Second Shot

“Er, yeah, anyway, according to the reports you have, Lucas was at the height of his bad-boy phase in the eighteen months before she was born. It was around that time that he chucked two trainees out of a helicopter and one of them broke his shoulder.”

“Collarbone,” Sean said absently, sipping his coffee. “And we know all this. How does it relate to him not being Simone’s father?”

“Well, just stick with me on this. At the end of the previous November he got into an argument in a pub in Hereford and ended up making one bloke eat the cue ball off the pool table.”

“Eat it?” I queried.

“Yeah, he forced it into the bloke’s mouth and apparently they had to surgically dislocate his jaw to get it out again. Caused a real ruckus at the time. It seems that the bloke he injured had connections-his uncle was the local chief constable or something. The end result was that top brass came down hard on Lucas. They didn’t just kick him out of the SAS — they stuck him in clink for it.”

Sean had gone very still, like a dog on the scent of prey. “Go on,” he said.

“Sergeant Greg Lucas was a guest of Her Majesty in the glasshouse in Colchester for a couple of months over Christmas and the New Year while they sorted out what they were going to do with him.” He singled out a sheet of paper and handed it across. “From the third of December until halfway through February, actually.”

Sean took the sheet and stared at it. “The dates don’t line up,” he said slowly.

Matt nodded, eyes suddenly very bright like someone in the grip of religious fervor. “I’ve seen Simone’s birth certificate. She was just short of nine pounds in weight when she was born. And bang on time-not premature, not overdue. There’s no way on this earth that Lucas could have been her father.”

“But he is,” I said blankly, looking up. “The DNA test proved it.”

“That DNA test,” Neagley said, breaking in for the first time, “just proved that the two of them were father and daughter. It didn’t prove that the man who was Simone’s father was Greg Lucas.”

“In other words,” Matt chipped in, “just because Greg Lucas happened to be married to Pam- Simone’s mother-it doesn’t automatically mean that he was Simone’s father.”

“But that’s … impossible,” I said, and even as I spoke I knew it wasn’t impossible at all. In fact, it made a lot more sense than anything else I could think of.

Neagley smiled at my obvious confusion. “Trust me, Charlie,” she said. “We’ve done nothing but tear this thing apart all morning. There’s no other conclusion that’s feasible.”

“But he’s a match, so if he isn’t Greg Lucas, he must be — “

“John Ashworth,” Matt supplied, nodding. “Her mother’s boyfriend. The boyfriend who magically disappeared at exactly the same time Greg Lucas upped sticks and moved over here. The boyfriend who everyone thought was dead but no one could find a body for.”

“The boyfriend,” Neagley said, producing another sheet of paper from the pile, “whose middle name just happens to be Simon-which you have to admit kinda adds weight to the he’s-her-real-father argument.”

“If the DNA test is correct-and we can only assume it is,” Matt said, his voice tight, “then the only possible explanation is that the man who’s been posing as Greg Lucas for the last twenty years is, in fact, John Ash-worth.”

“We thought the DNA test would prove Greg Lucas was who he claimed to be,” Sean said, looking at me. “Whereas in fact, it’s proved him to be the one man he couldn’t possibly be.”

“And he knew,” I said. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have agreed to take it. He knew he really was her father.”

“Just as the real Greg Lucas must have known that he wasn’t,” Matt said, suddenly more subdued. “Maybe that was why he was so bloody cruel to her when she was a baby.”

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The personality change from vicious psychopath to doting grandfather, the fact that I just hadn’t got that professional soldier vibe from the man-and he hadn’t picked anything up, in return, from me.

So what the hell happened to the real Greg Lucas? And even as the question formed, the answer bloomed over the top of it.

“Ashworth killed him,” I said suddenly. I snapped out of my reverie and found everyone looking at me. “And Simone knew. The night she was shot,” I said, aware of Matt’s flinch at the words, “she went ballistic at Lucas. ‘I saw him do it. I loved you. I trusted you.’ That was what she shouted at him. She was only a child at the time, but I think somehow she must have remembered back to the night Lucas and Ashworth both vanished. Think about it-Lucas was ex-SAS and a natural killer. He’d been stalking them for months. If Ashworth ended up with Lucas’s identity, he must have had to kill Lucas to get it. You’ve seen his record. There’s no other way the guy would ever have given in unless he was dead. I don’t know what set Simone off, but what if she remembered seeing Ashworth kill Greg Lucas?”