‘The quad bike? Whatever do you want to look at that for?’
Bill Alderson was sitting across the kitchen table from Samson, the detective’s business card tiny in his large hand, while his wife, Lynn, was pouring tea, good and strong judging by the odour rising from the three mugs.
‘I just wondered—’
‘You think it might have had something to do with the accident?’ Mrs Alderson cut across Samson, eyes sharp in a face haggard with grief.
‘Possibly…’
She turned to her husband. ‘What harm could there be, Bill?’
‘None, I suppose. But I don’t understand why someone’s come all the way out from Bruncliffe for this.’
Samson reached for his mug while searching for the right words, unsure how to put it. ‘I’m investigating another accident,’ he said finally.
‘Like Tom’s?’ asked the farmer.
‘Kind of.’
‘How kind of?’
‘A suicide.’
Fresh pain showed on the face of Lynn Alderson, the teapot still held before her like a shield. ‘How could that be connected to Tom? You’re not suggesting he turned that bike deliberately, are you?’
‘No, no, nothing like that.’ Samson cursed inwardly at his own clumsiness. A life lived undercover hadn’t prepared him for interviews with grieving parents and, bizarrely, he caught himself wishing that Delilah was by his side. She’d know how to handle these people and their sadness without hurting them further. ‘I just thought … if I could have a quick look at the bike?’
But the keen eyes of Mrs Alderson were on him again, scrutinising him. ‘Was it the other mother who hired you?’
‘Sorry?’
‘The mother of the person who committed suicide. Did she hire you?’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t say—’
But Mrs Alderson’s hand was already covering her mouth. ‘You think it wasn’t an accident?’
Samson froze, unsure which way to leap.
‘You think someone killed our Tom?’ Her voice rose high and hung above the table, shimmering like a blade.
Bill Alderson reeled back. ‘Tom? You think someone killed him?’
‘I can’t be sure. It’s just … a hunch. But I might be able to rule it out,’ said Samson.
‘But why?’ Mrs Alderson asked, hand shaking as she replaced the teapot on its stand. ‘Why on earth would anyone want to harm Tom?’
‘I don’t know.’
Husband and wife looked at each other and then Bill got to his feet.
‘Come on then,’ he said, heading for the door. ‘It’s in the small barn.’
* * *
There. Staring out at her from her computer screen. A pattern of behaviour shared by the three men.
Having drawn a blank with her initial theory – that the women who had been rejected would yield a common link – Delilah had returned to the data accumulated after the Speedy Date night, this time focusing on the women who had been chosen.
According to her records, Richard Hargreaves had sent five follow-up requests, two of which had been turned down. That left him with three interested ladies. Martin Foster, after his staggering decision to invite all twelve women to meet him again, had been rewarded with six acceptances. While two of Tom Alderson’s three offers of a date had been favourably received.
So three women had wanted to date Richard; six had said yes to Martin; two had agreed to meet Tom. But only two names appeared in all three columns – two women who had accepted date requests from all three of the men who had subsequently died.
Finally Delilah had something to tie the deceased men together – even if it didn’t seem a credible catalyst for the deaths that had followed. However tenuous though, it was a definite line connecting her dead clients and right now, that was all she had.
Delilah stared at the two names in front of her and wondered if she was looking at the name of a murderer.
* * *
‘It’s fine.’
‘Nothing wrong with it at all? The brakes? The throttle?’
George Capstick was already shaking his head, eyes darting back to the large barn where the much more interesting grey tractor was waiting. ‘It’s fine.’
Samson covered his disappointment by stroking a hand across his face. He’d been so sure. So confident they would find something here; that there would be some evidence of foul play which would tie at least two of Delilah’s dead clients together.
He’d crossed the farmyard in the company of both Lynn and Bill Alderson, noting the pristine conditions once more as they paused to collect George from his loving admiration of the Ferguson tractor. The doors of the larger barn were painted green, the paintwork bright in the morning light and the woodwork solid. The yard had been swept, a couple of hens scratching futilely at the barren surface. The drystone wall that ran around the perimeter of the property looked newly repaired in places. And when they arrived at the smaller, stone-built barn, it too was organised to perfection: a workshop with everything in its place. It had made Samson ashamed to think of the ramshackle outbuildings of Twistleton Farm.
‘Tom kept the place in good nick,’ Bill Alderson had explained, noting Samson’s approving glances. ‘He could turn his hand to anything. Apart from walling. We had to get someone in for that as neither me nor Tom are … were … much cop at it. Everything else though…’
He’d tailed off, his anguish clear to see, and Samson, uncomfortable at the torment he was putting the Aldersons through, had been relieved when George had begun giving the quad bike a thorough inspection.
Now George was delivering his verdict. Apart from a few scratches and a couple of dents following the accident, the bike was in full working order.
Samson knew better than to question the judgement of his mechanic, George Capstick being more knowledgeable about anything with a motor than anyone Samson had ever met. But still, it wasn’t what he’d been expecting. Or hoping for.
He’d convinced himself that the quad bike had been tampered with. That Tom Alderson’s accident had been anything but. If he was on the trail of a murderer, however, the person he was chasing was covering their tracks impeccably.
A long exhalation next to him reminded him that not everyone in the barn was a detached observer.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said to the distraught parents, Lynn Alderson’s face drawn, hands clasped to her chest. ‘I thought … maybe the bike…’
Bill Alderson placed a solid arm across his wife’s shoulders. ‘No need to apologise, son.’ He sighed heavily. ‘It was a bit far-fetched anyway. Who’d want to hurt our Tom? And as for the bike…’ He gestured at the surrounding workshop, everything tidied away, surfaces clear. ‘Tom was particular about his tools. He wouldn’t have been riding a quad that was defective.’
Samson nodded. It had been a long shot, but one the gnawing in his stomach wouldn’t let him ignore. ‘Thanks for allowing us to look at it,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry to have intruded on your grief.’ He turned to George, who was still gazing longingly over at the far barn. ‘We’re leaving, George.’
His mechanic gave his characteristic slow blink, shuffling his feet on the concrete floor. Then, after what seemed an age, he spoke.
‘You need to tell them not to tape,’ he said.
‘Not to tape?’
George pointed at the handlebars of the bike, his eyelids closing for several seconds before reopening. ‘It’s dangerous,’ he said.
‘What’s he talking about?’ asked Bill Alderson.
‘I’m not sure.’ Samson watched his mechanic as he began to fidget, hands twitching, legs jiggling. ‘What do you mean, George?’
‘It’s bad for the engine,’ came the blurted reply. ‘Too many revs.’
Nonplussed, Samson turned to the quad bike. Too many revs – so something to do with the throttle. He reached across to the right and rested his hand on the metal lever under the handlebar. Sticky. A tacky substance pulling at his fingertips.
Heart beginning to thump, he stretched his fingers up onto the handlebar. More traces of what felt like adhesive. A loop of tape had been wrapped around the throttle and onto the handlebar above. Jamming the throttle open. Making the bike rev …
‘Can you think of any reason Tom would have had for keeping the bike running when he wasn’t on it?’ he asked.
Lynn Alderson looked up at Bill, who was already shaking his head. ‘No. I know folk who keep the quad trundling through when they get off to open and close gates. But only an idiot would do that round here. The bike would be off up a hill and back on you before…’ He paused, eyes darting to the handlebars where Samson’s hand was still resting and then to George. ‘Tape? My God. Someone taped the throttle open?’
‘But that could kill someone—’ Lynn Alderson’s words sliced through the cold air of the open barn. Then she let out a small moan, her hands flying to her mouth. ‘Tom! It wasn’t an accident!’
Samson made no move to disagree.
* * *
The sharp ping of an email arriving startled Delilah back to her surroundings. How long had she been sitting there staring at the two names? Long enough for her tea to go cold and her computer screen to go blank.
Hannah Wilson and Sarah Mitchell. Such unremarkable names. As for the women themselves, Hannah was local, a year older than Delilah, and a librarian who bred Shire horses in her spare time. She’d joined the Dales Dating Agency six months before but hadn’t really made much of the online options. But when Delilah had introduced the live events, Hannah had signed up for the first one and every one since. She was bubbly, cheerful, the perfect person for Speedy Date night.
A quietly spoken ecologist, Sarah Mitchell was almost the polar opposite of Hannah. Hailing from Leeds, she’d arrived in the Yorkshire Dales eighteen months ago to carry out research into otter populations and had stayed on to work for an ecology consultancy service based in Hawes. She’d only joined the dating agency in September; October’s dating event had been her first.
Neither woman struck Delilah as being capable of murder.
She slumped back in her chair and checked her emails. Two more requests to join the Speedy Date night the following week. It was almost fully booked now, demand such that Delilah had increased the number of participants to fifteen couples. The article in the local paper had proved to be great publicity.
It wouldn’t be so great when word got out about the link between the dating nights and the recent deaths.
The thought sent a shot of anxiety through her, propelling her to her feet to pace the floor. What was she going to do? She only had a few days before the next event. And she could really do without anyone dying after that one.
From the corner of the room a soft sigh alerted her to the presence of Tolpuddle, head on paws, eyes watching her forlornly.
‘Yeah, I know,’ she muttered. ‘You’re waiting for him.’
She gazed out of the window into the empty courtyard below, and inspiration struck.
* * *
Suspicion. Unfurling itself, snaking through his mind. Turning the normal into the suspect. Casting scepticism on every coincidence.
After the discovery of the tape residue on the bike, Samson had accompanied Bill Alderson to the scene of the accident, George opting to stay behind and continue his inspection of the old tractor. They’d taken the Land Rover, Bill pulling up inside the first gate where they got out.
‘This was open,’ he’d said, eyes filling with sadness as he recalled the night of his son’s death. ‘I should have known then there was something up. Tom never was one for being careless.’
‘So it was in this field that you found him?’ Samson looked up at the looming sides of Wether Fell, the autumn already turning the green to brown, and thought about how dark it would be here once the sun went down. And isolated, the only house visible being the Alderson farm in the distance.
‘No, the next one.’ Bill led the way up the field to the top gate. He paused, as though gathering his courage, and then passed through.
Samson’s first impression was the steepness, grass rising sharply up to the far wall. It was similar to the fields at the outer edges of Twistleton Farm – tricky to negotiate even on a quad bike. No one who worked this fellside regularly would be stupid enough to ride directly up it.
‘He was over there.’ The farmer pointed to his left, where the ground was gouged and stained. He made no move to follow as Samson crossed to inspect the scene.
Crouching down, Samson ran his eyes up along the land, taking in the contours, the bumps and indents. A well-worn track snaked across the hillside, weaving lazily up to a gate set high in the left-hand wall. The route for the quad bike. A safe traverse across this tricky terrain. So why on earth hadn’t Tom stuck to it? Because, judging by where the quad had ended up, something had urged Tom to take the more direct route to the top gate. Unless Tom hadn’t been in a state to make that decision…?
He looked back at the gate where he’d entered the field with Bill.
They’d been here, lying in wait, whoever had fixed the tape onto the bike. Tom would have stopped at the top of the first field, walked over in the headlights of the quad bike to the gate, and opened it. And out of the dark, rising up from behind the wall, his death had come to him.
How? Tom had been beneath the quad when his father found him, some distance from the gate. From what the Aldersons had said, his injuries – smashed pelvis, fractured limbs, broken vertebrae, extensive damage to the abdomen – were consistent with being trapped under a heavy four-wheeled motorbike. So if it hadn’t been an accident, how had he got there?
There was only one way. A blow to the head. Then slump the body on the bike, start the engine, tape the throttle open and let go. The quad bike would have carried its cargo up the treacherous incline, until it could keep traction no longer. Then it would have cartwheeled backwards and onto its inert passenger, leaving Tom Alderson dead in what would look to all intents and purposes like one more farming accident, the initial wound easily overlooked by a coroner as part of the overall trauma.
Callous. And calculated. For whoever had placed tape on the throttle had been composed enough to remove it. Which meant they’d approached the upended quad bike. No doubt checked the young man beneath it was dead, too, leaving nothing to chance.
Samson straightened up and walked back to the farmer, who seemed to have diminished in stature since they’d entered the field.
‘Well?’ asked Bill. ‘Do you still think it could have been deliberate?’
‘My instinct says it was. But I don’t understand how someone could have known Tom would be here that night. What brought him out here?’
‘Why, the dead sheep, of course.’
‘What dead sheep?’
‘The one we got the call about. Some tourist came across a dead ewe on the right of way beyond.’ Bill pointed towards the far gate up the hillside. ‘They called the Chairman of the Parish Council. He called Lynn and when Tom and I got back from the auction, Tom went straight out to deal with it. That’s where he was heading when…’ His gaze rested on the site of the crash. ‘If it hadn’t been for that blasted ewe breaking her neck!’ he muttered bitterly.
A ewe breaking her neck. That’s what had triggered this. A sheep carcass on a public path. A concerned tourist calling the Parish Council. And Tom Alderson had ridden out in the dark to his death.
A death that could have been even more calculated than Samson had first thought.
‘Is that the only access into the field where the sheep was?’ he asked, pointing at the gate up above them.
Bill nodded.
‘So Tom had to come through here to get to it?’
‘Yes. Why?’
Samson was looking from the road to the first gate, and then up to the far gate. It had been well planned. Somewhere to hide. Terrain that would provide the perfect explanation for an accident. And now, with this information about the sheep, a certainty that the victim would arrive in this precise spot. But for the residual trace of tape on the handlebars, there was nothing to arouse suspicion.
‘I don’t suppose the Chairman of the Parish Council got the contact details for that tourist?’ he asked casually.
Bill frowned. ‘I doubt it. Why, is it important?’ He paled as he grasped the implication of what Samson was asking. ‘You think … it might have been a trap?’
‘I can’t say for sure. But someone put tape on that throttle. Someone who knew Tom would be out here that night. And it seems to me a dead sheep is a pretty good way to guarantee getting a farmer out to a specific field.’
‘Christ! We have to call the police.’
A vivid recollection of Sergeant Gavin Clayton’s cynicism as he discussed Mrs Hargreaves and her suspicions must have been enough to place doubt on Samson’s face. Doubt which Bill Alderson read easily. His shoulders sagged.
‘They’d think we were mad, wouldn’t they? Nothing but a bit of stickiness on a throttle as evidence.’
Samson gave a small nod.
‘So what then? We do nothing and let the bastard—’ The farmer broke off and twisted away, putting his face into the wind, and once again Samson wished Delilah was with him to handle this man and his raw emotions.
The two men stood there in the vast field, dwarfed by the rising fell before them, the half-hearted trill of a lark way above sharp against their silence.
‘Do you think it’s connected?’ Bill Alderson turned, eyes red-rimmed, expression bleak.
‘Sorry?’
‘To the suicide you’re investigating. Do you think Tom’s death might be connected?’
‘Possibly.’
The farmer stared back over the landscape that he’d known all his life, as though assessing it anew in the wake of the last week. He shook his head in bewilderment. ‘Why?’ he asked.
‘That’s what I’m hoping to find out.’
‘You mean you’re going to look into this?’ Bill Alderson pointed at the scarred ground beyond them with its ominous dark colouring.
‘I’m going to try. I can’t promise anything, though.’
‘We can pay. I know it’s what Lynn would want.’
Samson was already shaking his head. ‘Let’s talk about that if I manage to find whoever did this. In the meantime, I’ll let you know if I discover anything that the police might be interested in.’
Bill Alderson held out his hand, a flicker of hope replacing the despair in his eyes. ‘Thank you,’ he said, grasping Samson in a firm handshake.
* * *
It was carrying the weight of that hope that Samson had left the Aldersons and dropped George back at his house. When she’d seen the excited state her brother had arrived home in, Ida Capstick shook her head in disapproval, shooting daggers of reproach at Samson while George babbled on about the Little Grey. So Samson hadn’t lingered, turning the bike back onto the road and accelerating towards Bruncliffe.
The police station. That was going to be his first port of call. Not to report a suspected crime – as Bill Alderson had realised, that would be pointless. If their reluctance to probe into Richard Hargreaves’ death was anything to go by, it would take something more substantial than a sticky substance on a throttle to make the local force sit up and take notice of this latest case. But although there was no point in involving the police at this stage, they did have something he was keen to see, now that his hunch about Delilah’s dead clients was beginning to appear valid.
Slowing up as he entered the town, he passed Fellside Court on his left, a group of elderly people sitting on the benches on the front lawn. He recognised his father and Arty amongst them, both men raising their hands as the scarlet motorbike went past. Then he was pulling onto the forecourt outside the station. Praying that someone other than Sergeant Clayton would be on duty – preferably some outsider who’d never heard of the O’Brien family and their colourful history, and who possessed an ounce of investigative talent – Samson jogged up the steps.
‘Afternoon, Mr O’Brien.’ The young constable who’d been in reception on his previous visit greeted him from the desk, a shy smile on his face as he snapped upright, his uniform sagging over his thin chest.
‘Afternoon…’ Samson let his eyes slip discreetly to the kid’s name badge, ‘Constable Bradley.’
The lad’s face reddened and his smile widened into a grin and Samson crossed his fingers.
‘I need to see the CCTV footage taken the day of Richard Hargreaves’ death.’ He said it nonchalantly, as if it was his inalienable right. But Constable Bradley wasn’t fooled. A frown replaced the grin.
‘I’m sorry, Mr O’Brien, but … Sergeant Clayton said … we can’t let you…’ The lad shrugged, his bony shoulders almost piercing his shirt.
Damn. Foiled at the first hurdle. The same hunch that he’d had about Tom Alderson’s quad bike was nagging at him about the camera at the old railway station. He really needed to see the video taken before and after Richard’s fall onto the tracks. But how?
‘That’s okay,’ said Samson, turning to go, already deep in thought. He was at the door before he realised the lad was calling him back.
‘Mr O’Brien,’ the young man was saying. ‘Is it true you were one of an elite group of undercover officers for the Met in London?’ There was no disguising the eagerness in the lad’s voice.
Samson paused, wondering where such a rose-tinted view of his career had come from. ‘I worked on some undercover drug operations, yes,’ he said, his answer deliberately vague.
‘What’s it like? Working for the Met, I mean? Is it exciting?’
A flash of memory – a drug deal in a backstreet, adrenalin soaring as he tried to negotiate the dealer into a trap.
‘That’s one word for it,’ he replied dryly.
‘Did you make a lot of arrests?’ The lad was leaning over the counter now, eager to catch every word.
‘As a team, yes, we did. But a lot got away, too. And it’s not all glamour.’ Another image from the past – holed up in an empty warehouse on a stakeout for two weeks, tracking the coming and goings of a drugs gang. He’d needed a long shower after that one.
But the lad seemed undeterred. ‘That’s so cool!’ he breathed, eyes shining. ‘It’s what I want to do. I’ve got six more months of probation and then I’ll be applying for the first job that comes up.’
‘You want to join the Met?’
Constable Bradley nodded.
‘What’s wrong with the force up here?’ asked Samson.
The constable rolled his eyes. ‘It’s boring. Nothing ever happens.’ He leaned even closer over the desk, voice lowering. ‘And you end up fat and dull like Sergeant Clayton!’
Samson laughed. ‘Possibly. But as for nothing happening around here, there’s more going on than you’d think.’
‘That’s what my grandfather says.’
‘Your grandfather?’
‘Eric Bradley.’ The lad nodded in the direction of the open door and the road beyond it. ‘He’s in Fellside Court with your dad. The old man with the oxygen cylinder?’
‘Ah, Eric,’ said Samson, recalling the frail pensioner with the sharp tongue. He was also putting two and two together and working out where young Bradley had obtained his forgiving version of Samson’s past. It wouldn’t be long, though, before even Joseph O’Brien would struggle to put a gloss on his son’s time with the police. Once recent events in London came to light …
‘Grandfather says you think Richard Hargreaves was murdered.’
Samson took a deep breath and cursed silently. Bloody Bruncliffe. It bred rumour like weeds in a neglected allotment.
‘Is that why you want the CCTV footage?’ the lad continued, almost whispering now. There was something in the way he said it, head angled to one side like an oversized fledgling.
‘Yes. I think it could be crucial.’
Constable Bradley glanced over his shoulder at the door cutting him off from the rest of the station, long fingers drumming nervously on the desk. Then he gave a sharp nod of his head as though coming to a difficult decision.
‘You’re not allowed to have access to it,’ he repeated, a gleam in his eyes. ‘But there’s nothing stopping me having a peek. What exactly are you looking for?’
Samson grinned. The lad would go far. He leaned across the desk and gave Constable Bradley the details.
* * *
By lunchtime both Delilah and Tolpuddle were going out of their minds. Samson wasn’t in yet.
Delilah broke off the relentless pacing of her office to stare down into the empty yard at the space where the Royal Enfield should be, the dog leaning heavily against her leg.
Today, of all days, he was running late.
She was toying with the idea of calling him, when she heard the back door open and the sound of heavy footsteps along the hall.
‘Samson?’ she called out, crossing to the landing. But it was the fair hair of her nephew that was coming up the stairs. ‘Oh … hi, Nathan.’ She covered her disappointment with a smile but Nathan simply grunted, the language of a typical teen, and passed her a paper bag.
‘Mum sent these over for you to try. It’s a new recipe.’
Delilah peered inside the bag, the contents still warm. Four fat rascals lay within, the rising aroma of cinnamon and nutmeg enough to make Tolpuddle lift his nose and give a speculative bark.
‘They’re not for you, mister!’ said Delilah. ‘They’re for me and Samson. Isn’t that right, Nathan?’
‘Whatever,’ muttered Nathan, face clouding over beneath his long fringe at the mention of his godfather. He turned away and entered her office.
‘Let me just put these out of Tolpuddle’s reach,’ she said, deliberately not reacting to his change in mood. She’d learned over the last few months that the best way to treat her nephew when he was in this frame of mind was to ignore whatever was bothering him. Especially when she was too tense herself to be treading on eggshells.
With an ever-hopeful Tolpuddle at her heels, she walked the length of the landing to the kitchen and placed the cakes in the cupboard above the kettle, the dog opting to stay and guard them. She was gone for no more than a minute. But when she re-entered the office, it was to see an even more sullen young man slouched in her chair, staring at her monitor.
‘Everything all right?’ she asked.
He looked up, expression dark. Then he stood and pushed past her, racing down the stairs two at a time.
‘Nathan!’ she called out. The only response she got was the slamming of the back door.
Puzzled, she moved round behind her desk to see a document open on her computer, Lucy’s name in the middle of the screen. The list of entrants for the next Speedy Date night. If Nathan hadn’t known before about his mother’s planned participation, he knew now.
‘Damn it!’ She should have known better than to leave her nephew in her office unattended, especially when he was so vulnerable. He’d be hurt. Enough to go and challenge Lucy?
Cursing her own stupidity and rueing her increasingly dysfunctional family, she phoned Nathan. Getting no reply, she left a short message asking if he was okay, before returning to her vigil at the window, her fears for her clients soon overriding any other concerns. She stood there for some time, hoping to see a motorbike being pushed through the gate. But nothing appeared.
‘Come on, Samson,’ she murmured, forehead pressed against the glass.
Perhaps she should call him? But no, she couldn’t do this over the phone. It was too important. Besides, with what she was going to ask of Samson, this conversation needed to be face-to-face. Because it was going to take every last bit of her persuasive powers to get him to agree to what she wanted – the only way she could think of to save her business, and probably other lives.
Where the hell was he?
* * *
God, he was starving. He’d skipped breakfast in his rush to pick up George and had been on the go ever since. Carrying his hastily bought lunch, Samson left the motorbike in the yard and let himself in the back door.
He checked his watch as he walked through the kitchen. One o’clock already. Constable Bradley had promised to be in touch within the hour, planning to use his sergeant’s lunch break to view the CCTV. Hopefully he would find—
Samson’s train of thought was interrupted by instinct. That age-old alarm system was prickling his skin, sharpening his senses. What had triggered it?
He inched out of the kitchen, back against the wall, eyes scanning the hallway. Then he froze.
His door. It was closed. He always left it open.
A creak from inside the room, in the region of his desk. A careless footstep on lino-covered floorboards. Not very professional. Had it arrived already? The mess he had fled from? And if so, in what form? More men in balaclavas?
A weapon. He needed a weapon. No point going back to his kitchen with its empty cupboards and drawers. And trapping himself by going upstairs would be plain suicide. Far better to force the confrontation here where he had the advantage, blocking both exits.
He glanced down at the carrier bag in his hand. It would have to do.
Taking a silent step forward, he reached for the door handle. Shifting his weight onto the balls of his feet, in one swift motion he flung the door open, fired the carrier bag at the figure sitting at his desk and rolled across the floor. He was up on his feet in seconds, hands outstretched, ready to lunge before his assailant had time to react, when he was hit from behind by a second attacker. A large weight slammed into his back, knocking him to the ground. Twisting sideways as he fell, he landed heavily on his hip, his head inches from the edge of the desk. But before he could recover, the weight was on top of him. And licking him.
Big, long licks from chin to forehead.
‘Tolpuddle?’
The dog barked and then resumed licking Samson’s face, while from the chair behind the desk came a dry comment from the other would-be attacker.
‘You sure know how to welcome a prospective client!’
He struggled to get out from under the dog and saw Delilah Metcalfe, face stunned, staring at him. Behind her, a dark trickle of coffee was running down the wall.