'Inspector, this is ridiculous.' D'Arblay tried another desperate throw of the dice as Cole reacted by beckoning the two cops who were dealing with Cooke's corpse. 'Alyssa has a wild fantasy playing out inside her head. You can't believe what she's saying.'
Cole stonewalled him. 'I'll be the judge.'
'Obviously something extremely traumatic has gone on here. Surely the important thing is for us to get Alyssa safely back to school.'
'I said I'll be the judge. Go on, Alyssa.'
'They're all part of the Campaign for Racial Purity. Chris Cooke, Audley the guy from Green Shoots, Harry Embsay and these two. They wear rings engraved with the group's initials.'
D'Arblay smiled thinly and held up his hands look, no ring!
'They killed Lily because Comco wouldn't stop filming an expose of their group.'
'How? Exactly how, Alyssa?' It was D'Arblay's final throw. You could picture two white dice rolling across a green baize table, coming up with double one, snake eyes a killer combination.
But no unlucky for him, Harry had given me the details and I had Jayden as my witness. 'They kidnapped Lily at Ainslee Westgate and drugged her with ketamine. They dumped her body in the lake.'
D'Arblay's face was still cold and calculating, but Guy's nerve snapped. He gave a short grunt of defeat then broke away and started to run up the hill. Cole's two men went after him and brought him down.
'How do we prove this?' Cole wanted to know. He was patient and respectful with me.
It all hinged on this moment whether or not I could make the inspector do what I was about to tell him. 'Go to D'Arblay's office, look on his bookshelves for a locked silver box.'
'What's inside the box?'
'Lily's tooth.' Two small words from me blew D'Arblay's world apart.
The police found D'Arblay's CRP ring in the box along with Lily's tooth and five others from the 1930s. Guy Simons wore his ring on a gold chain round his neck. They found traces of DNA from Harry Embsay on Lily's bag, which meant D'Arblay had given him the task of getting rid of it and Harry had hit on Tom Walsingham's house as a good enough dumping ground. He'd been too lazy and arrogant even to think it through.
Out on the periphery, Cole trawled through the membership of the local CRP branch, picking up the guy with the neck tattoo and his sidekick who mugged me at the train station.
After the Thursday night when D'Arblay was arrested, I didn't see him again not until the trial seven months down the line. The magistrates didn't give any of them bail.
Jack's face needed five stitches. Harry got thirty-five. I hope they gave him minimal pain relief. He stayed in Queen Elizabeth's for three days, then they transferred him to the hospital wing at Bristol Prison to await trial.
It wasn't Emily Archer or any of the journos at the school gate who got the scoop. No it was one of Comco's own reporters who went large with it on the front page of Friday's paper. Race Hate Group Kills Lily Earle.
Here's the relevant sequence of events as we're all driving away from Ripley Abbey, Cole phones Dr Webb and tells him that there are vacancies for the post of bursar and head of PE and the reason why, of course. Saint Sam is totally, one hundred per cent shocked, because it turns out he's been doing an ostrich, head-in-the-sand act right from the start. When he finally comes to his senses, he gets right on the phone to Robert Earle and breaks the news. Meerkat Man never misses an opportunity. He tells his people, run it on the front page tomorrow, 'Because if we don't someone else will.' A leopard doesn't change its spots.
And while we're with the Earles, I heard in the new year that Adam had signed his mother's release documents from the secure wing of her psychiatric hospital and Anna was in London again not in the Berkeley Square house she'd shared with Robert, but in a quiet new apartment overlooking Regent's Park. Adam quit his job as Comco's director of digital media and plans to pour money into setting up a rival news organization using Anna's money. I only hope that in future they steer clear of conflicts with fascist and racists.
Anyway, they both wrote to me to say that thank you didn't come close to what they really wanted to say. No words did.
'Dearest Alyssa, What happened to Lily has broken my heart,' Anna wrote. 'I miss her every hour of every day. But there are crumbs of comfort to be found, the biggest of which is that you and Paige loved Lily enough to risk your own lives to get to the truth.'
I wrote back. I made a card out of one of Lily's small graphite sketches, a self-portrait that I'd drooled over at the time, and she'd signed it then left it on my pillow for me next morning. The sketch showed a glossy-haired Lily, looking up and smiling.
'Your daughter was amazing,' I wrote. 'I'd do it all again.'
'Lily Earle was amazing,' I told Emily Archer in an exclusive interview for her weekend supplement.
Emily recorded all my words. Her paper printed them without dodgy edits or additions now there's a first.
'She had more energy, more life than anyone I've ever known. She lit up the room.'
'And Paige?' Emily asked.
I gave my new journalist friend a copy of the eulogy I'd spoken at Paige's funeral. In the first paragraph I covered the serious stuff Paige's extraordinary talent, her courage, her openness. Then I took a risk. 'Paige's favourite perfume was Equus, otherwise marketed as Eau de Horse. She was the top stylista of the equine world and sales at Joules and Mountain Horse will now plummet.' Paige would have smiled along with most of the mourners the ones who knew her best. 'She was magnificent. She was my friend.'
And so those of us left alive staggered on under the shadow of our grief to the end of term.
On the day before we packed our bags and left for our family Christmases, Jack and I took a walk along Hereward Ridge. It was calm and sunny on the shortest day of the year.
'You know one of my favourite things about you?' I asked as we went along hand in hand.
'My intellect?' he suggested.
'Nope.'
'My love of numbers?'
'Nope.'
'I give up.'
'I love it that you're taller than me, that I have to stand on my toes to kiss you. Plus I've always loved your quads.'
'Hm.'
'I know shallow.'
'But cool,' he decided as we wandered between trees. 'You want to guess what's top of my I-love-Alyssa list?'
'My knowledge of Shakespeare?'
'Wrong.'
'My fascinating family history?'
He shook his head.
'My incredible memory?'
'Definitely not that.'
'OK, I give up.'
'It's a contest between your eyes and your hair. Some days I love your eyes better, some days it's your hair.'
'Shal-low!'
'But cool.' He kissed me on his favourite spot on the top of my head.
We came out of the trees and looked down towards the abbey. I spotted a brown dog chasing a stick. I saw Jayden lope down the hill to meet Bolt, pick up the stick and throw it again.
Then Ursula came through a gothic archway and ran to catch up. Jayden put his arm round her shoulders and they walked by the river.
Stick man and stick dog plus new stick girl. I hoped Lily would have drawn a smiley face in her diary. I reckon she would.
end.