It definitely wasn’t there.

While he waited for his food to come, he phoned his computer man. From the crackling noise on the phone, it sounded as if Chris Webb was either driving or in a poor reception area.

‘I’m just on my way home from a client,’ Webb said. ‘Can I call you back when I get home?’

‘No probs.’

Half an hour later, Ollie strode up the drive towards the house, his head bowed against the rain which was now pelting down. He was pleased to see a row of workmen’s vans outside the house, and that a skip had been delivered.

He hurried inside, where there was a hive of activity in several of the downstairs rooms and the cellar. As he climbed back up into the kitchen, his phone pinged with a text. It was from Cholmondley, requesting an addition to the website. While he stood reading it, the plumber, Michael Maguire, wriggled out backwards from under the sink and looked round at him. ‘Ah, Lord Harcourt! How are you, sir?’

‘I’m OK – how’s it going?’ Ollie raised his phone and took a photograph of the pipework beneath the sink, to add to his photo record of the restoration work.

‘I don’t know who did this work before, but they were real bodgers!’ the Irishman said.

Before he could reply, Ollie’s phone rang. It was Chris Webb.

‘I’m back now, how can I help?’

Ollie waved for the plumber to carry on, and as he spoke to the computer man he walked back out of the kitchen and headed upstairs, needing to change out of his wet clothes, looking around warily. ‘It’s OK, Chris, it’s just that the photograph I emailed you earlier has gone from my iPhone and I needed you to send it to me. But it’s OK, I’m home now, it’ll be on my computer. Thanks.’

‘No problem!’

Ollie changed in their bedroom, taking a pair of jeans out of the huge Victorian mahogany wardrobe they’d brought from Carlisle Road, a fresh T-shirt and a light sweater, then climbed up the tower to his office, thinking again about the newspaper article about ghosts. Energy seemed a key factor. One of the theories it posited was that energy from dead people could still remain in the place where they had died. Could the energy of some elderly lady who had died here still be around? Was that what his mother-in-law had seen on the day they were moving in? Did that explain the spheres of light he had seen in the atrium?

Why had Jade asked him about ghosts this morning? Had it really been a bad dream that had spooked her on Sunday night – or something more?

What the hell was in this house? Something, for sure. He needed to find out – and find an explanation – before Caro saw something, too, and really freaked out.

Buying this place had been a stretch beyond what they could really afford. They were hocked up to the eyeballs. Moving out and selling right now was not an option. Whatever was going on, he needed to get to the bottom of it and sort it. There were always solutions to every problem. That had always been his philosophy. It was going to be fine.

He sat down at his desk and realized his hands were shaking. They were shaking so much it took him three goes to tap in the correct code to wake up his computer.

He went straight to Photos and checked through it carefully.

All the photos he had taken of the work in the house were there, and the photographs of Harry Walters’s headstone, as well as the one he’d just taken of the pipework. But there was no photograph of Harry Walters.

He turned to his iPad, and opened Photos again. It was the same. Everything else he had taken was there. But no photograph of the old man.

Was he going mad?

But Caro had remarked on the photo this morning, and Chris Webb had received it and talked about it. He dialled his number.

‘Chris,’ he said, when he answered. ‘I’m sorry, I do need you to send that photograph. I can’t find it.’

‘I’ve got a bit of a problem with that,’ Webb replied. ‘Must be a bloody iCloud issue, like I said. I’m sorry, mate, it’s vanished.’

21

Wednesday, 16 September

Sometimes Caro nudged him gently, or touched his face, to let him know he was snoring. But tonight Ollie was wide awake, unable to sleep. He had watched the dial of his clock radio go from midnight to 00.30 a.m., 00.50 a.m., 1.24 a.m., 2.05 a.m. Now it was her who was snoring, as she lay face down, her arms wrapped round her pillow.

He was thinking about the photograph of Harry Walters. And the name O’Hare that he had seen in the graveyard. Why did that name seem familiar? He heard the hoot of an owl somewhere out in the darkness. Then the terrible squeal of something dying. A rabbit caught by a fox? The food chain. Nature.

Then another sound.

Running water.

He frowned. Where was it coming from? Had he left a tap running in the bathroom?

He slipped out of bed, naked, as quietly as he could, not wanting to wake Caro, and crossed the bare floorboards to the en-suite bathroom, the sound of running water getting louder. He slipped in past the door which was ajar, pulled it shut behind him and switched on the light. And then saw the water gushing from both the hot and cold taps into both of the twin basins.

He strode over to them and turned the taps off. Still the sound of running water continued, loudly. He turned and looked at the bathtub. Both taps there were gushing out water. He turned them off too. Still he heard the sound, and realized the shower was running as well.

He turned that off. Then stood still. There was no way – no way at all they could have left all these on.

‘Dad! Mum!’

It was Jade crying out.

He grabbed his dressing gown off the bathroom door, hurried back in the darkness across the bedroom and heard Caro stir.

‘Wasser?’ she murmured.

‘S’OK, darling.’

He slipped out into the corridor, closed the bedroom door, fumbled for the landing light and switched it on.

‘Dad! Mum!’

He ran down the landing and into Jade’s room. Her bedside light was on and she was standing, in her T-shirt and shorts, in the doorway of her en-suite bathroom. He could hear the sound of gushing water.

She turned to him with terror in her eyes. ‘Dad, look!’

He pushed past her and stopped. Water was brimming over the top of the huge bathtub and the floor was awash. Both taps were spewing water.

He went over to them, sloshing through the puddles on the floor, and turned them off. But he could still hear water.

It was coming from the shower.

He yanked open the door and turned the tap off.

‘I turned them off, Dad, I did, before I went to bed! I had a bath and then brushed my teeth.’

He stroked her head. ‘I know you did, my lovely.’ He grabbed the towels off the rail and dumped them on the floor to mop up the water. ‘I’ll get you some fresh ones.’

‘I did turn them off.’

Down on his knees, trying to mop it up before it went through the ceiling below, he nodded. ‘The plumber was here earlier. He must have left a valve open or something.’

His words were enough to calm Jade. But not himself.

And he could still, faintly, hear running water.

His heart pounding, he kissed his daughter goodnight, switched off her light, then rushed downstairs and into the kitchen. Both taps there were going full blast. He turned them off and went through into the scullery where the taps on the butler’s sink were gushing water. He turned those off. And could now hear running water outside.

His brain was a maelstrom of confusion. He turned the ancient key in the huge lock on the door to the rear garden, pushed it open and stepped outside into the cool, damp air. The sky was clear and cloudless. A quarter moon was shining above the top of Cold Hill, and the sky was like a black velvet cloth sprinkled with sparkling gemstones.