Five pounds and a handful of change. Derek started to laugh it was all so bloody stupid. He choked the laughter back; it hurt too much. Would Sharon want him now? Now he wasn’t about to inherit part of Rupert Friedman’s illicit wealth.

Well, he figured, if he could ever find his way out of this damned field and back to the hotel where she was staying he might ask her. But not just now.

Derek shifted position finding the deepest grass and closed his eyes. He had not felt so bone weary in the longest time. Too bone weary even to despair.

With the sun on his face, Derek Reid slept while just two fields away they searched for signs of where he might have gone.

Back at the crash site, the crime scene officer had managed to open the door. The contents of the glove compartment, Reid’s jacket and the assorted debris from the door pockets and floor had settled on the roof.

Pictures had been taken and now he was bagging and tagging everything. No telling what might later be of use. The phone rang and he paused in his methodical search to retrieve it. He straightened up, phone in his gloved hand and waved it at the officer in charge. ‘Should I answer it?’

‘Is there a name?’

‘It says Kinnear.’

‘It what? Bloody hell. Yes.’

The SOCO pressed the key to accept the call and listened.

‘Where the hell are you? I told you to get back here. You listening to me?’

The SOCO covered the mouthpiece. ‘What the hell do I say?’ he whispered.

‘You listening to me?’ Kinnear’s voice again. ‘Who’s there?’ Silence.

‘He’s rung off.’

‘Never mind. Bag it and give it here.’

He took the wrapped phone from the SOCO and shook his head in disbelief. ‘He put Kinnear’s name in his directory,’ he said. ‘What a wally.’

The SOCO shrugged. ‘Lucky break,’ he said.

Sam Kinnear stared at his mobile phone and then dropped it on the bed in disgust. He did not know who had answered the phone but it had not been Derek Reid, that was for sure. He was surprised that no one had spoken. Had it been the police, would they not have announced themselves? Whatever, it seemed to Kinnear that this was not good, that it was a warning, that he should clear out while he still could.

A warning too that Derek was out of the reckoning.

Kinnear always travelled light and it took only minutes to shove his clothes back into his pack and select what food did not need cooking. Bread and beans and cheese and ham went into his bag. He had no objection to cold baked beans. Water. Derek had been bringing the bottled stuff.

Finally he reached beneath the bed and took out a fabric bundle. The gun was cleaned and oiled and he had two full clips to go with it. That, he figured, should be enough. He wasn’t aiming to have to shoot his way out of anywhere but always best to be prepared.

A last look around to check for anything he’d missed and then Kinnear was gone. Retrieving his car from below in the rundown barn. He knew where he would go. He figured he had one last chance to get what he was owed and, risky as that might be, he had come too far and wasn’t about to walk away.

Thirty-One

Elaine Ritchie held the door open halfway and leaned against the frame. She examined Billy Pierce carefully, methodically.

He stood still and waited for her to finish.

She had changed, of course. It had been twenty-five years or more since he had last seen her, sitting in the public gallery as Sam Kinnear was sentenced.

There had been no jubilation that day and that was one of the things he had always remembered about her. Usually the victim’s relatives who came to see the sentencing reacted in some way: relief, joy, tears; but with her there had been nothing like that. Elaine Ritchie had listened as the court sentenced her husband’s killer and then she had got up and quietly left the gallery. No fuss, no sound, not even a change of expression, and it was that same expression he remembered now. That quiet examination, but beyond that there was nothing he could read.

‘I said I’d come to talk to you about Rupert Friedman,’ he said. ‘You don’t seem surprised.’

She didn’t respond to his question. Instead she said, ‘You were the copper that knicked Kinnear.’

‘One of them, yes.’

‘I remember you. You’ve got old.’

‘I’m retired now.’

‘So …’

‘I’m doing a favour for a friend.’ He didn’t think Alec would mind the appropriation. It was something he hoped would become fact anyway. He liked Alec Friedman.

‘A friend? What kind of favour?’

‘Rupert’s nephew. There are questions surrounding Rupert’s death that need clearing up.’

For the first time concern rather than academic curiosity showed in the woman’s eyes. Her eyes were almost green and her hair still quite blonde though he thought that these days it probably had a little help.

‘He had a heart attack. His solicitor called me.’

‘That’s correct, but, well … May I come in?’

She thought about it and then finally stood aside and let him through. The door opened straight into the living room. It was at the front of the house and the large bay he had seen from outside added unexpected space. A sofa, overloaded with bright cushions, had been set there, separate from the rest of the room in which the furniture circled around the twin foci of gas fire and television.

A small shelf of books settled in the space between the sofa and the wall on one side and a tiny table – he thought of Victorian plant stands – squeezed into the gap at the other end. He could see a mug had been set down there when he had knocked at her door. Steam rose, carrying the scent of coffee.

She saw him looking. ‘Do you want one?’

‘Thanks.’ He was already sloshing from too much tea drunk in the little café, but making him a drink would help to break the ice and give him a better chance to look around.

The kitchen was small, but very clean, leading off the living room and visible in its entirety from where he stood. Two closed doors he guessed led to bedroom and bathroom.

‘Sugar?’

‘Two, please. This is a nice flat.’

She handed him the coffee. ‘Yes. And now it’s mine.’

‘Rupert left it to you?’

She nodded. ‘There was some weird thing in the will,’ she added. ‘His nephew wasn’t to be told. He was getting the rest but this was a separate thing.’ She looked worried. ‘Does that mean he’s a greedy bastard and might want it back?’

Billy Pierce smiled and shook his head. ‘He’s already guessed most of this,’ he said. ‘Alec feels he’s already been given more than he could ever have expected.’

She wriggled her shoulders and crossed the room to retrieve her coffee. ‘Well, that’s all right then. Rupert always said this was my place. Rupert was good to us. All the way through he was good to us.’

‘Us?’

She indicted that he should sit down and he chose the chair closest to the television. She took the one opposite.

‘I have kids. Two of them. This flat was too cramped, really. I slept out here for years and they had the bedroom. But it was somewhere safe after … after Fred was killed.’

‘You rented from Rupert?’

‘Rented,’ she laughed. ‘I paid a pittance to him but I made sure I always paid.’

‘How did you meet?’

Elaine sipped her coffee and considered her response. Billy understood that he was going to get the expurgated version. He figured it would probably be enough.

‘After Fred died, Rupert turned up on my doorstep one day. Not here, of course, in the dump of a place we’d had to move to. Fred left us with nothing and the police were all over it. They thought he might have been in on it.’

‘Did you think he was?’

She shrugged. ‘I was never sure. We were flat broke, two kids, and his job barely covered the rent and heat. I worked behind a bar five nights a week while he minded the kids. It got so we passed in the hall. Anyway, we were broke and Christmas was coming and if he thought he could have got away with it … I suspected he might have passed on some information. Times they were due to do the pick up, that sort of thing. I was never sure and I never said. I figured he’d more than paid his dues and I wasn’t going to let his kids think he was anything but what he’d always been to them. A decent man and a good dad.’