‘Coffee, Marcus?’ Harry asked. ‘Come on through. I was just washing up. Alec and Naomi should be here soon. Patrick, maybe you could give them a ring and find out how long they’re going to be?’

Patrick nodded. He waited until Harry had ushered the reluctant Marcus away and then ran upstairs. He put the bag in Rupert’s study and locked the door, slipping the key into his pocket. Then he sat down on the top step and called Naomi on his mobile, grateful when she said that they were almost home.

‘Marcus saw the laptop,’ he said. ‘I told him it was mine but he didn’t believe me. I’ve locked it in the study.’

‘Good,’ Naomi approved. ‘Patrick, you and Harry keep him amused, we’ll soon be there.’

It was interesting, Patrick thought as he rang off, that they had all come round to his way of thinking as regards Marcus just when, oddly enough, Patrick himself was starting to have some sympathy for the man. He sat for a minute more, analyzing where that feeling had come from and decided it was that he genuinely believed that Marcus cared for Rupert. And if he was scared of Kinnear, Patrick thought, no one could really blame him for that, but what they didn’t know for sure was if Marcus and Kinnear were in this together or if Marcus was just acting out of fear.

He thought about it as he went downstairs and joined his father but reached no conclusion. Marcus smiled at him as he came through into the kitchen. ‘They’re coming back,’ Patrick said. ‘Should be here in just a few minutes.’

‘Oh, good. I was just asking your father if you’d had any luck with the search.’

Patrick shook his head. ‘Rupert had some interesting stuff, though,’ he said. ‘Some great old books and that. He’s got maps from the 1640s when they drained the fens and all sorts.’

Marcus smiled again. A genuine smile this time. ‘He was working on a second book about the Fen Tigers,’ he said. ‘I don’t know all the details but I know one chapter concerned their descendants who still lived around here. He’d discovered that quite a few of the local families have roots going back to that time, including your neighbour, I believe.’

‘Our neighbour?’

‘Yes, the Fieldings at White Farm. He was quite enthused by it all.’

‘Did you know he wrote poetry?’ Patrick asked.

‘I knew he tried. I don’t recall him showing me any.’

‘Well, it’s not all that good. He was a much better prose writer,’ Patrick said. ‘Though I like bits. There’s one about the fenland skies that’s pretty good.’

‘You’ll have to show it to me.’

Patrick nodded. He heard Alec’s key in the front door and went to meet them. Behind him he heard Marcus ask Harry again about the laptop, saying how odd it was that Patrick had the same model.

‘I believe it’s a very common one,’ Harry said.

Patrick was surprised that Marcus even knew. Laptops tended to look similar, though Rupert’s wasn’t new and was certainly not as thin or light as many of the more modern ones. Maybe it was this that Marcus had noted. Whatever, Patrick was not easy about it.

After saying hello to Naomi and Alec he took himself back upstairs and into the study, then locked the door and fired up the laptop. In his excitement about the journals he had not taken so much time to look at the computer and, frankly, neither his dad nor Alec were that good.

Methodically, now, he began to open the files in ‘my computer’ and on the C drive, surveying what was there and comparing the different versions Rupert seemed to have saved. He was still involved when he heard Marcus leave and the car pull away, and then was startled when Alec, unable to access the study, knocked on the door.

‘Oh, sorry. Hang on.’ He let Alec in.

‘You can come out now, he’s gone.’

‘He knew it was Rupert’s computer.’

‘Yes, I guess he did. He mentioned it several times. We stuck to our story.’ He came round the desk to look at what Patrick had been doing. ‘Find anything?’

Patrick shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘It was Marcus that put me on to it actually.’

‘Oh?’

‘He mentioned Rupert’s new book on the Fen Tigers and how some of the families were still living round here. He said the Fieldings were one of them and I thought I remembered seeing something. So I looked and I found this. It’s a list of all the people he interviewed for that book. There’s like a little file on each of them and this one is on the Fieldings of White Farm.’

He turned the screen so Alec could read it properly.

‘It’s a rough family tree,’ Alec said. ‘And some comments on the family. “Husband is a boorish oaf”,’ Alec read. ‘That’s a very Rupert turn of phrase. “Wife is a shrew. I pity the boy”. Well, that’s a little damning, wouldn’t you say?’

Patrick shrugged. ‘There’s more,’ he said. ‘About the family history and the stories he planned to use.’ He sighed and leaned back in Rupert’s captain chair. ‘I’ve been looking for financial stuff and there’s a couple of files Dad hasn’t seen yet. They were nested inside folders he kept his writing in.’

‘Hidden?’

Patrick shrugged. ‘Burying it in the garden was better,’ he said. ‘Easy enough to find if you look deeper than the title and no one has so far, which is why we missed it.’ He pushed up from his seat. ‘You and Naomi get anywhere?’

‘Well, we’ve arranged for Kinnear’s picture to get into the papers, but Fine can’t do a lot more for us. Harry tells me Danny Fielding came over.’

Patrick nodded. ‘We didn’t find out anything.’

‘Apart from Ellen March,’

‘Ellen March? Oh, angry woman.’

‘That would be the one. From what she said to Harry it’s likely she and Danny’s father were having an affair.’

Marcus was unhappy. Unhappy and now very much afraid. He had been counting on Naomi and the others playing straight with him. Had convinced himself that they would even though reason told him they had no cause to tell him anything.

The laptop belonged to Rupert, Marcus was sure of it and Patrick and Harry had both lied. That meant they didn’t trust him. Marcus thought about it as he drove home and was bitterly angry and despairing by turns. Angry because if it hadn’t been for his insistence they look into Rupert’s death, no one would have suspected anything or found anything. No one would have looked further than a heart attack. Alec would have probably sold up and that would have been that. Despairing because he knew Samuel Kinnear would not be understanding of his troubles. Sam Kinnear just wanted results.

He was unsurprised when the phone rang just after he got back to his flat above the shop. Kinnear was watching him, Marcus was sure of that. Kinnear or the quiet one he’d seen once or twice in his company.

‘Well?’ Sam Kinnear demanded.

‘I don’t have much to tell. They’ve found the laptop, that’s all I know.’

‘And you’ve got it.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘No, I haven’t got it.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m supposed to just ask and they hand it over, is that what you think?’

‘Works for me.’

‘Maybe I don’t have, shall we say, your powers of persuasion.’

‘I’ve been telling you that from the start. You reckoned you could get the stuff quietly, no fuss. Seems you can’t.’

Marcus sighed. ‘Let me have another try,’ he said. ‘The computer isn’t any good to you without the books, or so you said. I don’t know yet if they’ve found the books.’

Kinnear was silent. ‘One more day,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you another twenty-four. Get the laptop and find out about the books. You don’t, I will. You get the books and you work out what that bastard Rupert was doing with my money, where he hid it and how he planned on getting it back.’

‘Rupe had already transferred more than you deserved,’ Marcus was suddenly angry.

‘I want it with interest,’ said Sam Kinnear. ‘Way I figure it, he owed me capital and with thirty-year interest on top. Rupert had only just whetted my appetite.’