was looking at hundreds of photographs, melded together in such a way that you couldn’t see the joins. Maybe there were none; Simon couldn’t see lines where one picture started and another finished. How had Kit done it? Had he taken all these photos and had them made into wallpaper, somehow?
They were all of roads and buildings, apart from the ones on the ceiling. Those were of the sky: plain pale blue, blue streaked with white cloud, grey flecked with sunset pinks and reds; a deep blue with part of the moon in one corner, a curve of uneven glowing white.
Simon moved closer to the wall; he’d spotted a street he recognised. Yes, there was the Six Bells pub, the one near the Live and Let Live, where he’d met Ian Grint. ‘Is this . . . ?’ Turning in search of Barbara, he found himself looking at the books on the shelves instead. They were lined up in neat rows, their spines exactly level. From their titles, Simon saw that they had a subject in common.
‘Welcome to Cambridge in Bracknell,’ said Barbara.
Histories of Cambridge, books about the origins of the university, the boat race, Cambridge’s rivalry with Oxford; about famous people associated with the city, Cambridge and its artists, Cambridge and the writers it inspired, the pubs of Cambridge, the gardens of Cambridge, its architecture, its bridges, the gargoyles on the college buildings, A Cambridge Childhood, Cambridge college chapels, Cambridge and science, spies with a Cambridge connection.
Simon saw the words ‘Pink Floyd’ – had he found a book that broke the pattern? No, it was The Pink Floyd Fan’s Illustrated Guide to Cambridge.
At the far end of one shelf there was a pristine copy of the city’s A–Z – an old one, if Kit hadn’t been inside this room since 2003, but it looked brand new. On the shelf above it, Simon saw a row of Cambridge Yellow Pages and telephone directories.
He was aware, suddenly, of Barbara standing beside him. ‘We knew he was fond of the place,’ she said. ‘We had no idea it was an all-consuming obsession.’
Simon was reading the road signs in the photographs: De Freville Avenue, Hills Road, Newton Road, Gough Way, Glisson Road, Grantchester Meadows, Alpha Road, St Edward’s Passage. No Pardoner Lane, or at least none that Simon had seen yet. He looked up at the pictures of the Cambridge sky. Thought about eighteen-year-old Kit Bowskill, unwilling to sleep under its Bracknell equivalent.
Connie had been wrong. She’d told Simon that Kit had been in love with someone while he was at university, someone he wouldn’t tell her about, whose existence he flat-out denied. For obvious reasons, she’d suspected it was Selina Gane.
It wasn’t. It was no one. The love Kit Bowskill had been intent on hiding from his wife – so strong that he either couldn’t put it into words, or was unwilling to – was not for any individual inhabitant of Cambridge. It was for the city itself.
Barbara was doing her tour-guide bit, as promised. ‘This is the Fen Causeway – Nigel and I used to drive along it when we went to visit. King’s College Chapel you probably spotted. The Wren Library at Trinity. Drummer Street Bus Station . . .’
Simon was aware of his breathing and not much else. Like Kit Bowskill seven years ago, he could think about only one thing.
‘Are you all right?’ Barbara asked. ‘You look a bit worried.’
18 Pardoner Lane.
Kit Bowskill, who hated to fail, had found his perfect house in his perfect city. His parents wouldn’t give him the money he needed, so he hadn’t been able to buy it, but someone had bought it. Someone had succeeded where Kit had failed.
Someone who, at the time, must have felt lucky.
Chapter 21
Saturday 24 July 2010
‘Do you have a job?’ DS Alison Laskey asks me, determinedly calm in the face of my agitation. She’s a slim, middle-aged woman with short, no-nonsense brown hair. She reminds me of a politician’s wife from about twenty years ago – dutiful and muted.
‘I have two jobs,’ I tell her. ‘My husband and I have our own company, and I also work for my parents.’ We’re in the same interview room that Kit and I were in on Tuesday, with the chicken-wire grid covering the window. ‘Look, what does this have to do with Ian Grint? All I want is—’
‘Imagine if you were on holiday – sunning yourself on a beach, say – and someone turned up at one of your workplaces