We broke up around noon with an agreement that I’d sit in on the next production meeting, on Thursday, and go over my duties with Adrian in more detail afterwards. I told them I’d be handing in my resignation from the Commission as soon as I got back to Brussels: I was hoping to negotiate an early release, but would be with them by November at the latest. Everything sounded perfectly straightforward. And for the first time since seeing Louise Paxton’s face in my mother’s newspaper, I forgot about Hergest Ridge and the killings at Whistler’s Cot altogether.

But I wasn’t to be allowed to do so for long. Simon caught up with me in the corridor and invited me to an early lunch, by which he meant a two-hour soak at his favourite watering-hole, the Old Drum, in Chapel Street. Ordinarily, I’d have excused myself, not sharing his liking for thick-headed afternoons or caring much for the diatribes against Joan he usually embarked on when he’d had a few. But we were both indulging the long-lost brothers routine and I had nothing to get back to Greenhayes for, so I let him lead the way.

Only to be hijacked, before I’d swallowed my first mouthful of Burton bitter, by his hoarse whisper: “Bit of a coinkidinky, you being in Kington when those murders were done.”

I tried to laugh it off. “Any chance of an alibi?”

“Seriously, did you see anything?”

This was awkward. If the police never followed up my message, I didn’t want to broadcast what I knew. But if they did contact me, Simon was going to remind me of any denial I uttered now. “What sort of thing did you have in mind?” I prevaricated.

“I don’t know. The local constabulary mob-handed. Flashing blue lights. That fluorescent red-and-white tape they rig up everywhere. Oh, and a helicopter. Didn’t I read something about a helicopter?”

“Wrong day, Sime. I was on my way south and none the wiser when all that happened.”

“You didn’t know about it?”

“Not until I got back to Greenhayes yesterday afternoon.”

He snorted in disappointment. “Bang goes my chance of some gory details, then.”

“You wouldn’t really want any, would you?”

“Maybe.”

“Sorry to let you down.”

“Oh, it’s no surprise. You’re the sort who’d have been on holiday in Texas in November sixty-three and left Dallas the day before Kennedy was shot.”

I shrugged. “None of us can foretell the future.”

“No, thank Christ. Otherwise, I’d have topped myself the day I first met Joan.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t I?”

I sat back and looked at him and decided, on an impulse, to test just how predictable he thought I was. “What would you say, Sime, if I told you I met the woman who was murdered-Lady Paxton-in Kington the day I was there-July seventeenth? What would you say if I told you she offered me a lift to the next village and I turned her down?”

“I’d say you were stark raving bonkers. According to the papers, she was driving a brand new Mercedes SL. Nobody would turn down a ride in that.”

“It was a nice car.”

He frowned. “You’re having me on.”

“No. It’s the truth. I recognized her photograph in the Sunday Telegraph.”

“Bloody hell.”

“What do you think I should do? Tell the police?”

His reply was instant and instinctive. “No, I bloody don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t know what you’d be getting yourself into. Have you got an alibi?”

“I don’t need one. I’m not even a witness.”

“We all need alibis, old son. Every step of the way.” He leant across the table and lowered his voice. “You’ll admit I’ve never been one for handing out brotherly advice?”

“True.”

“Well, I’m going to start now. If you can avoid getting mixed up in something like this, avoid it. Like the plague. There’s no telling where it might end.”

“And if I can’t avoid it?”

“Then don’t say you weren’t warned.”

Simon’s concept of the responsible citizen had never coincided with mine. I didn’t take his warning seriously. Nevertheless, I’d already decided that, if there was no response to my message, I wouldn’t be sorry. I wasn’t bothered about alibis-or the lack of them. But I was beginning to suspect that what little I knew was best forgotten. I couldn’t properly have explained why, but something about my meeting with Louise Paxton had already become unreal, disturbingly elusive. I’d dreamt about her on several occasions without clearly being able to recollect what I was dreaming. And perhaps that was just as well. The dreams had begun before I knew of her death. But not before the fact of her death. My mind had begun looking for somebody who was no longer there to be found. And I wanted it to stop.

But I’d already given up the power to call a halt. When I reached Greenhayes that afternoon, my mother had a message for me.

“What’s this all about, Robin? I’ve had the police on the phone. A Detective Sergeant Joyce. From Worcester. He wants you to ring him. Urgently.”

CHAPTER THREE

Detective Sergeant David Joyce of West Mercia C.I.D. arrived at eleven o’clock the following morning. He was smartly dressed and well-spoken, with choirboy looks that made him seem even younger than he probably was. My mother took an instant and irritating shine to him, plying him with coffee and cake as if he were the new curate paying a courtesy call. Eventually, she left us to ourselves in the sitting-room.

I’d had the whole of a restless night to prepare what I was going to say. When it came to the point, however, I was tempted to be frank as well as factual. Why not tell him about Louise Paxton’s elliptical remarks, her enigmatic glances to the horizon, her implications by word and gesture that she was about to take some significant step in her life? Because I didn’t want to be responsible for throwing those particular pebbles into the pond, I suppose. Because I didn’t want to share what she’d made exclusive to me: insight without understanding.

Accordingly, I stuck to a plain and simple version of events. We’d met on Hergest Ridge. We’d exchanged a few comments about the weather and scenery. She’d offered me a lift to Gladestry which I’d declined. And then we’d parted. A brief and inconsequential encounter which I’d forgotten all about until I’d seen her photograph in the paper.

“And the time, sir? You said on the telephone you could be specific about the time.”

“Seven forty-five, when we parted.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“It couldn’t be later?”

“No. I looked at my watch as she walked away.”

It was a point he seemed anxious about, almost fretful, but he wouldn’t say whether it had any bearing on the evidence they’d amassed against Shaun Naylor, whose blanket-draped figure I’d seen bustled out of a Worcester court on the television news the previous night. Clearly, however, the time and circumstances of our parting interested Joyce more than a little.

“This lift, sir. Why do you think she offered you one?”

“The sun was setting. I was probably looking pretty weary. It had been a hot day…”

“A friendly gesture, then?”

“Yes.”

“But Gladestry was out of her way, wasn’t it, if she was going to Whistler’s Cot?”

“I didn’t know where she was going.”

“No, sir. Of course you didn’t. But tell me, why did you turn the lift down?”

“Because the point of walking a long distance footpath is to walk all of it, not all of it bar two miles.”

“With you there, sir. I did it myself, a few years ago. Offa’s Dyke, I mean. The whole way. Chepstow to Prestatyn.”

“Congratulations.”

“But you were only doing the southern half, weren’t you? So, completeness doesn’t really come into it, does it?”

I looked at him levelly. What was he driving at? “I’m hoping to do the northern half next year.”