“What do you mean?”

“I mean in London. The people he worked for. Did he ever mention any names?”

Harry Finnegan gave a nervous laugh. Arthur shot him a glance and he shut up. “As a matter of fact,” said Arthur, pausing dramatically, “he did.”

“Who?”

“The Twins. Reggie and Ronnie Kray.”

“Bloody hell!”

Arthur Banks’s eyes shone with triumph. “Now do you see why we just thought he had a big mouth on him?”

For the second time that day, Annie turned up at Swainsdale Hall, only this time she felt the butterflies in the pit of her stomach. People like Martin Armitage were difficult enough to deal with in the first place, and he wouldn’t like what she had to say. Still, she thought, for all his tough bluster he hadn’t done much but kick a ball around most of his life. Robin was another matter. Annie sensed that she might feel relieved to have someone else to share her fears with, and that underneath her accommodating exterior and her air of vulnerability, there was a strong woman who was capable of standing up to her husband.

Josie answered the door, as usual, holding a barking Miata by the collar. Annie wanted to talk to Josie and her husband, Calvin, but they could wait. For the moment, the fewer people who knew what was going on, the better. Robin and Martin were both out in the garden sitting at a wrought-iron table under a striped umbrella. It was a warm evening, and the back garden faced south, so there was plenty of honey-tinted sunlight and dark shadows cast by tree branches. Annie felt like reaching for her sketch pad. Beyond the high drystone wall that marked the property boundary, the daleside stretched up in a patchwork of uneven fields, green until the sere bareness of the higher slopes, where it rose more steeply to merge into the wild stretch of heather moorland that separated the Dales.

Neither Martin nor Robin seemed to be enjoying the beautiful evening or the long cool drinks that sat in front of them. Both seemed pale, tense and preoccupied, and the mobile perched on the table like an unexploded bomb.

“What are you doing here?” Martin Armitage said. “I told you Luke was on his way home and I’d be in touch when he got here.”

“I take it he’s not arrived yet?”

“No.”

“Heard from him again?”

“No.”

Annie sighed and sat down without being invited.

“I didn’t ask you to—”

Annie raised her hand to quiet Martin down. “Look,” she said, “there’s no point pissing about any more. I know what’s going on.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Come off it, Mr. Armitage. I followed you.”

“You did what?”

“I followed you. After I left this morning I waited in a lay-by and followed you to the shepherd’s shelter. What were you doing there?”

“None of your bloody business. Why, what are you going to do? Charge me with disobeying government regulations?”