It would be perfectly simple to give in now, put the bloody cottage back on the market and return to London, yet as she drove through the deserted Cotswold landscape, she recognised something was drawing her back – the unfinished decryption of Dove Cottage, the sense of abridgement in Eyam’s tape, and her straight curiosity about DEEP TRUTH.
She stopped in a small town of honey-coloured stone houses for a bite to eat and bought some groceries. Sitting on a bench by the town’s war memorial she worried at the problem with a bleak sense of her own impotence. Then she tried Kilmartin’s number. There was no reply so she continued on her journey. Near Cheltenham she hit the traffic coming from the racecourse and swung north to cross the River Severn near Tewkesbury. On the road to High Castle she received two calls: the first was from the coroner’s clerk, Tony Swift, who asked to see her that evening. ‘Well, OK,’ she said with a slight hesitation and a hope that the bull-necked Swift had not taken encouragement from a goodbye kiss.
He added, ‘I’ll have some friends with me. They want to meet you. Same place? Good.’
A few minutes later she answered to a voice that said: ‘Darling?’ Only her mother could deliver the word with such a note of crisp accusation. ‘Are you driving? If so will you pull over? I need to talk to you now.’
Kate seldom thought of her family, but when she did a photograph often came to mind of the five of them standing round a table twenty years ago. On one side were Kate and her father, Sonny Koh; on the other her mother – pleated tartan skirt and twinset – her sister Laura in a similar uniform and brother Bruce.
The two sides could not have been more different. Her father, a gambler and disruptive genius, who killed himself a few months after Charlie Lockhart died, stood back with mischief dancing in his expression, the mixed ancestry of Indonesian Chinese, Indian and Dutch traders evident in his light, liquid eyes and the sheen of his black hair. He was better looking than any man Kate had ever seen and he provoked a passion in her mother that would never otherwise have surfaced in her rather formal personality. Her love for him was epic and, to Kate, redeeming, and when he overdosed in a hotel in the Sumatra leaving debts and an ex-mistress with a child she retreated into a granite stoicism, throwing herself into her work as a barrister, which would eventually lead her to the bench.
Stricken by her father’s death so soon after Charlie’s, angry at her mother’s self-control, Kate found a kind of solace in the law too – it was the only thing they had in common. New York made it impossible to dwell on her loss, but the anger smouldered like a peat fire deep underground. Even before she talked to a grief counsellor, who despite her misgivings was actually quite good, she realised that the hostility towards her mother was in fact rage for her father. Like Eyam, he had left, vanished without the slightest thought for her or how she would survive without him.
‘Are you still in the country, Kate?’ her mother asked.
‘Yes. Sorry I’ve been very busy,’ she said as she pulled up.
‘Were you going to ring, or were you just going to flit off again?’ Her mother didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Well, I’m sure you were going to get in touch when you had time. I read about David Eyam’s death and heard from Oliver Mermagen that you were at the funeral. That is one reason why I am calling.’
‘Oliver Mermagen! What the hell’s he doing ringing you?’
‘It was the only way he knew how to get hold of you. He found me in the phone book. He told me that you had moved back to this country and were looking for a job. Is that true?’
‘I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet.’
‘But have you left your job in New York?’
‘I left the job, not the firm.’
She cross-examined her for a few minutes while Kate wondered without much regret why all their conversations lurched from one misunderstanding to another. Her younger sister, Laura, and Bruce got on well with her and had obliged her with conventional marriages and the regular production of extremely dull, pale-faced children. But Kate and her mother always found themselves circling each other.
‘The point is,’ she said as though Kate had needlessly interrupted her, ‘Oliver Mermagen has found you a job – a very well-paid post in London working for a man named Eden White.’
‘I’ve already talked to White, Ma. He’s a creep.’
‘But he’s influential and wealthy and he wants to see you again.’
‘It would be like going to work for the Mafia, Ma.’
‘Oliver says you would be perfect for his organisation. I gave him your number. Surely you realise that it’s very considerate of him to go out of his way like that, don’t you think? He was always a good sort.’
‘Yes,’ said Kate.
‘Good, well I’m glad we’ve spoken. I was sorry to hear about your friend. He was evidently a very gifted person, if you believe what you read in the obituaries. But he went off the rails. Perhaps he should have married.’ She stopped to underline that. ‘I can just remember his face – very intelligent eyes.’
‘Yes, that was Eyam.’
‘I hope we’ll be seeing you in Edinburgh soon, Kate.’ She paused. ‘Don’t leave it too long, darling: we’re becoming strangers.’
‘I won’t,’ she said, caught off guard by the genuine appeasement in her mother’s voice.
Tony Swift led her from the Mercer’s Arms to a private room at the back of the Black Bear pub where five people sat round a table. She recognised the photographer Chris Mooney and Alice Scudamore. A tall man in his mid-forties got up and introduced himself as Danny Church. He was followed by Andy Sessions, a web designer who seemed to her the epitome of the word ‘bloke’. The last was Michelle Grey, a therapist of some sort, who offered her a slender hand that jangled with bracelets.
Bottles of red and white wine were on the table. The atmosphere would once have been thick with cigarette smoke but now the private room smelled of the pub’s food and the fumes of the coke fire in the grate.
Tony Swift grasped a pint of beer from a wide hatch that opened onto the bar, sat down and threw a hand out to the table. ‘Who’s going to start?’
Danny Church said he didn’t mind, and stroked a soft beard streaked with grey hair. ‘We’re here to make contact with you and to tell you about us. With Hugh Russell’s murder everything’s changed. It’s obvious he was killed because of his association with David Eyam and that makes us all feel really jumpy.’
‘Threatened,’ said Alice Scudamore.
‘We think things are coming to a head,’ said Andy Sessions.
‘Everything is connected,’ said Chris Mooney fiercely. ‘Our lives have been made hell. They’re trying to crush us – police, tax inspectors, bailiffs, local authority snoops.’
‘Is that really true?’ asked Kate pleasantly. ‘Can you prove there is an organised campaign?’
‘Not in the legal sense,’ said Alice Scudamore. ‘But it exists. They’re gradually stripping my house because I refuse to pay identity card fines. They won’t jail me because that would be too public. They just barge in, take what they want and leave. They can do that now you know.’ She shook her head and looked down. ‘I can’t work, I’ve got no money and I’m stressed out. And the worst thing about it is that we all know they’re listening to our phones. They’re watching our email, monitoring our movements. They make it obvious. We see the same men outside our houses. They’re everywhere. Rick and Andy’s web company is falling apart because they’ve lost all their contracts. The tax inspectors are around every moment of the day. Their bank has withdrawn its loan facility. At least six of us have been charged with new offences. The VAT inspectors turned over Penny Whitehead’s home and took her computer to try to prove fraudulent claims, and Michelle’s partner received the same treatment at his restaurant.’
‘But you can’t prove it’s a coordinated campaign. The authorities will argue that they’re just doing their job properly, and most people would support them judging by what I read in the papers.’
‘That’s exactly what we were told by our member of parliament,’ said Chris Mooney. ‘We tried taking the story to the media, but we got nowhere. They’re not interested – not even the local rag or radio station. They just think we’re all being paranoid. The national media couldn’t give a toss. The wankers down in London have no fucking idea what’s going on out in the sticks. Do they ask what’s happened to the rights of ordinary men and women? Do they give a fuck? No, because they’re not being persecuted and pushed around like we are. They don’t see what’s happened and you know why – it’s because they’re part of the problem.’
Alice Scudamore began nodding. ‘Look, just take our word for it: this is a campaign of persecution. They’ve practically admitted as much.’
Tony Swift took a long draught of his beer and looked at Kate. ‘I didn’t tell you about this the other night because . . . well, I wanted to consult these good people here and . . .’
‘What he’s trying to say,’ interrupted Chris Mooney, ‘is that they offered me a deal. They told me that everything would stop if I informed on the others. They gave me the names of the people they wanted me to watch, but I didn’t turn them down flat. I mean, I’ve got to think of my family.’
‘Have you any record of this approach? A tape or a phone recording or anything else?’
‘No, they stopped me on the road because of a traffic offence and then after a few minutes this guy gets out of an unmarked car that’s pulled up behind me and he leans in the window and tells me he wants me to inform on my friends. I mean, it’s unreal.’
‘Did this individual say where he was from?’ asked Kate.
‘No, I guess Special Branch or maybe MI5. I didn’t ask. Look, they’ve got me by the fucking balls. I can’t move without one of these bloody agencies giving me a hard time. I’ve had the VAT people on my tail, building inspectors, the police, some damned busybody from social services threatening us with a parenting order and a home environment study because my youngest is in trouble at school. My elder daughter’s flat at university has been searched by the police twice – they say she’s linked to some extremist environmental group. They know everything about my family. When the man offered me a deal he mentioned my wife’s depression. That was like ten years ago. How would they know unless they’d looked at her medical records?’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I’ll play along with them and just tell everyone in the group that I have to do this.’
‘They’ll offer the same deal to someone else who may take it,’ she said, ‘which means they will know you’re stringing them along.’
Mooney opened his hands in dismay. ‘Fuck it. I’m not used to this. I’m a bloody photographer, not a double agent.’ He stopped. ‘But you’re a lawyer. Tell us what we should do.’
She thought for a moment. ‘You need a narrative and a timeline of exactly what has happened to all of you. It’s no good you fighting this thing by yourselves. You need to band together and make a convincing case – which takes in everything – and find other people across the country who appear to have suffered like you. Then go to a London lawyer who specialises in this area of the law and campaigning and make your pitch. Someone will take it on. Get it out in the public domain.’
Andy Sessions, who with Michelle Grey had not spoken, drummed his fingers on the table, leaned forward and said, ‘Tell us about yourself, Kate. You arrive out of the blue and inherit David’s house and all his possessions. We want to know who you are and where you stand on all this.’
The noise from the bar swelled and briefly silenced the group. Kate looked up and through the hatch saw the slender black man Tony had signalled to two evenings ago. He was standing at the bar between two young men, who looked like identical twins. Her eyes met the black guy’s and he turned away to one of his companions.
‘You know what?’ she said. ‘I’m not really in the mood to explain myself to a bunch of complete strangers. If what you say is true about your group being under surveillance it wouldn’t really be sensible, would it? I am sorry about your problems but I’m no part of them. David Eyam is dead. Hugh Russell is dead. Forgive me if I don’t get too worked up about your tax inspections and parking fines.’
‘So you’re not interested,’ said Alice Scudamore, who had watched her with a private intensity that made Kate suddenly consider the possibility that she’d once been close to Eyam.
‘I’m not interested in establishing my credentials for you,’ she said. ‘Yes, you have problems and yes, Merrie old England sometimes seems like it’s becoming a shitty little dictatorship, but a case is what interests me and you don’t have anything that resembles one.’
A silence fell on the group.
‘Who are the bell ringers?’ she said.
‘Why do you ask?’ said Alice Scudamore.
‘David Eyam left money to the Bell Ringers of the Marches Society in his will. I never knew he was interested in bell ringing, but then again there was a lot I didn’t know about David’s life down here.’
‘They’re a group,’ said Swift slowly. ‘They rang the bells at his funeral. He was friends with some of them.’
‘Good friends apparently: he left them a hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds. What would bell ringers want with that kind of money?’
‘There are all sorts of expenses,’ said Mooney. ‘I’m a member of the group.’
‘Well, you must be pleased,’ said Kate.
Mooney grunted.
Not much more was said and a few minutes later they began to get up and leave separately through the bar. She looked at Tony Swift, seated with his pint and his immovable, owlish self-containment.
‘So tell me what that was all about?’
‘They wanted to have a look at you and see where you were at.’
‘Where I’m at, Tony!’ she said, putting down her glass. ‘And you, Tony? Where are you at? Does all the information you hear get passed up the line of the Citizen’s Watch? Or are you a paid-up member of the High Castle chapter of Paranoia International?’
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said, getting up and draining his glass, apparently unfazed.
Outside she said, ‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘Me? Where am I at? Oh, I just do my job, keep my nose clean and try to help people when I can.’ He stopped and looked at the moon sinking through some cloud above the castle battlements, then hitched up his trousers and buttoned his enormous black coat.
‘There’s something very familiar about you, Tony. I can’t put my finger on it.’
‘It’s because I seem like every middle-aged bloke you’ve ever met. We’re the same the world over.’
‘No, that’s not it. There’s something else.’
They began to walk.
‘The black guy in the bar with the twins – who is he?’ she asked. ‘I know you know because you nodded to him the other night.’
Swift smiled. ‘You’ll meet him one day. His name is Miff.’
‘Miff?
‘Yes, Miff is a friend.’
‘And the twins?
‘David and Jonathan: they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses.’
‘In a pub? Jehovah’s Witnesses? It doesn’t seem very likely. Who are they? Why does this Miff character shadow you?’
Swift stopped and looked up at the moon. ‘We’re living through some strange times here. But I prefer to think of them as an eclipse, Katy; not the beginning of the long night.’
‘You called me Katy. I haven’t been called that since my first year at Oxford.’
‘Sorry, it somehow seemed natural.’
‘And Miff – why does he follow you?’
‘We have business together.’
‘Business. What kind of business?’
‘It’s of no interest.’
‘You were saying about the eclipse and the long night.’
‘I believe this is an eclipse because I’m an optimist. However, I am also a realist about myself. I’m just a coroner’s clerk: no more than that. I have to move at a speed that is in keeping with my station in life. You’re an extremely clever woman, as well as a very beautiful one, I might add. But don’t embarrass me by asking me to explain things to you.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Ah, but you will,’ he said, quietly turning to her. ‘You will. We have to keep our powder dry.’
‘What powder?’
His hand found her shoulder. ‘There you go asking questions. I am going to say good night, Kate. Sorry.’
He looked long and hard at her, then turned away and took his thoughts off to what she assumed was a loveless bed, unless Miff was waiting there for him.
She got lost trying to find Dove Cottage in the dark, but after an hour eventually came across the spot where Hugh Russell had died. There was no police car, just tape cordoning off a portion of the road and the area where the Audi had ploughed into the bank. She reminded herself to phone Paul Spring the following day to ask how she should approach Hugh Russell’s wife.
Inside Dove Cottage there was such a desolate air that she nearly turned and left for the hotel. But she unpacked the groceries, lit a fire and read a note from Sean Nock saying he would come in later to see she was OK. What now? she thought, looking round the kitchen. Make herself at home? Play house by making those minor adjustments that would put her stamp on the place? Start thinking about replacing the floribunda pattern curtains, which reminded her of her mother, or the tapestry cushions in the sitting room? No, Dove Cottage was still indisputably Eyam’s, and it always would be. She could not assume ownership even if she wanted: it would be like wearing someone else’s clothes.
The sitting room warmed up quickly, and she sat by the fire with a cup of soup and crackers thinking about the group she had met in the pub. Her eyes moved to the bookshelves. It was a while since she’d done any serious reading away from the law and the occasional detective mystery. And now she had the time and all Eyam’s library at her disposal. That was quite an interesting prospect, but what the hell was she going to do with the library that Eyam had asked her to look after? There must have been at least twelve hundred volumes in the sitting room alone.
She swept the shelves, making a rough calculation. At regular intervals, he had pushed the books back to accommodate various objects on the shelves – a photograph of his mother in a silver frame, a fragment of a Greek amphora, a little terracotta Roman head, a Russian icon, an old brass microscope – knick-knacks, most of which she recognised from his flat in London. Occasionally, instead of an objet d’art breaking the line a book had been turned so that the front cover showed.
And then she gasped, because there was the book: The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel García Márquez, the book Eyam had been reading in the bar in Cartagena and gave to Detective Bautista before he died; the book the detective had flourished in front of the camera and claimed was some kind of good luck charm: the last gift of a true English gentleman, he had said. She put the bowl down and went to fetch the book – a slim volume, first published in Spanish in 1970, then in English translation in 1986. She read the first sentences of Márquez’s preface about the eight crew members being washed overboard from the Colombian destroyer Caldas, which had been bound for Cartagena; how the search for the sailors was abandoned after four days but one sailor had lived to crawl up a deserted beach in northern Colombia, having survived ten days without food or water, drifting on a raft in the ocean. His name was Luis Alejandro Velasco. García Márquez described him as looking like a trumpet player, not the national hero he became; a man who had natural instincts for the art of narrative, an astonishing memory and ‘enough uncultivated dignity to be able to laugh at his own heroism’.
She flipped through it. About halfway through, the top of one page had been turned down, a sure sign that Eyam had been at the book. There didn’t seem to be anything of particular significance on that page but maybe that wasn’t the point. The point was this: if Eyam had already read the book, what was he doing with another copy in Cartagena? Eyam had a miraculous ability to absorb the written word, barely forgot anything he read, and was able to quote whole passages from years before. His comprehension and memory for the written word were of a very high order indeed, and he did not re-read books because he didn’t need to, especially books with such an elementary story.
She sat down and began to read the hundred-odd pages with the attention normally applied to a complex legal case. The vitality of García Márquez’s tale and of the storytelling impressed her, but when she put the book down an hour later she had only one thought. When the sailors were washed overboard everyone in Cartagena believed Velasco was dead. As they prepared his funeral he was out there on the ocean sipping seawater and catching seagulls to eat. When he was found and news reached Cartagena it was truly as though Velasco had come back from the dead.
She poured herself a glass of whisky and checked herself: brought herself up short and tried to think of something else. But it wasn’t as if she was imagining all this. The same book was there, clear as day in both the tourist recording and the interview with Bautista. Not the Spanish edition, mind you, but the English translation in paperback with a cover that looked very much like the one she held in her hand – an ocean with a warship steaming towards the horizon.
She put on a jacket and went into the garden to ring Nock’s number. ‘I’m back,’ she said. ‘Can you come round? I want to ask you something.’ Then she dialled her message service and worked through the accumulation of new messages until she reached Eyam’s and listened to it again. ‘Hello there, sister – it’s me. Eyam. I felt like having a chat, but it seems you’re busy and I now realise it’s not ideal this end either, because I’m sitting outside in a street bar and a bloody wedding party has just appeared so you wouldn’t be able to hear much anyway. But, look, I miss you and I’d really love to see you when I get back. Perhaps we should meet in New York.’
An ordinary message but one with a secret, she was sure. At the end of a list of options she was invited by the automated voice to key eight for message details. There was no record of a telephone number, but the message had been left at five thirty-eight p.m., Saturday, January 19th – not January 12th, the date of the explosion. So when Eyam called she wasn’t in the office working on a deal, but staying with Sam Calvert and his wife. She went into the phone’s calendar to make sure. January 18th–20th was marked off with the words Calverts – country. It was the same weekend she’d told old Sam Calvert she wanted to leave and he had shown her into his den on that Saturday afternoon and persuaded her to take a few months off, then join the London office. He didn’t want to lose her but he reckoned it was time for her to get her bearings in her personal life, by which he meant that she should get a personal life. Hell, he’d even pay for a cruise or finance a pro bono section in the London office if it meant she’d stay. She could have a baby on the firm, if she wanted. Whatever it took, she only had to say.
She checked the GPS facility, which rather unnecessarily in her view kept a record of the phone’s precise location for every minute it was switched on. She entered January 12 and an approximate time, and a map of Manhattan came up with the address on Sixth Avenue in a panel below. Right, she was in the conference room and the phone would have been on the table beside her and switched on; she would have answered. She did the same for the following weekend. There was no record of the phone’s location in the afternoon because it had been switched off, but for that morning it gave an address in Connecticut.
There was no mistaking it – the call had come a week after he had died, and yet Eyam had taken care to locate and time the message by mentioning the policeman and the wedding party passing in front of him. She turned towards the lights of the cottage with a profound sense of bafflement. There could only be two explanations. Either the automated message service had made a mistake on the date of the call, which seemed highly improbable, or Eyam was alive and moreover meant to convey that astonishing fact by obliquely alerting her to these discrepancies. That of course was absurd – impossible. But just pretend it’s possible, she said to herself. What would the phone message mean? He was saying, yes, I am in the film that was shot outside the cafe but I wasn’t killed by the explosion. The presence of The Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor was an internal clue, planted there by Eyam, who could be sure that she would search the cottage high and low after his letter. Her mind reeled. She stood shivering in the cold, staring vacantly at her breath clouds, which were lit blue by her mobile. If Eyam had faked his own death there must be others involved – Detective Bautista for one. And Darsh for another: she remembered that odd look he gave her when he talked about the red admiral butterfly, the butterfly that hibernates then comes to life in the spring, or flies north from France. Was he saying Eyam was still in France? Did Darsh know and if so was he dropping a hint to see if she had any suspicions of her own? His theatrical display of grief at the funeral might also contain its own message – the prayer he quoted about the inward man being renewed and the things that are not seen being eternal.
And it wasn’t just Darsh who was dropping hints during the service. She went inside, found her bag in the kitchen and drew out the order of service for the funeral that Eyam had planned with such care and prescience. On the back was the poem entitled The Death of Me. She read the second verse: ‘I may be gone for now, sister, For others say I’ve died. But I’ll wait for you here, sister, ’Til we take the waters wide.’ This wasn’t an anonymous American folk song, but verses Eyam had knocked up himself and with some gall placed on the back of his own funeral service. She stared at the words and whispered, ‘Eyam, you fucking bastard.’ Gripping the booklet, she sat down heavily and struggled to get a hold on her thoughts. Until this moment, disbelief, hope and joy had competed to overwhelm her but now the hardening conviction that Eyam was alive sparked a sense of what? Betrayal seemed the best word. He had deceived her, used her unscrupulously without thought for the grief and remorse she would experience, jeopardised her life and caused the death of an innocent man. Faking a death was somehow the ultimate lie and Eyam had done it in order to pass all his troubles to her and escape the responsibilities of the cause he seemed to have created. Cowardice was the other word that came to mind, but she had no time to refine her thoughts further because Sean Nock was hailing her from the open front door.
‘Come in,’ she said, getting up.
Nock was in a loose lumberjack shirt and steamed in the cold. He had run all the way. ‘You sounded worried on the phone.’
‘I’m fine,’ she said coolly. ‘I’m going to ask you a question and I want a straight answer.’ She picked up The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor and handed it to him. ‘This book was placed facing outwards from the middle of the bookshelves. Did you put it there?’
‘Maybe it was moved during cleaning,’ he said innocently.
‘I don’t have a cleaner.’
‘Yes, you do – it’s me.’
‘You’re an engineer, Sean, not a cleaner.’
‘I was paid to look after the place and that included doing a bit of dusting and vacuuming.’
‘Sean, did you put that book there so that I would see it? Were you told by anyone to do that?’
‘I don’t think so – no.’
‘Don’t fuck with me, Sean. Did you put it there?’
Nock gave her a look of bewilderment. ‘Really, I don’t remember moving it.’
‘You stay here. I’m going to make a call outside. When I come back I want some answers.’ She snatched up her bag and left for the end of the garden where she took out Kilmartin’s phone and dialled his number. He answered after the first ring. ‘We need to talk as soon as possible,’ she said.
‘Yes, I agree; we have much to discuss,’ said Kilmartin, ‘but I can’t speak now. We should meet tomorrow. Town or country, which suits you?’
‘Country. Near here.’ As she said it she saw several headlights slashing through the trees at the top of the track.
‘Good. I’ll call first thing,’ said Kilmartin and hung up.
Now she saw a flashing blue light. A few seconds later three police cars plunged into Eyam’s drive, pulled up and disgorged several uniformed police officers. Then came two unmarked cars and three men in civilian clothes got out. One of them was Newsome. The uniformed police ran to the front door and opened it without ringing. Then through the sitting room windows she saw them seize hold of Sean Nock. There was some shouting and a tussle in which Nock threw two of the officers across the room. Without thinking, she switched off the Kilmartin phone and placed it into one of the flower pots stacked at the corner of Eyam’s vegetable patch and placed another pot on top. Then she summoned the call register on her own phone, worked her finger across the screen until she picked ‘Received Calls’ from the menu and kept pressing the screen until the number of the last call received was ringing.
‘It’s me,’ she said when her mother answered. ‘I need some help. Can you call Sam Calvert at Calvert-Mayne in New York, and explain that I need the best defence lawyer in England. He’ll know who that is. I think I’m about to be taken to High Castle police station. Got that?’
‘Yes, I’m writing it down, darling. High Castle . . . police station.’ For once Kate was grateful for her mother’s composure. ‘Will Mr Calvert be readily available?’
‘He has an assistant called Amy Stovall. Tell her who you are and explain it’s urgent. Look, I must go now. Thanks, Ma.’
‘Got it. Good luck. Call me if you can.’
She waited in the dark watching the police race through the house, searching for her. She dialled her message service and went back to delete the voicemail from Eyam, then turned off the phone, dropped it in her pocket and walked towards the front door. Newsome turned at the sound of her crossing the gravel. ‘Kate Lockhart, I am arresting you in connection with the murder of Hugh Arthur Russell on March 13th. You will come with us.’ A woman officer took hold of her and led her to the unmarked car. Sean Nock, by now bound with blue wrist ties and sporting a gash to his eyebrow, was taken to the back of a police van.