Funnily enough, Ruth can believe this. Hadn’t she felt a faint chill, reading his diary just now? Against her will, she feels sorry for Elaine.

Now Elaine reaches forward and grabs Ruth’s hand. ‘But I would never do anything to hurt him. You must believe that!’

Gently Ruth extracts her hand. ‘No one thinks you did,’ she says.

‘The police do,’ says Elaine. ‘That awful detective, the fat one, he came round asking all these questions. I know he suspects me, he kept giving me these horrible looks. And the other one, the good-looking one, he kept asking about the White Hand.’

‘Well, they think the White Hand might be involved,’ says Ruth. ‘After all, they’re Neo-Nazis, they’re capable of anything.’

Elaine stares at her. Wet with tears, her eyes look almost white.

‘Don’t you understand? We were in the White Hand, all of us.’

*

Cathbad hadn’t realised how late it was until he went into the garden and saw that the hills were in darkness. Thing, clearly delighted to be back in his old home, is running around, barking at the gathering birds. Cathbad doesn’t wear a watch as they tend not to work on him (too much natural electricity, he suspects) and there don’t seem to be any clocks in the house. Pendragon didn’t have a TV or a radio or any electrical gadget – if you ignore the high-tech office upstairs, which Cathbad is trying to. He fumbles in his pocket for his mobile phone and looks at the display. It’s eight-thirty. He’d better get back to Ruth.

It had been easy to extract the cottage keys from Gary. Once he’d had a sniff that Cathbad might want to take over the rent, he had fallen over himself to be helpful. Yes, take the keys. Drop them back tomorrow. Take as much time as you want. So Cathbad had spent a peaceful afternoon at Dame Alice’s cottage, praying for Pendragon’s soul and offering libations to the good spirits. Anxious to cover all spiritual bases, he said a decade of the rosary (his grandmother would be proud of him) and made a symbolic sacrifice of one of Pendragon’s old robes, which he burnt in the sun-dial. He even forced himself to make a trip to the woodshed where he scattered herbs and said the Catholic prayer for the dead. ‘Eternal rest give unto him, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon him.’ Despite this cleansing, Thing had flatly refused to enter the shed.

Sometime during the afternoon, Cathbad realised that all the contents of the house belonged to him. Really, he could just move in tomorrow. Now, as he is locking up, he wonders whether he should take the crucifix from Pendragon’s bedroom. It might transfer some of its protection to Ruth and Kate. But when he stands by the bed, as smooth as a shroud, he feels curiously reluctant to touch the heavy wooden cross. After all, it didn’t bring Pendragon much luck. He is about to leave the room when his eye falls on the book beside the bed. Old English Ballads, it’s called. He opens the book and sees that a page has been kept by a bay leaf. A verse has been annotated in pencil. Cathbad reads, Thing panting at his side.

The wind doth blow today, my love

And a few drops of rain

I never had but one true love

In cold grave she was lain.

*

The word ‘she’ has been changed to ‘he’. The ballad is called ‘The Unquiet Grave’. Cathbad stands still, listening to the silence of the house. There is no wind today and no rain. Why did Pendragon mark this poem? Was he thinking of his own mortality? Of the fact that he was planning to take his own life? The will gave no instructions about a funeral or interment but Cathbad has an idea of what his friend would have wanted. Is this bleak little verse referring to an unmarked grave on Pendle Hill? Is that where Pendragon wanted to lie at rest? And who was Pendragon’s ‘one true love’? Cathbad never heard him mention a woman but he supposes that everyone has one true love in their lives. Not wanting to think about this, he takes the book and makes his way downstairs. It’s cold now so he borrows a cloak that’s hanging on a hook by the back door. He also liberates a large packet of dog biscuits. Everything else can stay where it is.

He sends Ruth a quick text and, with one last farewell to Dame Alice, sets out for the car.

*

‘What do you mean “all of you?”’ whispers Ruth.

Elaine seems to understand what she means. ‘Oh, not Daniel. He couldn’t join, could he, being Jewish and everything. No, me, Guy and Clayton.’

The casual anti-Semitism shocks Ruth almost more than anything. But Elaine had loved Dan. Ruth notices again how, alone of all his acquaintance, Elaine always refers to him by his full name.

She still can’t quite believe it. ‘You belong to a Neo-Nazi group?’

‘You don’t understand,’ says Elaine, sounding quite impatient. ‘The Neo-Nazis on campus, stomping around protesting about Chinese cockle-pickers in Fleetwood, they weren’t anything to do with us. The White Hand was different. It was about going back to the old days. The days of the High King.’

‘King Arthur?’

‘Yes, even before we joined the White Hand, we used to talk about recreating Camelot, the four of us. Clayton was King Arthur, I was Guinevere, Guy was Lancelot. Pendragon was Merlin.’

‘So why did you join the White Hand?’

‘Pendragon told us about it. He said there were magical powers associated with belonging to the group. Strong psychic energies. And he was right. We had an initiation ceremony on Pendle Hill. It was wonderful. There were lights in the sky, voices from the heavens, a great black bird appeared above us with wings of fire.’ She smiles reminiscently.

There is a lot that Ruth could say to this. You can admire the Arthurian legends without belonging to a sinister secret society associated (whatever Elaine says) with racist and homophobic groups. As for the heavenly voices and the fiery blackbird, she suspects the presence of hard drugs. But there are other things she needs to know.

‘Who else was in the White Hand?’ she asks. ‘Who was in charge? Who was the Arch Wizard?’

Elaine’s eyes flicker from side to side. ‘I don’t know. You only know your chapter and our chapter was the four of us.’

‘Someone must have known.’

‘Clayton, Guy and Pendragon were knights. They had messages from the Arch Wizard sometimes but I don’t think they ever met him.’

‘And you weren’t a knight?’

‘Oh no. Women weren’t allowed to be knights.’

Sexist as well as racist and homophobic, thinks Ruth. But surely someone must know who the Arch Wizard is. Somebody prancing round in robes, setting people’s houses on fire, that can’t stay a secret for long. She thinks of the masked figure on the riverbank and shivers.

‘Who was Dan?’ she asks. ‘Did he have a role in all this?’

‘Oh, he didn’t know about the White Hand. We couldn’t tell him. But he was Percival, wasn’t he? The one who found the grail.’

So when Dan wrote about the White Hand, he had no way of knowing that two of his closest friends and his boss were actually members. But, even so, both Guy and Clayton had clearly been scared of someone or something. Guy had insisted that the bones be stored in a safe place and Clayton had received threatening letters (or so he said). Did they know the identity of the Arch Wizard? Did they know that he was capable of murder?

‘Elaine,’ she says. ‘Do you know who killed Dan?’

Elaine seems to sag in her chair, becoming young and vulnerable again. When she speaks, it is in almost a baby voice.

‘I didn’t have anything to do with the fire. Guy and I had been to the pub. When we got back, there were flames everywhere. I thought it was our house at first. Guy called the fire brigade. It was awful. I was screaming. We saw them bring Daniel’s body out. The paramedics were giving him mouth-to-mouth but Guy wouldn’t let me go to him. I was hysterical. I had to take a tranquiliser.’