Karen’s death had made me a rich man, and after consultations with a financial expert recommended by Thomas I made a number of investments, the results of which astonished me. I’d had no idea until then that you could make more money doing absolutely nothing than you could in even the best-paid job. There was no point in my looking for work, not with the amount I was earning from the money I already had. Nevertheless I needed a cover. When people ask what you do, it’s simply not on, at least in the circles in which Alison and I revolved, to reply, ‘I sit at home in front of the TV while my brokers perform obscenely profitable operations with my accumulated capital.’ To provide myself with an acceptable occupation, I sank?30,000 in an investment which was, in a sense, to prove the most rewarding of all.

  Following Clive’s conviction and sentence, the management of his business concerns had passed to his sister, a nurse who had no knowledge of or interest in EFL work. She therefore agreed to a buy-out proposal from a group of teachers at the school, who attempted to run the place as a co-operative. This lasted less than six months. What the teachers hadn’t realized was that the secret of the school’s success had not been their professional excellence but Clive’s unscrupulous and ruthless management, which they were neither willing nor able to emulate. That’s where I came in.

  Buying a controlling interest in the OILC afforded me the greatest possible satisfaction. Besides giving me a colourable occupation — I appointed myself to the position of Director, while leaving the actual day-to-day running of the place to a salaried subordinate — it completed my revenge for the insults and injuries I had sustained in the past. Clive might have had my wife, but I had his school. I knew this would hurt him far more than Karen’s infidelity had hurt me. Everything he had lied and cheated and scrounged and gouged to create had been handed to me on a plate, as one more item in my varied and lucrative portfolio.

  I soon turned the fortunes of the school around again by applying the methods I had learned the hard way from Clive himself. I offered the teachers a 25 per cent cut in wages and a one-year contract on the previous terms. Those who objected were dismissed. I then flew to Italy and tracked down Clive’s recruitment agent, who had switched to another school when the co-operative refused to pay his cut. In return for a percentage increase and a substantial cash incentive up front he agreed to forsake all others and cleave unto me. After that it was just a matter of finding an anal-obsessive martinet with a sadistic streak to act as administrator, while I swanned in from time to time and played at being busy. I remember my friend Carlos telling me that the difference between North and South Americans is that for the former power means being able to do whatever you want, while for the latter it means being able to prevent others doing what they want. At the time I was too much of a gringo to grasp the attractions of this kind of power, but as I lay back in Clive’s swivel chair, my feet up on Clive’s desk, admiring the view from Clive’s window, I finally understood. It is simply the most exquisite and luxurious sensation that life can afford, the ultimate peak experience.

  And I had in fact peaked, although of course I didn’t see it that way. In the two years following my belated conversion to the doctrine of self-help and free enterprise my life had changed out of all recognition. There seemed no reason to suppose that the changes would stop there. On the contrary, I was full of plans and projects of every kind. Alison and I were ineluctably drawing closer together, and our complete union appeared to be just a matter of time. I dreamed of a large gothic revival mansion overlooking the Parks, where Alison would preside with effortless grace over the elaborate rituals of North Oxford social life. At other times I found myself attracted to the idea of a manor house in a Cotswold village, a gem of classic restraint and rustic charm where we would keep dogs and horses. Then there would be long lazy summers at the cottage in the Dordogne, and, once Rebecca was off our hands, impromptu trips to Venice and Vienna, to Mauritius and Morocco.

  Nor were these mere idle fantasies. We had the money, we had the freedom, and even more important we had the taste and the style, the breadth of vision, the experience. But they were to count for nothing, and all because of a man named Hugh Starkey.

  If a dramatist were to take the liberty of ascribing what Aristotle calls the catastrophe — an apt enough term in this case — to a totally extraneous character who pops up from nowhere towards the end of the last act, he would rightly be ridiculed. Life does it all the time, though. Forget anything I may have said about the reasons for my present circumstances. The disastrous turn which events were about to take was due not to anything I did or failed to do, but to a man I never even met.

  In August 1988 a group of masked men ambushed a Securicor van in Wolverhampton, seriously injuring one of the guards. Following a tip-off from an informant, Hugh Starkey was picked up for questioning and later charged. Starkey was a minor-league villain from the Handsworth area of Birmingham with a long and uninspiring record of rubbishy offences like holding up petrol stations, extorting protection money from Asian and Chinese restaurateurs and breaking into bonded warehouses. While in police custody he signed a remarkably full and copious confession, naming the other members of the gang and citing a string of other unsolved crimes for which they were responsible. So forthcoming had he been, in fact, that it was widely assumed he had done a deal with the authorities in return for a reduced sentence. Much to everyone’s surprise, when the case came to court Starkey drew a baker’s dozen just like the men he had informed on.

  About two years later, while Clive Phillips was awaiting trial for murder, our Hugh got a break. In the course of inquiries into a string of supermarket holdups, Greater Manchester police discovered incontrovertible evidence that on the day the Securicor van had been attacked Starkey had been on their patch, taking part in an abortive attempt to rob a Gateway supermarket in Salford. Security cameras mounted over the entrance had videoed him and two other men as they fled. This didn’t do much to improve Hugh Starkey’s image as an upstanding member of the community, but it was extremely embarrassing for the police force which had charged him with the Wolverhampton job. The Home Secretary ordered an inquiry, which discovered among other things that a number of passages had been inserted into Starkey’s confession after it had been signed. Disciplinary proceedings were brought against various senior officers, including a certain Chief Inspector Manningtree, who had transferred from the squad six months after Starkey’s arrest because his wife was ill and wanted to return to her native Wales. When the police in Rhayader discovered that they had a full-scale murder hunt on their hands, they asked headquarters to send up someone with the necessary experience to handle the case, and who better than a man who had served for five years in a big city Serious Crimes Squad?

  When these facts came to light, Clive’s solicitor was engaged in the thankless task of preparing to lodge an appeal against his client’s conviction. In the absence of any new evidence or witnesses he knew this was a total waste of time. Clive stoutly maintained that he had signed a limited confession under duress, and that this had subsequently been doctored to include statements he had never made. Until now his solicitor had never believed this himself, let alone felt that there was the slightest chance of getting anyone else to do so. The Hugh Starkey scandal changed all that. Within weeks a lively media campaign was underway. The quality papers ran thoughtful, heart-searching articles expressing grave and widespread anxieties concerning the present system of policing, while the tabloids slammed and blasted their readers into a state of outraged moral indignation. From one end of the land to the other, the air was redolent with the stink of bent filth.

  The first I knew of all this was during one of my occasional walkabouts at the school. Keep everyone on their toes was the idea. I knew it was no use trying to treat the staff as responsible adults. They wouldn’t be working for me if they were. In the teachers’ room I noticed an article pinned to the notice-board with three large felt-tipped exclamation marks beside it. It had been cut out of one of the local free papers. The headline read RESERVOIR VICTIM’S FIRST HUSBAND ALSO DIED MYSTERIOUSLY.

  With the help of large photographs of Karen, Dennis, the house in Ramillies Drive, the Elan Valley and the Cherwell boathouse, the ‘exclusive’ article covered a two-page spread. ‘Our own reporter’ first summarized the events leading up to Clive’s conviction and then the ‘recent developments which have created demands for the case to be reopened’. But most of the article was devoted to what was termed ‘an astonishing oversight’ by the police, namely their failure to note the ‘disturbing parallels’ between the circumstances of Karen’s death and that of her first husband, ‘local Chartered Accountant and Rotary Club stalwart Dennis Parsons’.

  Since these parallels amounted to no more than the banal coincidence that both Karen and Dennis had ended up in the water, one was initially left with the impression that the article was a feeble attempt to fake a sensational breakthrough where none existed. But the facts as printed were so scanty in relation to the claims being made that another solution eventually forced itself on this reader at least. The ‘disturbing parallel’ was not the one which the reporter described, but one which he could not mention for fear of legal action: my involvement in both deaths. My name was mentioned only once — in the caption beneath the photo of the house, where I was identified as the present owner of a property ‘marked by death’ — but my absence hovered over the whole article like a malign spirit.

  I have no doubt whatever that this piece was ghost-written by ‘our own reporter’ to a scenario supplied by Clive through his solicitor. The rag in which it appeared was after all an advertising medium, for sale by the column, page or spread. Clive’s advertisement merely took a rather unusual form, that’s all. There was no follow-up in the legitimate press, and I forgot all about the incident until a few weeks later, when my answering machine recorded a call from a Chief Inspector Moss, or some such name.

  It was a grey, gloomy day with a bitterly cold easterly wind which had brought the pavement out in grease spots. I had been out for a walk along the canal, and I got home feeling depressed and bewildered, full of disgust for myself and others. In this state of mind the message from the police seemed less alarming than it might otherwise have done. If I had been enjoying the fruits of my crimes more, I might have felt guiltier about them. As it was, I was so miserable that I might as well have been innocent. I called back and made an appointment to see Moss the following morning.

  I left the BMW at a cash-and-flash car park and walked to St Aldate’s police station, where I was led upstairs to an interview room on the second floor. A paunchy, balding bloke in his mid-fifties sat doing a crossword puzzle. As I entered, he started whistling a phrase which I recognized with some surprise as the Fate motif from Wagner’s Ring cycle. On the desk in front of him lay a number of folders bulging with typed papers.

  Moss stared at me for some time as though considering how best to proceed.

  ‘Several months ago, Clive Reginald Phillips was tried and convicted for the murder of your wife,’ he finally said. ‘Due to various irregularities in the investigative procedure which have recently come to light, that conviction has been ruled unsafe and is about to be set aside.’

  I started gasping, as though I’d just run all the way from North Oxford.

  ‘This will entail various practical consequences,’ Moss went on gloomily. ‘One, of course, is that Phillips will be released from prison.’

  ‘But he murdered my wife!’

  ‘I wouldn’t go around saying things like that if I were you, sir. You could find yourself facing charges for criminal libel.’

  ‘It’s enough to make you despair of British justice!’ I cried, writhing about tormentedly in my chair.

  ‘Another consequence is that the file on the case will have to be re-examined. Since the Force originally concerned is now the subject of disciplinary action, we in the Thames Valley Police have been asked to take on the task of reviewing the evidence and deciding what further action, if any, to recommend.

  He lifted a file from the desk.

  ‘I have to say that one or two items here appear to corroborate the version of events which Mr Phillips gave at the outset. For example there’s this florist’s assistant who was collecting a Red Star delivery from Banbury station. He remembers seeing two cars parked in the forecourt, one of them a yellow sports car and the other a, quote, red Alfa Romeo, unquote. He was then shown a photograph of a BMW like the one you drive, and he said yes, that was it, he could tell one of those Alfas anywhere.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Another witness, who was meeting his aunt off the Oxford train, not only confirmed the presence of this second car, but also identified Clive Phillips from a photograph as one of the two men sitting in it having what he described as “a loud argument”.’

  ‘But none of this was mentioned at the trial!’

  ‘Quite so, sir. Transcripts of these interviews were communicated by us to our colleagues in Wales, but in the light of the overwhelming evidence of Phillips’s guilt they apparently didn’t consider them relevant to the investigation.’

  The door opened to reveal a WPC pushing a trolley laden with styrofoam mugs of tea and coffee.

  ‘ “Ye blessed souls, that taste the something something of felicity!” declaimed Moss fruitily. ‘Tea for me, please Fliss, since there’s nothing stronger. How about you, sir?’

  ‘Coffee,’ I croaked.

  ‘ “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons …” ’

  ‘It’s a bit early in the morning for Eliot,’ I snapped.

  ‘A matter of taste,’ Moss replied, patting the woman constable’s bottom as she left. ‘Personally I have excellent taste in poetry, women, music, beer and crime. And I have to say that this business doesn’t do a thing for me. Ah!’

  He swooped down on his newspaper.

  ‘The solution was staring me in the face all along. Simple, really.’

  I’d had enough of this cat-and-mouse game.

  ‘Excuse me, Inspector, but what exactly was it you wished to speak to me about?’

  Moss finished filling in his crossword and sipped his tea noisily.

  ‘Well, sir, the last thing we want to do is waste a lot of time reinvestigating this case when the identity of the murderer has in fact already been established beyond a reasonable doubt.’

  He was inviting me to confess! I felt I was going to faint.

  ‘I’d like to call my solicitor,’ I muttered.

  ‘What we must remember,’ Moss told the ceiling, ‘is that just because Phillips is being released, that doesn’t mean he’s innocent.’

  I stared at him open-mouthed.

  ‘It doesn’t?’

  ‘Of course not. All the review board has said is that he wasn’t given a fair trial. It’s entirely a matter of speculation what the outcome might have been if he had.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous! You mean a guilty man could be set free because of some technical detail?’

  ‘Happens all the time. Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about that, but we do try and prevent the innocent being persecuted as a result. Now if the case were to be reopened, it would of course be very distressing for everyone concerned, especially yourself. We fully appreciate that. And that’s why I just wanted to check that you’re absolutely sure there’s no one who could verify that you were in Oxford on the Saturday in question. If there was, you see, then I could virtually guarantee the matter would go no further.’

  I finally understood. As far as the police were concerned, the significance of Clive’s release depended on whether or not the investigation was reopened. If it wasn’t, everyone would assume that Clive had been freed on a mere technicality, in which case the slur on the police would also remain purely technical. They’d got the right man, even if they’d used the wrong methods. So the boys in blue were pulling together. All Moss wanted to do was to bury the case discreetly, to write it off as a botched job with no moral opprobrium attached. If he was to do that, he needed me to have an alibi. So why didn’t I do us both a favour and go and get one, eh?

  Fair enough, I thought. I can take a hint.

  ‘Actually, what I told the police earlier was not strictly true,’ I murmured. ‘I did see someone that day, but I didn’t like to mention it because … well, it was a woman.’

  Moss nodded sympathetically.

  ‘To be perfectly honest, I had taken advantage of my wife’s absence to see a dear friend of mine who … There was absolutely nothing between us, but, well, you can imagine how it would have looked at the time.’

  ‘And the lady’s name, sir?’

  ‘Kraemer. Alison Kraemer.’

  Moss noted it down in the margin of one of the papers.

  ‘I’ll need to speak to her in the next day or two. It won’t take long, just a formality really. Then we shouldn’t need to bother you again.’

  He turned back to his crossword.

  ‘ “The iceman buyeth not his round.” Five letters starting with a C. A rather over-elaborate clue, I’d say. The trademark of an amateur.’

  ‘Fine, fine. And you? Really? Good. Super. Listen, I was wondering if we could get together some time soon. There’s something I need to ask you. It’s a bit urgent, actually.’

  I was standing in a glass phone booth amid the roar of traffic in the Westgate one-way system. Alison’s voice reached me as though from a great distance. The air was milder there, the vegetation lusher. Somewhere in the background a piano was playing.

  ‘Can you come to lunch?’

  The meal was the same as on the day we first met: omelette, salad, cheese and bread. The food wasn’t quite as good as it had been in France — the best money could buy, rather than just the best — but the real drawback from my point of view was that we were a threesome. It was half-term, and Rebecca was kicking her heels around the house. To try and break the ice which formed whenever she was around, I asked her if she was interested in crossword puzzles.