A week later, all the notes had been typed up—evidence, such as it was, collated. MacFarlane had filled out an arrest warrant. They just needed the right man to wave it at. But no one was giving away Dickie Dunne’s whereabouts. His Cambridge friends and protectors maintained a mystified silence. Negative reports came back from areas all over the country he was known to have frequented. “He could be working his passage back to India, for all we know,” MacFarlane grumbled to Redfyre. “Croaked on some exposed northern moor. We’ll never hear about it. I’m going to shove the Fanshawe file, slim as it is, into the coffin box. When the chief suspect’s a corpse and the Prosecutor is narrowing his eyes and shaking his head, I’m not exactly encouraged to keep the case open on my desk. It would be interesting to find out for certain whose fingers squeezed Abel Hardy in too tight an embrace, but not knowing isn’t going to keep me from my sleep. In fact, I’m relieved that the garbage is off our streets for good.”

He sighed and came to a decision. “In they go, both of them. Hardy and Fanshawe! Requiescant in pace, the shits!”

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Cambridge, Thursday, the 5th of June, 1924

Redfyre was trotting to keep up with his dog on his usual route through the meadow on Coe Fen. The day had been warm, and the night air was bringing a welcome freshness that descended, trapping the almond scent of the May blossom in a low-floating layer where it blended in an enchanting cocktail with the green river smells. It was one of those magical twilights that faded slowly into a pale grey night, which lasted no time at all before the horizon brightened again. If a Viking longship had ventured upriver and moored in front of him, he’d have leapt aboard, grabbed an oar and gone off adventuring. With his sharp grey eyes and his dark blond hair, he would have surely been accepted by the crew as a long-lost brother.

He shook the illusion away and grinned. Midsummer madness, he told himself. The town was in the grip of it: Strawberry Fair, maypole dancing on Jesus Green, Shakespeare in the master’s rose garden. The summer party mood of the town seemed to have spread to the riverbank, and behind him, he heard lively shouts of puntsmen pulling in to their berths at the Anchor pub just downstream, while in front, the boozy, raucous laughter of the usual crowd of vagrants clinking bottles around a campfire.

Was it the smell of something delicious roasting on a sharpened willow stick that had attracted Snapper? He realised that the crowd had gone abruptly silent at the very moment the little dog took off at a ninety-degree angle from his route and charged, unseen, through the tall-growing Queen Anne’s lace towards the encampment.