The constable on duty at the desk was the same one who had come to search the lighthouse after Mutti’s tribunal – the one with the oily moustache.
‘I need to report an act of sabotage,’ I said, as soon as I got through the door. I leant over the desk towards the policeman, breathing hard. ‘The telephone line to the lighthouse has been cut.’
Oily looked at me. He made a note of what I had just said. ‘And when did this happen, miss?’ he asked.
‘About half an hour ago. It’s very important,’ I said. ‘It’s not just a normal telephone line, it was installed by the Admiralty, for emergencies.’
Oily made a note of that too. ‘Did you see this happen?’
‘Yes, I did. And I saw who did it too – it was Michael Baron.’
He put his pen down. ‘Michael Baron, the magistrate’s son?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
Oily looked at me very closely. ‘You live at the lighthouse, don’t you? One of the half-German girls. Your mum was locked up for being a traitor.’
I looked at him hard. ‘No, she was interned for being an enemy alien. It’s a very different thing.’
‘And it was Mrs Baron who locked her up, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Mrs Baron was one of the magistrates at the tribunal, but what’s that got to do with—’
‘It’s just a bit of a coincidence, that’s all,’ Oily interrupted. ‘Seems to me that you might want to cause trouble for her – to get your own back or something.’
‘No!’ I said. ‘I’m telling the truth! You have to tell Pinstripe – the detective, I mean. I don’t know his name – the one in the pinstriped suit. You have to tell him about it right away.’ I fished the scrap of paper from my pocket. ‘Give him this, please. It’s vital evidence – look, MB!’
Oily’s face was a pantomime of confusion. He shook his head. ‘Not sure I know who you mean by Pinstripe, miss, but I’ll pass on your “evidence” if you really want me to.’ He took the scrap of paper from me and put it on the desk without even looking at it, then he slicked down his moustache with a greasy thumb and forefinger. ‘But it would be more than my job’s worth to cause problems for the local magistrate. I’m sure you understand. I’m hardly going to risk my position on the word of a spiteful child.’ He looked me up and down – my coat was covered with mud and chalk from the tunnel. ‘And a scruffy little devil at that. I think you’d better run along home, don’t you?’ He stood up. ‘And you can take your tall tales with you.’
I made my way to the cliff path, wary of being seen by Mrs Baron or anyone else in the village who knew that I was supposed to have been evacuated that afternoon.
I drove my fists down into my pockets and fought back the angry tears. The policeman hadn’t believed me. My own sister hadn’t believed me. She had taken Michael’s side – the side of a traitor. My feet moved heavily up the hill, weighed down by feelings of misery and betrayal and fear. Fat raindrops started falling from the rainclouds that blistered the sky above. They spattered on my head and ran down the back of my neck. As I pulled up the collar of my coat, I realized I was going in the wrong direction for the tunnel. Quite instinctively, I was heading home to the Castle. As I trudged up the steepest part of the path and my home gradually emerged from the rainy haze, something else occurred to me: perhaps when I thought I had seen a dark figure reflected in the kitchen window that afternoon, it hadn’t been my imagination playing tricks on me after all. Perhaps it had been him lurking around the lighthouse, hiding behind the standing stones. ‘Yes,’ I breathed. ‘Michael Baron.’
And then I froze. It was as if I had summoned him, like some sort of medieval demon, just by speaking his name.
‘Hello, Petra.’