While ill, Edward had scoured websites which mentioned Jonathan Wrigley’s death. He discovered the first TV report on YouTube, filed by a regional reporter in Bideford. DEAD BODY FOUND IN FOREST CLEARING was the caption. The businessman who had seen Dr Wrigley from the air looked ruffled in the interview, as if his tie had been torn off: ‘It was my daughter’s first flight, we were coming in to land, and she kept saying “starfish”. I am an inexperienced pilot, and it was all I could do to hold her steady.’ The aircraft or the daughter? The man was named onscreen as Andrew Cooms.
Once Edward had seen through the misspelling, it was easy to find him through LinkedIn. Kim’s portrait of Wendy – so downcast, so poorly treated – had reminded Edward of how he had been after Matty’s death. He was unable to do his show; the radio station had dumped him. The decision had subsequently been reversed after a small riot by angry pensioners, but he still smarted from the unfairness. Wendy’s story made him smart again.
Edward rang Coombs, who sounded warmer on the phone than he did in the YouTube clip. Edward said he was a radiopresenter in East Devon. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t heard of you,’ the banker said. ‘I gave the whole story to the police, and also the telly person, really. The TV didn’t use it all. I spoke to them for twenty minutes, and they just used twenty seconds of me saying we might not get over it.’
‘It must have been truly awful,’ said Edward with feeling. His voice was hoarse now, and he apologized for it. The conversation felt likeThe Temmis Session– he the presenter, Coombs the caller, Edward wanting as much story as possible without seeming to pry. ‘You landed and reported the body straightaway?’
‘Of course! I wasn’t sure he was dead at first. Certainly not murder. I wondered about a practical joke or what, yoga? He might even have been sleeping, for Christ’s sake! But not like that.’ This sounded like Andrew Coombs talking to himself, talking through the horror. ‘We couldn’t see the wound from up there. Shot in the chest? Who fires a crossbow bolt into a doctor’s chest, a man with no enemies, they say? He might not have been found if we hadn’t seen what we saw. But we could hardly miss it, the bright white suit.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t say it on camera, obviously, but Clara and I were both having a go at controlling the plane and … You’re not recording me, are you?’
‘Of course not!’ Edward coughed.
‘You sound a bit unwell, if I may say so.’
‘Just getting clear of a throat thing.’ Edward breathed in. ‘I just wanted to work out where exactly his body was found.’
‘Really? Why?’
And now the truth came out. ‘I have to be honest. The wife of the doctor himself asked me to look at the evidence for her. I am not a—’
Edward stopped. The line had gone dead.
He had paused the TV report on his laptop and screenshotted the frame showing the forest location, then used the mostbasic tools on his laptop to sharpen the image, then printed it out. He looked for a long time at the superimposed red cross. He must visit the scene with Wendy Wrigley. He had heard it said by Columbo or, maybe, years ago, read the words spoken by a character from an Agatha Christie:The scene speaks to you.If Wendy Wrigley was serious (and the banker hanging up the phone just then was yet another reminder of why she wanted exoneration), she would come with him and look at the place her husband was found. And then, while they looked, he could make progress and work out what had happened.
After seeing Wendy Wrigley at the Clock Tower Café, Kim changed her running route. Normally she would be home by now, but she ran a further two-and-a-bit miles to Ladram Bay, the site of the house she had sold Edward, when he was just a customer. She had made a joke about ‘the one property no one will even look at’, and then he goes and makes an offer. Coastal erosion had left it on the cliff edge. It was supposed to go into the sea in a hundred years, and one day half the garden had disappeared.
Unsaleable? Edward had proved there was no such thing. She wasn’t sure how he could bear to live there, but the loss of his son might have something to do with it – which poet had written, ‘after the first death, there is no other’? Edward had a superpower now. He could sleep soundly on a clifftop. She would not remind herself that the day she showed him around the house was only the second time they had met, and the first time they made love. So bloody unprofessional.
She knocked at his door, noting that it seemed more askew in its black-painted frame, suggesting the ground might be moving again. Before she could have another thought, a piece of paper was sliding out of the letterbox towards her.
I’m not talking to you
‘Wait – what?’ Kim protested at the front door. ‘I need a glass of water apart from anything else. Are you cross with me?’
A pause. A faint sound of folding on the other side of the door, and then another scrap of paper emerged like postage in reverse, Edward’s messages disobeying the one-way system which governed all letterboxes. This one was scrunched up as it came through the door from inside. She pulled the corners apart and read.
Did you ask my questions? I bet not
‘Are you Sherlock Holmes today? Sorry but I wasn’t feeling secretarial,’ she said. ‘I forgot your questions and asked my own.’
The door opened. He was standing there – smiling! – with an old notepad in his hand. Then he raised a knee, balancing with difficulty, and found the last blank page to write on.
A&E told me not to talk.
‘Mama told me not to come. But I’m here anyway. Apologies for my Sherlock Holmes remark, but yes, I did ask her my own questions. If we are going to set up as a detective agency, I can’t be your number two. In the movies, the number two always gets killed first.’
She went to kiss him, but he pulled back. He managed the slightest whisper. ‘Infectious.’
‘Yuk.’
Then he beckoned her through to the living room, which opened out onto the crumbling garden and the sea beyond.
‘Well, this conversation is going to be a bit one-sided,’ Kim remarked gently. ‘Poor you.’ She pulled out her phone and, finding the Notes app, ran Edward through the nuts and bolts of her conversation with Wendy Wrigley. She had written ‘acrobats’ and she could not remember why. ‘Oh, a friend, a vicar with a name like Circus. Maybe he’ll have an idea. And there were doctors, twins.’
‘Should we talk to them?’ he whispered.
‘I don’t know. It seems like he might have been a bit paranoid, or depressed, or unwell. Making mistakes at work, that kind of thing. She had a good explanation for watching her first Marvel film – he bought the ticket.’
Edward was silent.
