EIGHTY

Elias made his way back down from Temple Bruer’s tower and out to his car. The road that had brought him here quickly degraded into a farm track. He made his way carefully along it until he reached a cobbled lane. A pair of scarlet oaks appeared in his headlights. A little further on, they glinted off the rear reflectors of a white convertible with a black soft-top in a walled-off parking area. He pulled in beside it and yes, it was Merchant’s BMW. He’d seen enough of it these past few days to recognise it on sight, after all. First at Warne Farm, then at the King John Hotel and again last night outside his…

The King John Hotel, he thought suddenly. Oliver Merchant had spent the night before last at the King John Hotel. That was to say, he’d been there the night before Scott’s spade had been found on the salt marsh, and right after his dinner out with Anna at which she’d first suggested that maybe her uncle had been killed by a treasure hunter rather than smugglers, an idea that had been virtually certain to transform their investigation, and thus to require a new suspect. He’d checked in to the hotel with Anna too, and so would have witnessed Penny Scott’s relief at news of the intruders, suggesting she’d had reason to believe her husband guilty, thus making him the perfect person to frame.

Why then had Merchant come to Warne Farm at all? Surely safer to lie low. Except that lying low hadn’t been a possibility, not with his interview booked with Dunstan Warne, and having spoken to him all those times on the phone. They’d have got round to him eventually, so better to do it on his own terms, when braced for the challenge and ready to make light of Elias’s request for alibi witnesses, which he hadn’t followed up on anyway, believing the case already solved.

‘You again!’ said Quinn cheerfully, when he called her back once more. ‘We need to be a bit careful, or Dan’ll start getting worried.’

‘That hotel CCTV,’ said Elias. ‘Didn’t you tell me that the intruder lights came on again the night after the storm?’

‘Yes. Once. Why?’

‘Can you remember what time? Or, better yet, were Merchant and Anna back from dinner by then?’

‘Yes. They’d been back about an hour. Why?’

‘Okay. Okay. I need you to run another search of your traffic cams, if you can bear it?’

‘Sure. What am I to look for?’

‘A white BMW with a black soft-top heading away from Warne Farm early last Monday morning.’

‘Christ!’ said Quinn. ‘You think it was Merchant.’

‘Yes,’ he said. Then he added balefully: ‘And Anna’s with him now.’