She paused to switch her phone back on and found she had a missed call: Marcus.

Of course, she hadn’t told him what had happened to Alec.

Once in the taxi she called him back. ‘Are we still on for Fallowfields today?’ he wanted to know.

She had, she realized, forgotten all about the promised search. To be reminded now was irrationally and absurdly irritating. ‘No,’ she told him. ‘It won’t be possible.’ Quickly and perhaps more acerbically than his enquiry had warranted, she told him why.

Marcus was shocked; she could hear it in his voice, but to her astonishment, once he had expressed his horror and his sympathy he asked again, ‘So we won’t be going to Fallowfields today?’

‘No, Marcus. Frankly, that’s the last thing on my mind just now.’

‘Naomi dear, if you gave me the key, I could make a start. One less job for you.’

Naomi frowned. ‘For one thing, Marcus, it isn’t just a question of the key. The police secured the doors and windows. It will take more than a key to get in. For another, I’d much rather wait until Alec is up and about before we do anything more.’

Silence on the other end of the phone. She could feel Marcus working out what to say next. Why so impatient? she wondered. What was so important?

‘Marcus? Are you still there?’

‘Of course. I’m sorry, of course. You must be too concerned about Alec to want the bother of such secondary things.’

‘I’ll call you, let you know.’

‘Problems?’ Patrick asked as she rang off.

‘I don’t know,’ Naomi told him, wondering at the tension in Marcus’s voice. It came to her again that there was something Marcus wasn’t telling.

Seventeen

Two days later they returned en mass to Fallowfields. Harry had been as good as his word. New locks secured the front door and the French windows had been reinforced and re-glazed with a deadbolt added.

‘Best we could do with that.’ Harry was apologetic. ‘Anything more would have meant replacing the entire lot and that’s a major undertaking. Be a shame, anyway, to take the French windows away and replace them with one of those patio things.’

Naomi stepped out on to the terrace. She listened to the garden noises as she had on the day the men had broken in. Somehow, she had expected them to have changed, to have registered the aggression and violence that had interrupted the peace of this garden, but the birds sang and the trees whispered and the scent of roses continued to fragrance the air. She breathed deep and tried to relax.

She hadn’t wanted to come back here and her palms felt clammy, sweat trickled down into the waistband of her linen trousers. Her head felt as though a band had been tightened around it; a band with extendable rods that reached down to press upon her shoulders.

‘We started to clear up the mess,’ Patrick said, ‘but we only did enough to make the floor safe for Napoleon. There was broken glass and stuff.’

Napoleon, Naomi smiled, not her. Patrick had his priorities right.

‘We thought we should leave it in case the stuff they chucked about might give us a clue to what they were looking for.’

‘Did they go upstairs?’ Marcus asked.

‘Um, yes,’ Harry said. ‘Into the study.’

‘The study?’ Naomi was puzzled. ‘No, the police arrived. They didn’t have time to get into the study.’

‘Which means they came back later.’ Alec’s tone was flat, emotionless. He had been discharged the evening before and spent a restless night at the hotel. He was still in pain from his ribs, Naomi knew, but more than that, he’d had time for the implications of the attack to sink in and to consider what might have happened to Naomi had the police not arrived.

He was not a happy man.

‘Fine didn’t know about the second break-in?’

‘Fine secured the place as best he could but he didn’t have the resources to keep anyone on watch. Harry, did you notice anything when you got here? Was the place secure?’

‘The front was and the side gate. To be truthful I didn’t take a good look round the back. DS Fine sorted out the locksmith and the carpenter and I just waited for them to arrive and left them to it. I mean, I did stay, but I sat in the car and listened to the radio, I’m afraid. I didn’t like to, you know, go inside until I had you with me.’

Harry and his old fashioned sensibilities, Naomi thought.

‘Well, we should let Reg Fine know,’ Alec said. ‘And meantime, everyone keep out of the study. I doubt there’ll be prints but you never know.’

‘But the study …’ Marcus began. ‘Surely that is likely to be … Anyway, don’t you already have prints from that terrible man?’

‘We’ve identified one,’ Alec said. ‘We know there were two. Until the crime scene investigator’s had another chance to look around we keep out.’

‘What state’s the kitchen in?’ Naomi asked. ‘If Patrick gives me a hand I’ll make us all some coffee.’

Setting Napoleon free to wander in the garden, she and Patrick made their way back through the dining room and into the kitchen. She could hear Alec taking charge and allocating tasks. ‘Watch the steps,’ she told Patrick. ‘The kitchen is on a slightly lower level.’ She reflected that to an outsider it might sound odd to be giving that advice to a sighted person but she knew Patrick. He’d grown fast lately and seemed not to have worked out yet where his newly extended limbs ended. She closed the door behind them.

‘Open the back door, will you, Patrick. Let some fresh air in. Then you can tell me what you don’t like about our friend Marcus.’

Patrick laughed. She heard him release the bolts on the heavy door. ‘They didn’t come through here anyway,’ he said.

‘Good to know.’ She found the kettle, filled it. ‘We’ll need extra mugs. Second cupboard on the right. No, your other right. So, Marcus?’

She heard him open the cupboard and remove china, placing it on the counter with extra care. ‘I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘It’s just a feeling. I don’t think he’s actually lying and I really do think he’s cut up about Rupert dying and he’s genuinely afraid that it was foul play …’

‘But?’

‘But. Big but …’ Patrick paused as though thinking it through.

He was good at reading people, Naomi thought. He wasn’t so good at taking notice of what he read, but there was nothing wrong with his actual perception.

‘I don’t think he’s saying everything. I think he knows … knew about those men before Rupert died and that’s really what made him suspicious, what scared him. And I think he’s very scared, Naomi. I think he’s trying very hard to hide it but I think if he thought he could get away with it he’d have skipped the country well before now.’

‘Skipped the country?’ She was amused by his choice of phrase. Then more seriously she asked, ‘So, what’s stopping him, I wonder?’

‘You agree with me?’ He sounded surprised.

‘I think I do. Question is, why he is hiding what he knows.’

‘He’s more scared of them than he is of you.’

‘Fair enough. Except he’s never encountered Alec, not when he’s got the bit between his teeth. Next question is, did he get Rupert involved with them or was Rupert the link?’

‘Rupert,’ Patrick said with confidence. ‘Bet you a fiver.’

She nodded. Much as she disliked the thought of damaging Alec’s rosy memories of his uncle, she felt pretty sure that Patrick was right.

The day passed slowly and inconclusively. It would have helped, Patrick observed, if they had any idea what they were looking for.

By the time Marcus had left it was after four. SOCO had been and gone, their promptness leading Alec to comment that either Reg Fine had pulled a lot of strings or that this must be an amazingly crime-free county. Patrick and Naomi had joined the search, Patrick describing what he found, Naomi telling him whether to return it to where he’d found it, or to keep it to add to the growing stack of documents and notebooks Alec had gathered on the kitchen table.