Solar

'Some cocky little lawyer said he could get me off, and I believed him.'

'So you planned all this out together?'

'I couldn't get to her once Aldous was dead. And then I was arrested. So we had to sort of work it out as we went along without actually speaking. But we knew what we were doing.'

The band had given all it could to the Beatles and was taking a rest. Brass players were decanting condensate onto the desert sand from their instruments. The bandmaster was striding away with a cigar in his mouth.

Beard said, 'But surely, if you had gone to see Aldous yourself, you could have frightened him off.'

Tarpin laughed bitterly. 'Tried that, didn't I? Right at the start. Went round to his place in Hampstead, took a tyre iron just for effect. He had it off me first stroke, threw me all over his garden, put my back out, fractured my kneecap, held my head under his pond, dislocated my arm. And did this. Look.'

He pointed to the gap in his teeth.

Beard could not help a fierce proprietorial pride in Tom Aldous. What a physicist! He said, 'Paying you back, I suppose, for blacking Patrice's eye.'

'I apologised for that, Mr Beard,' Tarpin said huffily. 'More than once, if you want to know. And in the end Patrice accepted my apology.'

'So you went to prison for my wife. And she came to see you, wrote you beautiful grateful letters?'

'It wouldn't look right, would it, visiting her lover's murderer. After a year I started writing to her. Every single day. But I heard nothing. Nothing in eight years. I didn't even know she was married again till I came out.'

The poor deluded sap stared away towards the mountains beyond Lordsburg. Looking at him, Beard was pleased that he himself had never fallen properly in love. Not if this was what happened to a man's reason. He had come closest with Patrice, and what an idiot that had made of him. In the circumstances it was not possible, but he would have liked to press Tarpin about the murder weapon, the hammer with the narrow head. Had he really forgotten that he had left a bag of tools in Belsize Park? What an ass, and how convenient.

Tarpin said, 'I can't stop thinking about her, and you're the only one I can talk to. We've both loved the same woman, Mr Beard. You could say our fates are entwined. She won't let me come near her, won't even talk to me for five minutes on the phone. But I still love her.'

He repeated himself, with greater force, so that two workmen walking past the stand glanced up in their direction.

'I ought to be bitter, I ought to be furious at the way she let me down. I ought to break her neck, but I love her, and it makes me feel good just to say it out loud to someone who knows her. I love her and if it was ever going to stop, it would have happened a long time ago, when I realised I wasn't going to hear from her. I love her, I love €¦'

'Let me get this right,' Beard said. 'You came all this way, you concealed your criminal record from Homeland Security, just to tell me that you still love my ex-wife?'

'You were the only other player, if you see what I mean. You're the only one I can say it to and it means something, that Patrice killed Aldous, and I paid for it with eight years of my life. And I owe you an apology, treating you the way I did when you came round to my house. But I was under a lot of stress, you see, with Patrice going to see Aldous in the evenings because she didn't dare upset him. But I am truly sorry about hitting you like that.'

Beard said, 'I think we can let that one go.'

But there was a purpose to Tarpin's apology. 'There was another reason I came. I've thought about this really hard. I've got to do something with myself. I can't spend the next ten years just thinking about Patrice. Mr Beard, I want a fresh start, somewhere far away from where she is. I saw about your thing here on the TV. You're the only one who knows this situation and I know you'll understand. I'm asking you to give me a job. I've still got the skills, plumbing, wiring, bricklaying, labouring. I'll pick up litter, if that's what's on offer. I know how to work hard.'

Beard's thoughts were running ahead. He had found something for Darlene's Nicky, even though she lasted only two days. There were ways round Tarpin's illegal status. And the man was a fantasising fool who possibly deserved a break. It was unfortunate for Tarpin, however, that minutes before, Beard's mood had dipped at the memory of those dark days, when he watched from a first-floor window as his wife, in new frock and shoes, went down the garden path to her Peugeot and her evening assignation. Wasn't eight years enough? Wasn't his punishment complete? It probably never would be, Beard thought as he stood and extended his hand and resumed his official tone.

'Thank you for coming to see me, Mr Tarpin. I don't know whether I believe your story, but I've enjoyed it. As for a job, well, you had an affair with my wife and you encouraged her to murder my close colleague, or, who knows, you killed him yourself. All in all, I don't exactly feel I owe you any favours…'

Tarpin stood too, but he refused the handshake. He sounded astonished. 'You're saying no?'

'Yes.'

He moved at speed from whining petitioner to aggressor. 'Because I went with your wife?'

'Mostly that, yes.'

'But you didn't love her. You fucked everything in sight. You didn't look after her. You could have had her all to yourself, but you drove her away.'

Now that he was angry, he looked more like his former self, with the colour back in his cheeks and that old ratty look. He was gaunt, but in possession perhaps of some wiry strength. And though he had shrunk and aged, he remained taller and younger than Beard.

'I didn't go looking for an affair,' he said loudly. 'Patrice came on to me as a way of getting at you. I had my own problems. My wife ran off with my kids. You wrecked your own fucking marriage. That beautiful woman. You broke her poor heart!'

Mindful of the possibility of violence, Beard was edging away along the line of bleachers. He was no Tom Aldous, adept at cracking kneecaps. He said from a judicious distance, 'There are some patrolmen down by the highway. Clear off now or I'll invite them to come and discuss your tourist visa with you. They're not so gentle with illegals in these parts, you know.'

'You bastard! You cowardly bastard!'

Beard descended the stand as fast as he was able, then strode away. Even when he had reached the far side of the parade ground and was heading back towards the Texan-style barbecue, he could hear the diminishing cries, 'Cunt! Coward! Cheat! I'll get you!' Heads of upright citizens turned to look, and there were disapproving glances in Beard's direction too. Some minutes later, after a wrong turn, he found himself in the grand colonnade of green portable lavatories and slipped inside to make lingering use of one. When he came out and looked around, he saw Tarpin in the distance, right down on the highway, waving his thumb at the passing traffic.

Beard was late for his rendezvous with Darlene, but he was tired and hot, and there was much to think about, so he dawdled. Tarpin, not Aldous, was the lover whom Patrice could not shake off, and she made up a story to escape another black eye. But what had stopped the bullying was the thrashing Aldous delivered. Even if Beard had strangled Aldous with his bare hands, Tarpin would have stepped up to take the blame, such was the reach of his obsessive delusional state. Beard's past was often a mess, resembling a ripe, odorous cheese oozing into or over his present, but this particular confection had congealed into the appearance of something manageably firm, more Parmesan than Epoisses. He was reflecting cheerfully on this formulation – it reminded him that he was still peckish – and was in sight of the Texan barbecue when he felt his palmtop trembling in his pocket. Melissa, the screen told him. Calling before she turned in for the night. But when he put the phone to his ear he heard the sound of a car's engine and, faintly in the background, Catriona singing.

'Darling,' he said quickly, before she could speak. 'I've been trying to reach you.'

'We were on the plane.'

Running off with the conductor, taking his child, was his immediate thought. 'Where are you?'