Anna became aware of Jamie hovering at her elbow. ‘Want a loops.’

  ‘In a minute,’ Anna said, distracted.

  ‘Want Loops, get a loops,’ he repeated, tugging at her sleeve.

  ‘In a minute, Jamie,’ she shrugged him off impatiently. ‘This is hopeless’

  Jamie mirrored her exasperation. ‘Loops!’ he insisted grabbing at her arm.

  ‘Oh! You and your bloody—!’ Anna banged on the keys irritably. Hu-la-Ho-ops, she typed. And the screen unfurled in front of her.

  ‘Jamie, you’re a genius!’ Without thinking, she put out her arms to hug him. He backed away in alarm, fearful of the sudden contact, making Anna laugh. ‘You can have all the Hula Hoops you like.’

  The intercom buzzer sounded, and Anna let in a frowning Mariner. ‘Sure you’re all right?’ he asked.

  For a moment, Anna didn’t know what he meant. Then she remembered the bin. ‘Oh, yes, I’m fine. Going a bit nuts, but fine.’

  ‘Good.’ He was examining the door. ‘How do you lock this when you go out?’

  ‘On the Yale.’

  ‘Maybe you should consider using the mortise, too.’

  ‘Yes, inspector,’ Anna said meekly.

  Mariner smiled. ‘Okay. Here ends the Mariner lecture for today. Call it compensation for the fact that our enquiries seem to have hit a brick wall. Frank Crosby has got a solid alibi for the night Eddie was killed. So unless there are some other unknown heavies doing his dirty work, it looks as if Kerry was telling the truth and Frank wasn’t involved. It leaves us pretty well back at square one.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Anna said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve found the password to the CD. Jamie’s obsession with Hula Hoops finally came in useful.’

  CHAPTER 25

  ‘I’m not even going to ask what you mean by that,’ Mariner said. ‘Have you found anything interesting?’

  ‘Not yet. You’re just in time to help me look.’ Mariner dragged a chair round to Anna’s side of the table so that they could both look at the screen. As he did so, his arm brushed against hers, making her skin tingle. Focus, Anna, focus, she told herself sternly. With a curiously wobbly hand, she opened up the drive. It contained a single document. MS Access. Untitled.

  ‘Eddie and his databases,’ commented Mariner, shaking his head. ‘He had them for everything.’

  Anna double clicked the icon and rows of data unfurled on the screen before them.

  ‘It’s the same document as we found,’ Mariner observed straight away.

  ‘Except that now we’ve got all the data as well,’ said Anna, hopefully, examining around thirty rows and five complete columns containing an assortment of numbers and letters.

  ‘If that makes a difference,’ he said, with obvious disappointment. ‘There are still no headings to any of the fields, so we don’t know what any of the numbers mean.’ Without any indication of what the digits represented, the database told them nothing. ‘We’re no further on.’

  But Anna was staring at one of the columns. ‘We might be,’ she said, slowly. ‘I think it’s got Jamie on it.’

  ‘Jamie?’

  Jamie looked around momentarily from where he lay on the floor in the lounge.

  ‘Look,’ she pointed to one of the dates. ‘That’s Jamie’s date of birth. It didn’t mean anything when you showed it me before, but since then I’ve had to memorise it.’

  ‘It’s just a date,’ Mariner was less sure. ‘That could just be a fluke.’

  ‘No, look at the initials.’ Anna traced a finger back along the row. ‘JB, Jamie Barham, and there in the first column, SB, Susan Barham, that’s my mum. That’s got to be more than chance, surely?’

  Mariner remained sceptical. ‘Anyone else you recognise?’ he asked, doubtfully.

  Anna studied the column of letters, her mind now moving in a new direction. AR, DM, CJ, ET . . . she mulled over each set of initials, searching for a connection. ‘It’s a long shot, but that could be Liz — Elizabeth Trueman. I hadn’t seen her for years, but she came to Eddie’s funeral. And that’s their son, Michael.’ She indicated the MT, further along the row. ‘They live in Sutton now but our families were close when we were kids, you know? We used to go and visit them. They had this massive copper beech tree in the garden that Jamie once fell out of.’

  ‘So what we have here are the initials of children and their mothers. That makes sense. The last initial of each pair seems to match up.’

  ‘It’s only one child, Eddie and I are not on here.’

  ‘The youngest child?’

  ‘No, Michael’s got a younger sister, Carol. But Michael’s autistic, like Jamie. It’s the autistic child.’

  ‘So this is about autistic children and their parents, and what?’

  Anna thought for a moment. ‘Medication,’ she said, picking up the envelope that came in the post. ‘This is what Eddie sent me. The rest of this stuff is about different kinds of medication. Those PSTIs I was telling you about. And when I met Liz Trueman, she was full of how well Michael is doing these days, mainly because of the new medication he’s on.’

  ‘But Jamie doesn’t take anything, does he?’

  ‘Not yet, but I think Eddie must have been considering it. I didn’t want to believe it at first, but given that he was having mega problems with Jamie’s behaviour, and all the residential homes seem to want to have that option open to them, he must have been. The ones that don’t use medication routinely are incredibly expensive.’

  ‘And Eddie wasn’t exactly rolling in it.’

  ‘So he was being more or less forced into it. But Eddie being Eddie, he wouldn’t have taken that step without doing some thorough research. I think it’s what all this is about.’ She indicated the other rows of figures. ‘Maybe he wanted to compare Jamie’s data, whatever that may be, with others’ before making the decision.’

  Mariner was unimpressed. ‘But if that’s the case then this is pretty harmless information. Who else would be even interested in it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘If this was Eddie’s so-called “drug story” Darren was right. It was a wind-up. The drugs Eddie was talking about were these PSTIs. And the project was “personal” because it was for his own use.’

  Anna wasn’t about to give up so easily. ‘But if that’s all it was, why would anyone go to the trouble of wiping it off his computer?’

  ‘They could have been after anything,’ Mariner pointed out. ‘The corrupted database was one of the items that was left. They could have already successfully destroyed what they intended to.’

  ‘So that’s it?’ Anna was crushed. ‘All this stuff is irrelevant after all?’

  ‘Well, it may be helpful to you. But I can’t see how it will help us find Eddie’s killer.’

  ‘I’m not really sure if it will be much good to me,’ Anna said, finally conceding defeat. ‘As you said, without titles for any of the fields, there’s no way of knowing what the remaining data could be. It’s impossible to tell what the units are for these numbers, let alone what they represent. I’m sorry. I seem to have wasted your time, too.’

  Mariner smiled. ‘Not entirely. It means we’ve effectively ruled out another lead.’

  ‘Would you like a coffee or something?’ Anna said, quickly, partly because she didn’t want him to leave yet.

  ‘Okay, thanks.’

  Anna got up to put the kettle on. Mariner picked up the envelope. ‘This was all Eddie sent you?’

  ‘That’s it. Apart from one of dad’s old notebooks, which is pretty indecipherable. Oh, and he left a shoebox full of old letters with our solicitor. They went back years, and were addressed to my dad, not Eddie. I left them where they were.’

  Mariner was staring thoughtfully at the computer screen. ‘If you’ve got Jamie, it shouldn’t be that difficult to work out what the rest of this means,’ he said.

  Anna came back to the table with the coffee. ‘Is there any point?’

  ‘Eddie must have thought so, or why bother?’

  Anna shrugged. If he really wanted to, she’d let him get on with it.

  ‘Let’s start from what we do know. We’ve got your mother’s initials, Jamie’s initials, Jamie’s date of birth, then another number: 2.1. How old was Jamie when you found out he had autism?’

  ‘Older than that, much older, in fact, it wasn’t really until he went to school, even though Mum had been up at the doctors with him every other week for years. Everything was put down to colic or teething or the terrible twos and she was told he’d grow out of it. It wasn’t until he was about five or six that autism was even mentioned.’ She looked across the page. ‘In fact, this next column is more likely to refer to that.’ The fourth column contained a second date that put Jamie at almost six years old. That was more like the time he was diagnosed.’

  ‘Okay, that’s good. It would account for the variation across the other kids, too. Presumably they were diagnosed at different ages. So what is this 2.1?’ Jamie’s rating appeared lower than many of the others, which were anything ranging between four and nine. What could it be measuring if not time? Quantity? But of what? Measurement? Height? No, too small. Suddenly Mariner thought of Greta’s tadpole. ‘What about Jamie’s weight, when he was born?’

  ‘He was seriously underweight,’ said Anna. ‘Tiny, you should see the photographs.’

  ‘So it could be that.’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible,’ she sounded doubtful, but Mariner pressed on.

  ‘Let’s go with that for now. Okay, so we’ve got some names, dates of birth, birth-weights, dates of diagnosis.’

  ‘So what? It still doesn’t tell us why all these people are on the database, except that all these people might be diagnosed autistic on those particular dates.’

  ‘Which still doesn’t tell us why it was important enough for Eddie to go to all this trouble.’ Mariner picked up the envelope. ‘You’ve been through this information?’

  ‘Yes, it’s about various drugs, but the only common factor seems to be that none of them are particularly safe. The only one that doesn’t appear to list numerous side effects is this one, Pinozalyan, but that’s because there’s hardly any information about it.’ Anna showed Mariner the short paragraph. ‘This is all there is?’

  ‘Yes, I tried the internet, but there was hardly anything. And when I went to ask Dr Payne about it this morning, he’d never heard of it either. Mark, my friend’s partner, is a GP. He said he’d look into it for me, but he hasn’t come back to me yet.’

  ‘Pinozal-yan,’ Mariner read. ‘A relaxant. Prescribed for the treatment of insomnia. Acts as a depressant to hormone serotonin, which controls levels of arousal and anxiety. So that would be useful for someone like Jamie, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘You bet. Anything to calm him down and help him sleep more would be a miracle-drug.’

  ‘And there’s no mention of side effects?’

  ‘That’s what makes it unique.’

  ‘But your doctor hadn’t heard of it?’

  ‘No, he was pretty dismissive actually. But then he did have quite a few patients waiting to see him. You said it differently. Maybe I didn’t pronounce it correctly. What did you call it?

  ‘Pinozal-yan,’ Mariner repeated.

  ‘See I thought it was Pino-zalyan.’

  ‘What, like Pinot Noire? Pino-zalyan . . . Pino-zalyan,’ Mariner said to himself. ‘Actually that does sound more—’

  ‘Sshh!’ Anna silenced him. ‘Listen!

  ‘Sally-Ann,’ murmured Jamie, suddenly, from where he lay on the floor.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Anna.

  ‘God,’ repeated Jamie.

  Anna tried it again. ‘Pino-zalyan,’ she said.

  ‘Sally-Ann,’ the name bounced back at them. ‘No Sally-Ann.’

  Mariner shuffled through the papers. ‘Impramine,’ he said out loud. Nothing. ‘Ritalin.’ Silence. ‘Pinozalyan.’

  Jamie shook his head irritably, ’No Sally-Ann.’

  Mariner looked at Anna.

  ‘He must have heard Eddie say it,’ she shrugged.

  ‘And why would Eddie say it? Because it was of some significance. Maybe Eddie had stumbled across a drug that would help Jamie that has no side effects. What exactly did the doctor say when you asked him about it?’ Mariner asked, with renewed curiosity.

  ‘Nothing. Just that he hadn’t heard of it.’

  ‘Did he ask what it was, or how you’d come across it?’

  Anna thought back to her brief meeting with Dr Payne. ‘No, he didn’t. He just cautioned me against going down that route. He reminded me about my mum and dad’s aversion to medication.’

  ‘So without even asking for more information he actively put you off the idea?’

  ‘I suppose he did. Do you think it could be illegal or something?’ Suddenly Anna began to share Mariner’s gathering interest. ‘That might have given Eddie his story.’

  But Mariner was less sure. ‘If a drug’s illegal, normally the first place you’d find it would be on the internet and you’ve tried that. Unless it’s just unavailable.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, either it’s so new that it hasn’t yet been clinically approved in this country. Or it could be like Viagra.’

  ‘Viagra?’

  Anna began to wonder where this was going.

  ‘Yes, well. When Viagra first came on the market, if you remember, the government tried to withhold it in this country because of the predicted burden the massive demand for it was going to place on the NHS,’ he said. ‘It was thought to be too expensive and potentially too popular to make it widely available. But in the end, the government had to bow to public pressure, because anyone could get hold of it from the US and a vast internet black market for it was going to develop. Once people knew about Viagra they wanted it. You’ve been looking at drugs that might be of benefit to Jamie, haven’t you? But what puts you off?’

  ‘The side effects.’

  ‘Right, so you don’t go for anything. But say one company developed a drug that was both effective and free of side effects. What would you do then?’

  ‘I’d grab it with both hands.’ Anna was beginning to see what he was getting at.

  ‘As would any other person who’s caring for someone with autism. And the NHS would have to foot the bill.’

  ‘Except that there wouldn’t be anywhere near as much demand for it as for something like Viagra. There wouldn’t be much of a bill.’

  ‘Wouldn’t there? I thought autism was on the increase. And don’t some treatments for illnesses like multiple sclerosis run into tens of thousands of pounds, just for one person? If Pinozalyan turns out to be considerably more expensive in the first place, then the cost would soon mount up. And what better way to avoid having to pay out for any drug than to suppress it?’

  ‘But that’s immoral.’

  ‘Which would make it exactly the kind of story Eddie would have been interested in,’ Mariner concluded, with faultless logic. ‘This database could be the list Eddie was collating of the people who would potentially benefit from the drug, were it available. Including Jamie. And there’s your scandal: all these people being denied an effective drug that doesn’t carry the side effects that all the others do.’

  ‘But how would Eddie have found out about it in the first place?’

  ‘He was an investigative journalist. He’d have had ways and means. And he certainly had the motivation. Now, assuming that these other initials also belong to autistic kids, where would Eddie have got the names? Jamie’s day centre?’

  Anna was doubtful. ‘The people there have a whole range of learning disabilities. I’m sure there wouldn’t be enough specifically with autism.’ Remembering Susannah’s parents, she scanned the column of initials. There was no S, but then she remembered the comment from Susannah’s father: ‘I hope you’re not going to start stirring things up . . .’ Perhaps Eddie had talked to them, but they didn’t want to be involved.

  ‘So maybe it’s not just autism we’re talking about.’

  For a few minutes they both sat staring at the screen, hoping it would yield an answer. It didn’t, and eventually Mariner sat back, rubbing his eyes. ‘It’s like having three random pieces of a 1,000 piece jigsaw and trying to fill in the rest.’ Because when it came down to it, all they had was speculation. Without specifics, they had come to another cul-de-sac. Anna knew it, but Mariner wasn’t about to admit it. ‘There must be a bigger picture, something that would help us to complete it,’ he said.

  Anna couldn’t help but admire his doggedness. It was doubtless what made him good at his job. ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Call it a gut thing.’ Mariner’s stomach chose that moment to announce loudly how empty it was.

  Anna looked at him askance. ‘You trust a gut that makes that noise?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Mariner, mildly embarrassed. ‘I’m late for my appointment with Mr Lau.’

  ‘Mr Lau?’

  ‘The proprietor of my local Chinese takeaway.’

  ‘We haven’t eaten either,’ Anna realised suddenly. ‘Jamie will be famished. You can stay and have something with us if you like, though it will only be pizza. I haven’t yet found anything else that Jamie will eat. Apart from chocolate ice cream.’ She tried to make it sound casual, take-it-or-leave-it, but she hoped he would stay.

  ‘Pizza sounds good, thanks.’

  ‘And how about a proper drink? Or are you on duty?’

  ‘I officially went off-duty hours ago,’ said Mariner. ‘I could murder a beer.’

  ‘Help yourself. I don’t drink the stuff and it doesn’t look as if anyone else will be coming back for it.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he replied. To Anna’s ears, he didn’t sound entirely sincere.

  * * *

  The microwave pinged to indicate that the pizza was ready. Jamie stayed sitting at the kitchen table until he’d eaten two slices.

  ‘That’s a record,’ Anna observed. ‘You must be a good influence.’

  ‘Not on everyone,’ Mariner’s blue eyes held hers for a moment and something in the air crackled. Then the phone rang.