Rainstone Fall

Chapter Seven

‘This is a seriously naff idea, Chris,’ was the considered Bigwood opinion, forcefully expressed the next afternoon in my little attic office. Tim shook his head. ‘I know nothing about this Telfer guy but if he’s a heavy hoodlum like you say then cleaning him out isn’t the healthy option.’

‘Which is probably why they’re blackmailing us into doing it,’ Annis told him.

I held the receiver out to him. ‘So, would you like to tell Jill we’re chickening out because it’s unhealthy?’

‘Hey, hey, I didn’t say I’m not going to help.’ Tim made dampening motions with his hands. ‘I’m just having a moan, all right? I’m not in this for my health. Remind me, Chris, what am I in this for? Best not answer that. So who exactly is Telfer and who is doing the arm-twisting?’

‘I’ve no idea who set us up. I didn’t recognize the voice. But the goon was short- tempered and had skipped charm school. The voice was very distant and scratchy, which might of course have been deliberate. “Caller withheld number”, as one might expect, and definitely a mobile or a satellite phone, a hint of warble. There’s no way we could trace it. Even the police could have trouble doing that. I dare say they’d try but there’s a waiting list and all they’d probably find is a cheap mobile in a skip somewhere. Because if you plan a caper like this then you get yourself twenty stolen mobiles and chuck each one on a passing dustcart after you’ve made your call, or simply drop it in the river.’

‘Do you have any suspicions?’

I didn’t. It came out of the blue. It could be anyone, anywhere. The boy could be long dead, the phone call could have been made from a poolside lounger of a villa on the Costa Brava for all I knew and there was little I could do except comply. I shook my head. ‘Could be anyone but they’re quite ruthless and they thought it out well. They obviously know all about Aqua Investigations and what kind of a rep we have. And they didn’t kidnap one of us so that we’d have a full team to play with.’

Tim ran a hand over his eyes and seemed to come to some kind of conclusion. He sat up straighter. ‘Okay, so who exactly is this Telfer guy?’

‘We’re talking about Barry here,’ said Annis. ‘His brother Keith got put away for aggravated this and that last spring.’

‘What did he get, just out of interest?’ Tim asked.

‘Five years.’

‘Out by Christmas,’ all three of us bleated in unison.

‘On the surface they’re successful businessmen,’ Annis continued. ‘Proud, self-made men, a bit uncouth and ostentatious, a bit too loud and badly dressed in an expensive way. Bad taste in women and cars — ’

‘What’s bad taste in cars?’ I interrupted.

‘Yellow.’

‘Quite right.’

‘Anyway, they run scrap yards and hire out heavy plant, diggers, bulldozers, rollers, etc., but they probably also hire out heavy muscle and apparently scrap cars they shouldn’t, like shiny new Mercs wot don’t belong to them.’

‘And for committed capitalists they have a curious attitude to competition as a regulator of price: they don’t seem to like it at all. That’s how little brother Keith got himself nabbed, trying to stamp out the competition. With hobnail boots and a baseball bat. Brother Barry is no slouch in the casual violence department either, I hear, and he never goes anywhere without one or two heavies. No children, which is probably just as well, and last thing I heard his wife ran off with one of his bodyguards but she didn’t get far and the goon was never heard of again.’

‘Charming family. And we’re relieving them of whatever’s in their safe? I hope you bought us all open tickets to Mumbai for afters. So where does this bundle of fun keep his baubles?’

‘Chez Telfer, up in Lansdown. In his safe.’ I dropped the ‘safe’ delicately at the end. Tim often complained that I was leading him astray when he’d been going straight for years but secretly he couldn’t wait to get his hands on a strongbox again. He missed it. He missed the frisson, the challenge of pitting his wits and gadgets against a safe. No gas axe or Semtex for Tim. He looked more interested already.

I walked to the map by the side of the door. The other two followed and I pointed to roughly where I remembered the house to be. ‘Big place somewhere round here, overlooking Charlcombe Valley.’

‘Okay, what are we waiting for then?’ Tim pulled me away by the sleeve. ‘Get your binoculars and take me there.’

Despite the obvious dangers of the project I couldn’t help feeling the current of excitement that crackled inside Tim’s car as he slowly drove his Audi TT along the narrow Charlcombe Lane. Annis had chosen the back seat and had an elbow each on the backrests of our seats. She was humming to herself. I was cradling the big binoculars and Tim was happily twiddling buttons on his modified dashboard. From the outside Tim’s car appeared like any other black Audi TT but inside it had acquired a lot more dials and gadgets than were strictly necessary for the purpose of locomotion. The thing looked like it had been kitted out by Q and vertical take-off wouldn’t have surprised me much.

‘Stop here,’ I told him as we came to a row of low white cottages on our left. We had come up the lane from the Larkhall side and just beyond the last cottage the view opened up across the little valley. Tim pulled into the drive of the deserted-looking place and we got out. I handed him the bins and pointed up at the hill on the opposite side.

‘See the large cuboid thing high above Charlcombe Manor? That’s it.’

He trained the binoculars at the hillside. ‘Ehm. . quite. . gloomy over there.’

I reached up and took the plastic lens caps off for him.

‘Ah, much clearer like that,’ he agreed. ‘Oh yeah, got it. Ugly place. Mostly glass and concrete. Big, though, and the garden is massive. . high hedges all around. . one hell of a slope. No immediate neighbours. What’s it like on the other side?’

‘Much the same,’ I said. ‘A private little road, maybe a couple of hundred yards long between hedgerows. I’ve driven past the turn-off but have never been near the actual place.’

‘Definitely a night job. Look at all that glass, they’d have to be blind not to see us coming. That’s probably why they bought the place.’ He checked his watch. ‘Dark soon, we’ll go and have a closer look then.’

Annis took her turn at the binoculars. ‘Best way is up through the fields, I reckon. We’ll have to find out what the routine is up at the house.’ She handed the bins to me. ‘Did you mention something about Thursday?’

‘Yes, the voice said he’s playing cards at the Blathwayt Arms, the pub by the race course.’ I put the glasses to my eyes and had a good look at the Telfer house. Tim was right, there was an awful lot of glass, all along the ground floor, facing the garden, then the wrap-around terrace on the first floor was backed by enormous picture windows set between strips of concrete. With all that glass, how difficult could it be to get in there? The garden was very large, giving ample space around the house. There were trees and island beds and ponds, lots of places to hide but also a lot of ground to cover before you got anywhere near the house proper.

‘Okay, if Thursday is a good day we’ll do it Thursday. It’s Sunday now, that gives us three days to get ourselves organized,’ Tim suggested.

I let the glasses wander downhill from the property. A long line of hedgerow, a couple of solitary oaks, a few fences, three grey horses and a man with binoculars. Looking straight at me. A man wearing some kind of hat and a waxed jacket. Could have been a bird watcher. Could have been that the menace of this solitary figure, which transmitted itself right across the valley, was all in my mind. Yet it sent my heart hammering with sudden anxiety. I took the glasses away from my eyes to get the context. There seemed to be nobody else up there. I looked through the glasses again. By the time I found him once more he was disappearing behind a stand of trees just above the manor.

‘Something stinks,’ I concluded eloquently.

‘You think this is a trap of some sort?’ Annis asked.

‘I don’t know what I’m thinking yet,’ I admitted. ‘Just now I thought I saw a bloke watching us from the other side of the valley. The whole thing is just weird. Let’s not do anything too predictable. Let’s come back later.’

They grumbled but let me herd them into the car. On the way back to Mill House we bounced around ideas about how to get into Telfer’s place but I had infected us all with my feelings of doom. What excitement there had been was gone. It had all turned back into the dangerous job of rescuing Jill’s son, and secretly I was glad of this. We might all be a bit more careful if we had a little less fun.

Nightfall. While Annis and I changed into black clothes and trainers we wondered about the kidnapping. How did you pick a victim? Was it really random? How did he get to know about Jill and Louis in the first place? What were the criteria for a useful victim? The same as always, we decided — vulnerability, isolation, powerlessness, loneliness. Unemployed single mother was a perfect fit.

It only slightly worried me that Tim, who hadn’t known what this was about when he came over, had found in the boot of his car a convenient set of black clothing to change into, including a pair of black trainers I’d never seen him wear before. It did sometimes cross my mind that I had no way of knowing just how retired a safe breaker he really was, despite his protestations that it was only me who led him astray from the path of righteousness he chose when he wrote himself a fantasy CV and started working for Bath Uni.

We set off into the dark in Tim’s car. All the way there, when we spoke at all, we did so in hushed voices, as though we needed to practise stealth. This time I made Tim approach from the opposite side, up Lansdown, turn off right when the watchful spire of St Steven’s suddenly loomed, and drive slowly along the narrow and unlit lane until it briefly widened near Charlcombe Manor.

We left the car squeezed against the steep bank and all got out of the driver door into the cool, dark silence. I found a few stone steps leading up the hill and in the absence of anything better stomped up those as though I knew where I was going. The slithery steps soon stopped and turned into an uneven narrow path that ended at a stile in a wooden fence. We clambered over and found ourselves in a plantation of young trees. Every nine feet in any direction stood a spindly tree tied to a stout stake. We used the stakes to pull ourselves up the steep slope into the hill fog. Once through the narrow belt of saplings we came to another barrier, this one an overgrown fence of wire strung between wooden posts. We scrambled over as best we could with as little use of our torches as possible. Thick cloud obscured the stars. The only illumination came from the reflected glow of the city beyond the hills, which allowed just enough light to see which way was up. We hadn’t gone far into the meadow before the rain started its maddening dance again. I headed for the dark line of the hedgerow to my left. It ran uphill in an unsteady diagonal which I hoped would bring us within yards of Telfer’s property. With the rain tap-dancing on the hood of my rainproof I led us in a puffing and squelching trudge uphill until a deeper darkness loomed in front.

I let the others catch up with their breathless leader. ‘This is it. That’s the hedge. . that runs round. . the entire property. Let’s walk round to the right.’

Soon the house itself came into view above the line of vegetation, a silhouette like a decapitated pyramid. There were lights on upstairs beyond the picture windows behind what had to be enormous blinds or curtains. We moved quietly now, probing for openings in the hedge. It was impossible to make out what it consisted of in the dark but it was prickly stuff. The house was still a good forty yards uphill when Tim stopped us. ‘I think I found our way in.’

I risked a brief flash from my torch. A narrow opening in the bottom of the hedge, no bigger than a foot-and-a-half in diameter. ‘Rabbit tunnel. Bit small for me,’ I concluded but Tim was already down there. He produced a pair of secateurs from his pockets and went to work on the opening, widening it, moving in.

‘I pass the stuff back, you put it in heaps to carry away later,’ he whispered.

I got the distinct feeling that Tim had done this before. Annis and I dutifully pulled away what he passed out to us and cursed quietly as thorns and prickly leaves pierced our fingers through our gloves.

Eventually Tim backed out again. ‘I’m through. There was a fence in there once but most of it’s rusted away. Who wants to explore?’

‘You guys go,’ Annis whispered. ‘I’ll get rid of the cuttings in the hedgerow and snuffle round the outside a bit more.’

‘Okay, I’ll go with Tim. If you hear any commotion, don’t come in, get away,’ I advised her and got down on all fours. Immediately my hands were pricked by the debris of the cuttings. As I crawled into the dark scratchiness of the hedge I tried not to think of rabbit droppings and to work out instead when I’d had my last tetanus jab. Despite Tim’s pruning expertise my face was scratched by the time I got out the other side. Our tunnel opened on to a long border, five or six feet wide and full of dripping evergreens standing in mud. The house, uphill to our right, showed a diffused glow on the ground floor and the light escaping from the edges of curtains upstairs gave it the impression of a partly obscured glass lantern. Enough illumination spilled into the enormously long garden to see that the upper half had been terraced, with rectangular ponds or pools on each level. Clumps of dwarf conifers and tall grasses looked grey and dispirited, as though no one had told them they were back in fashion.

‘After you, boss,’ Tim invited. I waddled up the slope in a duck walk to the next island bed. Even though I had my hood down in an effort to hear something beyond the drumming of raindrops I couldn’t make out anything apart from the rain slanting into the stone-bordered, weed-choked pool to my left. We made it to the next level of the garden unmolested. My biggest fear was a patrolling Dobermann or two but who would send a dog out in this? We were still at least twenty-five yards from the back of the house. I was just about to waddle on when the garden erupted into ice-bright light. I fell flat on my face and scrabbled backwards to the incomplete shelter of a stand of pampas grass. Tim was already there. ‘We set off the security light,’ I hissed. ‘What now?’

‘I don’t think we did,’ he hissed back. ‘We weren’t actually moving when it came on.’

For a moment it seemed that nothing else would happen. Then I heard faint footsteps. I lifted my head and risked a look. A bulky figure had appeared on the top terrace, pacing first one way, then the other, then it came down the first set of broad stone steps that led to the next level down. When he reached our level I could see he was a big bloke in his twenties, squinting against the rain and looking decidedly unhappy. He made straight for the water feature on the other side of the grasses we were hiding behind. I had a view from below him now as he stood by the pool just fifteen feet away from me. If he didn’t spot us it would be a miracle. But then it appeared he wasn’t really looking any more. ‘Come on,’ he chanted into the rain, rocking on his heels. ‘Come oooooon.’ Eventually the security light went off. ‘Thank fuck for that,’ he offered up fervently. In the fresh darkness I could make out his silhouette against the glimmer from the house. He bent down and fished round at the edge of the pool for a moment, then lifted out a bottle. He shook it, uncapped it, took a draught and let it plop back into the water. A noisy sniff, hawk and spit into the pond seemed to complete the ritual since he turned back towards the house, triggering the security light again as he set foot on to the steps to the next level of the garden.

I dared breathe again. ‘That was close. Now what? We can’t get to the house without triggering the lights and bringing one of Telfer’s goons out here.’

‘We don’t need to. Let’s check the pond life instead.’

We squatted by the side of the pool and I did the honours. The water was icy and slimy at the same time. My hand closed on the neck of a bottle and I lifted it up. It was half full. It was too dark to read the label. I unscrewed the top and sniffed. It was vodka, just as I had expected; all secret drinkers imagined that sober people couldn’t smell it.

‘That’s our way in,’ Tim assured me. ‘Put it back where you found it and let’s get out of here the way we came.’

I got thoroughly snagged and scratched on the way out again and was glad when I found myself back in the meadow. Annis was there, apologizing. ‘Sorry about the security light, that was me. I thought I’d found an easier way in when I got to a service gate.’

‘Tut. But we’d only have set it off ourselves anyway and we got away with it. Tim even thinks he knows how to get in now.’

‘Yeah? How?’

‘Well, it depends heavily on me not getting pneumonia so let’s get back to civilization and I’ll tell you.’

Next morning in my kitchen I contemplated how the things that made us feel civilized varied greatly from person to person; with Annis it was going to the theatre, in Tim’s case anything with lots of mayo did the trick. What made me feel civilized was a leisurely breakfast, preferably involving hot croissant, smoked salmon, a five-minute egg and no police. One day I would manage it.

I could hear them crunch their wheels, braking hard in the yard, and knew it meant trouble. Far too early for a friendly chat. Annis hadn’t put in an appearance downstairs yet and I hoped she had the sense to keep it that way. Knowing his way around the place Needham sent someone to every door but the hammering came from the front. No one knocks like the fuzz. You just can’t ignore it, whether your croissants are burning in the oven or not. I did a quick mental check, remembered that my shotgun had been stolen and my handgun confiscated, and walked confidently towards my front door with the traditional ‘All right all right, no need to break it down.’

Apparently there was. It flew open as a large uniformed constable shouldered through. Immediately behind him came a large Needham in Superintendent mode with a look capable of withering any gumshoe wisecracks I might have in mind. As it happened I wasn’t good at that kind of thing before breakfast.

‘Chris Honeysett, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder,’ he rattled off. ‘You do not have to say anything but I must warn you that it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely upon in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. What’s that smell?’

‘Two “all-butter” croissants dying in the oven.’

‘All right: kitchen.’ He waved me on. ‘You don’t touch a thing,’ he warned me off. ‘Constable, get the damn croissants out of the oven, we don’t want them catching fire.’

The constable did his bidding and left the baking tray on the top of the stove. The croissants looked just about edible, I thought, and my stomach growled in agreement.

‘Right, let’s go.’

I took a last hungry look at my breakfast table — cafetière of coffee, a perfectly cooked speckled egg, the smoked salmon waiting for the croissant — and let myself be pushed out of the house.

‘Is this about the old geezer in my car?’ We were being driven by a plain-clothed, plain-faced policeman into town.

‘This is about the murder victim in your car. So save it. Grimshaw still your solicitor?’

‘Do I really need her, Mike?’

‘You’ve just been arrested for murder, Chris, and it’s Superintendent Needham until I tell you otherwise.’ Once, over a few beers, Needham had offered first-name terms and had probably regretted it ever since.

At Manvers Street police station they asked me a lot of questions they knew the answers to already, searched me half-heartedly, took my mobile away and made me wait in an overheated interview room with an elective-mute constable standing by the door. I sat and worked on changing my thirty-a-day habit into a fifty-a-day habit until the door opened and Needham and DS Sorbie turned up with their files and tapes. Sorbie scrabbled the cellophane wrapping off a new tape and did the preliminaries. When the tape recorder stopped bleeping he sat down next to Needham opposite me, told the tape who, when and what, and the ping-pong started.

‘Your solicitor is on her way,’ Needham said. ‘But since you’re happy to start without her. .’

‘What makes you suddenly think it was murder?’ I asked.

‘I don’t suddenly think, Honeysett, the pathologist and forensics tell me. The victim did collide with your car. Whilst riding his electric bicycle. We found the crumpled remains of it hidden under some bushes beside the Lam brook, a few hundred yards from where we found your car. But Prof Meyers’ report says you hit him on the head, then ran him over.’

‘Prof Meyers said no such thing. Professor Earnshaw Meyers probably said something like, “The victim suffered a blow to the head prior to being involved in an accident” or some such carefully worded thing, but did he tell you what killed him? The blow to the head or the accident? Did you find any fingerprints on the bike?’

‘We ask the questions, Mr Honeysett,’ Sorbie suggested with forced boredom in his voice. It wasn’t very convincing. Like this entire arrest thing. Needham on the other hand was a good actor. It was always difficult to unravel his ultimate motives, that’s what made him such a dangerous cop if you sat on the wrong side of the table. Which is where I spent most of my time. But I had the distinct impression that Sorbie’s heart wasn’t really in it. Ignoring him I asked Needham: ‘Have you traced the minicab driver who took me home yet?’

‘Of course not, because there’s no such creature.’

‘There is, but he’s not going to admit to picking up an illegal fare in the street without prior booking. He could get fired or lose his licence.’ Memories of my way home that night were far too hazy to remember what company the cab belonged to or what the driver might have looked like. I couldn’t even remember the make or colour of the car. No minicab driver, no alibi. No alibi, no croissant for breakfast. For an awfully long time. Something had to be done.

The door opened behind me and some kind of signal was exchanged because Needham picked up his file. ‘Your solicitor is here.’

As if to confirm this a clear, precise voice demanded: ‘I’d like to talk to my client alone, if you don’t mind.’

Sorbie did the ‘interview suspended’ palaver for the tape and followed his boss out of the room as my solicitor took a seat opposite me, setting her briefcase beside her on the floor.

There was nothing at all grim about Kate Grimshaw, in fact she was good to look at: she looked a young fifty, had a well-cut face to match her well-cut charcoal grey suit; hair dyed black, red and gold and cut very short; rather forbidding grey eyes, though. Just looking at her made me feel young again. About five, I’d say.

‘All right, Honeysett, start babbling at me like an overexcited infant protesting his innocence in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.’

‘You misjudge me, as usual.’ I lit another cigarette to dampen down the hunger that kicked about in my stomach, then I rattled off the whole story: Heather and Cairn’s attempt to hire me; the mysterious men Cairn thought he’d heard threaten to let someone called Albert have an accident; how much of that I’d told Needham; what they had told me and the fact that I had missed out on breakfast. I might have laboured that last point a bit.

‘My heart bleeds for you. Is this the story you want them to believe or me to believe?’

‘It’s what happened,’ I protested.

‘All right then. So no weapon has been found, certainly none with your prints on it. Someone stole your car and used it to run over the old dear, it happens all the time. There’s nothing to link you to the victim apart from the car you reported stolen and the police have been negligent in finding your cab driver. They haven’t got a snowball’s chance of keeping you here. As usual I can’t believe you even talked to the police without me. And for the second time! You really must like it in here. When will you learn? I know you rate Superintendent Needham highly but all the same: say nothing and call me. How often must I tell you?’ She waved my cigarette smoke away irritably.

‘That’s fine for you to say. Has anyone ever told you how much you charge?’

‘You can pay me in paintings,’ she said, dismissing my point.

‘Paintings? Tings? Plural? Your fees have gone up.’

‘A pair, forty by eighty inches, predominantly blue.’

‘Predominantly blue?’ I huffed. ‘I don’t do interior decorating.’

‘And I don’t do charity work. Please don’t go all injured artistic soul on me, Chris, a) you can’t afford it and b) I know you’d happily exchange one of your paintings for a roast turbot if one came along.’

She was right, of course. I agreed and twenty minutes later I went and collected my mobile phone from Sergeant Hayes at the desk while Grimshaw waited impatiently by the exit. The relief of getting out of there must have shown on my face.

‘Don’t know what you’ve got to smile about,’ Hayes grunted as he made me sign for my phone. ‘It’s much safer in here than out there.’

‘Yes, but the tea is lousy.’

‘There is that,’ he agreed and walked off to file the receipt.

Once back outside in the drizzle Grimshaw and I shook hands. ‘Keep me informed of any new developments, will you? Don’t wait until they pull you in again.’ She pointed her key. A racing-green Jaguar in the station car park flashed its sidelights.

‘What makes you think there’ll be developments?’

‘That hungry look on your face, it means you’re off to get yourself into trouble,’ she said over her shoulder.

‘Talking of which, you couldn’t give me a lift to trouble, could you?’

‘Certainly not. There’s a taxi rank around the corner. Take some free advice, Chris,’ she said as she got into her car. ‘Go home. Start painting.’ Then she got into her car and drove off at fifty quid a minute.

It was good advice and free and it was tempting. While I walked I got out my mobile and noted that it needed charging, which almost certainly meant some copper had played around with it while I was in there. I called Griffin’s, the insurers, and asked for Haarbottle.

‘Ah, Honeysett, have you nailed him?’

‘Nailed him? You’re watching too many cop shows. Now, I have followed Lane every waking minute over the past few days,’ I lied, ‘as you will see from my invoice and there’s not the slightest hint that he is anything but genuine.’

‘Rubbish. Keep at it. I know he’s faking it, I can feel it in my waters.’

‘I don’t want to know about your waters. I’m standing in the rain as it is.’ I was grateful I’d never felt anything in my waters. If I ever did I’d see a doctor about it. I had really hoped to rid myself of this job. With DI Deeks interested in Lane and some DC called Howell traipsing after him — and just possibly me as well — this didn’t spell fun. But then there were roofers to be paid. ‘Look, I don’t feel right taking Griffin’s money when there probably won’t be a result at the end. Just how much are you prepared to fork out for this?’

‘Oh no, I’m not falling for that one. I’m not allowed to tell you that, otherwise that’ll be exactly the sum you’ll charge us. Give it another week, then we’ll call it off. Think of something. Be inventive. He has to slip up sometime. I just know it.’

‘Do you realize it hasn’t stopped raining since I took this job? I’m thinking of charging you extra for work in inclement weather.’

‘Get a brolly,’ said Haarbottle and hung up.

At the taxi rank I realized I had no money on me. Well, I’d be able to pay the driver at home.

This time I made mental notes on the make of car (Mercedes), the taxi firm (Sulis) and the back of the driver’s head (square). I wedged myself into the corner of the back seat, absentmindedly took out a cigarette and lit it without even noticing I’d done so until the driver got agitated. ‘Hey, there’s no smoking, all right? Nuff signs everywhere.’

I apologized and chucked the cigarette out of the window with a pang of regret. I’d be smoking in my sleep soon. When we splashed into the yard at Mill House I asked him to wait so I could get enough money to pay the extortionate fare. I ran through the rain to the front door. It was locked. I felt for my keys and remembered I hadn’t brought them, so I gave the bell-pull a workout despite the fact that Annis’s Land Rover was missing. I just didn’t want to believe the way the day was going. I made apologetic gestures towards the cab driver and walked round to the kitchen door. Locked. When I got back to the front the driver had got out of the car. Cab drivers hate getting out of the car. ‘Problems?’ he asked.

‘Didn’t bring my keys,’ I explained. ‘I expected someone to be in.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘It’s no problem though.’ If a mere constable could do it then so could I. I took a short run at it and rammed the door open with my shoulder. Just like in the movies, except in the movies no one ever hopped about afterwards rubbing their sore shoulder and cursing like their Tourette’s had just kicked in. Right then. . money. I hunted round in a couple of jackets without result.

The driver was standing in the door, eyeing me doubtfully. ‘You do live here, right?’

In the end I had to pay him in small change scraped together from a gherkin jar full of silver and copper coins I kept on top of the fridge and he was not a happy man when he drove off. At least, should anyone else have got themselves bumped off in the meantime, he would definitely remember driving me home.

In the kitchen I opened the bread bin: empty. There was no sign of my abandoned breakfast. I opened the fridge: no smoked salmon left. There was a note from Annis by the kettle.

Gone shopping, there isn’t a thing to eat in the house.