“It’s the house.”

“You care about the house more than about Dad?”

“I suppose I do. What a shit.”

“Yes.”

“None of it matters. Not beside this. How long will it go on?”

She shook her head. “Probably not as long as I expected. They gave him a few months at the beginning but they can never be sure and I guess they were wrong. Not their fault.”

“Why is he so set against the hospice?”

“I’m not sure. He’s always been very keen on it for his patients. I don’t think it’s that he doesn’t want to go there so much as that he does want to stay at home. We can manage that. The hospice does home support and Dickon Farley’s his doctor—I’m his wife but at this stage it doesn’t make much difference. Dickon will make the decisions, I’ll be on the spot. I won’t send him away. It’s a few weeks.”

“The kids?”

“They have to live with it c Sam and Hannah anyway. I can’t protect them from everything though we’ll make sure they don’t see him if they shouldn’t. But they know. I’ve talked to them about it. Sam listens and doesn’t say much, Hannah says a lot but she hasn’t listened and she hasn’t really taken it on board. It’ll be worse for her.”

“Worst of all for you.”

“Adam’s driving his mother down the day after tomorrow. I don’t want them to leave it too late but I suspect that actually she can’t face it. You know Chris’s mother—only looks on the bright side because only the bright side is allowed to exist. I can’t talk to her on the phone because she just insists it’s a matter of positive thinking. She’s a great one for positive thinking, my mother-in-law. I wish I were.”

“You’re a realist. You have to be. So am I. I have to be.”

“You’re up against it at the moment, aren’t you?”

“Yup. I wouldn’t admit it to many but he’s got the upper hand. He’s laughing at us, I can hear him.”

“What do you think?”

“He’ll make a mistake. They always do. He’ll make a mistake or he’ll flip and start running round the shopping centre with a gun and then turn it on himself. But not before there’s a massacre. Have you counted the number of times the media uses the word every time they report? They dredge up every American high school and small-town gun massacre in history and scare the daylights out of everyone. Apparently two weddings have hired private security—word has it one lot were armed though we don’t know that for sure. Another lot have postponed their wedding until it’s all over. Shops say they’ve never known such quiet Saturday afternoons and the Jug Fair didn’t help any. And all the time, I’m looking round, you know? I’m looking round trying to put myself into his head, thinking, would I have a go here, why wouldn’t I come and shoot someone there, what would I do next, who would I gun down this week? I can guess. We can all guess. But we can’t have a full armed response every time a popgun goes off.”

“I heard the royals have cancelled for the Barr wedding.”

“They’ve been advised to cancel but we haven’t had anything official. The Lord Lieutenant’s having apoplexy, his wife’s having a nervous breakdown, the Chief wishes they’d skip the wedding and go straight for the honeymoon.”

“Nothing will happen there.”

“Probably not, but thinking so doesn’t help lower the temperature.”

From upstairs they heard Chris shouting out at the same moment as Simon’s mobile rang.

Chris was standing up beside the bed and when Cat went into the room he said, “Please c”

“I’m here. What is it?”

But he simply sat and then lay down on the bed without replying and fell asleep. Cat pulled the duvet over him and left the room.

The kitchen was empty. She looked out and saw that Simon had driven away. Mephisto was still out. The wind was still blowing hard, stirring the edges of the yellow curtains and rattling the catflap.

She lay down on the sofa, knotted with misery and dread, and waited for first light.

Sixty-two

“This is a situation virtually without precedent,” the Chief said. “There have been shootings, of course there have—Dunblane. In the United States they are becoming commonplace. Lone gunmen open fire in a school playground or a college or a shopping mall, but in almost every instance they turn the gun on themselves. Not in this case.”

She looked round the table. Faces were grim. The media had returned in force. There had been half an hour about gun crime on the BBC with TV pictures of Lafferton. Awkward questions were being asked in high places. Simon wondered how long it would be before the rest of his SIFT team was called in. Could he head up both? Probably not.

“My—”

A knock. The door opened. Paula Devenish glared. The desk officer brought in a single sheet of paper, gave it to her and vanished.

The Chief Constable read. Closed her eyes for a second. Looked up.

“This,” she said, “is a message about next Saturday’s wedding. The Lord Lieutenant’s daughter.” She paused. “The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall will be attending.”

There was an intake of breath. Someone muttered, “All we need.”

“Quite,” the Chief said.

“But I thought—”

“We all thought, John. We were told royal protection advice had been firmly not to come, and that the Prince of Wales had agreed.”

“Buggers.”

“Don’t say that,” someone else said, “PoW’s never bottled it before. He knows someone could take a potshot every time he goes out.”

“I’m going to apply for an extra unit from RP,” the Chief said. “I don’t see why all this should be down to us.”

She stood up. “Thank you, everyone. Simon, can I have a word c?”

They went along the corridor to his office.

“Frankly, I’m terrified. Not something I readily admit to. I know this is a private visit but we are going to organise ourselves as if it were high profile. Gold Command.” The Chief looked at him. “You’ve got plenty on with this entire case but no one knows it better. Problem?”

“It’s personal and family, but yes. I’m concerned that I may need to be available for my sister at short notice c her husband has a brain tumour—he’s very ill.”

“I’m sorry, Simon. That’s a pig, my father died of one, so I know. But the fact is, it’s your brother-in-law, not your wife or child. I can’t let you off.”

Tough, he thought. Tough as ever. Station word had always been that the Chief was tougher than a man because she had more to prove. That might have been true ten years ago but now Paula Devenish was one of several female chief constables. She was still reckoned to be the toughest among them.

“I’ll fix a meeting with royal protection and whoever else as a matter of urgency. I’ll let you know. Any more news on the fairground accident?”

“Fatalities stand at nine—the ones still in hospital are all out of danger.”

“Good,” she said briskly.

Simon went to get a coffee. The royal visit was the least of it. There would be a lot of tedious meetings, the wedding would go ahead, nothing untoward would happen because, whoever he was, the gunman had a brain. He would know that the cathedral would be bristling with armed police.

Patience, Simon thought, closing his office door. It was only a matter of patience and good, careful policing and of playing a waiting game. Sooner or later the man would make a single mistake which would give them their chance. A mistake, a bit of luck, making sure their backs were covered, double-checking everything c the tedious stuff. Most of his police life went to prove that he was right. The rest, the serial killers, the major dramas—they were rare.

But in any case, he knew that at the moment he needed the shelter of routine. For most of the day, the thought of Cat and Chris was not at the back but near the forefront of his mind. That was a question of waiting too. The worst sort of waiting.