The telephone in the office behind the counter began to ring. The two men looked at each other. Then Questred pushed past Umber, strode into the office and picked up the telephone.

Umber expected to hear some brief and vapid discussion of a wine order. But what he actually heard was very different. 'Kennet Valley Wine Company… Jane?… What's the matter, darling?… Who?… But what did he want?… Say that again… You're sure?… I don't believe it… But this, on top of everything else… Yes, of course… I'll come straight away… Never mind that… Yes… Don't worry… I'll see you shortly, darling… 'Bye.'

Questred slowly put the telephone down and stared into space. There was an expression of shocked confusion on his face.

'What's happened?' Umber asked.

'It doesn't make any sense,' Questred murmured. 'Why now? After all this time.'

'What's happened?'

'Sorry?' Questred seemed to snap out of his brief reverie. His gaze focused on Umber. 'Jane's had a reporter on to her. Asking for her reaction to the news. It was on the radio at lunchtime, apparently, but she hadn't heard. She's quite upset. I have to go home.' He took his jacket down from a hook and put it on. Then he stopped and frowned at Umber. 'Did you know about this?'

'Know what?'

'You didn't, did you? You really didn't.'

'For God's sake, man, just -'

'Brian Radd's dead.'

'Dead?' Umber gaped at Questred in amazement. 'How?'

'They say he was…' Questred swallowed hard. 'They say he was murdered.'

When Umber switched his mobile back on, he found a message from Sharp waiting for him. He already knew, of course, what Sharp had phoned to tell him.

'I heard the news in a pub at lunchtime. The locals were full of it. Radd's dead. Murdered by another prisoner, apparently. Details are sketchy at the moment, but I imagine all hell's broken loose at the prison. No point me staying here now. I'll head back. I don't know what to make of this, Umber, I really don't. We'll talk later. 'Bye.'

Umber went back to the Ivy House and learned a little more from the Ceefax service on the television in his room. Radd had been found bleeding from a stomach wound, probably inflicted with a knife, in a toilet cubicle at the prison at about nine o'clock that morning. He had been rushed to hospital, only to be pronounced dead on arrival. A police murder inquiry was under way.

Umber stared at the words on the screen for several long minutes, shock giving way slowly to something closer to fear. The media would regard this as a fittingly violent end for a child murderer and rapist: rough justice dispensed by a fellow prisoner. But they were unaware of the pattern it fitted into. Even Sharp did not yet know what had happened that day in Yeovil and what both events seemed to imply. Someone was on to them. Someone had decided to stop their investigation in its tracks. And they were willing to kill to do it.

The trilling of his mobile fractured Umber's thoughts. He answered, guessing it would be Sharp, calling en route from Cambridgeshire. But he had guessed wrong.

'Hello?'

'David? Percy Nevinson here.'

'What can I do for you?'

'I felt I had to call in view of the extraordinary turn of events. You've heard about Radd, I take it?'

'I've heard.'

'Another mouth's been shut, it seems. There's no chance of him withdrawing his confession now, is there? At least this time no-one's in any doubt that it was murder.'

'I can't talk about this, Percy. Not now.'

'I understand your reticence, David. Perhaps you're wondering who to trust in such a situation. I can assure you -'

Umber switched the phone off. He could take no more of Nevinson. The report of Radd's murder was still there, on the television screen. He pressed the standby button on the remote. The screen went blank. He lay back on the bed.

He was not thinking about Radd any more, or the theft of his Junius papers. It was Sally's death five years ago and the circumstances surrounding it that filled his mind.

Umber had been in Turkey when it happened, roasting in the heat of Izmir. Sally had been living in a flat in Hampstead, lent to her by her friend Alice Myers. Late June had not brought tropical conditions to London. And Sally had always felt the cold more than most. The bathroom of the flat was unheated. It was possible to believe – just – that she had trailed a fan heater into the bathroom to warm it. There was a chair close to the bath, on which the coroner theorized she might have stood the heater, then somehow tipped it into the bath as she reached for a towel. Alternatively, she might have deliberately pulled the heater into the bath with her, fully knowing what the consequences would be. That was what most of her friends believed, grateful though they were to the coroner for not concluding as much. The absence of a note and Alice's testimony that Sally had been in better spirits than for some time sufficed for him to give her the benefit of the doubt. No-one had suggested murder, of course. No-one had considered such a possibility, nor looked for evidence of it. The idea would have been dismissed as absurd, not least by Umber. He had felt certain that Sally had taken her own life.

Now, five years later, he was certain of nothing.

He headed out for dinner, the thoughts still running round in his brain. Was it possible? Could Sally have been murdered? 'She must have strayed too close to the truth,' Nevinson had said. Could he be right after all?

From the restaurant, Umber went to the Green Dragon. He had hoped to slink into a quiet corner, but the pub was staging a quiz night and there were no quiet corners. He swallowed one pint and left.

Back at the Ivy House, the receptionist told him Sharp had returned in his absence. He went straight up to Sharp's room.

He could hear a newscaster's voice through the door as he approached. In response to his knock there was a gruffly bellowed 'Come in'.

Sharp looked a weary man, slumped in front of the television with a glass of whisky, waiting for a report on Radd's murder to crop up on Sky News. He muted the sound and poured Umber a generous slug from the bottle of Bell's he had bought somewhere along the road.

'I didn't see this coming, Umber,' he said. 'It never crossed my mind.'

'Child murderers aren't top of anyone's popularity list, George.'

"That's not why he was killed and you know it.'

'I do, yes. You could say I've had… independent confirmation of that.'

Umber described his experiences in Yeovil, keen to have the anticipated outburst of scorn from Sharp over and done with. Drained of much of his pepperiness by his own experiences, however, Sharp merely grunted and growled and rolled his eyes during Umber's account. Then he topped up both their whiskies and switched off the television altogether.

'Shall I tell you where we are, Umber? Out of our bloody depth. That's where.'

'You ought to know I'm beginning to think Sally may have been murdered.'

'Yes. I suppose you were bound to. Which means you won't be prepared to drop it now, will you?'

'I can't.'

'Thought so.' Sharp rasped his hand round his unshaven chin. 'Only you should bear in mind Radd may have been taken out in order to warn us off.'

'I can't let that stop me, George. Not if they killed Sally.'

'All right, then. We go on.'

'You're not going to allow yourself to be… warned off?'