Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

'I can see your skils deserted you there,' said Somers. 'Perhaps you didn't get as far as Liley. You didn't use your imagination.'

'Do you know, I've had enough of people teling me what I should have done,' said Laurence, fatigue and discomfort crushing the instinct to placate the man in front of him. 'I now know why John Emmett died, even if I don't know exactly how. I set out to unravel that and that alone. John's path crossed, disastrously, with your son's and with you, but al I ever wanted was an answer for his sister. I have that answer. And for her it may now be much simpler to come to terms with her brother's death. Knowing his life was taken by you, not thrown away by him,' he said, recaling both Byers' and Eleanor's comments about the relative pain of the suicide or the murder of a loved one.

Somers' face contorted slightly. He looked puzzled. 'You think someone kiling someone you love is easier to bear than knowing they took their own life?' For the first time, he fel silent.

'Yes. However you might have chosen to punish the men you condemned, for John Emmett's sister, at least, I think the truth wil be terrible but less hard than it was.' And then, stil angry, he added, 'I did know about Liley and you got the wrong man in Byers. He wasn't the man on the execution detail.'

'There you are wrong. Emmett identified Byers on the photograph. Described him. Told me precisely how he'd fussed about his wet feet—had degraded my son in his last minutes. I tracked him down to the very farm he'd enlisted from.'

Although Somers spoke firmly, a faint doubt showed in his face.

'That was his cousin,' said Laurence. 'There's a family resemblance, I'm told, but he was a cousin. You kiled Jim Byers. Jim Byers just did his bit in France for three years. Leonard Byers is alive and wel.'

He was angry because Somers was wrong. In this war every man's life had been on the line. Batmen and bandsmen had fixed their bayonets alongside their comrades. There was no escape.

Somers looked disconcerted only for a second and then, unexpectedly, he laughed, a laugh that filed the room with something like normality.

'Of course he's wel,' he said, with just a trace of bitterness. 'Mr Leonard Byers, successful civilian. Of course he is. I told you he was a man with an eye for the main chance. Warm feet now, no doubt. Stil, I'm sorry about the cousin if it's true. Dismal, run-down place the farm was, too. Not much sign of Mr Lloyd George's land fit for heroes down there. Scarcely fit for cows. But I am sorry. Not that any of it matters now.'

'And you were seen,' Laurence said, realising that for al his reasonable manner, part of Somers was irreparably and unpredictably damaged. 'Byers' old uncle, semi-bedridden, was at a window when you arrived with your gun. He was a weak witness, shocked and bemused, but he was stil a witness.' His words came out more strongly than he'd intended.

'I was seen, as you put it, before I pushed Liley under the train. I was seen by plenty of people when I shot Mulins. There's seeing and not seeing. Age, expectation and authority: they're al surprisingly effective disguises, Mr Bartram, especialy to certain witnesses.'

Laurence looked at the window. It was now completely dark outside. Where was Gwen Lovel?

'I wasn't merciless, you know. I checked them al. The other men connected with my son's death are more or less blameless or dead. One—Private Watkins—

endures a living death in the North Wales County Lunatic Asylum.

'Since the death of Mulins, things have become harder but my hand was forced before I was ready when I realised Mulins might be piecing things together. It was Gough I wanted, above al. Gough served with me in Africa. I knew him. He deserved to die. An ambitious man. An incompetent commander. Calous, arrogant; I doubt he even bothered to read through Harry's defence.

'In those crucial days when the top brass were weighing Harry's fate in their hands, even General Shute, who had no respect for Harry's division and whom the men hated, pointed out that Harry was very young. So I let Shute live. The request for confirmation of sentence rose upwards until it reached Gough. Gough rejected a unanimous cal for clemency by the officers of the court martial. Gough said with zeal that he "recommended" that sentence be carried out. Only rank distinguished him and Tucker: brutal men who reveled in war's cruelty and humiliations. He's been in Switzerland. But now he's back. And I have waited for him.'

There was absolute silence. Laurence had heard a single car pass by and a door slam across the road; the sounds provided a comfortable, though brief, assurance that there were people out there. Was Gwen Lovel listening to al this? Had she known al along what Somers was planning or what he'd done? While he was certain she hadn't known when he had first come to her house, he sensed that she did now. She had aged twenty years since then.

'Mulins came to see me after Emmett vanished. Very polite, of course. A favourite nephew had been a patient at Holmwood, as bad luck would have it. The late Inspector Mulins was obviously a very wel-connected man. The boy had no father so Mulins was up and down to see him. He made a miraculous recovery. So Dr Chilvers, not putting vast store by the local constabulary, had asked Mulins to cast an eye over Emmett's disappearance as a personal favour. Bad for the place's carefuly built reputation to lose a patient. It was Chilvers who told Mulins that Emmett had been in touch with members of the Darling Committee and was obsessed with the Hart execution. Al the same, it should have been a formality for a busy senior police officer from another force. Eventualy I had to concede to Mulins I'd visited Emmett at Holmwood. Chilvers was bound to tel him. I said Emmett had been a friend of Hugh.'

The army friend that the staff at Holmwood had described, Laurence thought. He had simply assumed it was a wartime contemporary of John's. How careless he'd been.

'Mulins was sharp. He seemed to be satisfied but he obviously kept turning it over. He remembered Hart's execution, of course. Then Emmett was found dead and Mulins thought a little harder.'

'And Mulins was briefly involved in investigating Jim Byers' death,' Laurence said.

'I didn't know that,' Somers said, obviously digesting this new information. 'Perhaps he was already looking out for connections? A clever man. But Dr Chilvers knew of Emmett's assault on Tucker—it was why he had been admitted: to escape prosecution for assaulting a policeman in that fracas—and that, too, Chilvers passed on to Mulins. Tucker was also dead, as Mulins discovered from the Birmingham force. Too many coincidences. At some point he commandeered Harry's file and tracked down the letter I'd written, pushing for him to be given a commission. He came to talk to me. I don't know if he ever knew about Liley. His death was carried in The Times, so it was likely. Liley lived and died just two miles from my house. Sooner or later Mulins would have approached Gwen because of Emmett's wretched bequest. Then, a week before his death, he asked me to come and see him again when I was next in London. Nothing urgent, so he said.

'I couldn't risk it any more but, anyway, he'd always been on my list. The perfect public servant. Duty and inflexibility. I went up to London, and the rest you know. The police were always going to go flat out once nemesis had caught up with Mulins. He'l have kept a record. Today it's you on the doorstep, tomorrow it wil be them.'

Somers got up and came towards him. Laurence tensed himself, but Somers simply walked unevenly past him to the window. Charles had said he had been wounded in South Africa. Somers stood looking out at the darkness, with his back to Laurence. Laurence wondered whether he should make a run for it. With his back so stiff, he doubted he'd get far. Who would win if it came to a tussle, and what part might Gwen Lovel play?