He picked up on the fourth ring and she realized she had been holding her breath. She could not have borne it if the call had gone unanswered.

‘Naomi? You sound upset? What’s wrong?’

The story spilled out. The men who’d come to Fallowfields, Alec being attacked. The mystery surrounding Rupert’s death.

Harry broke in before she was really through. ‘Naomi, where are you staying?’

Momentarily confused, she told him.

‘Then just hang on for a couple of hours and we’ll be there.’

‘No, Harry, I can’t ask you to …’ Though she realized as he said it that this was exactly what she’d hoped he’d do.

‘Don’t be silly. What else would we do? Now, have you had anything to eat?’

‘No, I don’t suppose I have.’

‘Then get on to room service and order yourself a decent meal. Patrick and I will be with you as soon as we can.’

Naomi rang off. Relief flooded through her and her hands shook. She felt suddenly drained and also very hungry. She fumbled with the room phone, trying to remember what Alec had told her about getting through to reception and, more by luck than anything else, managed to order sandwiches and tea.

‘A man just called,’ the girl told her. ‘Someone called Harry Jones? He said he was a friend and booked a room for himself and his son.’

Naomi replied to the question the girl had made of this statement. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘He said he was coming. Yes, he’s a good friend.’

A very good friend, she thought as she put the receiver back on to its cradle, feeling carefully to make sure it was properly seated.

She thought of all the four of them, Alec and Harry and Patrick and her and all they had been through in the past few years, and she was relieved beyond words that soon she would not be alone.

Sixteen

The side ward was rather crowded. Naomi hoped that the nursing staff would continue with their tolerant attitude; the number of visitors allowed technically being only two per bed and with Harry, Patrick and herself they were already one over.

DS Fine’s arrival added to the visitor infringement.

Naomi introduced Patrick and Harry, and Fine greeted them with an air of formality that jarred Naomi’s senses, setting them on edge.

‘What’s wrong?’ she demanded.

‘That obvious, am I?’

She shrugged. She heard Fine pull up a chair and deposit something papery on Alec’s bed. ‘Recognize anyone, Alec?’

She listened, straining for audible clues as Alec picked up the folder and flicked through the pages.

‘Him,’ he said at last.

‘You’re certain?’

‘I’m certain. I got a decent look at him, both when I was following him across the square and when he had me by the throat.’

‘Right,’ Fine said.

‘So? Tell,’ Naomi prompted.

‘We found a partial print on the doorframe at the house.’

‘He put his hand on the door,’ Naomi remembered.

‘Most of the print was smudged, but there was a partial of the index finger. There aren’t enough points of similarity for it to stand up in court but enough for us to run the print. We got a match. This man. Alec just picked him out from a sample of twenty mugshots,’ Fine explained for Naomi’s benefit.

She nodded. She knew how it was done. There had to be a selection available for the witness to choose from or the accusation could be levelled that the officer was leading the witness. Or, in this case, the victim. ‘So, who is he?’

‘His name,’ Fine said slowly, ‘is Samuel Kinnear and if ever a man needed to go on an anger management course, it’s him.’

‘Kinnear,’ Alec mused. ‘There’s something familiar …’

‘Armed robbery seems to have been his speciality, but he’s implicated in everything from murder to extortion. Been inside for the last fifteen; released eighteen months ago. His parole officer lost track ten days in and no one’s seen hide nor hair since.’

‘So, what’s he doing here?’

‘That’s what we’d all like to know,’ Fine said, ‘and by all I include our friends in the Met. Kinnear’s a long way from his home patch.’

‘London?’ Alec was surprised.

‘With a career that stretches back to the Kray twins,’ Fine confirmed. ‘Rumour, only on that score, but rumour says he worked as an enforcer and he wasn’t too particular on whose behalf he enforced, provided they paid up.’

‘He’s not a young man,’ Alec said thoughtfully. ‘I’d say he had a good ten, fifteen years on me.’

‘Date of birth 1952,’ Fine said. ‘So that makes him, what, fifty-four?’

‘So …’ Naomi calculated what she could recall about the gangland situation in Kray’s London. ‘He must have caught that particular wave at the tail end and only been young. Eighteen, twenty maybe.’

‘That fits with the rumours,’ Fine told her. ‘He was an army brat, grew up following his old man across Europe and the Middle East. The family settled in the East End when his father left the forces. Samuel didn’t seem to get along with his old man and left the family home soon after, but he was trouble even before that. Got himself thrown out of two different schools by the time he was fifteen, charged with assault when he was seventeen. Charges were dropped …’ He paused. ‘Alec, I don’t have many details, I’m afraid, and I can’t begin to guess what his connection with your uncle might have been, but—’

‘But it sounds as though I got off lightly,’ Alec finished. ‘Reg, you’re not going to like what I’m planning.’

Naomi could hear the frown in Fine’s voice. ‘Which is what?’

‘I’m moving back to Fallowfields.’

‘You’re right. I don’t like it. Alec, my advice would be for you and Naomi and your friends to get off home. End it here, let us sort this one out.’

‘I can’t do that,’ Alec told him. ‘Whatever this Kinnear is after might well be at Fallowfields or, at any rate, there might be something to explain what’s going on. I agree, Naomi and the others should go—’

‘Well, Naomi doesn’t agree,’ she told him tartly.

‘Naomi, I don’t have the resources to—’

‘Um, I don’t think you’ll need them,’ Harry informed him. ‘Patrick and I will stay. We’re with Alec on this.’

‘Harry?’

‘Alec, if the roles were reversed, you and Naomi would be there. You’ve both proved that time and again. I’ll make arrangements for new doors, locks, maybe a panic button?’

‘I can arrange a direct line, yes,’ Fine conceded.

‘That’s good,’ Harry said. ‘And maybe you know a decent locksmith?’

Fine sighed. ‘I can manage that as well. But Alec, Harry … I don’t think—’

‘What you mean,’ Patrick butted in, ‘is that you don’t see how my dad and Alec can protect a blind woman and a boy.’

‘I wasn’t going to put it quite like that.’

‘’S’all right,’ Patrick told him. ‘We’ve been in worse scrapes. And Dad’s right. You don’t walk out on a friend.’

Fine left soon after and so did Harry, Patrick staying on to help with the practicalities of Naomi getting back to the hotel. ‘I’ve brought your laptop,’ Naomi told Alec, ‘and the disks and your other stuff. Keep you out of mischief.’

‘Thanks, love. But I’ll be out sometime today.’

‘You won’t,’ she told him. ‘I talked to the ward sister this morning. They want you here for another day.’

‘Then I’ll discharge myself.’

‘No. No, you won’t. I’m fine now. I have Harry and Patrick and you need more time to heal and rest. Alec, I’m not going to argue about this. Play with your files and get some rest and I’ll be back for proper visiting this afternoon.’

‘I’m fine,’ Alec protested.

‘So fine you got out of bed this morning and fell flat on your face. That fine? The sister told on you.’

‘Vertigo. That’s all.’

‘I’m not listening.’

She got up from her seat by his bed and kissed him. ‘Nothing is ever simple, is it?’

‘No,’ Alec agreed regretfully. ‘It never is.’

They left the ward and collected Napoleon from his place in the waiting room. Patrick took her arm and Naomi reflected that he seemed to have grown again. She thought of the shy fourteen year old he had been when she had first met him three years before, small for his age and terribly unsure of himself. Patrick had grown up.