and celebration of a person’s life could be imparted by a short inscription, and this churchyard did not disappoint. She caught sight of an old headstone that was covered in text. It was just the other side of the grey wall, so she drew closer and leaned on the capstones to see better.

IN MEMORY OF ANNA CECILIA, SHE DEPARTED THIS LIFE JUNE 17TH 1812 AGED 31. SHE WAS DISTINGUISHED BY A MOST ADMIRABLE DISPOSITION OF THE HEART, THE DELIGHT OF HER PARENTS, AND THE ADMIRATION OF ALL WHO KNEW HER. AT 16, SMALLPOX STRIPPED THE BLOOM OF BEAUTY, BUT HER AFFECTION AND TENDERNESS FOR ALL WERE UNDIMINISHED. SHE WAS FINALLY RELEASED FROM MORTAL SUFFERING AND RECEIVED INTO A WORLD WITHOUT PAIN, WHERE GOD HIMSELF WIPES THE REMNANTS OF LIFE’S TEARS FROM EVERY EYE.