69236538256563

JIM
Nine o’clock Sunday morning, on Fraser’s instructions, Bennett and I were knocking at a heavy
wooden door set in a stone wall on a wide pavement in the posh end of Sea Mills and listening to the
sound of birdsong while we waited for a reply.
The woman who opened it had the same flaming red hair as Ben’s teaching assistant. She wore an
extravagantly colourful kimono over a pair of pyjamas and had bare legs and feet. Her toes curled in
as the cold hit them. She was polite but perturbed. She was Lucas Grantham’s mother.
‘He’s here but he’s still asleep,’ she said, when we asked if we could have a word with him. ‘He
got in late last night.’
‘Anybody else at home?’ Bennett asked her.
‘No. Just us. Nobody else lives here.’
The house was unusual, 60s built I’d have guessed, single storey, wrapped in an L-shape around a
large garden. Impenetrable looking from the outside, the interior was flooded with light because
almost every wall facing the garden was made of glass.
She asked us to wait in a modest-sized sitting room. There was nothing showy about this home
apart from the architecture. The furnishings weren’t new and the walls were lined with shelves in
cheap brown wood, which carried hundreds of books. Visible across the garden was a room at the
end of the house, which looked like an artist’s studio.
In a far corner of the garden was a very large mound, covered in grass, and at one end of it was a
corrugated metal door that you reached by walking down a few steps.
‘Do you know what that is?’ Bennett said, in a voice that told me he’d quite like to educate me.
‘It’s an Anderson shelter,’ I said. I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of engaging in his usual
one-upmanship. I’d wanted to do this interview with Fraser but she was still firefighting back at HQ
after Emma’s confession. We’d only been out together for half an hour but already I was tolerating
Bennett at best.
When Lucas Grantham appeared, his pale skin was whiter than I remembered, freckles running
over it like a nasty rash. He wore a crumpled T-shirt, which looked like he’d slept in it, and a pair of
tracksuit bottoms.
His mother had dressed herself and Bennett said, ‘Make us a cup of coffee would you, love? While
we have a chat with Lucas.’
I winced as I saw pride flicker in her face before she made a calculation and quelled it in the face
of our authority. She left us with her son.
The three of us sat down around a low coffee table, and I pulled a photograph from my file and put
it down in front of Grantham. It showed his car, crossing the suspension bridge, at 14.30 on Sunday,
21 October, time and date clearly printed on the photograph.
‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Oh fuck. I told Sal we shouldn’t have done this, I told her.’
‘Done what, son?’ said Bennett.
‘Now you’re going to think that I’ve done something to Ben Finch. Truth is, I don’t even know him
very well! I don’t. He’s a nice kid, he’s good at art, but that’s all I know!’
‘Reel it back in, son,’ said Bennett. ‘Reel it back in. Let’s start at the beginning.’
Grantham’s panic was palpable now, hands rubbing up and down along his thighs, clawing at his
knees. Eyes darting from Bennett, to me, to the photograph, to the doorway where his mother might
reappear.