She pushed him hard against the wall and staggered into the other room. ‘Get out!’ she screamed. ‘Go on, get out!’

‘He was here tonight, wasn’t he?’

‘No, it isn’t true. I haven’t seen Ben Garvald in nine years.’

She tried to rush past him, he grabbed her by the arm and swung her back across the bed. She lay there staring up at him, terror in her eyes, and he leaned over her.

‘He told me he wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole and I believed him, so why else would he want to see you? It had to be the money.’

He reached into his inside breast pocket and pulled out his wallet and various papers, scattering them on the bed, searching through them with one hand while he held her wrist with the other.

He found the letter, opened it quickly, and held it in front of her. ‘He wrote from prison warning you he was coming, didn’t he? There’s his letter.’

Her face shattered like a mirror breaking. He released his grip on her wrist and looked at the letter, a frown on his face, and what he saw there hit him low down in the stomach like a kick from a mule.

As she started to sob hysterically, he grabbed her by the throat and forced back her head. ‘Right, you bitch, and now we’ll have the truth.’

24

It was almost 6 a.m. when Jean Fleming opened the side gate and went into the school yard. In the grey light of early morning, the fog had receded, but rain still hammered down as relentlessly as ever, drifting in a curtain before the wind.

She ran into the porch, searching for her key with one hand, a carton of milk in the other and a newspaper tucked under one arm. She finally got the door open and paused, a slight frown on her face. Someone was playing the piano in the music room.

Nick was tired, more tired than he had ever known. It had been a long night and now the Graveyard Shift was ending. He glanced up as Jean opened the door. She placed the carton of milk and the newspaper on top of a desk, untied the damp scarf which had covered her head and ran her fingers through her dark hair as she came forward.

She was wearing her heavy sheepskin coat, Cossack boots and a hand-tailored tweed skirt, and stood so close that he only had to reach out to touch her. He wondered whether this ever happened more than once in a lifetime? This strange blend of love and desire and the flesh that was almost physical in its pain.

‘You look beautiful,’ he said, continuing to play. ‘More beautiful than I ever believed a woman could look at this hour in the morning. Did you manage to get some sleep?’

‘Not really. I was waiting for you.’