‘What do you think, Mason?’ Jack’s question was accusatory, and Mason knew it. ‘This is exactly why need-to-know was so important.’ Jack didn’t wait for Mason to deny yet another mistake. ‘Someone at your end told him way too much. He knew “Mr Smart” had more than a passing connection to a couple of old Oxford burglaries. He was scared. That’s why he was taking extra precautions.’ Jack shook his head in disbelief. ‘One look at Mulhern’s face and they’d have known he’d had the cops round asking questions. That’s why they tortured him. To find out how much you knew. And Mulhern would have told them everything before they made the second cut . . . Everything else was sadistic.’

Mason touched the rim of his pint glass. He just wanted to be able to do something to make his guilt vanish.

But Jack pushed him further. ‘Carving him up like that. Getting his own horse to trample his bones.’

Mason squeezed his eyes tight shut. ‘Enough! You’re right, is that what you want me to say?! This is on us. On me, OK? My God, he must have been terrified.’

Now that Jack had Mason stoked up, he presented the solution. ‘OK. Tomorrow, we target the weakest link. Charlotte Miles. And we make her tell us everything.’

Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

Jack had been parked up in his blue Vauxhall Corsa hire car at the end of the driveway to Charlotte and Annie’s smallholding for about an hour. The Corsa had been another one of Oaks’s ‘jokes’ intended to make Jack feel unwelcome, just as the original, dingy B&B had been. But whereas Oaks had been able to change the B&B to his cousin’s pub, he had been unable the change the hire car.

Mason, slumped low in the passenger seat, looked like he hadn’t slept. He gazed out of the side window, but his eyes couldn’t focus on anything. He was miles away, still thinking about Mr Mulhern.

The lawnmower that, according to Canteen Barbara, Charlotte had bought from James Somerset for £1,800, was parked underneath the kitchen window. The known finances of this small cottage industry swirled around in Jack’s head: Annie’s father had died, leaving them £200,000 which allowed them to make up their mortgage payments and keep their home – but only just. Charlotte earned, on average, £30,000 a year and Annie’s sporadic wages seemed to come from her one or two shifts per week at The Soho Farmhouse. Was he right about Charlotte? Or was he about to accuse a completely innocent woman of something she knew nothing about?

Jack felt a small grin forming at the corners of his mouth. He’d underestimated seemingly hard-working, low-income women before. He couldn’t take anything at face value here.