The former policeman was jabbing a finger at Daniel and Annie could just about hear his raised, angry voice but couldn’t make out the words.

The pair of them were the only ones in the square. Annie stepped up behind a tree so that if they looked her way, they wouldn’t see her. But she could see them and for about a minute she watched them shout at each other.

The altercation ended when Daniel threw his arms up in the air, then turned sharply on his heels and stomped off.

Keegan treated him to a two-fingered salute and then moved away in the other direction.

Annie waited until they were both out of sight before she resumed her journey home.

She was curious to know what they had been arguing about and made a mental note to tell James what she’d seen.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

James had been forced to take Gordon Carver into his confidence. He saw it as the only way to stop the reporter from rushing into print with the scoop that had been handed to him on a plate by the killer.

The Twelve Days of Christmas card delivered to the guy’s home had understandably got his journalistic juices flowing.

‘I don’t want you to fob me off by saying this is a hoax if you know it isn’t,’ he’d said. ‘And if you’re going to ask me to sit on the story then you’ll have to give me a bloody good reason why.’

It was a familiar situation faced by detectives – a reporter comes into possession of information that, if released, would be detrimental to the investigation. More often than not the hacks – and their publications – will drop or delay a story if they can be persuaded that it’s not in the public interest to run it.

And that was what Carver agreed to do after James decided to be completely open with him. He told the reporter about the first card that had arrived on his own doorstep along with the dead partridge, and then about the one that was dropped off at the church for Father Silver. Finally, he’d mentioned the card found inside Lorna Manning’s dressing gown pocket.

James had explained that he was withholding the information to avoid causing panic in the village. But he had felt it necessary to inform the public that the police believed the murders were committed by the same person. Carver had accepted that it was a sensible strategy, and said that, as a resident himself, he could imagine how alarmed people would be if they knew about the cards.

He’d promised not to pitch the story to the nationals for at least twenty-four hours. His own weekly paper wasn’t due out until Saturday, but there was an online edition, so he would also hold off on alerting his own editor.

‘In return I’ll expect you to keep me well ahead of the curve as the story develops,’ he’d said, and James had agreed.