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difficulty in recalling the
exact
details of what it was that he’d written about Katherine Turpin in the book –although there was one thing of which he was absolutely certain: whatever he’d said, it must’ve been necessary.
    He had an unshakable confidence in the multifarious decisions made on his behalf by his former selves. How could a fundamentally decent and honourable man ever really seriously regret his past actions? How pointless would that be? How lily-livered? How inconsistent? How
slack?
    ‘She works,’ Ted reiterated, ‘growing beansprouts on a farm. But only part-time. I have a key.’
    ‘A beansprout farm?’ Wesley smiled caustically. ‘How unique.’
    Ted didn’t respond. But he was deeply perturbed by Wesley’s tone. Beansprouts? He pondered quietly, jangling his keys with a renewed determination. Beansprouts?
Unique?
    It was a pretty little property. A white bungalow, satisfyingly angular, with a small, friendly picket fence to the front, directly backed by a staunch and rather less welcoming row of well-tended shoulder-high evergreens. The garden was covered in a neat red-brick parquet. The overall effect was private, stately, and quite exquisitely anal.
    ‘Grand,’ Wesley said, peering around him intently. Ted stood on the doormat, struggling to locate the correct key. Wesley glanced behind them. The Old Man was following.
    ‘You went to school here in Canvey, Ted?’ Wesley asked.
    Ted nodded, ‘Furtherwick Park School. We just walked past it.’
    ‘And what about her? What about Katherine?’ Ted finally selected a key. ‘Yes. But she was two whole years older.’
    ‘Two
whole
years?’ Wesley grinned. ‘Was she beautiful?’
    ‘Not exactly,’ Ted’s cheeks flushed a sharp bullfinch pink as he turned towards the door and shoved the key into the lock.
    Wesley had teeth like a pony. Indomitable teeth. Very gappy. Very square. Very strong.
    ‘Did you have a crush on her?’
    ‘Everybody liked her,’ Ted mumbled, ‘if that’s what you’re getting at.’
    Wesley chuckled and then half-nodded his concurrence, although this was patently not what he’d intended by it at all.
    He looked behind him again. The boy-woman had joined Murdoch on the opposite pavement. They stood a distance apart. Murdoch was holding a pager. He was tapping into it with his large, slightly arthritic middle finger. Wesley scowled. It seemed improbable that Doc should’ve already made the Katherine Turpin connection…
    But if he had? Wesley’s jaw stiffened at the thought. This possibility plainly jarred him.
    Ted turned the lock, pushed the door, removed the key and entered.
    ‘By the way,’ he said, laboriously wiping his feet on a second doormat inside, ‘I hope you don’t have a problem with rodents.’
    Wesley paused on the threshold and inhaled deeply. ‘Sawdust…’ he murmured, and then, just a fraction more quizzically, ‘
brandy…?
’
    ‘She keeps chinchillas,’ Ted explained, ‘in the lean-to behind the kitchen. I should’ve mentioned that back at the office.’
    The bungalow’s interior belied the neatness of its exterior. Where outside all had been cleanliness and order, inside, all was mess and mayhem.
    ‘This woman is a slut,’ Wesley observed, stepping carefullyover the doormat and calmly appraising the state of the hallway. ‘Perhaps you should’ve specified that back at the office.’
    ‘She’s an artist,’ Ted countered primly, slamming the door shut and then shoving a group of carrier bags up closer to the wall so that they could proceed unhindered. The bags clanked and tinkled. Wesley frowned. ‘What kind?’ he asked, bending over to peer inside one of them (it contained seven empty peach schnapps bottles). ‘A
piss
artist?’
    Ted merely growled, but not fiercely. It was the subterranean grumble of an old labrador in the middle of having his toenails clipped: sullen, irritable, mutinous even, but nothing serious. He led Wesley through a half-stripped pine door