“Sarah’s a fellow Welshie mum,” said Corinne.
“I’ll show you my Bonnie.” With shaking hands, Sarah reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a small photo album. She passed it to Mum. “She’s fourteen and really suffering now, poor little darling. She’s blind and deaf and—”
“But she’s had an incredible life,” said Corinne.
“Yes, she has.” Sarah nodded.
Mum looked at the pictures in the album. Bonnie was smaller than Champ and had a patch of white stretching from the middle of her chest up to her neck.
“Sarah took Bonnie to the vet last week, because… Well, I’ll let you tell Sally, Sarah.” Corinne stood back.
“To keep my Bonnie alive beyond this point wouldn’t be fair to her,” Sarah explained tearfully. “Next time she goes to the vet, which might be as soon as tomorrow or the next day, she won’t be coming back.”
“I’m so sorry,” Mum said, feeling tears start in her own eyes.How awful, she thought.Poor woman. Poor, sweet Bonnie.
“I’d like to go to Cambridgeshire Police, if you’ll let me, and tell them a lie,” Sarah Sergeant said. “I’d like to say that it was Bonnie who bit Tess Gavey, not Champ. If I do that, they’ll have to give up their attempt to punish Champ. And they’ll never be able to prove it’s not true.”
“No,” said Mum. “Absolutely not. I mean…thank you, I know you’re only trying to help but—”
“Don’t say no straight away,” advised Corinne.
Ree had covered her face with her hands to smother a groan. The last thing Mum wanted was to be a dasher of everyone’s hopes, but she couldn’t possibly agree to what was being suggested. “No,” she said again. “It’s not right. Why should poor Bonnie’s reputation be trashed? I bet she’s never bitten anyone either, just like Champ.”
“You’re right,” said Sarah. “She hasn’t. But I’d like to do this for you and your family, Sally. And I’m confident Bonnie would too, if she understood the situation. I’ve always thought… I’m too old now probably, but if I could donate an organ from my body after my death, I’d love to—”
“It’s not the same,” Mum told her. “It’s not right.” Everything inside her felt as if it was shutting down. She felt sick. She could see how much everyone needed her to agree, but she would hate herself forever if she did.Poor Bonnie…
No, this couldn’t be the way. She’d be as bad as the Gaveys if she agreed to it. Miscarriages of justice weren’t solved by falsely pinning the blame on those who were equally innocent.
“Thank you. You’re very kind,” she told Sarah Sergeant. “But I can’t. Please don’t…don’t do anything like that. I’m sorry you’ve had to come all this way to…” Mum broke off as tears started to pour down her face. When she finally recovered—nearly half an hour after Sarah had left, taking her Bonnie photo album with her—Mum looked up at Corinne, who’d been waiting, and said, “So. What’s our brilliant plan C, then?”
29
Connor
Larges, it’s me again, Connor Chantree. Here are a few more things that I wasn’t sure whether or not to include, so I have. As follows:
A newspaper column.
A few pages of dialogue between members of the Lambert family.
Info about a comedian and some vodka. (This will make sense when you get there.)
As per when I popped up before, I’ll say the same again: These things are only of interest if there’s a chance that we’re looking at a murder. I’ll be honest, Large: It’s not that I think the coroner got it wrong. I actually think we could commission three more postmortems and they’d all conclude the same. But deep down, and even though it makes no sense, I believe someone—maybe a Lambert, maybe a Gavey, maybe Corinne Sullivan—committed a murderso clever, they knew no autopsy would be able to prove it wasn’t a natural death.
And the thing is, Large, I reckon that’s the point of this whole book. Whoever did it is advertising what they’ve done and boasting about it, but in a roundabout way. You’ll see when you get to the end that we’re being asked to believe in a murderer whocannot possibly have done it.That’s the real killer’s way of taunting us, I reckon. Like: “We all know this isn’t what happened, but you might as well accept this silly story as the truth because it’s the only explanation you’re ever going to get.”
So, anyway, here goes:
Below is a newspaper column by theDaily Telegraph’s Deborah Partrick. I doubt you read it at the time. I didn’t. It doesn’t prove anything at all, except that the opinion that the world would be a better place without Tess in it was a widely shared and almost acceptable one between mid-June and November last year. Anyone tempted to murder Tess, therefore, might have felt encouraged to do so. Have you heard of the Overton Window, Large? It means: what’s considered by society to be the normal, acceptable range of beliefs at any given time. I’d say it was widened in the second half of last year to include the belief that the world would be a better place without Tess Gavey in it. Given that, it seems rather a coincidence, and certainly it defies logic, for her to have died from a supposed allergic reaction even though the postmortem report swears blind that the thing she was allergic to—fish—was nowhere in her system. Anyway, here’s the newspaper column:
Deborah Partrick,Daily Telegraph,20 June 2024
Some of my older readers will remember a time, not all that long ago, when our justice system was a beacon to the world. With wistful sighs (or perhaps uncontrolled sobbing, if they’re anything like me), they might recall the days when we could glory in the achievements of our top universities. That golden age, alas, is no more. Nowadays young people are made to approach every work of art through a thicket of silly trigger warnings, almost all of which double up as quite unnecessary surprise-destroying plot spoilers (Macbeth: murder, suicide, infanticide, supernatural elements).
The modern university student is encouraged toward victimhood instead of resilience, fed great gulps of anti-scientific bilge from many directions, and taught almost no history. The perilous ignorance that results from this approach is then duly celebrated by the misguided and the deluded, all in the name of progress. Most tragically of all, youngsters these days are neither taught nor, if we’re being honest, permitted to think—not logically and certainly not for themselves. Quite the reverse; they are brainwashed into rejecting concepts that have served us well for centuries.
Failure and dishonesty on such a monumental scale have grave consequences. One of these is that I, who foolishly believed until recently that I had no further flabbers left that might be gasted and no more gobs available to be smacked, find myself both flabbergasted and gobsmackedby the sheer idiocy displayed by so many in relation to the Champ Lambert affair.
