house that night. But three other people knew this fact was untrue; and all
three of them whichever way intercommunication was effected were subsequently
rewarded for their roles in the conspiracy of complicity and silence.
Back to my proviso.
Can it be that Frank Harrison trawled his net even wider and dragged in the
cyclist who sent Barren down to his death, the boy Holmes the brother of
Harrison's son Alien?
We turn now to the Harrison clan itself.
Our researchers have given us several pointers to the relationships within
that family. The marriage itself had long been loveless: he with a string of
mistresses in his Pavilion Road flat in London; she with a succession of
straight or kinky but always besotted bed mates with whom she fairly
regularly dallied with mutual delight. And, doubtless, profit. Of the two
children, Simon was clearly the mother's favourite - a boy who had battled
bravely with his disability; a boy for whom his mother had found an affection
considerably deeper than that for her daughter Sarah a young lady who was
very attractive physically, very bright academically, very talented
musically, who from her early years had almost everything going for her, and
who (unlike her brother) needed far less of her mother's tender loving care.
Both children, as well as their parents, were probably fully aware of the
imbalance here; and tacitly and tactfully accepted it.
At the time of their mother's murder, both the children had left home several
years earlier. Sarah had already qualified as a doctor specializing with
considerable distinction in the treatment of diabetes. And Simon had landed
a surprisingly good job in publishing, and was now financially inde- pendent
if not emotionally independent, because he still yearned for that unique love
his mother had always shown him; a love that had meant everything to him in
those long
years of an ever-struggling school-life in which he knew with joyous
assurance that it was he Simon! - who'd acquired the monopoly of a mother's
love, more of it even than his father had ever had. He called to see her
regularly, of course he did. But she probably always insisted that he rang
her beforehand. No reason to ask why, surely? Simon was completely unaware
of his mother's vespertinal divertissements.
But Frank certainly knew all about them, and they served as some sort of
excuse and justification for his own adulterous liaisons. He didn't much
care anyway. Perhaps he could shrug things off fairly easily. But Simon
couldn't. Simon turned up unexpectedly one evening and found his mother
lying on that very same bed where as a young boy (perhaps as an older boy? )
he'd snuggled in beside her when his dad was away; and where he'd seen a man
straddled across her on his elbows and his knees.
I doubt it had been exactly like diat, though. More likely he'd seen a man
bouncing down the stairs towards him, jerking up his trousers and fastening
up his flies. A man he knew: Barron! Then he'd found his mother lying in
the bedroom there: naked, gagged, handcuffed, with a porno- graphic video
probably still running on the TV.
Shellshocked with disbelief and disillusionment, in the white heat of a
furious jealousy yes! - he murdered his mother.
309
chapter SiXTY-SiX We might now be stepping through a dark door with no
bottom on the other side, and fall flat on our faces (A member of the
Honolulu City Council, quoted by the Press Corps) conscious that he was
writing with increasing fluency, Morse poured himself another tumbler of
single malt, and resumed his narrative: With regard to events immediately
thereafter, we can only guess. But at some point Simon rang his father in
predictable panic. He had very few people he could call on. But he could
