and the sound of footsteps running down the stone stairs. He did not look out of his room. Steven Flyford was found the next morning hanging from a noose made from his own gown.
His sister, Mrs Grove of London SW, gave evidence that he had always been a well-adjusted, happy boy, but said he had not had a steady girlfriend before Miss Callader. He was quite inexperienced sexually. She could only suppose that he was distressed by Miss Callader’s reaction to intercourse.
Miss Callader said that he had seemed quite untroubled when she left his room, but agreed that she had been crying. His tutor, Dr Oliver Bainton, said: ‘He had been depressed over his work for much of the term; perhaps the added stress of a new and difficult relationship was too much for him.’ His friends, Miss Sasha Munsley, Mr John Harbinger, Mr Dominic Mercot, Mr Fergus Swinmere and Mr Robert Kemmerton, also gave evidence of his low spirits all term, but said that they were unaware of any details of his relationship with Miss Callader.
After the inquest, John Harbinger said: ‘Steve was very kind, and he greatly admired Virginia. I can only suppose that seeing her in distress worried him so much that he took his own life.’ The dead boy’s mother, Mrs Flyford of London SW, commented that young women who lead men on and then change their minds at the last minute are a menace to themselves and their boyfriends. Miss Callader had no comment to make.
The coroner said: ‘As a result of many anxieties concerned with his work and his social life, Steven Flyford’s normal equilibrium was disturbed and he took his own life.’
So, Ginty thought, pushing down all thought of her unknown family until she felt safer, Harbinger practically oversaw my conception. Does he know that? Is that why he’s been giving me work? Is it why he sent me to meet a man involved in the mass rape of women?
She tried to remember what Janey Fergusson had said when she’d rung up with the invitation to dinner. She’d certainly mentioned Harbinger, but only because she’d thought he might help Ginty’s career. And he himself hadn’t shown any signs of knowing anything about her when they’d started to talk.
Her forehead rucked up as she tried to remember what they’d said. Harbinger had been funny about freelance journalists, and reasonably encouraging about her chances of changing direction. That was clear enough, and she was sure he’d been excited by the discovery that she was Gunnar’s daughter. It hadn’t surprised her; most people who knew anything about music were excited by any contact with him, even at one remove, and they all asked exactly the same kind of questions.
No. She was sure there had been nothing to suggest that Harbinger knew her real identity. That ought to make it possible to ask him all the questions she would never be able to put to her mother. A detached journalist, researching the rape story, might hear the real facts from the rapist’s friends. His child would almost certainly not.
Ginty made a note of everyone else who’d given evidence at the inquest. If Harbinger wouldn’t give her what she needed, she’d try them. Moving between the smaller volumes that held the index and the heavy piles of bound copies of the newspaper itself, she looked them up. The more she knew about them, the more likely she was to get them to talk.
Sasha Munsley, who had married a man called Henderson and had four daughters, had become an orthopaedic surgeon. There was an article about the rarity of female consultant surgeons when she was first appointed to a London teaching hospital in the 1980s. Only six months later came a brief comment about her resignation in a commentary opposite the leader page by a senior member of the Royal College of Surgeons on the unsuitability of women – and in particular mothers of young children – for high-pressured surgical positions.
Robert Kemmerton was now an MP, whose political career was easy to track from his first adoption for a hopeless seat through to his appearance on the front bench as a very junior minister in the Department of Social Security. He seemed to have bypassed all the sexual scandals of the era and had hung onto his seat in the landslide that had booted out the Tories.
Dominic Mercot appeared only once in the index, when he was appointed Companion of the Bath in the New Year’s Honours List. That gave the information that he was now an Under Secretary in the Cabinet Office. Fergus Swinmere had more entries than all the others put together. Having been called to the Bar in the early seventies, he’d taken silk in 1989 and was now mentioned in the Law Reports practically every other week. Ginty ignored them, but she did follow up a reference to an article about barristers’ earnings and read that he was thought to be one of the few Queen’s Counsel pulling in more than a million pounds a year.
That definitely made him the star of the group. It also made Ginty curious enough to stop thinking about her own story for a moment. You had to be brilliantly clever, of course, to achieve that kind of success, but you also had to be driven. Might this man’s obsessive hard work have come from watching a friend destroy himself before he’d achieved anything?
Looking back towards the beginning of Fergus’s career for answers, she found the obituary of another Swinmere, a General Arthur George, who had died four months after Fergus’s first marriage, leaving a widow, two daughters and a son. It didn’t take Ginty long to nip upstairs to check Who’s Who and confirm that Fergus had been the son.
Back in the basement, she read the rest of the obituary. General Swinmere had served with distinction in North Africa and Italy during the Second World War, going on to become a regular soldier after VE Day, and eventually taking up a post at the Ministry of Defence in London. At the end of his list of achievements, Ginty found an even better reason for his only son’s drive to succeed:
It was a tragedy for this gallant and respected officer that his house was burgled one night when he had classified documents in his possession. They were taken with the rest of the contents of his safe. The thieves were never caught. Honourable to the last, he resigned at once, even though there was never any suggestion of fault on his part. He was greatly missed by colleagues, all of whom had tried to persuade him to stay on. He died four years later.
That seemed to explain pretty much everything. Watching your father’s heroic career spoiled by a stray burglar, you’d probably be prepared to do just about anything to make the kind of money and reputation that would let you say ‘sod off’ to anyone in the world. A top-earning Queen’s Counsel was one of the few who could.
The pile of huge volumes on the table was unmanageable now, and so she moved seats to give herself room to search the index for clues about her Flyford relations. As she moved, she caught sight of the clock on the far wall and swore. She was supposed to have been at the Femina offices ten minutes ago.
There was a phone box on the ground floor of the library, near the lift. Knowing how slow that was, she took the stairs, feeling in her purse for change as she ran.
Twenty minutes later, she was standing breathless by the lift in a tall glass building north of Marble Arch, having run all the way from Bond Street tube station. There hadn’t been any taxis either in Piccadilly or Oxford Street.
‘I’m sorry, Maisie,’ she said when she was admitted to the editor’s office.
‘I told you on the phone there was no rush. Coffee?’
‘Great. Thanks.’
It came in another bendy plastic cup from a machine, but it tasted better than it looked. After a few minutes, Ginty’s heart stopped banging, and her breathing returned to normal, but her mind was still skittering about her own concerns. For a time she was afraid she wasn’t making much sense. But Maisie liked talking, so that didn’t matter too much.
Ginty calmed down eventually as they discussed the ways she might frame the rape victims’ stories and settled most of the editorial questions. When Maisie was satisfied with what she said she was going to write, Ginty added:
‘There is one other thing. I want to use a pseudonym.’
‘Why?’
Ginty told her about the threats Rano had made as he tied the blindfold round her head and sent her back down to the valley with his men. Maisie