He used his work phone to call her. ‘Becky, I’ve been sidetracked so it’ll probably be an hour before I get to you. You can’t wait for me – you’ve got a tricky situation there. Are you okay to handle it?’

‘Of course, but what’s going on, Tom?’

‘Nathan Gardner has been doing his own investigating, and I think I know who the woman with the silver hair might be. I think Callie knows her too. So ask her about Thea and Garrick Atwell. That’s the priority. Ask what she knows about them; forget about Ian Fullerton for the moment. Call me when you’ve got anything.’

He cut Becky off and gave in to the temptation to put his foot down.

CHAPTER 61

61

Tom slowed down as he turned into the leafy lane that led to the Atwell home. It wasn’t yet six o’clock, but it was pitch dark outside and there was a fine mist in the air that meant he had to switch on the windscreen wipers for a moment, then off again as they dragged across the glass. He wished the weather would make its mind up and rain properly. Perhaps if it tipped down, Jack and Nathan might be less inclined to snoop around in the Atwells’ grounds.

The houses on either side of the lane were well back from the road, but Tom could see patches of bright light shining through the hedges and shrubs that bordered each property. He could well afford to live somewhere like this, thanks to the money he had inherited when Jack ‘died’, but he didn’t think he would want to. Each building seemed like an island, self-contained, with no connection to the outside world. He wondered for a moment if any of the residents knew their neighbours.

His satnav was telling him to turn down a narrow track, and he knew he was in the right place when he saw the car that had been parked on his drive a couple of hours ago. Nathan’s hire car. As Tom had suspected, though, it was empty.

He pulled up behind it and switched off his headlights. What he really wanted to do was knock on the Atwells’ door, announce himself and ask if they knew the whereabouts of Caroline Baldwin. They weren’t to know that she had turned up. He could say they had been tracking her movements and understood she had become quite friendly with Thea on the trip to Myanmar.

It was an idea, but he would have a hell of a job justifying his actions later. And it could totally destroy the case against this couple if they had been involved in the assisted suicides of Jasmine DuPont and the woman on the golf course. For now he had to find Jack and get him out of there.