‘Afterwards he was probably sorry. He went to his father and told him what he’d done. But his father didn’t go to the police. He was a public figure. His wife was already suffering from depression. Imagine what the press would make of it. A boy that age charged with murder. Yet he couldn’t face living with Theo either.
‘Redwood hadn’t long opened and was desperately short of money. There was a possibility that the place would shut before Alice Cornish had a chance to prove her ideas. Crispin Randle made a generous donation and Arthur accepted care of the boy. He probably saw it as a professional challenge. He promised he wouldn’t tell the authorities that Theo had killed his sister and agreed to the change of name.’
‘Was that wrong?’ Hannah asked. ‘Would Michael have been better off in a secure unit? A prison?’
‘He would have been safe there,’ Porteous said. ‘And he wouldn’t be a danger to other people.’ He paused. ‘There was another incident of arson. This time at Theo’s school. He started the fire there too. Apparently he hated the place. Arson was his answer to difficult situations. His way of hitting out. Arthur provided an alibi for him. He didn’t want people making awkward connections. Again Alice Cornish never knew. Soon after, the time came when Theo had to move on. He couldn’t be protected in Redwood for ever and Arthur couldn’t let on that he might still be a risk. Alec Reeves, a care worker at Redwood, knew the Brices. They agreed that he could live with them.’
Hannah didn’t answer. She was thinking of Michael, sitting on the shore here at Cranford Water, so bewitched by a bonfire that he couldn’t take his eyes off it.
‘Then Arthur had a tricky moment,’ Porteous said. ‘Theo wanted to confess. Perhaps it was the Brices. Being surrounded by all that religion. Perhaps he kept getting flashbacks of Emily in her cot. He’d never been allowed to admit the truth of the memories. He phoned Arthur, telling him what he intended to do. Very self-righteous. Very dramatic.’
Oh yes, he’d have been that, Hannah thought.
‘At first Alec was sent to sort him out. I don’t think he was ever told the complete story but he knew the reputation of Redwood was at stake and he’d have done pretty well anything to protect that.’
‘Did he have a blue car?’
‘Why?’
‘I saw him. He came looking for Michael here one night.’
‘Poor Alec,’ Porteous said. ‘All those rumours about his nephew and he was just a lonely, middle-aged man who got on better with children than adults. He persuaded the boy to keep quiet, but in the end Theo couldn’t let it go and Alec was sent back.’
‘The weekend of Macbeth?’
‘Yes. He realized immediately it wouldn’t work and Arthur came up himself. He and Theo met on the Sunday evening after the performance of Macbeth, the day after the party, here on the shore. It was late at night. Theo must have had the dagger with him. The prop from Macbeth. We’ll never know if he intended any harm with it or if he’d kept it as a souvenir. He was a disturbed young man and he’d already tried to kill twice. There was an argument. Arthur says Theo got wild and angry and started to wave the dagger about. They had a scrap and Theo was killed. Hard to believe it was self-defence when the boy was stabbed in the back. And considering how cool and efficient Arthur was in dealing with the death. He weighed down Theo’s body and threw it in the lake. Then he phoned the Brices and said that Theo was in the middle of some sort of crisis and had decided to go back to his father. Of course they believed him. Why wouldn’t they? Theo had been their gift from God, only theirs on loan. Presumably Alec was given a similar story.
‘And that’s how it would have stayed if it hadn’t been for global warming and a drought and a canoeist called Helen Blake, who found the body.’
‘I don’t understand where Melanie comes in.’
‘Melanie was at Redwood too, briefly.’
‘For her anorexia?’
‘No,’ Porteous said. ‘It was history repeating itself. She killed a baby. A little girl called Emma. She was babysitting. The baby wouldn’t stop crying, she got frustrated. She smothered it with a pillow. It was put down as a cot death. She confessed too. To Richard Gillespie. I couldn’t accept the coincidence. Two babies dying. Richard was a public figure like Crispin Randle, but I don’t think he was considering himself when he shipped Mel off to Redwood. He couldn’t put her through a trial. There’d been all the publicity about the killers of the little boy in Liverpool. Even after her death he didn’t want it to come out that she was a murderer. When he was young he’d worked as a solicitor for Randle. Apparently Randle got drunk one day and let slip about Theo and Redwood…’
‘… so Melanie got shipped out there too.’
‘Yes,’ Porteous said. ‘For a price. No wonder the girl was so screwed up.’
‘Why did Arthur kill her?’
‘Melanie was bright,’ Porteous said. ‘She knew what was happening to her. She was nearly fifteen when she killed Emma Leese, not a child like Theo. She was confused and mixed up and she wanted someone to blame. She knew Arthur was working locally. Rosie had talked about her mother’s new friend at Stavely. She tracked him down, phoned him a couple of times at the prison. You can imagine the sort of thing. “You really screwed me up. How could you do that to me?” Wanting sympathy, someone to take her seriously. Arthur got jumpy and went to the Prom to try to talk to her. He knew Rosie worked there, thought it would be somewhere Mel would hang out.
‘Mel might have let it go but she saw the photo of Theo on the local news in the pub on her way to the airport. She recognized him. Redwood was plastered with pictures of the kids who’d stayed there. The coincidence freaked her out. And she couldn’t understand why Arthur didn’t go to the police about the Redwood connection. Later that week the press reports were still talking about the mysterious boy with no past. She phoned him again and said that if he didn’t tell the police Michael had been at Redwood, she would. He must have been frantic but he still thought he could reason with her. He couldn’t get to her at home. She was so disturbed by then that her parents almost had her under house arrest. So he became more devious. He even followed Rosie and Joe home from the Prom one night, hoping they might lead him to Mel. At last he found her in the Rainbow’s End. He persuaded her there was a reasonable explanation for keeping quiet about Theo. If she went back with him he’d tell her all about it. But whatever story he’d dreamed up she wouldn’t accept it. She was hysterical…’
‘And he killed her.’
‘In his cottage.’ Porteous hesitated, seemed to make up his mind to continue. ‘The next night he took her body to the cemetery at Millhaven. He knew you’d been there. You were already a suspect and he wanted to implicate you.’
She sat in silence for a moment wondering how she could have been so foolish, so easily taken in. ‘What about Rosie?’ she asked. ‘She can’t have known anything about all that.’
‘Rosie suspected him.’