not been a Hastings with the Hastings history of service to the New Forest behind him, he'd likely have been given the sack.
The news was bursting with the story of Ian Barker, the wicked child killer of a toddler, a bloke who'd managed to keep his identity secret for the years since his release from wherever he and his murderous mates had been held. Reporters from every media source in the country had at first sought out everyone whose life had touched on Gordon Jossie's, no matter how remotely.
There was, it seemed, a hideous kind of romance to the story that the tabloids especially wanted to feature. It was the story of the Notorious Child Killer Who Killed Again, with a minor headline indicating that this time he'd done it to save a woman in danger, before going on to kill himself. This didn't actually appear to be the case, according to Meredith Powell and Chief Superintendent Zachary Whiting, since the truth of the matter according to them was that Frazer Chaplin had charged towards Jossie and only then did Jossie shoot him, but that wasn't as symbolic an act of redemption as was the idea that Jossie had saved someone prior to ridding the world of his presence, so it was that story and not the other that got the most ink from the tabloids. Ian Barker's childhood photo was printed every day for a week, along with Gordon Jossie's more recent visage. Some of the tabloids demanded how people in Hampshire had possibly failed to recognise the bloke, but really, why would they have recognised in a quiet thatcher a long-ago child who, they probably suspected, had cloven hooves for feet and horns beneath his schoolboy cap? No one was looking for Ian Barker to be hidden away in Hampshire, anyway, leading an unassuming life.
Neighbours along Paul's Lane were interviewed. Never suspected and I'll keep my doors locked from now on, I will were the general comments. Both Zachary Whiting and a Home Office spokesman made a few statements about the duty of the local police in matters of new identities, and for several days sightings of both Michael Spargo and Reggie Arnold were reported. But finally, the story faded away, as these stories do, when a member of the Royal family got into an unfortunate struggle with a paparazzo in front of a nightclub at 3:45 A.M. in Mayfair.
Rob Hastings had managed to weather all this without speaking to any of the journalists.
He let his phone take the messages, but he returned no calls. He had no desire to discuss how the former Ian Barker had come into his life. He had less desire to talk about how his sister had taken up with the bloke. He understood now why Jemima had left the New Forest. He did not understand why she had not confided in him, however.
He spent days pondering this question and trying to work out what it meant that his sister had not told him what had driven her from Hampshire. He was not a man prone to violence, and she surely had known that, so she could hardly have expected him to accost Jossie and do damage to him for deceiving Jemima. What would have been the point of that anyway? He could also keep a secret, and Jemima had to have known that as well. Beyond that, he would have only too happily welcomed his sister home without question had she wanted to come back to Honey Lane.
He was left considering what all of this said about him. But the only answer he was able to come up with was the one that asked another question: What would have been the point of your knowing the truth, Robbie? And that question led to the next: What kind of action would you have taken, you who have always been so fearful about taking action in the first place?
The why of that fear was what he couldn't cope with in the aftermath of all the revelations and the deaths. The why of that fear led directly to the heart of who and what he was, of who and what he had been for years. Solitary not out of choice. Solitary not out of necessity.
Solitary not out of inclination. The sad truth was that he and his sister had long been, in fact, much the same sort of people. It was only the manner in which they'd muddled through their lives that was different.