Free Deadly Virtues by Jo Bannister Page A

brain—which was also having a bad day—drew together things it had heard and seen in different contexts, including dreams, and made them into a plausible narrative. I don’t think you’re making any of this up. I think your brain, also from the best of motives, may have been playing tricks on you.”
    “And Othello, the sniffer dog?”
    Hazel gave a sympathetic smile. “Does it seem likely? Because most things that don’t, didn’t happen. Or didn’t happen the way we remember. It’s not just you. Every time we talk to a witness we have to consider what other factors might have affected what they think they saw. Most people try to tell the truth. But it’s very easy to get it wrong.”
    He had nothing to say to that and she had nothing to add. She stood up, putting down her cup. “Try not to worry about it. The people who’ll investigate what happened are very experienced. They’ll get to the bottom of it. Thanks for the tea. I’ll see you again.”
    Ash stood up, too, and showed her to the door. “I don’t think I thanked you. For last night. For looking after me.”
    “All part of the service,” she said brightly—too brightly. It must have been obvious to him that she’d satisfied herself as to what had happened and exactly what his testimony was worth. She hoped he wouldn’t think she was being rude. But probably, she reckoned, by the time she was back in her car he’d have forgotten what it was they were discussing.
    But she was wrong about that.
    After Constable Best had gone, Ash went back to the leather sofa in the kitchen and sat down beside his dog again, his right arm slipping automatically and naturally across her back. She gazed at him with expectant amber eyes.
    “She didn’t believe me. She thinks I imagined it.”
    The dog said nothing.
    “ I don’t think I imagined it,” Ash said stubbornly. He poured more tea, sipped it reflectively. “I think that boy asked me for help. Would I have dreamed something like that? In so much detail?” He simply didn’t know. “But if it wasn’t a dream, then I owe him … something. To do as he asked—to find someone who might believe me. Someone who might understand what he was trying to say.”
    Still the dog said nothing.
    “He was only twenty years old. He must have parents in the town. And it’s not a common name. Someone who wanted to find them probably could.”
    Patience raised a back foot and delicately scratched her ear.
    “Maybe I should talk to Laura first.” It had taken the therapist a year to get him to use her first name. “She’ll think it’s a bad idea. Maybe it is a bad idea. She’ll say it’s more about my feelings of guilt than anything the boy said. That I’m making a mystery of it because you can hope to solve a mystery, where you can’t hope to put right a tragedy.”
    He looked sidelong at his dog as if waiting for a response, but there was none.
    “I know what you’re thinking. That this is displacement activity. That I want there to be something going on that no one else knows about. Because I used to be good at this. When there was space in my head to think. That I’m never going to pick up where I left off, but I could do if I had to. And maybe then there wouldn’t be enough space left in my head for … Or at least, not every minute of every damned day.”
    He sighed. “And you’re probably right. What happened at Meadowvale Police Station is most probably what appears to have happened—a monstrous, horrible thing, but not a mystery. Robert Barclay killed Jerome Cardy because he is a bad man; Jerome died because he was unlucky.”
    He stood up and walked to the window. The view was more pleasant than remarkable; but then, he didn’t look out much. “But just suppose for a moment that you’re wrong. Suppose Jerome meant exactly what he said when he told me he was going to die in that police station, and something quite different when he talked about Othello. If he was trying to alert someone