What loved ones? An ex-wife who hated my guts so much she burned every item I owned, then posted a video of her bonfire on YouTube? Or my colleagues from the police force, who felt I sold them out when I opened up as a private detective?
“Can’t say it holds much appeal.” An understatement, if ever there was one. “Especially when I don’t see a problem. I’m assuming Lucy Fuller died of her injuries?”
The Boss wouldn’t be talking to an ex-CID officer if she’d slipped under a bus.
“Laceration of the renal artery led to delayed complications, but before she died, she identified this man” — a third photo flashed up, replacing Lucy’s rescuers — “as her assailant.”
Slim build, dark hair, easy grin. In his Coldplay T-shirt, two-day stubble, and crumpled jeans, he didn’t look the seventeen-stab-wound type. Then again, who does? I reached for the file, which told me his name was Craig Langstone, twenty-six years old, also from Winchester, where he worked as a media consultant. Somewhere in the file it probably told me what a media consultant was. I was too busy reading how, for almost a year, he and Lucy had been an item. Until she caught him in bed with another woman.
“What am I missing?” I flicked through the report a second time, in case I’d skipped a page. “Says here, he committed suicide the day after she died. Hardly an exceptional event, in my experience.”
Guy has fling, guy regrets it, guy tries to win back girl, girl tells him where to go, guy gets angry, things turn nasty, girl ends up in hospital or worse. Overcome with guilt — or because the net is closing in — he tops himself. I’d seen it happen a dozen times during the course of my career. Heard of it hundreds more.
“Well, now, that’s where things get complicated,” the Boss said, leaning back. “Craig Langstone turned up at the Gate House—”
Everybody does, this being the start point for the admittance/elimination process.
“—swearing black was white he didn’t do it.” St. Peter grinned. “Hardly an exceptional event, in my experience, either. Except.” He threw up his hands. “When the cherubs weighed the feather of truth, it passed with flying colours, and when the angels read his aura, that also came out tops. To be absolutely certain, we had the seraphim put him through the Soul Scanner, but guess what? Not the faintest trace of evil to be found.”
“Then the girlfriend’s lying. Or at the very least mistaken.”
“Our view exactly. In the end, we brought in the archangels to test her, that’s how serious it was, but the thing is, Lucy’s story never wavers. She was taking her usual Sunday morning run when Craig jumped out and struck her from behind.”
“She didn’t see him?”
“No, but she recognized his voice, and during the course of the attack he referred to things that only the two of them could possibly have known.”
I want you out of my life, he kept shouting. I want you out of my life. The same words over and over, which at first she did not understand.
You’ve made a mistake! I’m Lucy Fuller, I live—
Remember that night we made love on the beach? When you lost your earring and we spent half the night searching for it, and it was caught on my shirt all along?
That was when she knew it was Craig. That, and various other things he brought up. Silly things. Insignificant things. Like their pet names for each other, the first meal she cooked him, that picnic by the river when his ice cream cone fell in the water, bobbing downstream like a raft. Even then, she’d thought it was just his fists he was using. The man she knew — the man she’d loved — would never lie in wait with a knife...
“Which leaves me something of a predicament,” the Boss said. “She says he did it, and she’s telling the truth. He says he didn’t, and he’s telling the truth. Until we get to the bottom of this, I’m not in a position to grant admittance, or exclusion, to either party.”
“Oh no, not Limbo?”
“Now you see why I asked you here.” His face twisted. “Uncertainty is ten times worse than Hell, Frank. In Hell, there’s no false hope.”
Four contented years of reuniting children with parents, widows with husbands, lovers with one another, congealed like duck fat in the pit of my stomach. Memories flooded back. Of cold, lonely evenings. An even colder, lonelier bed.
“When do I leave?” I asked brightly.
Winchester, for those of you who have never been, is just an hour and a half from London and a completely different world. Bordered by lush water meadows on the east, golf courses on the west, it has a town centre lined with half-timbered houses and boasts what was once thought to be the original Round Table from King Arthur’s court. Turn any corner and you’ll find a courtyard, arch, or alleyway virtually unchanged from Chaucer’s day, not to mention a twelfth-century castle, an almshouse built by William the Conquerer’s grandson, and the longest damn cathedral in Europe. It doesn’t hurt, either, that the river cuts right through the city, creating an oasis of calm and tranquility in a distinctly uncalm, untranquil world.
I stood beneath the statue of King Alfred, the one who burnt the cakes, feeling the spring sunshine warming my face for the first time in over four years. Despite countless visits to Winchester Prison during my spell in the force, this was the first time I’d stopped to listen to the voices of the chapel choir drifting on the air, and suddenly it seemed a lighter, freer man who wandered round the cathedral close, gazing up at the stained-glass windows while the organ resonated round Jane Austen’s grave. And as I walked through gateways that had stood for a thousand years, and passed mills that were almost as old, I felt an unexpected pull...
“Be careful,” St. Peter warned, once I’d been primed, updated, and kitted out for travel. “Don’t allow yourself to become emotionally involved.”
“No worries there,” I laughed. “Plug-ugly flatfoots like me, we never get the girl.”
“Who’s worried? Plug-ugly flatfoots like you can take care of yourselves!” He paused, and the smile dropped from his face. “Seriously, Frank. It’s the living I worry about. Once they cross over, we can erase any bad memories, if that’s what they want. But while they’re still in the physical zone, there’s nothing we can do to influence events as they unfold. Despite what some people think.”
“I’ll be good.”
“I know, but— Emotional attachment means someone gets hurt when it comes time to leave, and if it isn’t the traveller we send back, it’s the person they leave behind, and I’ve seen it happen too often. All chance of a happy future destroyed, because they’re literally chasing a shadow.”
“Trust me.” I gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Fifty-four’s too old to start going off the rails.”
“Deny the Holocaust, deny paternity, deny the existence of God if you must,” he laughed back. “But never, ever deny the male midlife crisis!” He shook my hand. “Best of luck, son. Those kids are counting on you, and remember: no diversions, no involvement, just facts.”
“No diversions, no involvement, just facts,” I promised.
Yet an hour into the mission, what do I do? I fall in love with a city.
Mind you, at least the girls were safe.
But now, with two carefree faces burning a hole in my conscience, it was time to leave the castles, crypts, and tearooms and set to work, with the crime scene top priority. Hardly the freshest I’d ever worked, because, like St. Peter said, time loses its significance once you cross the Threshold. Craig and Lucy’s sojourn in Limbo might mean unchanging spiritual agony, but in earth times, seven years had drifted by. A lot of time for a murder investigation, but it was crucial to get a feeling for this peaceful, wooded hillside, where a young woman was ambushed, stabbed, and left for dead.