Kinnear followed the wall right round, found a possible place to climb where the field curved and a tree branched further into the grassy area in which he stood. He dropped his pack and climbed the tree, edging along the branch. He could now just see over, well enough to get his bearings as regards the garden beyond and the house beyond that.

He sensed movement in what looked like the kitchen and an open door. Kinnear grimaced. He could see, but still needed to get over the wall. He was a heavy man and not the most agile; the branch he sat astride was some five feet off the ground, but it was a lone limb, reaching out with nothing above to grip. Vainly, Kinnear tried to get to his feet, balance on a moving branch that shook beneath his efforts to balance.

Kinnear fell, heavily. He lay, winded, sure he must have been heard.

In the kitchen at Fallowfields, Danny wolfed down his breakfast. Bacon, eggs, sausage. Toast to follow. He hadn’t eaten this well in ages. Lunch with Patrick and Harry a couple of days before being the last decent thing he’d had.

‘You’re leaving then?’ he asked. Suitcases stood in the hall and Naomi had excused herself to finish off her packing. Napoleon had followed, disliking the upset of people moving around him with big bags. He liked a settled life. She had asked Patrick and Danny to come up when they were done, help her down with her things.

Patrick nodded. ‘Sergeant Fine can’t promise police cover, Alec’s handed over all the evidence we’ve got on Kinnear and Rupert, but until things are sorted he doesn’t feel he can have anything much to do with Fallowfields. So, we’re off home.’

‘If your mother agrees, you could come and stay for a while,’ Harry offered. ‘It is the holidays after all. No school to worry about.’

Danny looked eagerly at Harry, wondering if he meant it.

‘I could use the company,’ Patrick said. ‘If your mum and dad say its OK.’

Danny didn’t think they’d have any right to object, not really. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’d like that.’

He finished off his tea and stood up. ‘Better go and help Naomi,’ he said. ‘Thanks a lot for breakfast and, you know, everything else.’

Harry nodded. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said.

‘I like this place,’ Danny said as he and Patrick wandered into the hall.

‘Yeah. I could live here, I think.’

‘It’s a bit out of the way for a townee.’

‘I’m not much of a townee,’ Patrick said. ‘We’re right on the edge of town anyway. Where I live you can get down on to the canal and walk right out into the country and the sea’s only five minutes the other way. That’s the only thing living here. I’d miss the sea. My mum lives near the sea too. In Florida. When I visit my room looks right out on to the ocean.’

‘You get on OK with your mum?’

Patrick nodded. ‘When mum and dad got divorced I went to live with her. She met my stepdad when she was out there on business. He’s OK, got two sons of his own, but I didn’t fit in there and I missed my dad and, I don’t know, I came home for a trial, just to see how it worked out and I decided to stay. Florida’s nice and my mum’s family are nice, but it never felt like home.’

Danny shrugged. ‘Don’t know where I’ll end up,’ he said. ‘Mum won’t come home. Dad is acting strange, like he doesn’t belong at the farm any more. You know what I wish? I wish they’d just sell the lot, set up somewhere else and just … I don’t know, make their minds up. It’s crap this idea of staying together for the kids. Mam said a couple of years ago that they wouldn’t split up ’cos of me. I mean, like that makes me feel better or something.’

Patrick nodded. ‘Maybe you need to tell them that,’ he said.

Kinnear had found his entry point. It was off towards the road end of the meadow and far too distant from the house for his liking, but there was a place where a stretch of dilapidated-looking fence met the wall. He tested the fence nervously. He was no lightweight. It creaked ominously, but held. Panting with the effort, Kinnear hauled himself up on to the wall and rolled, keeping his body low, then dropped, lowering himself the length of his arms, down on the other side.

Pausing only to check his weapon, Kinnear raced across the lawn and towards the house. He entered through the kitchen door.

Harry and Marcus were clearing away the breakfast things. Marcus was still nervous, still jumpy. He planned, he told Harry, to close the shop for a while and go away. Far away. He had friends in Scotland, surely that was distance enough.

‘Depends what you’re running from.’

Marcus froze. Harry, turning from the sink found himself facing Sam Kinnear, gun in hand.

Dimly, Harry recognized it as an automatic and some odd bit of his mind suggested that Patrick would know the make and model. It was the sort of oddity that Patrick always knew when they watched films together. But this was not a film.

Marcus had begun to panic. Gibbering wordlessly. Harry shushed him impatiently. ‘What do you want?’ he asked Kinnear.

‘What do you think I want?’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Don’t try to be smart,’ Kinnear told him. ‘Give me what I came for and I’ll be out of here. I want the numbers, the accounts. I want the lot, everything he owed me.’

‘I don’t have them,’ Harry said, oddly relieved that he could tell the truth. Harry was never very good with lies. ‘The police have everything we found.’

Kinnear laughed out loud. ‘Like I believe you.’

‘Harry, give him what he wants.’

Harry glanced sideways at Marcus. ‘You know I can’t do that. Sergeant Fine took the books away last night. You were here, you saw it.’

‘But your notes, you must have kept notes. I know you kept notes.’ Marcus started to run, he leapt for the kitchen door. Kinnear fired and Marcus went down. Blood poured from his torn calf.

Harry grabbed a towel and made to move towards the fallen man. He could hear footsteps, running down the uncarpeted hall. ‘Alec, stay back.’

‘And you bloody well stay there.’ Kinnear had crossed the space between them and the muzzle of his gun pressed hard against Harry’s side.

Alec appeared in the doorway and Kinnear motioned him through. Harry could see Alec cursing himself for running in like a green fool.

The boys and Naomi were still upstairs, Harry thought. He prayed they had heard the shot but would have the sense to stay put.

‘You. Who else is here. I know about Danny and there’s another one, I saw him. Anyone else?’

‘No,’ Harry said firmly.

Alec shot him a look, nodded almost imperceptibly.

He hoped fervently that Marcus would not contradict but the man was lying on the floor clutching at his injured leg and seemed not to have even heard.

‘You.’ Kinnear prodded Harry in the side. ‘Tie them up.’

‘Marcus is hurt, at least let me help him first.’

‘Just do as you’re told.’

Having nothing else to hand, Harry tore the tea towels into strips and used them to bind Alec and Marcus’s hands and feet to the kitchen chairs. He dare not tie them too loosely, knowing Kinnear would check. He tied another strip around Marcus’s bleeding calf, padding it with a towel and hoping that the bleeding would stop. It looked very red, Harry thought. Very red and very painful. He tried to think if there were any major arteries Kinnear might have hit, but he really didn’t know. He found himself thinking that Patrick would know that too. Patrick or Naomi.

Harry took a deep breath. He was oddly calm in the face of the gun; less so having witnessed the sheer unpredictability of Kinnear. Last year he and Patrick and Naomi had found themselves caught up in a hostage situation, Harry’s first encounter with weapons. He had seen then just what a gun in the hands of a madman could do, but he had faced his fear back then and somehow that fear had diminished.

He was wary, certainly, but as he set about the practical task of binding Marcus’s wound and tying his friend’s hands and feet he found that his mind was oddly calm. Out of sight of Kinnear, he slid his hand into his trouser pocket and withdrew a small penknife, the twin to the one Patrick had given Alec last Christmas. He managed to open the knife, slid it into Alec’s hand.