“Lots of people.” I recited some names, and Robbie solemnly copied them down. When I said Sebastian’s name he looked up sharply. I knew he didn’t like Sebastian. In fact, whenever his name was mentioned, Robbie usually changed the subject.
“Did anything out of the ordinary happen?” he asked.
I put my head in my hands, trying to remember. “I met someone when I was in town first thing this morning. He said he’d been at the reunion, but I couldn’t remember him. In fact, I couldn’t place him at all. I asked him to remind me of his name, but he never told me. It was a bit odd, really.”
Robbie looked down at the list in his hand. “I’ll make some calls and get back to you.” He stood up and put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Don’t go away, will you.”
“Fat chance,” I replied as the cell door opened to let him out into the world of the free.
Robbie turned up again a few hours later, just when boredom was turning to blind panic. This time I met him in the interview room, and he was carrying a file. He placed it on the table and opened it. Inside I could see a typed list of names and a selection of photographs. Middle-aged men in groups and individually. I could see myself amongst them, forcing a smile for the camera.
“I got these from some of the people who were there — the wonders of digital technology, eh. Can you see your mystery man on any of them?”
I studied them carefully, but I couldn’t see the man I’d met on the Shambles. Then Robbie took his reading glasses out of his jacket pocket and handed them to me. I gave him a grateful look. We were the same age and he understood. I slipped the glasses on and when I studied the pictures again I spotted the man in the background, standing in the shadows of a doorway, well away from the rest of my old classmates. I couldn’t see his face clearly, but I had the impression he was watching. And the person he was watching appeared to be me.
I pointed to him and returned Robbie’s reading glasses. “There he is. I know most of these people from our year and I don’t recognise him. He reminds me of someone, but I can’t think who it is.”
Robbie frowned and said nothing.
We both went through the list of names of those who’d attended that Robbie had printed out from the school Web site, matching them with the faces. Whoever this man was, it seemed his name wasn’t there on the list. Which struck me as strange.
I stared at the image of the mystery man. He definitely reminded me of someone... someone I’d rather forget. In fact, I had forgotten him — put him out of my mind for thirty-five years. And now Paul Nebworth was crawling from the dark recesses of my memory like a portent of doom.
I had been with Paul Nebworth when he disappeared all those years ago. I hadn’t been able to keep up, so he had gone on ahead.
I shut my eyes tight and saw the scene again. We were fifteen and out in the Lake District on a geography trip. I’d been cold and wet and my shoes had been giving me blisters. Paul Nebworth and I had been working together that day and he had barged ahead into the descending mist, in his usual devil-may-care way. Paul Nebworth had been oblivious to danger and a show-off. And I never saw him alive again.
Suddenly I knew the identity of the stranger in the Shambles. It was Paul Nebworth. No wonder his face had seemed so familiar. But thirty-five years ago he had strode ahead of me into the thickening fog and disappeared from view. Everyone assumed that he had fallen into the ravine, but his body had never been found and laid to rest. Which was hardly surprising if he was still alive.
I wondered whether to tell Robbie about my theory, but I was afraid he’d think I was having one of my customary flights of fantasy. Anyway, if Paul Nebworth was still alive, where had he been all these years?
It was a stupid idea. The stranger had borne a strong resemblance to the young Paul Nebworth, but that didn’t mean the boy had come back from the dead. And this little mystery probably had nothing to do with my current predicament.
Robbie left. There were things to arrange. And after what seemed like hours I was released on police bail. There had been no fingerprints matching mine in the dead woman’s flat and they hadn’t managed to gather enough evidence to charge me.
I walked from the police station half free. And that was when my troubles really began.
I loved my flat on the first floor of one of the elegant Georgian townhouses lining Bootham, a long, straight Roman road just outside York’s ancient city walls; but when I returned there that day, I had an uneasy feeling that someone had been inside. That my sanctuary had somehow been violated.
Some things seemed to have moved slightly, and I was sure the place had been searched. I told myself that it must have been the police. And yet, they hadn’t mentioned it.
I was about to pour myself a drink when I had second thoughts. It might have been drink that had landed me in this mess in the first place. I’d just put the bottle back on the sideboard when the telephone rang. I picked up the receiver, my hands tingling with nerves. The events of the last twenty-four hours had made me jumpy. I said hello, but for a few moments there was silence on the other end of the line.
Then the caller spoke. One word. “Murderer.”
I’d had enough. “Look. I never met that woman. I’ve been set up.”
“I know.”
For a few seconds I was lost for words. Then I heard myself say, “Who is this? What do you want?”
“You killed Paul Nebworth and you’re going to pay for what you did.”
I heard the dial tone and I stood frozen, staring at the receiver in my hand. At last I knew what was going on. Whoever set me up thought I was responsible for Paul Nebworth’s death on that school trip all those years ago. The caller had withheld his number, but I was certain I knew his identity. It was the man I’d met in the Shambles, no doubt about it. The man who bore such a strong resemblance to Paul Nebworth himself.
I put my head in my hands. None of this made sense. I closed my eyes and tried to relive that fateful day up in the Lake District thirty-five years ago. We had been working in pairs in that wild mountainous landscape when the weather had started closing in and we found ourselves surrounded by thick, impenetrable mist. These days, health and safety regulations would have stopped the trip taking place, but things were different back then. Robbie was somewhere ahead of us, having been paired with Sebastian Sitwall for some reason I’ve since forgotten: perhaps Mr. Goff, the geography teacher, had considered Robbie a calming influence. I’d been put with Paul Nebworth, a boy I didn’t particularly get on with, but Goff never liked friends working together. Sebastian and Robbie had vanished into the mist and then Paul had dashed ahead, as though he was trying to catch them up. I had hung back because I couldn’t be bothered hurrying. Then, when I looked for Paul, he was gone. And Robbie and Sebastian swore that he’d never reached them.
I was questioned at the time, and I think I was believed when I told the police that Paul had simply disappeared. If others thought differently, there was nothing I could do about it. How could I prove my innocence after all these years?
I picked up the phone and dialled Robbie’s number. I needed someone to talk to; someone who knew that I was no murderer. And there was something I wanted him to do for me.
Robbie turned up a couple of hours later. He looked as tired as I felt. Perhaps he was under some strain of his own that he hadn’t told me about. He always seemed short of money, and his marriage had broken up some years before. Perhaps his ex-wife, like mine, was bleeding him dry. He never talked about her much these days, so I couldn’t be sure.