Over the next couple of days it became clear that Martin Chorley and Lesley May had gone to ground. We’ve always supposed he had resources beyond County Gard and its related companies. Seawoll suspects links to organised crime, people smugglers and the like. I assume that he has links to the shadier parts of the demi-monde as well.

Despite Nightingale’s assertion that he’s just an ordinary criminal at heart, I think there’s something more. There was something of the fanatic about him. I’m sure he has a plan . . . I wish I knew what it was.

We did pick up Reynard, though, and charged him with a miscellany of offences ranging from resisting arrest to handling stolen goods. We’re not pushing the Crown Prosecution Service very hard on this case, though. We don’t want our fox in prison. We want him to be out and about like a walking lightning rod.

As I promised Beverley I helped Maksim install some herringbone pattern baffles on a stretch of her river. The idea, Bev said, was to break up the flow and ultimately erode the banks into a more natural shape.

‘I thought you liked a fast flow?’ I asked later that evening.

‘It’s not the volume,’ she said between pants. ‘It’s how it flows.’

Phoebe and Olivia had joined Beverley on the river bank to watch as we worked and afterwards we had a slightly damp picnic under the protection of a weeping willow. Olivia said that she thought her mum might have forgiven me a little, or at least she’d stopped scowling whenever my name came up. When they left I found myself watching them walking away, hand in hand, and wondering what having kids must be like. Once you’re past the nappies and training wheels.

I turned to find Beverley watching me.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Nothing,’ she said and took me home.

Did I mention the paperwork? It took us a couple of days just to pull all the material together, not helped by having DAC Folsom descend on us for a review with the rest of the Tiger Hunting Committee in tow. So it didn’t really come as much of a surprise when Lady Ty asked if I could pop in to see her.

‘Any time in the next hour would be convenient,’ she said.

We met in the saloon bar at The Chestnut Tree which Lady Ty said she was in the middle of acquiring on behalf of her mother’s property portfolio. Judging by the way the manageress waited on our table, and hovered attentively until dismissed, that acquisition was a done deal in more ways than one.

Lady Ty had ordered a bottle of red and two glasses, but I shook my head when she went to fill mine.

‘Is it true you’re writing a briefing document regarding the expansion of the Folly?’ she asked after taking a sip.