A very slow smile spread across Thelma's face like flame through a newspaper. She was thinking hard now.

'Are you sure about this barbecue?' she demanded.

'Absolutely. I found fragments of tile on every side of the spot where she was found. She was definitely underneath it.'

'And are you positive that it wasn't completed a few days later? Maybe it wasn't finished in time for the party.'

'It was the centrepiece of the party. I've got photographs of people queuing up for their spare ribs and hot dogs.'

Another objection occurred to Thelma. 'But does any of this really matter? Alan confessed. The police would say that you just got the date wrong.'

'But Alan wasn't there. My father met Alan and Martha off the boat at Southampton on the morning of the party. They'd just come by steamer from the West Indies. They didn't arrive at the Stead until early evening, just when the party was starting. Alan couldn't have murdered Natalie. There's just one problem.'

'What's that?'

I threw up my hands in despair. 'I saw him do it. And he confessed.'

Thelma laughed out loud. 'Oh is that that all?' all?'

'Yes,' I said.

'I never believed any of that.'

'Are you saying I imagined it all?'

I may have been shouting.

'Jane, I'm going to have a whisky and you're going to have one too and I'm going to allow you to smoke your awful cigarettes and we're going to have a serious talk. All right?'

'Yes, all right.'

She produced two inordinately chunky tumblers, and then an equally chunky gla.s.s ashtray. I wouldn't have allowed any of them in my house.

'Here,' she said, slurping what looked like a quintuple scotch into each one. 'None of your trendy single-malt rubbish. This is good blended whisky, the way it was meant to be drunk. Cheers.'

I took a gulp and a blissful drag on a cigarette.

'So?' I said.

'Tell me about your sessions with Alex Dermot-Brown.'

'How do you mean?'

'The process by which you recovered this memory. How did it work?'

I gave a brief account of the little ritual that Alex and I had gone through, each time I'd placed myself back there by the Col. As I spoke, Thelma first frowned and then her frown became a smile.

'I'm sorry,' I said, 'is something funny?'

'No. Carry on.'

'That's it. So what do you think?'

'Did the prosecution lawyers show any willingness to put you in the witness box?'

'There was no need. Alan confessed.'

'Yes, of course. But did they seem eager about the prospect of your testimony?'

'I don't know. A couple of the lawyers seemed a bit uneasy.'

'Let me tell you that Alan Martello would never have been convicted solely on your testimony. It might not even have been admissible.'

'Why?'

'Because hypnosis alters memory, and you were hypnotised.'

'Don't be ridiculous, I know what I did and I just lay on the couch and tried to remember. I'd know if I had been hypnotised.'

'I don't think you would. There's no hocus pocus about this. It's my guess that you are a highly receptive subject. I could put you in a trance now and tell you that, oh, I don't know, that you saw somebody run over by a car when you walked here from Shepherd's Bush. When I woke you up, you would be convinced that it was true.'

'Even if that's true, Alex didn't tell me what to remember.'

'I know, but with all the repet.i.tion and reinforcement, you were going through an accretion of memorial reconstruction. Each time you added a little more to the story and then the following time you were remembering that detail you had added the previous time and adding a bit more. Your memory is real in a way, but it's a memory of memories.'

'But what about the final terrible crime? I saw it in so much detail.'

'The whole process was leading up to something like that. Alex Dermot-Brown was preparing you for it, he was a.s.suring you that everything you remembered was genuine and he used his professional status and the a.n.a.lytical authority he had over you to convince you that you were witnessing rather than constructing.'

'Is that possible possible?'

'Yes, it's possible.'

'Was Alex doing it deliberately? Was he trying to implant a false memory?'

'Definitely not. But sometimes you can create what you're looking for. I know that Dr Dermot-Brown believes pa.s.sionately in the phenomenon of recovered memory. I am convinced he wants to help these sufferers and now he has. .h.i.tched his entire career to it.'

'Are you saying that he is definitely wrong?'

'What other explanation have you you got, Jane?' got, Jane?'

'But what about the women who said they were abused as children? Are you saying that that's all fantasy, the way that Freud did?'

Thelma took a large gulp of whisky. 'No. I'm treating half a dozen abuse victims at the moment. Two of them are sisters who each had two children by their father before they were sixteen years old. I gave evidence at the trial that helped, I hope, to convict him. I also know that abuse is sometimes difficult to prove. I know of specific abusers who are currently getting away with it and it fills me with despair. Perhaps that's why I drink more of this than I should.' She gave her whisky gla.s.s a little shake. There wasn't much left in the tumbler. 'But I don't believe that abuse exists in a universe of its own in which normal rules and I mean rules of law or of science cease to apply. Just because abuse is exceptionally difficult to prove, that doesn't mean we should try to convict people accused of abuse without proof.'

'But these cases aren't aren't without proof. Those women I met at the workshop. They remember being abused.' without proof. Those women I met at the workshop. They remember being abused.'

'Do they? All of them? I've seen reports of young women, from apparently loving, functional families, entering a.n.a.lysis and emerging a year or two later with accounts of obscene abuse throughout their entire childhood. They give accounts of repeated ritual rape, sodomy, torture, the ingestion of faeces, satanic ritual. Some of us might say that unprecedented claims require a particular rigour of proof, but the supporters of these sad women say that we must demand no proof at all beyond their own testimony. Anything less is collaboration with the abuser. There isn't even a neurological model to explain the process. We all know about memory loss after a single blow on the head in a traffic accident. But there is no precedent for the systematic amnesia of regular, separate incidents occurring over many years. Your own supposed witnessing of your father-in-law murdering your cousin is trivial by comparison.'

'But why did it happen to be Alan Alan that I saw?' that I saw?'

Thelma shrugged. 'Don't ask me. You're the one who knows him. It may be that he was the focus for particular strong feelings during the period of your a.n.a.lysis. At a time when your creative mind was searching for a villain, he seemed like somebody who could be violent to a woman. The imagined murder was the moment when your inner and outer worlds coincided. In a perverse way, it was something of a triumph for the psychoa.n.a.lytic method. It's unfortunate that reality has intervened so stubbornly.'

'But why on earth did he confess?'

'People do, you know. They have their reasons.'

'Oh, G.o.d,' I said, and my head slumped into my hands. 'You're asking if Alan Martello is the sort of man who might deal with feelings of guilt and despair by making a wild, self-destructive, theatrical gesture? You're f.u.c.king right he is.'

Thelma drained her gla.s.s. 'So there you are then.'

I looked at my own gla.s.s. No chance of draining that. There was at least a triple scotch left and I already felt drunk. I stood up, a little unsteadily. 'I think I'd better go,' I said.

'I'll call you a taxi.' She did so and it was barely a couple of minutes before the doorbell rang.

'I suppose you'll be wanting to use me as an exhibit in the crusade against recovered memory,' I said as I stood in the doorway.

She gave a sad smile. 'No, don't worry. Your experience will have no effect whatsoever on their certainties.'

'That can't be true.'

'No? What about you? What would you have thought if you had arrived at your river and found it flowing the right right way?' way?'

'I don't know.'

'Look after yourself on the way home,' she said, as I got into the cab. 'You'll have to phone the police tomorrow morning. They'll need a whole new murder inquiry.'

'Oh no they won't,' I said.

Thelma looked puzzled but the cab was moving off and I was already too far away to say anything.

Forty.

We drove out of London on the A12, against the commuter traffic, and were quickly in the pseudo-countryside between the fringes of London and the Ess.e.x flats beyond. I had the road atlas open on my lap. Except for my directions, n.o.body spoke. We left the main road and entered the mess of roundabouts, corridor villages, industrial estates. A bypa.s.s was being constructed, and we sat for half an hour in a single line of traffic, looking at a man rotate a sign. Stop, go. Stop, go. I looked at my watch repeatedly.

For the last stages of the journey, the map was unnecessary. We followed the blue signs to Wivendon. We parked outside a neo-cla.s.sical building that could have been a supermarket or a tourist centre. But it was a prison.

The others stayed in the car park. I walked up the path, between low privet hedges, to the security gate. My ident.i.ty was checked, driving licence inspected, bag removed from me. A woman in a navy blue uniform smiled but prodded me through my arms and under my dress. I was led through relatively small doors, much as if I were being led through the staff entrance at a munic.i.p.al swimming baths.

I sat in a waiting room, where a flowerless pot plant and old magazines stood on a central table. On the wall was a poster advertising a fireworks display. The door opened and a man came in. He was dressed in brown corduroy trousers and a rough checked shirt, unb.u.t.toned at the neck. His thick, reddish-brown hair hung down over his collar. He was heavy-set, about my age. He held several thick brown folders under his left arm.

'Mrs Martello?' He came and sat down beside me, and held out his hand. 'I'm Griffith Singer.'

'h.e.l.lo.'

'You look surprised.'

'I suppose I'd expected a warder.'

'We try to be a bit more informal than that.'

'How long have I got?'

He raised his eyebrows: 'As long as you like. I'm sorry, you've caught me on a busy day. Is it all right if we talk on the move?'

We got up and he ushered me through the door and along a corridor which ended at two consecutive barred double doors.

'This takes us into the unit,' Griffith said, pressing a simple plastic doorbell which was glued to the wall beside the first door. A uniformed man came out of a gla.s.s-walled office between the two doors. Griffith showed a pa.s.s and my name was checked on a clipboard. It wasn't there and we had to wait for several minutes for someone to come along from the main entrance with a docket.

'How is he doing?' I asked.

'He's one of our stars,' Singer said. 'We're very pleased indeed. This is a new unit, you know. I we only set it up shortly before he arrived and he has been one of the people who has made it work. Do you know anything about us?'

'We've all written. He hasn't replied.'

'The residents here all have long parole dates. Instead of letting them rot, we're putting them together in an environment where they can help each other and also, we hope, spend their time creatively.'

'Swap memories,' I said.

'It's not like you think,' Singer said. 'He's doing terribly well. He's formed a seminar, got everybody involved. He's... oh, good, here's Riggs now.'

Another man in a uniform clattered along the corridor. He panted an apology. I had to sign a slip, insert it into a transparent plastic tag which was clipped onto my lapel. The first door was opened and locked. Then the second door. A warder with a name tag identifying him as Barry Skelton followed us through.

'Am I safe?'

Singer smiled in amus.e.m.e.nt. 'You're safer here than you are out in the car park. Anyway, Barry will be nearby the whole time.'

A corridor with a soft felt carpet and whitewashed walls went in each direction. Singer took my arm.

'I'll try to find you somewhere quiet. There's a storeroom along here that should be free.'

We pa.s.sed a couple of rooms. I glimpsed some men watching a television set. n.o.body looked round. Something I couldn't see what was going on in the storeroom, so we walked on until we reached a seminar room which was empty.

'You go in with Barry,' said Singer and carried on down the corridor. A thought occurred to him and he turned round. 'He's writing a novel, you know. It's rather promising.'

It was a medium-sized room with large windows at the far end overlooking a deserted recreation area. In the centre of the room was a circle of eight orange moulded-plastic chairs. Everything was bright under the strip lighting. Barry stepped forward and lifted one of the chairs and put it down just inside the door.

'I'll stay here,' he said. He spoke in a light Ulster accent. He was a very tall man with pale skin and straight black hair. 'You sit facing me. We're relaxed about the rules here, but you're not allowed to pa.s.s any object between you. If you want to end the interview, for whatever reason, you don't need to say anything. Just touch your identification tag and I'll come forward and escort you out.'

I nodded. I sat in the chair as instructed. I let my face fall into my hands. I needed to gather my thoughts.

'h.e.l.lo, Jane.'