perceptions could ever be quite the same.
He wished he had been a drinker like the boy's parents, and had fallen into the habit of watching his own children with obsessive protectiveness, could not stop hugging them, hated letting them out of his sight, patted them and kissed them, was easily moved to tears. They were irritated by all the anxiety in his attention. PC Bowles dragged his eyes back to his companion. She had not been invited, but he had been too sluggish to object.
Of course, I always thought it was strange,' said Amanda Scott. A bit too neat, you know. But if sir thought so, too, he never said. At least no one's making any formal complaints. Well, they couldn't, could they? Nothing we could do. Not about the boy or anything. How was I to know?'
He could not imagine where she found the energy to chat. It was out of character for her to sit with uniformed plods like himself, failing to perceive the indifference in his eyes or to recognize it for what it was – contempt. His blithe approval of Detective Scott had arisen less from any kind of enchantment than from admiration, and the same guileless glance was currently cold. She was just another tart after all. Out with the rich widower, was she?
Quicker to spot pickings than a magpie. Never a word of pity in her ten-minute monologue, not a thing on the death, the boy, the fires, the pity of it. What price a career like his or hers without pity? What point in doing it? Bowles looked at the scum on his tea, crinkling the brown surface as he heard the desperately casual words of a woman with no one else to listen, speaking to him only by default, decided pity was not appropriate here. She didn't deserve it.
You might have tried courting Blundell when he was one kind of victim; bet you've abandoned him now. Are you worried about complaints? I hope they hang you. He pushed back his chair and left without a word. She sat where she was, surrounded by an ocean of empty seats. On her lap, she scrunched up the piece of paper informing her with crude politeness of her transfer back to the streets from which she came.
Bailey drove back from the coroner's office full of messages. Yes, the parents may bury the body, after Bailey's own punishment of identifying the remains, the only pain he was allowed to spare the parents. Whatever their failures, neither Featherstone deserved to see the curled and black, utterly obscene remains of a son shrunk into a charred foetus. Helen had offered to go with him to the coroner's; he had refused, wondered if that had been kind.
Perhaps he was not the only one who needed to exorcise this crushing burden of guilt.
He had never in his eventful life felt so critical a sense of failure, been haunted with such dreams. He had watched inquests and postmortems, seen physical evidence of barbarism and betrayal, been saddened, sickened, and angered, but in this instance alone, he felt himself the betrayer. He sat in the car outside Branston waiting at the same junction for more than one paralysed minute. The car behind hooted; he moved towards the spread of new houses, a contrast to the shabby old East End office of the coroner. I like this old place,' the coroner's officer had said. Bailey had agreed.
I hate newness for its own sake, he thought. I loathe the deception hidden in new things, all that promise that they will alter the state of the same old humanity by making people happier or even nicer. At least in the comparative poverty of his childhood the neighbours had nothing material to distract them from what their children and those next door were doing. Might have been happier with a little more, no telling, but they would certainly have been less caring and far less observant. Here in the new houses there had been no one looking.
As he drove down Branston High Street, the windows of Invaders Court blinked at him like a series of blind eyes. He had failed to watch like a parent, failed to act and to analyse, earned himself a lifetime's nightmares, but the introspection and the blame would have to find a place alongside all the rest. He could not afford to go to pieces, was too sinewy for that, too practical, but still soft enough to be racked from top to toe with pity and self- recrimination.
He thought of Helen, less proofed against sorrow than he, and almost regretted his thick skin. A year of progressive failure for both of them, and if he had not been dissolved by it, he was beyond making decisions concerning their future. Except for one. She must lead him through the rest and he would follow humbly. Only do not lose me, Helen, not now, not in the future. Do not lose me. We were wrong to come here. Branston's new life has stunted our growth, impoverished my vision, eclipsed your career with this horror at the end.
That cannot be altered: the boy is dead; you have finished weeping for the parents who would not or could not weep and we need a wider compass, greater anonymity for our lives.
We cannot live as others try and fail to do. You must accept me for the deficiency I am – not perfect, neither great nor good, guilty in part for this. I am an embarrassment here, ripe for transfer back to the dirty depths of London, out of the way. Come with me. Before I do any more damage. Poor boy, poor little bastard. I must try to do better with your kind.
He shifted gears, checked his mirror for the impatient one behind, acutely conscious of his hands moving through every movement, his own strength influencing these minor events, progress towards no known goal but the next destination. There was no other way to conduct life. The shadow of William Featherstone which had wrapped itself around him lifted slightly.
There was a duty to live; he had made too many mistakes to be overwhelmed now. He noticed the sun was shining wet on the windscreen, raindrops pushed to the edge, glimmering like William's jewels.
`Where now?' asked Redwood. 'Where now? The law's an ass.' He looked at Helen, blaming her for the inadequacies he had in mind, holding her half responsible for his own predicament and the law's powerlessness. 'We've already arraigned Antony Sumner, but we'll offer no evidence, and discontinue the case against him. He wasn't even grateful.'
`Should he be?' Helen said. 'He's been in jail for nearly three months.' One high summer of life gone as well as one crucial love affair reduced to ashes, a reputation ruined for ever. For what should he be grateful? She was silent.
And the rest,' Redwood continued. 'One juvenile psychopath silent as the grave, apart from insisting that her own confessions on paper, delivered without caution, of course, were simply the stuff of fantasy.'
`The possession of her mother's gold was not fantasy.
Enough fact to charge murder.'
`Yes, and we will, but without William Featherstone, who is too dead to deflect the accusations her inventive mind will shovel in the direction of his memory. We have no more than a forty per cent chance of getting a conviction. Counsel says less than that. Without him we can't even prove he didn't start all those fires. She did, to discredit him if ever he should talk, tell someone about the body, lead everyone to her. But I can't charge her with arson.'
And her father?'
Ah. Counsel also says no to a charge of harbouring an offender. Besides, we don't know if he actually did so. He simply knew darling child had the gold, and he chose to ignore the implications. He saw the jewellery in her pocket the day after the murder, he told Bailey, knew she had it. It strikes me that both of them, father and daughter, preferred Mama to be dead. He would have seen the murder as a massive economy drive, but she committed it.'
And then you and I and all of us fell down while the obvious flowed over us. We were outwitted by a child who delivered the unkindest cut of all. Redwood had dissociated blame and himself from Amanda Scott, but like her, he ignored the second tragedy in deference to the prospects of criticism, recrimination, blame, extrication, and getting a conviction. William had robbed him of that chance. I am going mad, Helen thought. Is it only Bailey and I who feel William to be the only loss, the only innocent, killed by the wilful blindess of us all.
You could not blame such a clumsy hand as his own. You don't cure by convicting his assassin. Without our intervention he might have lived, under the shade of what dominance and how poor the quality of life does not matter; it is still life lost.
But if her own capacity for guilt was endless, Redwood's was nonexistent. Like the law. She should have known better by now, but because of the guilt, could not criticize either.
She had no right.
`We'll try to avoid using you as a witness.'
`Thank you. I don't see how you can avoid it, but no doubt you'll try. You know I'm transferring back to London?'
`Yes.' He had the grace not to pretend regrets, looked at her with respect, even a tinge of affection. 'I'm sorry. When do you go?'
