Jane was in his car, the doors locked, white as chalk. She let Simon in.

“I think I’ve had enough,” she said.

The roads were quiet and Simon drove fast. He had called ahead to Cat and the spare room was ready. For half an hour, Jane slept. The phone woke her.

“Serrailler.”

It was the duty sergeant processing the drunken young men.

“Gentleman who stopped your attacker, sir—you get his name by any chance?”

“No. Didn’t ask. Your mob showed up so I left everything to them.”

“Right.”

“Go on, don’t tell me.”

“Well, apparently there was mayhem, and the bloke didn’t wait. We got his car on the forecourt CCTV though.”

“Well, trace him through that.”

“We did. Car’s registered to a Bishop Waterman.”

“Didn’t look like a bishop.”

“He wasn’t, that’s the thing. Car was reported stolen fromthe Bishop a couple of days ago.”

“No wonder he didn’t give me his name.”

“Some hero!”

“Look, Sergeant, I don’t care if he’s nicked a bus. So far as I’m concerned he stopped a fist before it hit my face.”

“We’ll need a statement.”

“Goodnight, Sergeant.”

“When I was younger,” Jane said, “my mother had a saying: kindness never pays. I hated it then and I hate it now—as if you do a kindness in order to be paid. Only the trouble is, and it’s very, very annoying, it so often turns out to be true.”

“Do a good deed and it turns round and bites you?”

“Something does.”

“Right. We call it police work.”

“You drive very fast.”

“Sorry.” He eased his foot off the accelerator.

“I suppose you have automatic immunity.”

“No, not when I’m not on duty.”

“Will you take me home? I can’t land on your sister.”

“She likes it.”

“I feel I’m losing myself in all of this.”

“No. You’ve had a series of appalling things happen. Let other people take the strain. What’s wrong with that?”

“I do the strain-taking. I should.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure about God. You’d better know that.”

“Why?”

“Not sure. Cat always has been—she says she couldn’t do her job otherwise.”

“Not: why not God? Why had I better know it?”

He did not reply.

“I meet more people who are not sure about God than who are. I often meet them at the point where they start asking the question.”

“I’m not asking the question.”

“Fine. But I didn’t become a priest to preach to the converted, though I suppose I do that most of the time.”

“You prefer being at the hospital to being in the cathedral?”

Jane leaned her head back wearily. “I don’t know, Simon. I honestly don’t know if any of it is working out. I used to think I’d become a nun.”

“God Almighty.”

“Indeed.”

“I’m glad you changed your mind.”

“I don’t know that I did.”

“You can’t mean that?”

They were on the Lafferton bypass making for the Deerbons’ farmhouse. Simon was aware that he had been driving too long. He thought he would make sure Jane was settled and then sleep on the sofa in the kitchen. He was too tired for another twenty-minute drive back into Lafferton.

“I go on retreat to a monastery twice a year. Sometimes I think I’ll stay.”

He had nothing to say. The idea appalled him but too much had happened for him to feel safe to ask why. He turned into the farmhouse gateway. Lights were on upstairs and down. It was after two o’clock.

Chris was in the kitchen waiting for some milk to heat and upstairs Felix was crying.

“Hi. Bad night?”

“Bad night,” Simon said.

“You’re Jane, I’m Chris. I’ve just come in.”

Ten minutes later Jane was upstairs talking to Cat who had resettled Felix. Chris had taken hot chocolate to them both.

“Whisky,” he said, coming back into the kitchen.

“Now you’re talking. I’ll kip on here if it’s OK, I can’t drive home.”

“Sure. Her mother died?”

“Surprised she made it to hospital, the injuries she sustained. I saw the DI on the case.”

“What’s going on, Si? Patient of mine was murdered in her own garden and I was called out to the hospice tonight to a body in theirs. Bloke slit his wrists out there. Some poor woman whose husband had just died went out to get some air and found him.” Chris slumped on to the sofa. “I’ve had it up to here.”

“Have a weekend off. Ma’ll have the children.”

“She can’t cope with Felix. Not sure she can cope with the others now, to be honest. We’ve been a bit concerned about her.”

“I need to go over there. I get so caught up. Bloody stupid. What’s wrong?”

“Not sure. Cat wanted her to go for tests but she won’t of course. I feel like heading off, Si.”

“Thought you were heading back into hospital life. You’re just tired of being a GP.”

“Tired, period.”

There it came again, the threat Simon tried to ward off, that the new start would mean Australia. That and Jane Fitzroy’s threat—

“You could have the camp bed in Sam’s room,” Chris said getting up. “Or I could put it in Cat’s office.”

“I’m too tall for the camp bed and Sam wakes up at half past five.”

“See you then.”

Simon fetched the blanket and pillow from the playroom. He liked the kitchen. It was warm and it gave off a faint, comforting hum. The red light glowed from the dishwasher. After a couple of minutes, he heard the bump of the cat flap and felt Mephisto leap on to the sofa, curl into the small of his back, and settle down to purr.

Fifty-three

The noise was the worst thing. She wasn’t bothered by the rest of it, only by the noise. Banging, rattling, shouting, clanging. Everything here was made of metal, everything made a racket. Plates and doors and staircases and corridors and keys. Nobody walked about without their footsteps sounding through your head, nobody spoke without their voice echoing round the iron stairwells. In the day it was bad but the nights were worse. Someone started shouting, another followed, someone else screamed, someone began to bang on a door. Then the footsteps and the keys and the shouting again. Ed had put her pillow over her head but it made no difference. She screwed toilet paper into plugs and stuffed them in her ears but the noises were still there, only hollow, like noises heard at the bottom of a well. Still heard though. Her breakfast had come. She’d eaten the toast and drunk the tea. Everything else was filth. Slime and filth and grease. But the toast was OK. More or less cold but OK.

Then the footsteps and the key.

“Morning, Ed.”

That was one thing. They’d asked what she wanted to be called and she’d said Ed and that had been that.

This one’s name was Yvonne and she was like a sparrow, not much bigger than Ed. Her hair had a red streak down the side where she’d tried out a colour, she said, only thank God she had just done the one streak. “What was I thinking?”

“How are you?”

Ed shrugged.

“Right, there’s been a contact through the Prison Location Service. Your mother sent in a visitor’s request.”

“I don’t want to see her. I don’t have to.”

“No. You don’t have to, you have that right. Only— think about it, Ed. How’s she feeling?”

“Haven’t a clue.”

“Do you not get on with your mother?”

Ed shrugged again.

“Fell out?”

“Not exactly.”

“She’s your mother though, and you’ve just got the one. She’d be a support, wouldn’t she?”

“I don’t need a support.”

“You sure about that?”

“What do you keep asking me things like that for?”

“Because most people in your situation need support c they need all the support they can get, ask me.”

“She isn’t involved.”

“Looks like she wants to be.”

“Well, I’ve said, I don’t want her. So I don’t want to see her. Anyway, she’s got other fish to fry.”

“You got sisters and brothers?”