outside the door to the Reardons' flat. Jenny pushed them gently aside with her foot and lifted the knocker. A female liaison officer who didn't look any older than her son answered. Jenny asked to see Mrs Reardon alone, leaving the girl to dither over whether to bring the flowers in or to leave them outside. Were these unsolicited offerings which had become part of the modern death ritual, a private gift or a public memorial? It was hard to say.
Eileen Reardon was sitting with the curtains drawn in the airless sitting room. It reeked of stale smoke. Sniffling into a grubby handkerchief, she looked up at Jenny with eyes that seemed to have sunk into her face. Propped up against the empty cigarette packets littering the coffee table was a photograph of a smiling Freddy in front of a roller-coaster.
'That was on a trip last year,' Eileen said. 'He went with the church.'
Jenny sat on the edge of the sofa opposite, trying to tolerate the foul-smelling air.
'I'm sorry, Mrs Reardon. I truly am.'
Eileen lowered her chin, her exhausted marbled features telling Jenny that Freddy's death was less a complete surprise than a tragic conclusion to events she had been powerless to influence.
'How had he been?'
'Quiet.'
'Last night?'
'Went to church, came home about half-past ten. I left him in here watching the television.'
Jenny tried to imagine what it must have been like for Freddy returning from an evening of euphoria to this pit of despondency.
'When did you notice he was gone?'
'He gets up before me in the mornings, you know, takes himself to school.'
'Did he mention the inquest?' Jenny asked. 'I'd asked him to give evidence today.'
'I didn't know a thing about it.'
'There would have been a letter in the post.'
She shook her head.
'The police came here today—'
'I don't talk to the police.' She glanced at the partially open door. 'Rotten, hypocritical bastards.' She looked at Jenny. 'They can't do enough for you when they're dead.'
'You've been told there was a note in his pocket?' Jenny ventured.
Eileen nodded.
'This probably isn't the right time, but if there's anything you want to tell me—'
The corners of Eileen's mouth twisted downwards as she seemed to struggle against a feeling of overwhelming revulsion. 'He'd talk to me about Jesus. Walk with Jesus, love Jesus. Jesus is going to save you. Jesus is going to heal you. All that crap.' She spat out the words. 'I told him I didn't do bullshit any more. I'd had enough of that from his father and every other man I'd ever known. If there are answers in this world you find them yourself, you don't get taken in by some church that wants to send us back to the Dark Ages.'
'When I spoke to you before, I got the impression that you respected his belief.'
'Sometimes I'd pretend to. I know you've got to try to let them have a mind of their own, but all this religious stuff . . .' Running out of words, she shook her head.
'Did he ever talk to you about Eva Donaldson?' Jenny asked.
'She's sitting at the right hand of God, isn't she? I'd rather he'd been watching her movies, if I'm honest.'
'Did he ever talk about her death, the way she died?'
'It was the devil, you know. He did it. And it was unbelievers like me who were helping him, of course.'
'Freddy never talked about her wavering, losing her faith?'
'Was she now?' Eileen laughed, stirring the mucus in her rattling lungs. 'Oh, my God.'
'He never mentioned that?'
'I think I would have remembered. Oh, yes.' Her smile contorted into a mask of pain. 'He worshipped those people. But I was the one who got him out of hospital, it was me who nursed him and got him back to school.' She pounded her fist into her chest. 'But I was the one who was damned because I wasn't with Jesus!'
It was called the Eagle's Nest, a man-made balcony seven hundred feet above the western side of the Wye valley, midway between Chepstow and Tintern. Jenny pulled on the walking shoes and jeans that now lived permanently in the boot of her car and made the climb up the three hundred and sixty-five steps and narrow paths that snaked through the woods and traversed the jagged cliffs. The fading evening sun filtered through a dense canopy of ivy-choked oak and beech; ancient yews clung implausibly to the rocks, their gnarled roots strangling boulders like the slow-moving tentacles of sea monsters. In damp hollows and dark