*No, it didn't make me angry,' Mike said. *It made me confused, and scared too. I was in a cold marriage, but I didn't want to hurt Mary. I didn't know what the hell to do. A married woman was carrying my child. How the hell do you work yourself out of that one?'

*So you killed her?' Joe said. *That's an extreme way of solving your problems.'

*It wasn't like that.'

*So tell me, what was it like?'

Mike's fingers started to drum on the table. He took some deep breaths, to keep his control so that he could tell his story.

*We decided to meet up, to sort it out,' Mike said. *Claude was at the casino, or so we thought, and so I went to her house. It was a rough hour. She was crying. I was crying. I wanted us to be together. Nancy wanted her marriage to work with Claude. And maybe I wasn't a big deal to her. I was just a man in the right place. It was just one big rucking mess, and we were right in the middle of it all, trying to work out how to deal with it.'

*What decision did you reach?'

*We didn't get that far.'

*Why not?'

*Because Claude appeared.'

Chapter Sixty-One.

*Claude must have been hiding and listening,' Mike said. *He just seemed to step out of the shadows. He was holding some kind of cosh, lead piping wrapped in bandage or something, and he swung it hard.'

Mike wiped his hand across his eyes, his teeth clenched, anger in his voice now.

*Poor Nancy didn't even have time to look around,' Mike said. *It got her right on the back of the head, knocked her face hard into the table. Blood flew over me, went onto the table, everywhere. Nancy just slithered onto the floor. She wasn't moving.'

*I thought you said you killed Nancy,' Joe said, scribbling notes.

Mike looked at Joe and nodded slowly. *I did, because she wasn't dead then. But I didn't know that.'

*So what did you do?'

Mike looked up as a tear tumbled from his lash. *I panicked. Claude was waving the cosh around, saying he was going to hit me next, but as Nancy stayed on the floor he started to panic too. I don't know if he meant to hit her that hard. Maybe he was just listening and became angry, couldn't control himself, but as Nancy bled on the floor he became frantic. I became frantic. I wanted to leave, but he said that if anyone found out then everything would come out. Her affair with me, the baby, and so Mary...' He stopped and looked at the ceiling. *...Mary would find out.'

Joe looked surprised at that. *Mr Dobson, the woman you claim you loved is lying in a pool of blood on the floor, and you decide to say nothing?'

Mike banged his fist on the table. Alan jumped, but Joe stayed still, his eyes on Mike all the time.

*I know that it sounds like the wrong thing now,' Mike said, his teeth gritted, *and it was the wrong thing, but I wasn't fucking thinking straight. I'd seen what happened to Nancy, but we had spent the night talking about what we were going to do.' He ran his hands over his face. *I was going to lose her anyway,' he said, more distant now. *I didn't mean as much to her. I was a stop-gap, a replacement Claude, some below-stairs affair. So why ruin everything for something I couldn't change? I thought she was dead, for Christ's sake. Claude talked me into saying nothing, but that's what he does, isn't it? He's a lawyer. I sell insurance, or double-glazing, or plastic guttering, but Claude sold lies, and sold them well. I was sucked into them. He would live with the guilt, not me. He'd hit her. All I had was the loss.' Mike put his head down and wiped his eyes. *We decided to bury her.'

*Why bury her in the garden?'

Mike's chin trembled as he looked at the floor, and his hands wiped the tears into grubby streaks across his cheeks before he looked up again.

*Because it meant we didn't have to carry her anywhere.'

*What did you think Gilbert was going to do after that?' Joe asked.

*I don't think he knew,' Mike said. *It just sort of happened. Maybe he was going to dump her out at sea and forge a suicide letter. Perhaps that's why he put her in a cavity, because he would know the forensic stuff, and so some time away would give him the chance to work something out. Then he would just dig out the soil again, and she would be there, under the boards.'

*Except that she wasn't dead.'

Mike shook his head. *No, she wasn't dead, but we didn't know that then. She hadn't moved for a while, and there was blood everywhere, and so we dug and then we ripped out the planks from the shed. We carried her out and then took off her clothes so there would be nothing from us on her and just, well, we just dropped her into the hole.'

Joe leant forward and spoke with his voice low. *So what happened next?'

Mike put his hand over his mouth and sucked in air. He thought he was going to be sick, his stomach turning over fast.

*I heard the banging,' he said. *It started off light at first, and I thought it was the soil landing on the planks, or maybe it was my pulse-but it got louder.' He had to take a few short breaths and he licked his lips. *I realised then that she was alive and I wanted to get her out of there, but Claude said that it was too late to go back, that it would be attempted murder and my life would be over anyway, that we would go to prison together, that we had to keep going.' He shook his head, his eyes filled with disbelief. *We filled that hole and I walked away, so that she would die down there.'

Joe and Alan exchanged glances, both quietened for a moment, before they turned back to Mike as he started to talk again.

*I thought I could still hear the knocks coming from under the soil when I walked out of the garden,' Mike said, his words coming out in a rush, the tears pouring faster now. *I left Nancy in there to die because I am a coward. I was too scared to do the right thing when Claude hit her, because I was too scared to face Mary, because I didn't want to hurt her if she didn't need to know. And then when I knew Nancy was still alive I became scared for myself, that I would go to prison for the rest of my life. I was naive and cowardly and frightened, thinking that I could go back to my life. But you know what? I couldn't. The knocking stayed with me, that fucking bang-bang-bang, because all the time I could imagine Nancy underground, frightened, panicking, clawing at the wood, carrying my baby, the child I knew I would never have with Mary...because, you know, you have to actually get close to have a chance.'

*Some might say that's very convenient for you,' Joe said.

Mike looked surprised and wiped the wetness from his cheeks. *It doesn't feel convenient,' he said. *What do you mean?'

*You're a suspect in Hazel's case, and so you know we'll take your DNA. You don't know what evidence we have in Nancy's case, and so you give us an account that blames someone else. But there are problems with your story.'

*It's not a story.'

*The first problem is that Nancy Gilbert's child wasn't yours,' Joe said.

Mike jolted in his chair and he gripped the edge of the table.

*Do you think we hadn't considered a jealous rage, the possibility that she was carrying someone else's child?' Joe said. *Checks were done, and it was Claude's child.'

The detective's voice seemed to swirl around Mike, as if he was talking from another room, all faint echoes.

*But she told me it was mine,' Mike said, almost to himself.

*She got it wrong then, because it wasn't. Maybe her and Claude got on better than you thought. If you killed her to stop Mary finding out about your child, then you made a mistake. It was Claude's baby.'

Mike shook his head, his eyes scared now. *No, this isn't right. Nancy told me, she was sure.'

*And there's something else too,' Joe said. When Mike looked at him, confused now, Joe bent down for something that he had stored under the table. It was a large brown paper bag; when Joe put it on the table, it made a loud clunking noise.

Mike looked at the bag, and then back at the detective. *What's in there?'

Joe reached in and pulled out another bag, this time clear plastic, sealed with a red tie. Joe held it up. Mike could see red smears on the inside of the bag, and there looked to be a piece of metal, heavy and long, with a bandage wrapped around one end.

Mike had seen it before, twenty-two years earlier. His lip started to quiver. What was going on? He didn't understand.

*We found this in your garage,' Joe said.

Mike tried to say something but then he realised that he didn't know what to say.

*It was wrapped up in a towel, covered in blood,' Joe continued. *Fresh blood. Hazel's, we reckon.'

Mike's hands became clammy.

*Do you want that lawyer now?'

Mike nodded, and then the room seemed to fade out as he slithered slowly to the floor.

Chapter Sixty-Two.

The clock had crept just past midnight by the time I got the call from Claude. I was directed to a shale car park fringed by blackberry bushes, next to the canal that runs through Blackley. It was the site of an old textile factory, but was now an employeess' car park for a nearby firm of solicitors, one of the new accident-claim factories. It was quiet as I stepped out of the Triumph. I zipped up my jacket to my neck and thrust my hands in my pockets. The only other car there was an old blue Nissan with misted windows, and the slight rock of the suspension told me that it wouldn't pay to walk over that way.

The canal was once a vital trade link, when the cotton came in from Liverpool and was transformed into cloth, the waterway clogged with coal-powered barges and the air heavy with smoke and noise. The canals fell as silent as the mills when the textile trade died, and now just tourist barges patrol them on walking-pace tours of Lancashire, the waterway running through the town via a series of locks and aqueducts high above the valley floor, the views over Blackley making it a popular overnight mooring spot.

As I looked over at the town, I saw that the full moon was being taken over by clouds, but there was still enough gleam to turn the slate roofs silver and render the disused mill chimneys in silhouette; the skyline of lost industry was replaced by the new Blackley as the crumbling brick fingers were interspersed by sparkling new minarets, the call to prayer taking over from the din of machinery. The circular swirls of orange streetlights marked out the new estates and cul-de-sacs that had sprung up, so different to the regular up and downs of the nearby terraced streets, the traditional mill housing.

I looked both ways when I reached the towpath. Claude's directions had been simple: go onto the path and turn right, but I wanted to check both ways to make sure that there would be no nasty surprises behind me. There was no one there, just the long black ribbon of the canal that curved out of sight a few hundred yards away. No cigarette glow or shifting shadows.

My feet clicked on the cobbled towpath as I started walking. Narrow stone bridges crossed the water every fifty yards or so, making the path curve around the supports and creating patches of dense blackness on my route. Straggly bushes filled the banks and encroached onto the path, and the cobbles were slippery with moss. I could hear the occasional siren in the distance, sometimes the whine of a small car being driven too fast, and there was the pop-pop of a motorbike nearby, but my ears were mainly filled with the sound of my footsteps and the occasional lap of the water against the canal sides.

I thought about turning back. Claude wanted to stage-manage his homecoming, I understood that, and it was good for the story, but he was being too secretive. The flutters in my chest and the way the hairs on my arms prickled against my jacket told me that something wasn't right, but I knew I had to bring him out that night. Harry was going with the story in the morning, and it was too late to turn back. And where was Susie? I'd tried calling her, but all I got was an automated voice telling me that the number was unavailable.

The shadows in the bushes seemed to move as I walked, the soft rustle of the leaves in the breeze making me even more nervous. I tried to peer through them, to see behind them, looking for a threat, maybe the moonlight catching the glint of someone's eyes, but there was nothing. A bridge got closer and I realised that there would be a few yards where I wouldn't be able to see anything at all. I slowed down to listen out, but there was nothing. I ducked down to get under the bridge and felt moisture drip onto my neck from the cold stones. There was little but the black outline of the canal edge to warn me where the path ended and the water began.

I stopped for a moment and looked around. All I could see ahead was darkness as the path got further from the bright lights of Blackley. I couldn't go too much further. The towpath disappeared into the shadows of a wharf building a hundred yards ahead, the wooden canopy stretching across the canal. It had once protected the cotton from the elements as it was loaded and unloaded on huge winches, but now it just created an impenetrable blackness as the path curved round to a series of locks, the huge wooden gates taking the water lower down as the canal headed west.

There was a thrash of branches, and I jumped and gasped, but then a bird sailed over the canal and went towards a five-storey derelict mill on the other side of the canal. I took some deep breaths and then watched as a bat darted across the canal, swooping and then turning. Brambles trailed against my trousers as I set off again.

My phone rang, its electronic chirrup suddenly deafening. I looked at the number and recognised it as Claude's.

*Where the fuck are you?' I asked, my voice low and angry. I was getting tired of the games. *I'm on the canal path, like you said.'

*Can you see the wharf ahead?' he said.

*Of course I can. Stop playing games.'

*Jack, I've got to take precautions.'

*Where are you?'

*Trust me, Jack,' he replied. *People know what you are doing. I'm not coming out until I can be sure that no one is following you. I'm protecting you, Jack. And me.'

I looked back and saw just an empty towpath.

*There's no one here,' I said.

*Go into the wharf and wait for me there,' he said, and then his phone switched off.

I sighed and walked onward.

Mike Dobson didn't react when the door to the consultation room opened. A few hours had passed since the last interview, because the doctor had been called to make sure that he was fit to continue.

He had been taken there to wait for his solicitor, but he had spent the time with his hands clamped over his ears, trying to silence the thumping in his head.

*Mr Dobson?'

The voice seemed faint. He looked up. He expected it to be Roach again-he had been waiting outside the interview room-but there was someone else in front of him. A young man in T-shirt and jeans with bleached tips in his hair.

*I'm your legal representative,' he said. *Craig Selby.'

Mike squinted, tried to focus on him, but it was as if they were in separate rooms; his voice was distant, his movements sluggish, the colours washed out.

*You look surprised, Mr Dobson,' the rep said, and looked down at himself. *It's my turn on the night rota. We don't sit in our suits, waiting for the call. I was in bed, and so this was the best I could do. If you want, I'll go home and put on a suit.'

Mike shook his head and held up his hand. *I'm sorry. I've never been in this situation before.'

*Yes, we need to talk about that,' he said.

Mike sat back and looked at Selby, trying to focus. He took a few deep breaths, narrowed his eyes. The sounds of the room started to rush back in: Selby's breathing, the tap of his pen against the folder he held in one hand.

*I didn't kill her,' Mike said. *The girl last night, I mean.'

*Hazel?'

Mike nodded. *She was alive when I left her.'

Selby sat down on the opposite side of the table. *The police haven't told me much, so right now, stay quiet.'

*But I want to tell you,' Mike said.

Selby shook his head. *No, you don't. Stay quiet for now. All they've told me is that they've found the murder weapon in your garage.'

*It's a metal pipe,' Mike said.

*Was it in your garage?'

*So they said.'