ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON I was at Heathrow in good time to collect Marina and Saskia. In fact I was ridiculously early, and for no other reason than waiting at home was not an option. I had also given myself a huge leeway just in case of a breakdown, a puncture, a holdup due to bad Friday-afternoon traffic on the M25, or any other unforeseen mishap.

Hence, I arrived at London airport well before their flight had even taken off from Amsterdam. But I didn’t care, I was so excited, but also maybe a touch frightened. How would Marina react? Would she greet me warmly and lovingly, or in the same rather distant manner with which she had left me exactly two weeks ago—two weeks in which much had happened to both of us.

I parked the Discovery in the short-term car park and then waited in the café in the International Arrivals hall of Terminal 5, drinking coffee and thinking back to events over the past forty-eight hours.

Chico hadn’t been de-arrested, as I’d hoped, but he had been released under investigation. The police were clearly hedging their bets over whether he had used appropriate or excessive force in fracturing Anton Valance’s skull. Much depended, it appeared, on when, or even if, he would ever regain consciousness.

It seems that, on Wednesday evening, after the helicopter had finally given the all-clear for paramedics to enter the castle, Valance had been taken by ambulance to the large hospital in Darlington, where they had a neurosurgical department, while Marcus had gone in another one to the smaller Friarage for his collarbone X-ray.

Valance’s two goons had been traced from Chico’s photograph of the registration number of their car and they, too, were now helping the police with their enquiries, concerning the breaking of Marcus’s collarbone and several other matters, not least the fact that automatic number plate recognition cameras had shown their car in Middleham marketplace not only on the night of the fire at Gary Bremner’s stable yard, but also on the day his body had been discovered hanging from a tree.

For the umpteenth time I checked the arrivals board.

British Airways flight number 433 from Amsterdam, scheduled to arrive at 17.55, was described as being ON TIME. But, as I looked at it, it changed from reading ON TIME to EXPECTED 17.52.

I knew from experience that a change from ON TIME to EXPECTED meant that the flight had now taken off from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam and was on its way south-west, on the short hop over the North Sea. And it would be arriving three minutes early.

My excitement level, and also my fear and trepidation, rose a notch or two.

Chico and I had finally left the police headquarters in Northallerton at about three thirty on Thursday afternoon. We were taken back to Middleham in a police car to collect my Discovery, this time with me sitting in the front seat.