He tried not to sound too worried, and Maria did not like to pursue the subject. Instead, she said brightly, ‘Right, well I’ll make sure you have some lunch, then.’

Tiger was not getting on too well. Having finished his paperwork at the airport he had gone into Winchester and begun his inventory of shops, thinking that if nothing else it would take his mind off Sam. He battled with himself over her. Half the time he wallowed in the pleasurable thought of being next to her for another week. Wondering where it might lead. Then his conscience would get the better of him and he would tell himself that nothing else must happen.

The shopkeepers he questioned did not exactly welcome him with open arms on a busy Saturday morning, neither were they forthcoming with much information. What had seemed at the outset to be a fairly straightforward exercise had turned into a maze of confusion. A bit like his mind. One or two shopkeepers said they had been visited by the man in black. Others claimed no knowledge of him. Not one of them admitted to paying anything, and only one other shop had suffered any form of vandalism. They had indeed been visited by the man in black and declined his offer. Tiger saw his first glimmer of hope, until the shopkeeper explained that the vandalism had involved someone being heartily sick on their doorstep the previous Saturday night. This was not a tactic that Tiger would have suspected would be employed by the man in black.

After an hour of futile questioning he realized he was getting nowhere. He walked around the corner to the bookshop where Erica was working the morning shift, Brian having gone to see his mother in Bournemouth.

‘You look a bit down in the mouth,’ said Erica. ‘No luck?’

Tiger leaned against one of the towering bookshelves. ‘Bloody useless.’

‘I’m glad.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, if you’d found something you’d have gone at it like a dog with a bone, and I don’t know that I want you getting mixed up in something like this.’

Tiger looked disappointed. ‘But you said yourself that the police weren’t doing anything about it.’

‘I know, but I’d just like to see if that warning they gave him has any effect. Maybe they’ll have frightened him off and you won’t need to get involved.’

Not get involved. Something about the words echoed around his head.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Only your mind’s been somewhere else since you came back. Did you have a bad week?’