The irony made him smile—something he would never have done before meeting Eleanor. A freedom fighter (now, anyway—after all, they were the ones writing the history files) appalled by the use to which his gift of freedom had been put. People…they're such a pain in the arse.

“He's gonna die, isn't he?”

Greg bounced Christine about, enjoying her happy grin at the motion. “Yes, Andy, I think he is.” The young man knew it anyway, just needed to be told by someone else. As if saying it would make it so, would make it his fault.

“I can't believe it. Not him. He's so strong…where it counts, you know.”

“Yeah, I know it. I had to face him down once. Toughest fight in my life.”

“That's my father.” Andy was on the point of tears.

“What happened?” Greg scanned the kibbutz again. “There's no cars here, no traffic.”

Andy's arm was raised, pointing away over the fields toward the road. “There. We found him over there. Helped carry him back myself.”

“Can you show me, please?”

They tramped over the sun-baked mud tracks, moving along the side of the tall fences, a long winding route. Andy was quiet as they walked. Nervous, Greg assumed, after years of being warned of the demon who had captured his big sister.

“This is where we found him,” Andy said eventually.

They were on a stretch of track running between two of the fences. Two hundred meters away toward Oakham was a gate which opened onto the tiny road linking Egleton with the A6003: a hundred meters in the other direction it led out into a paddock with other tracks and footpaths spreading off over the kibbutz land, a regular motorway intersection.

Greg knelt down beside the fence where Andy indicated. A herd of cattle on the other side watched them idly, chewing on the few blades of grass they could find amid the buttercups. The three lower bars of the fence were splintered, bowing inward; and they were thick timber. It had taken a lot of force to cause that much damage. They had some short paint streaks along them, dark blue; a dusting of chrome flakes lay on the mud. Greg stood and tried to work out the angle of the impact. The car or whatever would have had to veer very sharply to dint the fence in such a fashion. It wasn't as though it would be swerving to avoid oncoming traffic.

“Was he right up against the fence?” Greg asked.

“Yeah, almost underneath it when we found him.”

“Did he say what happened?”

“Not much. Just that the car was big, and it had its headlights on full. Then it hit him, he got trapped between it and the fence.”

“Headlights? Was it nighttime?”

“No. It was early evening, still light.”

“Did anyone else see it happen?”

“No. We started searching when he didn't turn up for evening chapel. It was dark by then; didn't find him till after ten.”

“What about the car?” Greg indicated the gate onto the road. “It must have come from that direction, where was it going?”

“Don't know. Didn't come to us; haven't had no visitors for a while. We're the only ones that use this bit of track. It's the quickest way out to the road.”

“What do you use on the road?”

“We've got bicycles. And a cart; horse pulls it to market most days. We sell vegetables and eggs. People still like fresh food instead of that chemical convenience packet rubbish.”

“Okay, so the car must have reversed away and got back onto the road afterward. So was your father on a bike?”

“No.” Andy shook his head ruefully. “He didn't even like them. Said: God gave us feet, didn't he? He always walked into town.”

“Do you know what he was doing in town that day?”

“Gone to see the solicitor.”

“What the hell did Noel want with a solicitor?”

“It's a bad business been happening here. A man came a month or so back. Said he wanted to build a leisure complex on the shore, right where we are. He offered us money, said that it wasn't really our land anyway and he'd help us find somewhere else to live. What kind of a man is that to disrespect us so? We built this place. It's ours by any law that's just and true.”

“Right,” Greg said. Now probably wasn't the best time to lecture Andy on the kind of abuses which the local PSP Land Rights committees had perpetrated against private landowners. Nevertheless, expelling a farmer from his land so it could be handed over to a tribe of Bible-thumpers was a minor violation compared to some of the practices he'd heard of. The Party had been overthrown in one final night of mass civil disobedience and well-planned acts of destruction by underground groups, but the problems it had created hadn't gone with it. “So what did Noel want with a solicitor?”

“He kept coming back, that man, after we said we wouldn't go. Said he'd have us evicted like so many cattle. Said everyone around here would be glad to see us go, that we were Party, so we'd best make it easy for ourselves. Dad wasn't having none of that. We have rights, he said. He went and found a solicitor who'd help us. Seeing as how we'd been here so long, we're entitled to appeal to the court for a ruling of post-acquisition compensation. Means we'd have to pay the farmer whose land it was. But that way we wouldn't have to leave. It would cost us plenty. We'd have to work hard to raise that much money, but we ain't afraid of hard work.”

“I see.” Greg looked down at the broken sections of fence, understanding now what had really happened here. “What is this man's name, the one who wants you off?”

“Richard Townsend, he's a property developer lives in Oakham.”

“You think Townsend had my father run down?” Eleanor asked. They were sitting out on the farmhouse's newly laid patio, looking across the southern branch of Rutland Water. Citrus groves covered the peninsula's slope on both sides of the house's grounds, the young trees fluttering their silky verdant leaves in the breeze. Phalanxes of swans and signets glided past on the dark water, their serenity only occasionally broken by a speeding windsurfer.

“It's the obvious conclusion,” Greg said bitterly. “Noel was the center of opposition, the one they all follow. Without him they might just keep the legal challenge going but their heart won't be in it. For all his flaws, he was bloody charismatic.”

“You mean intimidating.”

“Call it what you like; he was the one they looked to. And now…”

She closed her eyes, shuddering. “He won't last another day, Greg. I don't think it would make any difference now, even if we could get him into hospital.”

She hadn't talked much about her father's condition since they had arrived back at the farmhouse at midday. The morning's events were taking time to assimilate. She had done what she could with the medicines in the first-aid kit, easing the worst of his pain. He had pretended indifference when she said she would return later. It didn't convince anyone. Her ambivalence was a long way from being resolved. It had been a very wide rift.

“Townsend won't have done it personally,” Greg said. “There'll be a perfect alibi with plenty of witnesses while whoever he hired drove the car. But he won't be able to hide guilt from me during the interview.”

“That won't work, darling,” she said sadly. “It still takes a lot for a jury to be convinced by a psychic's evidence. And you're hardly impartial in this case. A novice barrister on her first case would have you thrown out of court.”

“Okay. I accept that. We need some solid evidence to convict him.”

“Where are you going to get that from? You don't even really know for certain that it was Townsend. You can hardly interrogate him privately and then tell the police what he's done and ask them to follow it up.”

“The car is evidence,” Greg said. “Andy called in an official hit-and-run report from Egleton's phonebox. I'll start with that.”