“So you’re planning to go back to Rushy today?”

“Definitely. I want to see Bernard Cranshaw, and I must go to the remand centre where Dennis Shawcroft, the chef from the White Lodge, is being held in custody. After all he seems to have had something to do with Terry’s disappearance. He may even know where he is. He certainly made every effort to stop the lad talking to us.”

“Clive Anderson came to see you last night,” Molly said. “ He wanted to know where Adam was. Adam hasn’t been in touch since his accident, apparently. His school hasn’t heard from him. He’s supposed to be taking A-levels next week. He’s allowed the time off for revision, but he should have been into the school to discuss an essay. Poor Mr. Anderson. He was quite human. He’s very worried about Adam, you know. He wasn’t very happy that he’d disappeared to Scotland with the other three. He almost accused us of being negligent.”

“He’s right,” George said. “Does he think that Adam will come back to sit his exams?”

“He didn’t say. I got the feeling that he came to get information, not to give it.”

“Do you think that he knows more than he’ll admit?”

“It’s impossible to say. That’s why it was always so difficult to appear before him in court. His face was so impassive. You could never tell whether or not you’d got through to him. Last night he seemed very eager to find out exactly where Adam was.”

“Did you tell him?”

“I didn’t know. They’ll have seen the stork yesterday evening and could be anywhere by now.”

“I wish we knew whom Adam met in Fenquay on the morning of his accident.”

“You don’t think that it was Clive Anderson?”

“I don’t know at all. I want to talk to Sally about it. She may be able to give some description of Adam’s companion.”

George was impatient to get to Norfolk. Molly packed in a disorganized, absent-minded way, growing flustered as George urged her to hurry. It was just the same before every trip.

When they reached Rushy George dropped Molly at the Windmill. It was Friday and already the café was full of twitchers talking about the weather forecast, the high pressure, the east winds and the possibility of migrants.

Before leaving home George had telephoned one of his contacts in the Home Office. He was expected at the remand centre, where Dennis Shawcroft was being held in custody. So, reluctantly, he left the enthusiastic birdwatchers to their speculation, and Molly and Ella to their gossip, and drove inland towards Norwich.

He had visited many such places before, but coming across the long, grey concrete walls, the threatening notices, the floodlights, after driving down a sunny, country road, there was still a shock, a sense of unbelievable incongruity.

The gate officer was expecting him, and was friendly, told a joke. That was another incongruity: humanity in such an apparently inhuman, functional place. He was shown into a waiting room, where three men and a woman were already sitting. In the corridor outside a prisoner was ineffectually pushing a mop over the tiled floor. George smiled briefly at the other occupants of the room. The men were at home there. Two of them were solicitors, George thought, and the third, as easily identified by his leather jacket as if he were wearing a uniform, was an officer of the CID. The woman, no more than a girl, was nervous. She was reading a file intently, making notes. She could have been a young solicitor, or perhaps a social worker. She had never been inside a prison before.