The bursar was as good as his word, and an email came through ten minutes later. Kelly stared at the guest list and shook her head. George’s name was crossed out; he’d been due to sit at the same table as her band of merry men, led by Sebastian Montague-Roland (who didn’t row, and hadn’t attended Cambridge). She tapped her foot on the chair leg and wrote some notes on a diagram. HOLMES used a very similar methodology: a series of spider diagrams with connections and patterns in different colours. Kelly preferred to draw her own models. They usually ended up the same as the HOLMES ones, but that wasn’t the point. She wasn’t doing it to see if she was right; she was doing it to visualise all the moving parts, to commit them to the part of her brain that took notice of what her hands did. To understand the information, one first had to own it, and it was very difficult to get excited about something that had been churned out by a computer. Christopher Slater was on Sebastian’s table, as well as a serving colonel called Benjamin Dansford. She’d heard the name before but she couldn’t place when or in what context. She wondered if he’d come up in one of Johnny’s tales.

Matt called again and she toyed with ignoring him: the thought was childish but totally understandable, given his behaviour. She answered curtly.

‘Kelly, I’ve just had a call from the military police at Dhekelia garrison. Whoever you spoke to at the MoD did as you asked and sent somebody to Alexandros’s address, but there was no one home and they’ve tried several times.’

‘He told Tilly that he was going to the mountains, to a villa; can they get hold of any relatives who might know where that is? Whose jurisdiction is it?’

‘Local Cypriot. The military police are merely offering help because he was wanted for questioning here.’

‘I wonder where Colonel Dansford is stationed currently, and if he ever served in Cyprus. If so, he might have some old pals still there.’

Chapter 41

The Montague Club was quiet, but then it usually was unless there was an event taking place. It was the type of place that could cater for lots of people without seeming to ever be crowded. There were busy parts to it: mainly the rooftop bar, frequented by celebrities. But if one wanted solitude, it was readily available.