‘Tell us about Stephen Longhurst.’
‘Well, that was the worst of it. Why didn’t she listen to me? I told her the long and the short of it – about him and Wayne – but I was wasting my breath. When I finally saw that book of hers, I couldn’t believe what she’d written, and there was my name on the acknowledgements page at the back, as if I was the one who’d made it all up. I wanted to tell her publishers to take it right out again. My wife told me to forget about it, but I never have. It was a disgrace.’
He drew a breath.
‘She got it completely arse about face. You say you haven’t read the whole book, so I’ll tell you. The way she described it, Stephen was the innocent little kid who was corrupted by Wayne. He didn’t know what he was doing. Of course, that didn’t mean she had to like him. She said he was spoilt. She described that business with Lisa when she got pushed into a barbed-wire fence – although that was really just an accident, not like what she said at all.
‘But the biggest lie she told was that Wayne was the one in charge. You’ve only got to look at this place to know that’s not true. I mean, you tell me! A kid with all the privilege in the world goes over to an estate near Chippenham and ends up hero-worshipping some eleven-year-old whose dad’s been in jail and who lives in three tiny rooms surrounded by unwashed dishes and garbage? Give me a break! It was the other way round! I was here and I saw it. Wayne was just an ordinary kid. He came to this house and he thought he’d died and gone to heaven. The swimming pool. The sauna. The private cinema. Fridges full of food the likes of which he’d never seen before. Horses and dogs …
‘Wayne was the one in awe of Stephen. Stephen was a year younger, but he knew exactly what he was doing. I’m not saying he was bad either. But he was bored and he was angry that his parents had brought him here. He’d spent most of his life in the city and that was where his friends were. What was he meant to do out in the sticks? There are only so many times you can swim in a pool or bounce on a trampoline. If you want my opinion – and this is what I told the Throsby woman – he wanted revenge on his parents and on the world and it was the older boy who provided him with the opportunity. Stephen changed once he got here. I saw it for myself. Trespassing, shoplifting, little acts of vandalism. It was Stephen who decided what they were going to do. Wayne may have agreed to go along with it, but he was always two steps behind.’
‘What about the cruelty to animals?’ I asked. That was something I’d read in the book.
Lamprey dismissed the accusation. ‘The two of them went on the quad bikes and they ran over a sheep. It was an accident! That was just one of a million things she got wrong. Lisa was from Melbourne, not Sydney. This house was built in the nineteenth century. Stephen rode an American Quarter Horse and its name was Bree with two e’s – not like the cheese. And he didn’t fall off it – that was Wayne! Maybe that will tell you something about the two of them. Wayne had never sat on a horse in his life, but Stephen made him do it – and the next thing you know, he’s come off, flat on his face. I remember him sitting over by the fire, blood streaming out of his nose, crying his head off like any other eleven-year-old. He ended up in hospital after that one! He only did it because he didn’t want to lose face, and I’m sure the same thing was true when they did that silly trick with Major Alden. The family managed to persuade the judge that Wayne was the one in control and he ended up with twice the sentence of the other lad. But that wasn’t the case.’
‘Did you tell this to the police at the time?’ Hawthorne asked.
Lamprey shook his head. ‘It wasn’t my place. I was just the gardener. Anyway, nobody asked.’
He’d had enough. When he spoke again, there was a sheen of some distant memory in his eyes.
‘Neither of them were bad boys,’ he said. ‘I’m not saying they were perfect. But they were kids! They needed each other. I used to watch them chasing each other around the garden or sitting together, plotting and scheming, out by the old lion. That was their secret place. And I saw it with my own eyes. They loved each other in the way that only kids can. I was talking to my wife about it once and you know what she said? They were saving each other from themselves. That’s what she said, and she more or less got it right. They were both on their own, both of them abandoned. One of them was rich. One of them was poor. But when they were together, they were happy. I can still hear them laughing and shouting and just being kids.