Michael Robotham - Suspect

The farmhouse has been in the family since before I was born. For most of that time, until my father semiretired, it was our holiday house. He had other places in London and Cardiff. Elsewhere, teaching hospitals and universities would provide him with accommodation if he accepted visiting fellowships.

When he bought the farmhouse it had ninety acres, but he leased most of the land to the dairy farmer next door. The main house, built out of local stone, has low ceilings and strange angles where the foundations have settled over more than a century.

I want to clean up before Mum gets home. I ask Dad if I can borrow a shirt and maybe a pair of trousers. He shows me his wardrobe. On the end of the bed is a man's tracksuit, neatly folded.

He notices me looking. "Your mother and I go walking."

"I didn't know."

"It's only been the last few years. We get up early if the weather is OK. There are some nice walks in Snowdonia."

"So I hear."

"Keeps me fit."

"Good for you."

He clears his throat and goes looking for a fresh towel. "I suppose you want a shower instead of a bath." He makes it sound newfangled and disloyal. A true Welshman would use a tin tub in front of the coal fire.

I push my face into the jets of water, hearing it rush past my ears. I'm trying to wash away the grime of the past few days and drown out the voices in my head. This all began with a disease, a chemical imbalance, a baffling neurological disorder. It feels more like a cancer-a blush of wild cells that have infected every corner of my life, multiplying by the second and fastening on to new hosts.

I lie down in the guest bedroom and close my eyes. I just want a few minutes' rest. Wind beats against the windows. I can smell sodden earth and coal fires. I vaguely remember my father putting a blanket over me. Maybe it's a dream. My dirty clothes are hanging over his arm. He reaches down and strokes my forehead.

A while later I hear the ring of spoons in mugs and the sound of my mother's voice in the kitchen. The other sound-almost as familiar-is my father breaking ice for the ice bucket.

Opening the curtains, I see snow on the distant hills and the last of the frost retreating across the lawn. Maybe we'll have a white Christmas-just like the year Charlie was born.

I can't stay here any longer. Once the police find Elisa's body they will put the pieces together and come looking instead of waiting for me to turn up somewhere. This is one of the first places they'll search.

Urine splatters into the bowl. My father's trousers are too big for me, but I cinch in the belt making the material gather above the pockets. They don't hear me padding along the hallway. I stand in the doorway watching them.

My mother, as always, is dressed to perfection, wearing a peach-colored cashmere sweater and a gray skirt. She thickened around her middle after she turned fifty and has never managed to lose the weight.

She puts a cup of tea in front of my father and kisses him on the top of his head with a wet smacking sound. "Look at this," she says. "My stockings have a run. That's the second pair this week." He slips his hand around her waist and gives her a squeeze. I feel embarrassed. I don't remember ever seeing them share such an intimate moment.

My mother jumps in surprise and admonishes me for having "crept up on her." She begins fussing about what I'm wearing. She could easily take the trousers in, she says. She doesn't ask about my own clothes.

"Why didn't you tell us you were coming?" she asks. "We've been worried sick, especially after all those ghastly stories in the newspapers." She makes the tabloids sound as attractive as a soggy fur ball deposited on a carpet.

"Well at least that's all over with now," she says sternly, as if determined to draw a line under the whole episode. "Of course, I'll have to avoid the bridge club for a while but I daresay it will all be forgotten soon enough. Gwyneth Evans will be insufferably smug. She will think she's off the hook now. Her eldest boy, Owen, ran off with the nanny and left his poor wife with two boys to look after. Now the ladies will have something else to talk about."

My father seems oblivious to the conversation. He is reading a book with his nose so close to the pages that it looks as though he's trying to inhale them.

"Come on, I want to show you the garden. It looks wonderful. But you must promise to come back in the spring when the blooms are out. We have our own greenhouse and there are new shingles on the stable roof. All that damp is gone. Remember the smell? There were rats nesting behind the walls. Awful!"

She fetches two pairs of Wellingtons. "I can't remember your size."

"These are fine."

She makes me borrow Dad's Barbour and then leads the way, down the back steps onto the path. The pond is frozen the color of watery soup and the landscape is pearl gray. She points out the dry stone wall which had crumbled during my childhood, but now stands squat and solid, pieced together like a three-dimensional jigsaw. A new greenhouse with glass panels and a framework of freshly milled pine backs onto the wall. Trays of seedlings cover trestle tables and spring baskets, lined with moss, hang from the ceiling. She flicks a switch and a fine spray fogs the air.

"Come and see the old stables. We've had all the junk cleared out. We could make it into a granny flat. I'll show you inside."

We follow the path between the vegetable patch and the orchard. Mum is still talking, but I'm only half listening. I can see her scalp beneath the parting of her gray hair.

"How was your protest meeting?" I ask.

"Good. We had more than fifty people."

"What was it all about?"

"We're trying to stop that blasted wind farm. They want to build it right on the ridge." She points in the general direction. "Have you ever heard a wind turbine? The noise is monstrous. Blades flashing around. The air screaming in pain."

Standing on tiptoes, she reaches above the stable door to get the key from its hiding place.

The tightness in my chest returns. "What did you say?"

"When?"

"Just then… 'the air was screaming in pain.' "

"Oh, the windmills; they make such a horrible sound."

She has the key in her hand. It is tied to a small piece of carved wood. Unconsciously, my hand flashes out and grips her wrist. I turn it over and the pressure makes her fingers open.

"Who gave you that?" My voice is trembling.

"Joe, you're hurting me." She looks at the key ring. "Bobby gave me that. He's the young man I've been telling you about. He fixed the stone wall and the shingles on the stable. He built the greenhouse and did the planting. Such a hard worker. He took me to see the windmills…"

For a brief moment I feel myself falling, but nothing happens. It's like someone has tilted the landscape and I'm leaning into it, clutching the door frame.

"When?"

"He stayed with us for three months over the summer…"

"What did he look like?"

"How can I put it politely? He's very tall, but perhaps a little overweight. Big-boned. Sweet as can be. He only wanted room and board."

The truth isn't a blinding light or a cold bucket of water in the face. It leaks into my consciousness like a red wine stain on a pale carpet or a dark shadow on a chest X-ray. Bobby knew things about me, things I dismissed as coincidences. Tigers and Lions, Charlie's painting of the whale… He knew things about Catherine and how she died. A mind reader. A stalker. A medieval conjurer who disappears and reappears in a puff of smoke.

But how did he know about Elisa? He saw us having lunch together and then followed her home. No. I saw him that afternoon. He turned up for his appointment. That's when I lost him by the canal-close to Elisa's house.

No comprenderas todavia lo que comprenderas en el futuro. You don't understand yet what you will understand in the end…