‘I transcribed the notebooks into the form of a novel. It didn’t take long. They were so fresh and full of life. I couldn’t wait to get home after work and sit down at my typewriter. I became convinced, even before I was halfway through, that someone would buy the results. I tested Gerald out. Told him I’d taken a few notes - purely as an aide mémoire - after our meetings and did he mind? He immediately demanded to see them. I handed one of the notebooks over and when we met again he told me he had burned it.’
‘So you were not unaware of how strongly he felt in this matter?’
‘No.’
‘Surely, then, that should have been an end to it?’
‘Easy to say. Look,’ his whole manner became more urgent. Imbued with the need to convince. ‘There was no way he could have been connected with this book. All the names had been changed. And the—’
‘Aren’t you being a trifle ingenuous, Mr Jennings? That all sounds very logical, but theft is theft.’
‘Writers spend their lives stealing. Conversations, mannerisms, incidents, jokes. We’re completely amoral. We even steal from each other. Do it in the movies and it’s called an hommage.’
‘A very sophisticated argument I’m sure, but the fact remains that it was his story.’
‘A story belongs to whoever can tell it.’ He was becoming restless with irritation. While making an obvious effort to remain courteous, he was starting to sound like an instructor faced with a particularly obtuse pupil. ‘Gerald had neither talent nor imagination. That wonderful tale would have been lost. Wasted. Far Away Hills made him famous. If there is such a thing as anonymous fame.’
Barnaby did not respond. Jennings’ theory seemed to him both horribly feasible and subtly corrupt. Troy however, who had by now not only caught up with the game but spotted a chance to score, said, ‘Seems to me, sir, all due respects, you made yourself famous.’
‘So when did you finally tell him?’ asked the chief inspector.
‘I didn’t. I tried. Many times. But my nerve always gave out.’
‘I can’t say I’m surprised.’
‘In the end I sent one of my advance copies round by courier.’
‘Good God, man!’
‘With a letter, of course. Explaining, as I have to you, why I’d done it. Asking him to try and understand. I was expecting him on my doorstep within the hour, either livid with rage or suicidal. But he didn’t show. I rang and got no reply. I thought perhaps he was away for the weekend. I wasn’t sorry to put off the evil moment, to tell you the truth. But after about ten days I started to get worried and drove round there. The porter said Gerald had left in a great hurry. “Vamoosed” was his word. The furniture had been put in store and there was no forwarding address. I never saw him again. Until last week.’
‘But surely you tried to trace him?’
‘Of course I did. I put advertisements in The Times - even the Gay Times - the Telegraph, the Independent. I thought about employing a private detective, but it seemed a bit like hunting him down. I discovered later he’d been in a hotel round the corner.’
Barnaby pictured Hadleigh receiving his parcel, perhaps the very first gift from ‘the only person he had ever really cared for’. Tearing the wrapper off, gradually comprehending the brutal ferocity of his friend’s betrayal. Then hiding away from further hurt in some soulless hotel room. The chief inspector said, almost to himself, ‘Poor bastard.’
‘When the book came out I tried again. There was so much feedback, you see. Hundreds of letters. Supportive, concerned, totally understanding. Broken children grown into maimed adults trying somehow to make sense of the experience. They wrote so lovingly, wanting him to know he was not alone. I know this would have helped. But there was no way I could reach him if he didn’t want to be reached. And that’s how matters stayed until, as you are aware, I recently heard from him again.’
‘Do you still have the letter?’
‘I’m afraid not. I run a lean filing system. Everything but essential business correspondence and contracts gets answered and junked straight away.’
‘You must remember the details, surely, Mr Jennings,’ said Troy. ‘After what you’ve just told us it must have been a bit of a bombshell.’
‘Hardly that. Ten years had gone by. I’d published several more books and garnered my own share of personal misery. It occurred to me once that perhaps my child’s death was some sort of repayment for what I’d done to Gerald. Though that seems a bit hard on Ava.’
Not to mention the nipper, thought Troy in his corner.
‘Anyway, as far as I recall, the note simply said that in his capacity as secretary he had been asked to invite me to give a talk. The rest of it was devoted to persuading me against the idea. “Painful memories, impossible situation, sleeping dogs”. His prose style hadn’t improved. At first my inclination was to take the hint and not go. But the more I thought about it the more certain I became that, in spite of his protestations to the contrary, this was not what Gerald wanted. So, as you know, I accepted.’
He was looking extremely tired now. Strained and somewhat lost and perturbed, as if he had followed a certain path and it had led him to a surprising and unwanted destination. His smooth, tanned skin was mottled and chalky and stretched too tightly over his skull. The line of his nose jutted, sharp as a knife. Violet lines crisscrossed the fine skin beneath his eyes as if it had been savagely pinched. When, in answer to Barnaby’s next question, he started to speak, his voice was quite without colour. He sounded almost bored.
The chief inspector wondered whether Jennings was genuinely exhausted or deliberately conserving his energy so that he would be alert throughout this, the most crucial stage in the whole interview. Barnaby had paused before speaking, withdrawing his attention momentarily from the immediate present to dwell briefly on the extraordinary tapestry that had so recently been unrolled before him. Namely, the tragic life and times of Liam Hanlon aka Gerald Hadleigh.
This burdensome knowledge, coupled with a recollection of the all-too-detailed blow-ups on the incident-room wall, stimulated in Barnaby’s mind feelings of the keenest pity. In what a poignant light did the small child - escaping from one terror only to find, crouching at the end of his life another, unspeakably worse - now appear. And if you were responsible, Jennings, vowed the chief inspector, for twice stealing that life I will have you. By Christ I will! None of this showed on his face, which was entirely noncommittal.
‘I assume, Mr Jennings, you will now be offering us an entirely new, or perhaps I should say “re-written”, version of what happened on Monday evening.’
‘I’ve nothing to change regarding the first half. Everything was exactly as I’ve previously stated, except for my feelings of course. I was surprised at how moved I was at my first sight of him. Driving over I’d felt nothing more than mild curiosity as to how he was keeping, coupled with a vague hope that I could somehow make him understand why I had done what I’d done all those years ago. Yet, though I was never conscious during our relationship of feeling affection, this latest meeting did evoke precisely that response. Gerald, on the other hand, hardly looked at me. But I was determined to speak to him. I’d arrived early hoping to do just that but St John was already there. As you know, I accomplished it eventually by getting him out of the house and bolting the door.
‘I went back into the sitting room and what happened next was very distressing. He just went to pieces. Backed off from me, flailing his arms and shouting, “Go away, go away”. I didn’t know what to do.’