Grant had done his best to appear as though he were taking the defeat in stride, but his loyal sergeant could see the toll it had taken on the man.

When word arose that Jared had put the family estate in Esher up for sale and was moving in with the widow Dozier up on Primrose Hill, Grant had locked himself in his office for an entire day.

And now, if Grant were right, the Fleming Mess was back for one last nasty go-round.

If Prior Silver was going to claim his sixth and seventh victims at the same time, Jared Fleming and Liz Dozier perfectly fit the bill.

Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

One a murderer, the other an adulterer.

I suppose Jared is an adulterer as well, thought Hawley.

He shook his head as he negotiated a roundabout on the southeast outskirts of London. He didn’t suppose that Silver cared that Fleming was guilty of both.

Like Grant had said on the phone from New York—it checked all the boxes.

The moment Hawley disconnected from Grant, he had immediately tried to contact Dozier and Fleming at the house on Primrose Hill. No one had answered the phone. Neither picked up their mobiles.

He hoped that the two of them had gone on holiday somewhere far away.

But he had dispatched constables to the north part of London to double-check and see if anyone in the neighborhood knew of their whereabouts.

No one had seen either Jared or Liz for a few days. Hawley told the constables to keep the Primrose Hill house under watch until they returned or responded to the sergeant’s messages.

That should have made Hawley feel a touch better. But he hadn’t spent all that time with Commander Austin Grant without something rubbing off on him. Hawley wished he could disregard that gnawing feeling at the back of his brain, the one Grant had taught him to never ignore.

One word kept running through it.

Esher.

Despite Jared having listed the family home a few months back, Hawley didn’t remember hearing that it had sold yet. It wouldn’t surprise him—Esher was a posh village, unaffordable to most, and the notoriety Fleming had undergone in recent months might have made the house hard to sell.

It wasn’t like Hawley kept up with real estate sales. He was still living in his father’s house in Woking, the middle-class suburb where he had grown up and would most likely never leave. Esher was definitely above Hawley’s means.

But it was also on his way home to Woking.

The least he could do was check it out. That way, by the time Grant and the others landed at Heathrow the next morning, Hawley could deliver a complete report when he picked them up.