“I think you do as she said. She was a bitch. She should be in a lab, not dealing with people—God knows how other patients cope with her, totally bewildered by everything in there, not only by what might be happening to them but by the jargon and the procedures. She should never have to speak to a patient again for the rest of her life. But she was right. You have to do what she said. You know that.”

“Is there any point? How long is it going to take—six months? Max. Do I want to spend that time recovering from brain surgery, exhausted by radiotherapy? I’m not sure I do.” He sounded infinitely weary, even at this stage, too tired to bother with any of it.

“Yes. They need to do a biopsy. They can reduce the size of the tumour.”

“To buy me time.”

“What’s wrong with time?”

“Oh, nothing whatsoever from where I’m standing.”

“Surgery and radiotherapy will buy you time—and good time, Chris. Maybe quite a long time. And if the biopsy is good—”

“It won’t be. They never are.”

“Rubbish and you know it.”

“Do I? What do we doctors say? Listen to the patients, they’ll give you the diagnosis. So listen to me.”

She smoothed her fingers over the back of his hand, memorising the feel of it. She said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“No point.”

“Chris, I’m your wife.”

“You were going to find out. Why spoil the last bit of Australia, why put you through it before it was inevitable?”

She looked at him. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Long nose. Wide mouth. Flat ears. Not handsome. Not ugly. Not a face that stood out in a crowd. Not a face anyone would see and be unable to forget. Chris’s face.

He lifted up her hand and pressed it to his cheek.

“The thing is,” he said, “it’s not only that I don’t want to leave you and I don’t want to leave the children. I don’t want to miss them growing up. I don’t want not to be here, doing what we do, in this place. The thing is c it isn’t even that I don’t want to die.”

She felt the stubble on his skin. She thought that if she tried she could even feel the flow of the blood beneath it.

She said nothing. Waited. Whatever it was, he had to say it. To tell her. Whatever it was.

But he was silent. He held her hand to his face a little while longer, then let it go before getting up and wandering away across the garden towards the paddock. Cat watched him and as she watched saw that his gait was odd, uneven and slightly unsteady. She closed her eyes, knowing why, too terrified to watch any more.

Twenty-seven

The grounds of the hotel ran down to the river. There was a small hooped wooden bridge beside willow trees where almost every one had a photograph taken—the bride and groom standing romantically together with the willow branches bending over them, the water gliding by. Photographers were clever with reflections. The bridegroom would hold up a branch of willow for the bride to pass under. They would stand hand in hand, leaning over the bridge rail looking down. It never failed.

Amy Finlayson, Events Manager and Wedding Coordinator for the Riverside Hotel, stood on the lawn watching the gang erect the marquee for the following day. The double doors of the dining room would be open onto the small flight of stone steps, the marquee entrance just below, and with a bit of luck, they could open up the back too so that people could see the lawn leading to the river and stroll down there later. This lot were having fireworks at ten. The team would set them up in the paddock. She’d earned her bonuses and the extra tips this year. People were generous when a wedding went well, they were lavish with gratuities. By the end of October she’d be taking her holiday in Canada.

“I don’t understand you,” the manager had said. “Why don’t you go for sun and a beach? Why not somewhere like Mauritius?”

“Because Mauritius means one thing,” Amy said. “Bloody weddings.”

From where he stood, concealed behind the thick stump of a pollarded willow, he had the perfect view—the woman pointing, the marquee men. The line of sight was ideal. Up the lawn, through the tent to the open French windows.

He looked carefully around him. Behind, a wooden fence into a field. He could climb over easily enough but the field was fully open to view from the hotel. The footpath beside the river was also open and visible. Only if he went left did he have any chance of slipping away unseen and it was a risk because although there were screening trees and a hedge, both had significant gaps. It was also a long way to the road. Too long. There was nowhere he could safely hole up, either.

No. It would be clear exactly where any shots had been fired from. The patrol cars, especially just at the moment, would be fast on the scene. He had no chance. Unless c

He smiled. Unless.

It was so obvious he could have worked it out as a ten-year-old boy.

What kept you? he thought.

Alison had dreamed of a marquee—the inside had been designed in her head for years, with pink and white ribbons tied round a maypole, a pink and white awning and swags of flowers. It had all come together in the weeks before. Cost a fortune. Her mother paying. Paying for a grand wedding.

It was what she wanted and what she wanted was fine by him.

Alison.

He drove home feeling the sparks of anger, that always smouldered, rekindle and burn hard. When something reminded him, it affected his breathing. He felt a tightness in his chest. Even his vision sometimes changed, clouding a little.

Alison.

He put the car away and locked it, then went out again, a quarter of a mile to the pub he preferred because no one was interested in anyone else, no one behind the bar wanted to chat.

He bought his pint of keg, hating the sweet thick taste of the real ale they tried to push, took it to a corner with the local paper and a biro in case he needed to mark anything out.

It was full of the shootings. Three deaths. No leads. No clues. Lots of blether filling page after page but nothing real. Nothing that troubled him.

Twenty-eight

Simon Serrailler lay on his back on the floor and rolled first to the left and then to the right, left and right, left and right. He was a tall man and his back had been giving him trouble but in the past two weeks he had been working fifteen-hour days and although he knew he should go to the physio for treatment there had been no time.

He rolled over left to right a dozen more times and then lay on his back again, arms behind his head, in the quiet of his living room. Before long the bells would start to ring. Thursday night was full practice night. But for now, only the floorboards creaked occasionally, settling back after he had disturbed them with his exercise.

Exercise also helped to clear his mind. Work he could deal with. He had been in the game too long now to carry it home in his head. Earlier that day he had said, “We’ll get him and I’ll tell you why. Because he’ll make a mistake. Yes, he is clever and cunning, yes, he is planning carefully. But with firearms there are any number of mistakes he can make and sooner or later he will make one of them and give himself away. I don’t mean we sit and wait for him to do it. We’re being as proactive as possible on this one. But I’m confident that when he does cock up, in however small a way, we’ll be there and we’ll have him.”

He believed it.

He had closed his eyes. Now he opened them and looked around his room, drawing from its calm order. Then he stood up, twisted this way and that a few times, and went to fetch himself a whisky. He was spending the evening in, alone, watching a documentary about Italy and reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s biography of Stalin. It was time he desperately needed, time he had been looking forward to, limited enough for him to relish every moment. He wanted to go through his sketchbooks of his spring break in the Faroes where he had gulped in lungfuls of crystal-cold air and walked among seabirds and grass-roofed houses and felt both invigorated and deeply peaceful. He had an exhibition next year, half of which would be of these drawings, the rest of portraits, many of his mother. He wanted to sift through them, place them in perfect order which would take a long, careful time.