‘No, nothing useful as yet,’ Harry said. ‘And I can’t say that this morning was very helpful either. Nothing but a wild parrot chase, if you ask me. Come along through, Marcus, we’ll all have a bite to eat before you have to rush off back to the shop.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Marcus sounded faintly put out by the inference that he would have to leave. ‘Well, thank you. Lunch would be welcome, yes.’

Harry led the way into the kitchen, Marcus following on behind. Naomi turned her head. ‘Patrick?’

‘Here.’

‘Ah. Parrot chase?’

‘A woman called Mrs Thorpe and an African Grey,’ Patrick said. ‘I’ll tell you all about it in a minute.’

‘In a minute? Oh,’ she said catching on. ‘Something neutral to talk about over lunch, you mean.’

‘I might do.’

Naomi laughed softly. ‘Which means we’ve got something better to discuss when Marcus is safely gone?’

Patrick squeezed her hand in acknowledgement as Marcus himself stuck his head around the door, clearly wondering what was delaying them.

‘Patrick was just telling me about his encounter with a mad woman and a parrot,’ Naomi said.

‘Mad parrot, too,’ Patrick added.

Marcus rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, that’s going to be nothing,’ he said. ‘Not compared to our vicar and uncle what’s-his-name’s treasure buried in the orchard. You know,’ he continued, ushering them into the kitchen, ‘I really don’t understand how Rupert could do all this, listening for hours to other people’s boring little stories, I mean.’

‘Well,’ Naomi said, ‘I think he must have had a certain gift, Marcus. Patrick’s been reading some of his work to me and I’d guess that by the time the stories made their way into one of his books they’d have been Rupertized.’

‘Rupertized!’ Marcus laughed. ‘I like that,’ he said softly and for the first time Patrick looked at him and saw something to like. ‘Yes,’ Marcus went on, ‘I think perhaps Rupe Rupertized his entire little world, and I have to say I think it was a better place for it.’

Twenty-One

Alec had spent a frustrating and tiring afternoon at Colindale, searching the archives for mentions of Kinnear. He had come away with a more complete picture of the man. Kinnear’s career had escalated through the early eighties and he had graduated from committing general mayhem at the behest of others to setting up on his own account.

He’d committed three armed robberies in quick succession, all banks, always with a three-man team. It had been impatience that proved his downfall. Three robberies in as many weeks, and in the same geographical area, had put the banks on high alert. One of Kinnear’s associates had been killed and another wounded during the arrest. Unfortunately, there had been another death. A member of the security team, a man called Fred Ritchie. The news reports called him a ‘have a go hero’, but it was far from clear exactly what he had done. Neither could Alec find a definitive account of who had shot him. Some reports blamed Kinnear, others his dead associate, and yet another suggested he had been caught in the crossfire between the police and the bank robbers.

But it was a name mentioned only once that caught Alec’s eye and which chilled him to the core. A witness to the shooting: a man called Rupert Friedman.

Alec had searched for records of the court case, but found little of use. The trial was only reported in any depth because of the death of Fred Ritchie and by then, almost two years on in the spring of 1982, interest had waned. War in the Falklands knocked just about everything else out of the news and the trial of a couple of armed robbers counted for very little.

Alec returned to his car and made a few calls. The reports had also mentioned the name of the officer in charge of the investigation. It took a little while, and a few favours, but within the hour he had discovered that the officer in charge of the investigation, DS Billy Pierce, had long since retired.

‘I can’t give out his number,’ Alec’s informant, a friend of one of Alec’s acquaintances in the Met, told him, ‘but I can call Bill, see if he’s willing to talk to you.’

Alec agreed and sat back to wait, fighting weariness and wishing he could just drive to a nice hotel and go to sleep.

It was Billy Pierce who called him back. He sounded curious and, Alec thought, slightly wary, but by six fifteen he was knocking on the ex-policeman’s door.

Billy Pierce was greying and almost bald, but he moved with the agility and deliberateness of a much younger man. Alec was tall, but Pierce had a couple of inches on him. His handshake was firm and the grey eyes direct and curious as he invited Alec to come inside.

‘The wife’s away visiting the grandkids,’ he said. ‘Come on through. I’ll make us some tea.’ He led Alec into the kitchen at the rear of the house and indicated he should sit down at the table. ‘We can go into the living room, if you’d rather.’

‘No, I’m fine.’ Alec lowered himself cautiously into the wooden chair. His body ached as though he’d run a marathon in lead boots and been trampled by the rest of the field.

‘You digging into a cold case, or something?’ Pierce asked him.

‘Not exactly, no. It’s a bit more complicated than that.’

Pierce set the kettle to boil and turned to face Alec, arms crossed, leaning comfortably against the counter. ‘Our mutual friend mentioned Sam Kinnear, but didn’t say a lot more. Bit of a blast from the past, I have to say. I’d rather thought he’d be dead by now.’

‘No, definitely alive and still kicking,’ Alec said with feeling. ‘Any particular reason you might think otherwise?’

Pierce shrugged. ‘I suppose because most of them are from back then,’ he said. ‘There was Kinnear and the bloke that got shot on his last bank job … Timkins, I believe the name was. Ivor Holmes who worked door with him, stabbed from what I remember. Clifton something or other, found in the Thames … I could go on. But you’ll get my point.’

‘And was Kinnear implicated in any of those deaths?’ Alec asked.

Bill Pierce snorted. ‘Maybe, maybe not. All unsolved so far as I know. Kinnear was just a member of the same pack.’

‘I’m interested,’ Alec said, ‘in the job you mentioned. The last bank job he did.’

‘Any particular reason?’

Alec hesitated, wondering how much he should reveal. He decided on nothing, yet. ‘There was a witness. A man called Rupert Friedman. Do you remember him?’

Billy Pierce fixed him with that direct grey gaze. ‘You want to tell me why?’

‘I’d rather hear what you have to say first. If you don’t mind.’

Pierce chuckled. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you what I thought. I thought Friedman was in it up to his neck. It always rankled that I could do nothing to prove it.’

Back at Fallowfields the afternoon had been spent examining the journals and the ledgers and the buried laptop.

Lunch had been a surprisingly happy affair, laughing at the eccentricities of the people they had met that morning and particularly Patrick’s account of the parrot. By tacit agreement neither he nor Harry had spoken of the man and boy at the neighbouring farm and they had all been careful to avoid telling Marcus what they had discovered buried in the meadow. It was as though Patrick’s wariness of Marcus was catching and, though Patrick himself could not fully explain from where that uncertainty came, the others were willing to go along with it, for the time being at least.

Harry had been genuinely impressed by what his son had noted in the journals and Patrick returned to the task after lunch, Naomi at his side as he read extracts and together they tried to work out what the numbers and letters meant. It took time, Patrick thought, to get your eye in, but once you had there were more anomalies than he had first thought. The trouble was, none of them seemed connected and on a few occasions he was uncertain as to whether what he saw was a genuine correction, an unintentional mistake or something Rupert had wished to highlight.