She was still angry when she got home. She’d begged a lift with the area car. Byrfield had left a couple of hours earlier, having failed to persuade her to return to Cambridgeshire with him.
‘Hazel, we should talk,’ he’d said imploringly. ‘Please come back with me. You’re not safe here, and anything you could do can equally well be done by someone else.’
She’d brushed him off. ‘We will talk. When we get this business wrapped up.’
‘That could be weeks! Maybe longer.’
‘Pete, right now I can’t think any further ahead than that. I need to know that everyone I care about is safe, and there’s nobody waiting in dark alleys for any of us. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful than that. Go back to Byrfield, see to your cows. I’ll call you as soon as there’s anything to say.’
‘I could stay,’ he’d offered. ‘I’m not the only one who can run the milking parlour at Home Farm.’
But Hazel had shaken her head. ‘There’s nothing you can do here. Saturday’s going to be at the house, and when I’m not there I’ll be at work. Go home. I will call you.’
Anxious and unhappy, finally he had done as she said.
It was midday before she got back to Railway Street. She had her key in the door when someone hailed her – ‘Miss Best!’ – and she looked round to see Benny Price picking his way through the roadworks towards her.
So she swallowed her temper and replied with a dutiful smile. ‘Hello, Benny. How’s the work coming along?’
He rocked an ambivalent hand. ‘These things take time, you know. But I hope you’ll be able to park in front of your own front door next week.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Never mind that. I’ve been looking out for you. Do you know there’s someone in your house?’
Hazel had cast a quick, searchlight glance up at the house before the likely explanation had occurred to her. ‘Did you see him? Describe him.’
‘Late teens, maybe early twenties. Fair hair that hasn’t seen a barber in a while. About my height, but’ – he gave a wry grin – ‘only half as far round. Dressed a bit flash – long leather coat, and trainers that probably cost more than a good pair of shoes. I think he was driving the yellow sports car that’s parked round the corner.’
This was the first Hazel had heard of a yellow sports car, but otherwise the description was spot on. ‘It’s all right, Benny, I know him. He used to live with me. He’s working down in London now, but he’s here for a visit.’ Which was all the detail that a casual acquaintance, even a thoughtful and observant one, required.
If Mr Price was surprised he managed not to show it. ‘That’s all right, then. It was just, with everything that’s been going on …’
‘I appreciate it, Benny,’ she said, and let herself into the house.
As soon as the door had closed behind her she raised her voice up the stairs. ‘Saturday, get your backside down here now and …’
He wasn’t upstairs. The living-room door opened and they were both there, Saturday and Patience, both eyeing her with trepidation.
She marched towards them, put one finger in the middle of Saturday’s chest and pushed him back into the room by sheer force of purpose. Patience ducked round the back of the sofa.
‘And don’t think I didn’t notice you, either,’ snapped Hazel. ‘What’s she doing here?’
‘She was here with Gabriel, before he got mugged. I left her here when I went to the hospital with him. I haven’t got round to taking her home yet.’
‘Fine.’ Hazel pushed a little harder with her finger and Saturday sat down abruptly on the sofa. ‘Now, tell me what happened. Everything that happened.’ So he did.
When he’d finished, she was satisfied that she’d heard the truth and nothing but the truth; she still wasn’t convinced she’d heard the whole truth. ‘You went in the ambulance with Gabriel?’ The youth nodded. ‘Was he conscious?’
‘No. His breathing was awful. I thought he was going to die.’
Hazel’s anger began to subside. ‘So he didn’t say anything to you?’
‘Nothing. Why?’
‘Because by the time he was making enough sense to be interviewed, he told Dave Gorman …’ There she hesitated. She’d been angry with Saturday because she thought he’d kept this lacerating detail from her deliberately. It seemed he hadn’t. But what if he had? What if Ash had? Hazel’s stalker had beat him unconscious out of jealousy for their friendship, and Ash had decided to spare her that knowledge out of kindness. So why was she angry? Understanding that it was just another form of adrenalin reaction, like shaking or bursting into tears, helped her finally to lay it to rest.
‘He told DCI Gorman that the man who knocked him down said he was too old for me.’
‘Ah,’ said Saturday carefully.
‘That wasn’t a casual mugging. That was the man who’s been stalking me.’
‘We were right about one thing. We thought he’d come back.’
‘The point is,’ Hazel said heavily, ‘that once again someone I care about has taken a hammering for me. Last time it was you, this time it’s Gabriel. What the hell is wrong with me, Saturday? What am I doing so wrong, that being my friend is only slightly less dangerous than being a lion-tamer or a deep-sea diver? Why am I so toxic to everyone who gets close to me?’
Saturday stared at her, appalled. ‘Hazel, you’re not! None of this is your fault. All you’ve ever done is try to help people when they needed help, and be a friend when they needed a friend. Everything I have today I owe to you. You took a chance on me when no one else would. I thought you were crazy, taking a chance on me. I thought you’d regret it. Well, maybe you did, but I’ll be grateful as long as I live.
‘And I’m pretty sure that if you ask Gabriel, he feels the same way. Even today. Before you took him under your wing, he was Norbold’s resident crazy man, wandering round the town mumbling to his dog because he thought his wife and his children had been murdered. Look at him now. He has his sons. He has his shop. People respect him. OK, maybe they still think he’s a bit weird, but they don’t cross the road any more when they see him coming. Your friendship did that for him. Toxic? That is so far from the mark it would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic!’
Hazel blinked. This wasn’t the first time the boy – but he was a young man now – had stunned her with both the contents of his mind and the fluency with which he could express them, the laconic monosyllabic street-talk shed like casting off last season’s clothes. But she’d forgotten. In the thirteen months he’d been away she’d forgotten the unexpected depths she’d discovered in him, and only remembered that he’d been very young and very vulnerable, and very bad at doing the washing-up.
She was distracted by a sudden sensation of cool dampness on the back of her hand, and when she looked down, Patience was licking it. Their eyes met, and after a moment the dog looked away, embarrassed.
‘I’ve never known her do that before,’ said Hazel, wondering. ‘You’d almost think she knew what we were saying.’
Which would be patently absurd, observed the lurcher mildly; but because Ash was fast asleep in Norbold Royal Infirmary, nobody heard her.
The remains of Gillian Mitchell’s computer were sent via Scotland Yard to a laboratory in London, from where DS Presley received a surprisingly prompt report. He took it into the DCI’s office next door.
‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’
Gorman lowered his brow. ‘I’m hoping the good news is that there isn’t any bad news.’
‘Not exactly,’ said Presley. ‘The good news is that whoever smashed it didn’t know much about computers, and really only damaged the case. The hard disk was intact, and all the information on it has been retrieved.’
That wasn’t at all what Gorman had been expecting. ‘Well – good. Was there some bad news?’
‘The bad news is, the computer was six years old.’
Gorman waited. But that seemed to be the whole of it. ‘So?’
‘Have you any idea how many documents a journalist can create in six years?’
There were reports. There were features. There were letters to accompany reports and features. There were letters to friends.
‘Who the hell writes letters to friends these days?’ demanded Gorman.
‘Apparently writers do,’ said Presley.
There were ideas for articles. There were lists of contacts. There were records for HM Revenue & Customs. There was a whole file of letters complaining about the speed of her broadband connection.
There were photographs. Some of them were plainly personal, some professional. Some were identified only by gnomic tags like ‘LH @ SPP, 19/7’ and could have been anything at all. Some she had apparently taken herself, others she had downloaded from a multiplicity of sources.
‘Six years, hm?’ said Dave Gorman levelly.
‘And in all that time she never found the Recycle Bin.’
‘Writers,’ said Gorman, and both men rolled their eyes. ‘OK. I take it we can now access all this material?’ Presley nodded. ‘Then someone had better start working through it. Someone young, who isn’t going to see early retirement as a tempting alternative.’
An unworthy thought occurred to both of them at the same time.
‘Would Maybourne lend her to us?’
‘She might,’ said Gorman. ‘It would solve the problem of what to do with Hazel now she’s back in town and we still haven’t caught her stalker. She wants to get into CID? – well, this is what we do in CID.’
‘At least until we’ve got enough seniority to make other people do it for us,’ muttered Presley.
‘IT’s Hazel’s thing. She’s probably the best person for the job anyway. And sitting up here away from the general public, working her way through six years’ worth of a journalist’s life, even Hazel couldn’t get into much trouble. And she might come up with something useful. I’m going to ask Maybourne if I can borrow her. And you …’
Presley saw immediately what was coming, took a sharp step backwards. ‘Oh no. Not a chance.’
Gorman frowned. ‘What was that you were saying about seniority, and the power it gives us to order other people around?’
‘But the best kind of leadership,’ responded Presley, inspired by sheer desperation, ‘is leading from the front. Not asking your team to do anything you wouldn’t do yourself. Showing junior officers how to defuse potentially explosive situations.’
The DCI gave in with a bad grace. ‘Oh, all right. I’ll talk to Maybourne, and then I’ll talk to Hazel.’