Dead Men's s Boots

I had an appointment at noon at the Reflections Café, which going by the postcode was somewhere around Victoria. Didn’t know who I was going to meet there, or what light he might be able to shed on John Gittings’s weird little list, but I didn’t want to miss it. In the meantime though, I had some time to kill. So I strolled back up to Trafalgar Square, for the hell of it and the Harris hawks, and while I was walking I called Jan Hunter to tell her how my meeting with Doug had gone. I didn’t try to explain about Juliet: I just said that I’d taken along a colleague for the sake of getting a second opinion.

I didn’t mention Kale, either: not at first. I was afraid of offering her any shred of hope, because I was nearly certain that whatever I turned up would still leave Doug in the frame for murder. So instead of telling her that her husband was carrying a passenger, I asked her why she hadn’t mentioned the prison doctor’s diagnosis that Doug was suffering from a psychosis. The line went very quiet for a moment.

‘Incipient psychosis,’ Jan corrected me at last. ‘Not full-blown.’ She sounded defensive, but not apologetic. ‘I just thought that if I told you Doug was losing his mind you might not agree to help me. And really it’s not relevant – not to the case. It’s only come on since he was arrested. It’s that place. And the stress of everything that’s happened. He was fine before.’

‘I think you said he was increasingly distant and hard to read before,’ I reminded her. ‘And then he went AWOL for a week and didn’t even call you.

’

‘But he was still himself.’ Her voice was thick with tears now. ‘Some of the time, anyway. And when he wasn’t himself it wasn’t like he was mad. Just . . . like he wanted to be somewhere else. I don’t believe a week would be enough to turn him into a murderer. I don’t believe a lifetime would be enough!’

‘Maybe not,’ I allowed. ‘Anyway, for what it’s worth I think Doctor Maxwell got the wrong end of the stick. Whatever’s wrong with Doug, I don’t think he’s going crazy.

’

‘You don’t?’ Through the tears, hope and relief showing like the shiny edge of a fifty-pence piece in the muddy ruck of a sewage trench. Fuck it. I really needed to watch my mouth. ‘Then what is it? What’s happening to him?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I hedged. ‘And Jan, I hate to say this but it may not make any difference in any case. Not in terms of the verdict. But there’s a lot more to it than the police have got their little pointy heads around.