‘That bastard. His dad must have got to it first. But he could have called my mobile?’

‘Could he? Does he have the number?’

‘Course he does, he … God, no, he doesn’t. The phone. I left mine so he couldn’t call me.’

‘Your husband?’

‘Yes. Him. This is new, Derek got me it. He had one the same.’ She took her mobile from her bag and weighed it in her hand as though really thinking about it for the first time. ‘God, I’m stupid. I should have guessed he’d hide the letter.’

‘Call him now.’

Fine watched as she dialled White Farm. ‘If he picks up I’m hanging up.’

‘Don’t you have the number to Danny’s phone?’

‘Not in this one. I don’t have jinx.’ She listened. Fine could almost hear her holding her breath. Someone picked up.

‘Danny? Oh Danny love, are you OK?’

‘Mum? Mum, where are you? I thought you were dead. Are you coming home?’

‘Dead? Why on earth. Oh Danny …’

Danny Fielding cradled the phone close to his ear. He could hardly believe it. She was OK, she was talking to him. It was going to be all right. He saw his dad come through and stand in the kitchen doorway. He was scowling, glowering at the phone. Danny held it closer, afraid he might snatch it away.

‘Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you … what letter? No, I never got it. Oh, mam, when are you coming home?’

‘I don’t know yet love, I’ve got to talk to the police before I do anything else.’

‘The police? Why?’ He could hear it in her voice. That was just a delaying tactic. The truth was she wasn’t coming back. He had known it all along but …

‘This is because of that man, isn’t it? Isn’t it?’

‘Danny, it isn’t like that. Danny, you’ve got to let me explain.’

But for Danny there was nothing to explain. He could not put into words how deep the sense of betrayal or by whom he felt the most betrayed. His mother who was leaving him or his dad who had lied about knowing, who had told him she had left no goodbyes.

Unable to bear any more, he lowered the phone and turned to face his father.

‘She said she left a note.’

His father glared at him, then turned away and picked up his jacket from the back of the kitchen chair. He strode past Danny, down the hall, out to the car, and drove away.

Danny was once again alone.

From his window in the barn, Kinnear watched Danny’s father go.

‘He hung up on me.’ Sharon was shocked. Horrified.

‘Can you blame him?’

She shook her head.

‘You’ve made a right pig’s ear of things, lass. It’ll take more sorting out than a single phone call.’

Thirty-Four

Sharon stared through the glass panel in the door. ‘Oh my god, what happened to him?’

‘The car rolled. He walked away but by rights he should have stayed put and had himself hauled off to the hospital like a sensible boy.’

‘But how, was he driving too fast. Derek didn’t drive fast. He was careful, cautious even.’

‘We don’t know everything. The doc hasn’t let me talk to him yet, but we know he was chasing after Marcus Prescott. We know he rammed Prescott’s car and we think he flipped when he crashed into his back end. The details we’ll have to discuss with Derek here when he wakes up.’

‘Chasing Marcus Prescott? I don’t understand.’

‘Kinnear,’ Fine said. ‘We assume he was following orders from Kinnear.’

‘Him. I told Derek he should just walk away but no, he said. He was going to come into money if he stuck with Kinnear. We could go off somewhere, start again.’

‘And you believed him?’

She looked sharply at Fine. ‘Yeah,’ she said softly. ‘I believed him, but you know what, after a little while it didn’t matter any more.’

‘And you two met, where?’

‘Oh, one of Rupert’s little get-togethers. He liked his storytellers to get to know one another. Thought if we exchanged information we might remember more. Oral history, he called it.’ She shrugged. ‘Actually, I liked old Rupert. He was one of the good guys. Kind, considerate, good listener.’

‘And Derek came along to one of these meetings?’

‘At the library, yes. We called ourselves a study group but … well, we’d have a good gossip, talk about Rupert’s latest bit of writing and then all go off to the pub. Mostly it was the same crowd but Derek turned up one night out of the blue and I fell. Big time. He was charming, curious, talkative and shy, all at the same time.’

‘Sounds like a contradiction.’

‘Yeah, well. Will he be OK?’

‘We hope so, yes.’

‘Your son tells me Kinnear came to the farm.’

She nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘And did you have much to do with him?’

‘Too much. Look, it was obvious from the start Derek didn’t know anything about local history. He claimed his family came from round here and he wanted to find out more about his past. Their past. Rupert didn’t care and like I said it was more a social club anyway. But after a while, when we got more involved and I’d seen him hanging round with Sam Kinnear, he told me Kinnear was after something Rupert had. Something Kinnear thought that he was owed. He was scared of the man, too scared to tell me any more but one day when he was with me Kinnear phoned him. He wasn’t supposed to be with me but if he’d taken me home I guess he’d have been late answering his master’s call so he took me along. Not inside though, made me wait in the car and lie down on the back seat so Kinnear didn’t see but I knew where I was.’

‘You can take me there?’

She nodded. ‘I think so. It’s an old farm, deserted. There’s a few places round here just left to go to rack and ruin. The big companies take them over, use the land, leave perfectly good homes to fall down when there’s local kids crying out for cheap housing.’

Fine nodded. He knew. ‘But you can take me there?’

‘Yeah. Look, I need to talk to Danny, when can I go home?’

‘Tomorrow. Not tonight. The last thing your boy needs is his mum and dad rowing over him again tonight. Tomorrow I’ll arrange a meet, maybe at Fallowfields. He’s got friends there.’

‘You can’t stop me going home.’

‘No, I can’t but just now you’re going to take me to where Kinnear was holed up. You’ve not seen him for this long, best make a fresh start tomorrow, eh?’

She nodded slowly. ‘Friends at Fallowfields?’

‘The new owner, Alec Friedman, he’s got some friends staying. Patrick is just a bit older than Danny. They’ve hit it off.’

‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘He never seems to have that many friends.’

She was fairly sure where the farm was but in the dark they made a couple of false turns which meant Fine’s car and the patrol cars that followed had to carry out some awkward manoeuvres on the narrow roads.

The farm had once been called The Ash Trees, or so the sign on the sagging gate claimed. Fine thought it was one of those owned by a big frozen food corporation but he couldn’t be sure. The dark and the twists and turns had lost him too and he was glad of his GPS which would at least be able to guide him home when he told it to.

The farm buildings were not in bad shape, he thought, or as far as he could tell in the light of his torch. The door was open, though not wide. He looked around, noting the outbuildings and rusting machinery, the muddied yard with the remnants of cobbles in front of the farmhouse door. They kept well back, vehicles pulling up on the road at the end of the drive. Once out of their cars, they all crouched in the shadows behind the engine block, although that still felt too exposed. Fine worried that he was still in there – for all that seemed unlikely. That he might be armed.

He signalled for the armed support unit to move in, content to let them do their own thing. They would search, make everything secure. He heard their commander calling out ‘armed police’ and instructing anyone inside to come out with their hands raised.