Free Burnt Paper Sky by Gilly Macmillan Page A

it to come out like that. I’m just… this is such a big one.’
    ‘It’s fine, and I’m absolutely on it, don’t worry about that.’
    She cracked a big smile, making it OK, and her fingers made contact with mine again briefly. ‘Good luck with the dad,’ she added, and I watched her walk briskly away down the corridor before I went to find Benedict Finch’s father.
     
    John Finch was pacing around the small interview room that we’d placed him in. He looked gaunt, and shocked like the mother, but there was also a sense of innate authority. I guessed that in his normal life he was a man more used to being in charge of a room than being a victim.
    ‘DI Jim Clemo,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry about Ben.’
    ‘John Finch.’ His handshake was a quick firm clench with bony fingers.
    There was a small table in the room, two chairs on either side of it. DC Woodley and I sat on one side, Finch on the other.
    I went through the same process as with Ben’s mother, starting him at the beginning with date of birth, childhood, etc. What people don’t realise is that one of the first things we have to do is prove that they are who they say they are, and that the crime they’ve reported really has happened. We’d look pretty stupid if we investigated and it turned out that the people involved didn’t actually exist, that they’d spun us a lie from the outset. And God knows the press and public can’t wait to make a meal out of any instances of police stupidity.
    Finch answered my questions in a muted, economical way.
    ‘I’m afraid we have to spend time on what might feel like irrelevant detail,’ I said to him.
    I felt the need to apologise, to try to make the situation slightly easier for this man who was so obviously sensitive and so obviously trying to hide it.
    ‘But please be assured that it’s essential for us to build up a picture not just of Ben but his family too.’
    ‘I know the importance of a personal history,’ he said. ‘We rely on it heavily in medicine.’
    John Finch’s backstory was quite straightforward. He was born in 1976 in Birmingham, an only child. Dad was a local boy, a GP, and mum was a violinist. Her parents had escaped Nazi-occupied Vienna while her mother was pregnant with her, and then settled in Birmingham. Finch was close to his parents as well as his grandparents throughout his childhood. He was a scholarship boy at the grammar school. He did well and won a place at Bristol University Medical School. He’d arrived in Bristol to start his degree twenty years ago, in 1992, and never left after that. He’d worked his way up and done well. Proof of that was his current position as consultant at the Children’s Hospital. He’d become a general surgeon. I knew just enough about the world of medicine to know that that must be a coveted position in a competitive world.
    Finch’s composure first faltered when I wanted to talk in more detail about Ben’s mother, and the reason their marriage ended.
    ‘My marriage ended because Rachel and I were no longer suited to each other.’
    A perceptible stiffening of his body, words a tad sticky as his mouth became drier.
    ‘It’s my understanding that this came as a surprise to Rachel.’
    ‘Possibly.’
    ‘And that there was another party involved?’
    ‘I have remarried, yes.’
    ‘Could you give me an idea of why you and Rachel were no longer suited to each other?’
    A single bead of sweat had appeared by his hairline.
    ‘These things don’t always last, Inspector. There can be a host of small reasons that accumulate to make a marriage unsustainable.’
    ‘Including a younger girlfriend?’
    ‘Please don’t reduce me to a cliché.’
    I didn’t reply. Instead I waited to see if more information would seep from him, just as the perspiration had. It’s surprising how often that works. People have an almost compulsive need to justify themselves. I made a show of looking through notes, and just when I thought he wouldn’t