“Yes, but he … he’s a bit useless. Maybe that’s unfair.” I thought quickly. “He might know I’m here. We spoke on the phone yesterday. I can’t remember what I said. But still, I don’t think he’d have broadcast—”

“Small? A bit gnomish? With a beard?”

“Yes.” I thought of Mr. Hutchinson and his hunted eyes with a sudden pang.

“Last seen being bundled into a black SUV. One of the journalists I’ve been working with saw it happen. Somehow your detective had gotten hold of their phone number. It was a number only I knew. He called to arrange a meeting. Only before he could meet them, he got shoved into a car as he came out of the underground. Leo said it happened so fast they couldn’t do anything to stop it. Which means if your detective called you, whoever did it was probably listening.”

“I’m sorry—”

“They’d have come anyway, Andy. Hiding with my mum and dad, it’s hardly Cuba, is it?”

An owl hooted from somewhere in the graveyard and I shivered, remembering a school project on early Britain, how we’d learned the invading Vikings had imitated owls, calling to one another in the darkness as they crept up on the Anglo-Saxons bent on murder and pillage.

“I thought this was about the past. I thought this was about Em’s death, about David and the diamonds. At the wedding, you wanted to talk. I went to see all of them, Rob and Alice. I went to Italy and found David because you’d said you’d seen him.”

“Did you really?”

“Yes.”

“And how was that? How was it seeing David?” When I did not immediately reply, he read my silence. “Really? Still? When I saw him, I said your name. The ripples, Andy. You should have seen them. I actually felt sorry for him. And you with that young man at the wedding. I’d seen that look on your face before. It preyed on my mind, after seeing David in Rome. That I had wronged you both. Telling myself I was doing the right thing, protecting you. But knowing it was a lie. That I was jealous. That I hated you. I went back that night. The day we met David. All the way there on my bike. I was thinking that maybe this was it. That everything was finally going to begin. But when I arrived, you were already there, and it was like you had stolen it from me.”

“So you called the police?”

“Yes. In the end, I called the police. I put on a funny voice and told them a young man called David Graves who was wanted for stealing credit cards was hiding out at the manor.”

“I went to your flat. I found the telephone box.”