‘And you won’t go to the police?’ I asked. I couldn’t believe I was saying such words.

  ‘If you don’t, I won’t. You might wake up tomorrow and decide to confess to pushing a man to his death, of course, and choose to give up your vaulting medical ambitions forever. In which case, I would understand and cooperate fully. But I don’t think you will. You’ve got too much to lose. And what would be the point? The police are well on their way to telling the coroner that it was an unfortunate accident, death caused by drugs supplied by a dealer they’ve been wanting to bang up for years. The inquest will be a formality. No one will ever know.’

  ‘And that’s all you want from me?’ I repeated, for my own sake rather than his. ‘To be in another of your films? Twenty-four years from now? No money?’

  He shook his head. ‘No money. But maybe drop your inquiries into Aldous’s death. Stop bothering poor Grace in her hour of mourning. Very insensitive to doorstep her like that.’ So it was Louis I’d seen in the quad below Grace’s window. ‘If you continue to ask awkward questions, or mention our conversation to anyone, I will have no option but to publish the footage.’

  ‘On rotten.com?’

  ‘Wherever.’ He waved his hand dismissively in the air. ‘I’m sure there will be better video websites in the future. No film is complete without an audience.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’

  ‘It’s just the terms of our deal.’

  I stared at him, not sure whether to laugh or cry. And then I remembered his words at the ADC Theatre, when we first met. One day I’d like to shoot the film. A modern take on the original Faustian pact. He’d approached me at the bar as I was staring unsubtly at Clio.

  ‘Oh come on, Adam,’ he said, sensing my confusion. ‘I’m not asking you to sign it with your own blood. That was good, by the way. How you cut your arm on stage. Very realistic.’

  It had taken a lot of practice to get the moment right when Faustus signed the deal with his own blood. ‘Faustus wanted power and knowledge,’ I said. ‘And he turned to magic and necromancy to get it. I’m just a modest medic.’

  Louis laughed. ‘I didn’t know such a thing existed. And let’s be honest here: if your full-body dissection classes aren’t necromancy, I don’t know what is. Instead of summoning the dead to ask them questions, you cut open their cadavers.’

  No wonder Louis was so keen to film my anatomy class. It was hubris that did for Faustus in the end. Am I arrogant? By nature, medical students are confident people. Some of us even get off on the thought of playing God, enjoy the power of making life-and-death decisions for our patients. But do we, like Faustus, fly too close to the sun?

  ‘And if we are being honest, isn’t immortality the ultimate goal of modern medicine?’ Louis continued, getting into his stride. ‘I think Faustus would have approved of that.’

  He had a point, at least about Faustus, who rejected medicine because it couldn’t yet make men to live eternally. If the NHS offered immortality, Faustus would have been a fully signed-up medic.

  ‘Is Clio involved in all this?’ I asked, keen to change the subject. The thought of her possible role in a blackmail sting was troubling me more than Louis’ left-field musings on Marlowe. She’d invited me to lunch – was that at Louis’ request? But then she’d argued with him outside the restaurant. She’d also tried to warn me off the party, told me not to attend. Did she know what Louis was up to? Bad things always happen at his parties.

  ‘Clio?’ he replied with disbelief. ‘You really don’t know her, do you? Has she ever told you about her parents? What happened?’

  What did he mean? ‘She told me about her father,’ I said. ‘How he used to abuse her mother, lock her in the wine cellar.’

  ‘Clio killed him,’ he said bluntly.

  I turned away, stunned by his words. Her father had sounded like a monster but Clio wouldn’t kill him. She wasn’t a murderer. I’d assumed he’d eaten and drunk himself to death, ignored his doctor’s warnings. Louis was lying, knocking Clio off the pedestal I’d put her on. And relishing every moment of my shocked reaction. She wouldn’t harm anyone. And hadn’t she once adored her father?

  But the more I thought about it, the more it began to make hideous sense. I’ve done some terrible things in my life – didn’t she tell me that herself? What if Louis did know something truly shocking about Clio’s past and had blackmailed her into helping him blackmail others? It’s what he did, after all. It might explain her behaviour. Maybe she had known about Aldous and that’s why she and Louis had argued, particularly when Aldous subsequently jumped to his death from King’s College Chapel. She had seemed genuinely upset in the punt. And when she heard that I was to be Louis’ next blackmail victim, she had tried to warn me. Christ, she’d told me enough times not to attend Louis’ party. The thought was a comfort of sorts. Unfortunately, I couldn’t ask her about the footage of Lecter.

  I couldn’t ask anyone.

  43

  Tilly stirs, as if she’s listened to every word of her father’s soliloquy and now thinks it’s time for the interval drinks.

  ‘Is she awake?’ Tania asks, glancing over her shoulder at Tilly.

  Adam can’t tell from Tania’s tone how his story about Lecter has gone down with her. He checks Tilly on her back and shakes his head. Her eyes have closed again. In a bid to keep Tilly asleep, they looped around the apple orchard adjacent to the pony paddock as Adam finally confessed to his wife the strange deal he’d once struck with Louis in order to keep the film of Lecter’s death a secret. At their wedding, they retreated here for a quickie between dances. It’s felt special ever since, at least for Adam it has, and he was hoping the romantic resonance of the place might have softened the blow of what he’s just told her. They’re still in the orchard now, standing beneath one of the oldest apple trees, a Bedwyn Beauty apparently, another of Crispin’s pride and joys.

  ‘He blackmailed you,’ Tania eventually says.

  ‘You could say that,’ Adam replies. ‘Except that I didn’t push anyone. That’s one thing my conscience is clear on. I know I didn’t push Lecter out of that window.’

  In truth, there have been many times when he’s wondered, when he’s woken in the dead of night, dripping with sweat, Lecter’s face falling away from him into the darkness. Of course there have. And he’s duly exhumed the notion of his own guilt, turned it in his hands and buried it again, repelled by the stench of moral decay. But he’s shocked by how easy it’s been to convince himself that he’s not a murderer. And over the years the probability of his innocence has hardened into a certainty of sorts, become fact in the absence of any legal challenge – of any challenge at all apart from his own waning conscience. What’s consistently troubled Adam more is that he never went to the police about Aldous’s death. Aldous threw himself off King’s College Chapel because of the film Louis had made of him, and he, Adam Pound, brought up by hard-working, honest parents always to do the right thing, had done nothing. Failed to do right by Aldous’s grieving girlfriend, Grace. Let Louis walk free to blackmail others, to destroy more lives. He’d put his own medical ambitions before all else, telling himself that such selfishness was acceptable, because becoming a doctor was all about helping others, wasn’t it?

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’ Tania’s voice is quiet, numbed.

  ‘It’s OK. You’re not married to a psychopath.’

  She turns away, ducking under a branch as she walks down another line of trees.

  ‘What? Do you think you might be?’ Adam calls after her, troubled by her silence. He sees Lecter’s face again, falling away. And the man from Newlyn, head smashing against the cobbles. A well-worn mental routine kicks in – he’s not a violent man – and the images fade.

  She walks on. ‘I’m just so sad that you were never able to tell me this. It feels like a betrayal. A fundamental breakdown in trust. You should have told me about Clio too. That our son was returned to us in the park by a murderer.’

  Tania’s words cut him to the quick, a stark reminder of Louis’ claim that Clio had killed her own father. In his mind, the crime itself has gradually paled into insignificance. He’d even convinced himself that it was forgivable, if it meant that Clio’s feelings for him at Cambridge were genuine, unable to flourish because of the hold Louis had had on her.

  ‘There shouldn’t be any secrets between us, Adam,’ Tania continues. ‘None at all.’

  Adam draws level with her. ‘That’s what your dad said. Before we got married.’

  ‘He said it to me too. And he was right.’

  Adam is aware he’s still not being completely transparent and knows there’ll never be a better opportunity to be honest with his wife. Nothing can be worse than what he’s just told her about his pact with Louis, what happened to Lecter.

  ‘There’s more,’ he says.

  ‘Seriously?’ she asks, turning to him. ‘I’m not sure I can cope with anything else.’

  ‘Something that happened in the year before I went to Cambridge,’ he says.

  For the next few minutes, as they circle the orchard, he tells her about the incident in Newlyn, how he had only intervened to save Tom, how, even now, he can’t shake off the guilt at not having made sure the young man who’d slipped was taken to hospital.

  ‘I should have known about all this,’ Tania says, once he’s finished.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Not sorry enough to tell me.’

  ‘I didn’t want to lose you.’

  She stops to look at him, her head framed by apple blossom. He’s never seen her look so beautiful. ‘Why would you lose me if it was an accident in Newlyn?’ she asks. ‘If you’re innocent of Lecter’s death?’

  They stare at each other, but all Adam can see is Lecter’s crumpled body. He closes his eyes.

  ‘The footage from the party – it looked terrible,’ he says. ‘Awful. Anyone watching it would think that I’d pushed him out the window. I couldn’t take the risk. At first, it was about losing my medical career. Then, when we met, it was about losing you.’

  Adam sighs as Tania turns away. The jury’s still out.

  ‘Can I see it?’ she asks, walking on. ‘The footage?’

  He hesitates, surprised by her request, by his own instinct to refuse. The thought of not showing it to anyone has become so ingrained, such a part of who he is. It’s almost as if, by keeping the film hidden, he’s hoped that it might eventually cease to exist. But now he’s told her everything, she deserves to see it.

  ‘Adam?’ she asks, accusingly.

  ‘Of course you can,’ he says. ‘It’s in London. In the loft.’

  ‘All that time.’ Her voice tails off. ‘Just sitting there, inches above our heads. Above our marital bed. And you think what happened with… the photo of Clio, that was also—’

  ‘I think Louis has started to make the second film,’ he says, interrupting her. ‘Just as we agreed. Yesterday was twenty-four years to the day since the party.’

  ‘But would someone really do that? After all these years? You might say you will, when you’re a student, but life moves on. We go our separate ways, grow up, become different people. And anyway, why not make a nice film?’

  ‘Because Louis’s not a nice person,’ Adam says. ‘He’s evil.’

  ‘Evil?’ She seems genuinely surprised by his choice of words.

  Adam nods. ‘Evil.’

  ‘And you think he sent the texts to your teenage client?’ she asks.

  ‘Maybe someone connected to him.’

  ‘Clio?’

  Adam hesitates before he answers. He’s tried so hard to preserve Clio’s innocence in all this, to keep her pure and untainted, but he realises that the time has come to let go of the Clio of his memories and accept her for who she really is. To stop excusing her behaviour. She must have known what she was doing at his house in her underwear, the damage the photo would cause, the pain. Just as she knew what she was doing in Grantchester all those years ago. She and Louis had worked as a team then and they are again now.

  ‘They fell out badly at uni after having been very close,’ he says. ‘And she said yesterday that she’s lost touch with him. But it’s too much of a coincidence, her turning up like that after twenty-four years.’

  ‘And in her next-to-nothings.’

  Adam looks across at her. Is that the hint of a smile settling on her lips? ‘Next-to-nothings’ is one of her favourite expressions. When she’s being coquettish. ‘You get it now?’ he asks. ‘What happened?’

  She sets off again, back towards the house. ‘I’m trying.’

  44

  ‘I get that Louis might be behind what’s been going on,’ Tania says, as they approach her parents’ house. ‘But it sounds more like a student prank that’s got out of control, rather than anything more sinister. Louis’s just playing with you, messing around.’

  ‘You don’t know Louis,’ Adam says, disappointed that Tania’s still not onside.

  ‘No disrespect, but who would actually watch a film about you? About us? Our boring lives?’ Tania asks. ‘Why would anyone want to?’

  ‘Schadenfreude?’ Adam says. ‘Watching other people’s careers implode can be quite cathartic.’

  Tania shakes her head in slow disbelief. ‘This is why you’ve been so weird about that camera appearing at the end of our street, isn’t it?’

  Adam doesn’t answer. They are back at the gates to the main house and he looks around furtively.

  ‘When did your dad get these new security cameras installed?’

  ‘Don’t ask,’ Tania says. ‘They’ve caused a bit of a domestic. Someone dropped a leaflet through their door a couple of weeks back. Offered a discount and free installation. It coincided with a burglary in the village, so Dad went for it. One watches the front door, the other the courtyard and outbuildings. You know he loves a good gadget. He’s installed an indoor security system too – cameras and monitors in the kitchen and sitting room. All the cameras are monitored via an app on his phone.’

  Adam turns away, a sudden nausea rising. Someone dropped a leaflet through their door. If Louis is making a film of his life now, he’d expect Adam to come down here. His in-laws are an integral part of their family life, particularly as his own mum lives so far away. It’s like a second home to them. So Louis would need cameras in place. On location. All part of pre-production. Just as Louis knew he would need a camera in their street in Greenwich. Adam glances at the house, across to the orchard, over to the canal. Up to the sky.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ he asks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A buzzing noise.’

  They both stand still, straining to listen. In the distance a roar of an appeal from the village cricket field. Pre-season practice, maybe an early fixture. Crispin will know. He likes to go down and watch.

  Tania shakes her head, eyes creasing with genuine concern as she looks at him. ‘Are you OK, Adam?’

  ‘I thought I heard something,’ he says. ‘You know, a drone.’

  Tania’s eyes linger on his before looking upwards. She scans the empty expanse of the Wiltshire sky and then turns to Adam again.

  ‘I can’t hear anything,’ she says.

  ‘That’s because you don’t want to hear anything. You think I’m being paranoid.’

  ‘I do actually, Adam. A bit vain too, if I’m honest. Thinking that someone might want to film you with a drone, with security cameras. That you’re the star of some elaborate reality show. It’s all too far-fetched. Sophisticated.’

  ‘So why’s there a drone hovering above your parents’ house?’

  Tania looks again into the sky. ‘One’s been flying over the village a lot recently – there’ve been letters in the parish magazine about it.’ She goes quiet for a second. ‘I really can’t see or hear anything.’

  ‘There, listen,’ Adam says. The sky is still clear, but he can hear the distinctive whine of a drone’s tiny propellers.

  ‘Where is it?’ Tania asks.

  Adam looks around, but he can’t spot it. The noise is louder now, closer.

  ‘I think Louis might be filming us,’ he whispers, trying to disguise the fear in his voice. ‘Right here, right now.’

  It had been his first thought when he arrived, saw the new cameras on the gates, but he’d dismissed it. Now he can feel the zoom lens on him, sense Louis at work. Just as he had done in Grantchester Meadows all those years ago. At the restaurant too. But how’s he doing it?

  ‘Oh come on, Adam. Please…’

  ‘What if he’s somehow managed to hack into your dad’s security cameras?’ he asks, ignoring her scepticism. He’s not mad, or paranoid or suffering from scopophobia. He’s right. He is being watched.

  ‘Adam, you’re being ridiculous now—’

  ‘It’s been happening for weeks, months,’ he interrupts. It feels good to be finally talking to Tania about his fears, even if she won’t entertain them. ‘The sudden sensation that I’m being filmed. Today, as I was leaving the hospital, I could sense the CCTV camera above the door coming on, springing into life. And earlier at the café in Greenwich, with Stephen Goddard. I even went to see a psychiatrist at the hospital about it.’

  ‘A psychiatrist?’ she says. ‘When?’

  The sound of the drone has faded. Maybe he did imagine it.

  ‘The other day,’ Adam says. ‘I haven’t always felt this way.’

  After Adam left Cambridge, he almost managed to forget about his strange pact with Louis, particularly when he couldn’t find any trace of him or Clio online. Almost. Lecter’s and Aldous’s deaths had continued to trouble him more, particularly his own possible role in them. But this year has been different. The deal, Louis’ second film, has entered his consciousness again, hovering in the wings like an actor awaiting his cue.