Кара Хантер - No Way Out

`Mr Esmond, are you still asking me to believe you don't know anything about this?'

He shakes his head, then takes a deep breath. `No. But we can't talk about it here. Not where Mum can hear.'

With Fawley, Everett and Somer all due at the funeral, Baxter is having an unusually quiet afternoon. He has a cup of tea (proper tea, brought up from the canteen), and a half-eaten snack bar. It's one of those protein things, and in his book that counts as health food not chocolate, which means it doesn't have to be confessed to his wife and written down in that bloody Weight Watchers log she's running for him. He's been doing the diet for two months now, and he can tell his wife is disappointed the pounds aren't rolling off. She asks him, some days, if he's sure he's remembered everything he ate at the office, and he always looks her straight in the eye. All those years questioning professional liars have finally come in useful.

He finishes the tea, and turns again to trying to crack the password on the PC they found in Michael Esmond's office.

`OK, so talk to me.'

Outside in the garden it's bright but cold. Here and there, smudges of snow linger in shaded corners of the borders. There are snowdrops and the succulent first tips of hyacinths.

Philip shoves his hands in his pockets. It's too cold to sit so they keep walking. Somer can see his mother staring at them from inside. It occurs to her that she probably still thinks she's her son's girlfriend.

`When I said I didn't know anything about it, I wasn't exactly lying.'

`Not exactly ? What does that mean?'

`It means I was in Australia at the time. Having a gap year. Only it turned out to be just a `њyear`ќ, since I never ended up going to uni at all.'

`So what happened?'

`Mum and Dad were always really cagey about the whole thing, but Mike told me about it in the end. Not all at once `“ it came out in dribs and drabs.' He takes a deep breath. `Basically, my dad caught him with another boy.'

`Another boy ?' Whatever she thought she was expecting, it wasn't this.

`They were in the summerhouse. The one at the bottom of the garden. I don't think it was actual `“ you know `“ sex. Look, he was seventeen, they were probably just experimenting. But Dad went off the deep end. Threw the other kid out, started shouting and bawling and telling Mike he didn't bring him up to be a pervert `“ that he was a disgrace to the family name `“ shit like that. I'm sure you can fill in the blanks.'

And she can. Just as she can imagine how close to home words like that would have gone.

`So what happened?'

`Mike ran back to the house, grabbed the car keys and left. Five minutes later he knocked a little girl off her bike on the Banbury Road.'

`Oh Lord.'

`I know. Poor bastard.'

`And was she all right? The little girl?'

`Yes, she was fine. Just a few bruises. But she was knocked unconscious for a few minutes. Mike thought he'd killed her. He completely panicked. Just got back in the car and drove away. They didn't find him for three days. And when they did, he couldn't remember a thing about it.'

And suddenly it all clicks. `He was at Calshot Spit, right?'

Philip flushes, then nods.

`Why didn't you tell me all this when I asked you about the hut?'

He makes a rueful face. `I'm sorry. I should have been more open with you about that, I realize that now. But it was over twenty years ago `“ I couldn't see how digging it all up again was going to help anyone. Least of all Michael. It just didn't seem in the slightest bit relevant.'

`That's for us to decide, Mr Esmond. Not you.'

He stops walking and turns to face her. `I'm sorry. Really. I'm not a liar. That's not who I am. If you knew me better, you'd know that.'

She elects to ignore the covert message and moves on again. `And that doctor your mother mentioned?'

`My parents were panicking about the whole thing trashing Mike's chances of getting into Oxford so they paid for him to see someone in Harley Street. That way it stayed out of his NHS records. He said Mike was in a state of extreme emotional disturbance at the time of the accident and then went into some sort of traumatic amnesia afterwards `“ `њdissociative fugue`ќ, I think was the phrase. He wrote a letter to the police and they accepted it. And since the little girl was basically unharmed, my parents managed to make it all go away.'

He catches her eye. `And yes, I suspect the latter did involve a fairly hefty cheque.'

`And afterwards?'

`Mike saw the shrink for the rest of that summer and sat his entrance exams that autumn. The rest, you know.'

`And the other boy `“'

Philip gives an ironic laugh. `Totally redacted. I don't even know the poor little sod's name. And the way Mike went on afterwards, well, let's just say it was about as un-gay as you can get. He'd only had one girlfriend up till then. Janey `“ Jenny `“ something like that. But suddenly he was seeing them left, right and centre. Well `њseeing`ќ is perhaps an exaggeration. It was just sex, as far as I could tell.' He grins sheepishly. `I was pretty envious, if you must know.'

`So you were back from Australia by then.'

He nods.

`And how did your brother seem to you?'

`The same `“ and different. I'd never have guessed what had happened just from looking at him.'

`I don't follow.'

`Well, something like that `“ you'd expect it to knock you back, wouldn't you? But with Mike it was the opposite. It wasn't just the sleeping around. He was more confident, more assertive. You know, just louder. '

Just like the last six months, thinks Somer. Coincidence? Or has history been repeating itself?

However different our lives are, the way we leave them doesn't vary much. Not these days. Crematoria are like McDonald's. Identical in every town. Same layout, same chairs, same acrylic-looking curtains. And in most cases, the same embarrassing sense of one group of mourners being bundled out the back just as the next lot are coming in the front door. But not this time. The Esmonds' funeral is going to be all over the press this time tomorrow and the crematorium has clearly freed up the entire afternoon. I get there early, before Everett and Somer, but the vestibule is still packed, and I scan the crowd wondering who a lot of these people are. The smattering of smartly dressed women in their thirties is probably parents from Matty's school, but I reckon most of the rest are journos, sporting over-worn blacks and over-practised grief faces.

I'm doing my best to blend into the background, leaving Everett and Somer to manage the official presence. And they do it well, in their different ways. Somer is prompter to approach people, and I see her starting conversations, asking questions. I watch men underestimating her because she's attractive and in a uniform, and I watch her registering that fact and using it to her advantage. Everett, on the other hand, is more outwardly passive, as well as a good deal less comfortable in her uniform, which she keeps tugging at every few minutes. She does more listening than talking, making people feel they're the ones controlling the flow of information. But she's gathering it, all the same.

As the three hearses draw up outside, there's an unseemly jostling as the press photographers push forward to get the best angle. Samantha's coffin is covered in pink lilies and those tiny white flowers. Baby's breath. In the second car, Matty's is draped in an Arsenal flag, with a wreath of red roses I'm told was sent on behalf of the club. Apparently they're going to wear black armbands for the next game. That's social media for you. And finally Zachary's, the tiny coffin overwhelmed by his name picked out in cushions of daisies.