‘Would you mind getting rid of that … thing before you go? I’m going to have a bath and take a sleeping pill. I need to sleep. God knows what tomorrow’s going to bring. You don’t have lights on your bike so you should go now.’

Pete laughed mirthlessly. ‘Are you crazy? There is no way I’m leaving you on your own in this state … Not because I think you’ve got anything to fear, of course,’ he added hastily. ‘This is a completely different situation.’

Meredith was going to protest, but she knew she absolutely didn’t want to be on her own, not tonight.

‘OK,’ she said, reaching down to hug him where he sat in the chair. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Thanks bro.’

Meredith ran a bath and lay very still in it for a long time, watching a small spider abseil from one of the ceiling beams down towards the toilet lid. It was a long way down for such a tiny creature. She thought of Pete’s words. Was it a completely different situation? The police had never caught anyone last time – not even had any viable suspects, once they’d ruled out Iain. They’d written it off as a break-in that had gone very wrong, and that was probably what it had been. It had been almost a quarter of a century ago. Surely it couldn’t have anything to do with Ralph’s death now?

9

Meredith

Meredith always started her day by going into work at 8.00 a.m., an hour before she needed to, and collecting Ceri’s arthritic terrier Dexter. Ceri, who was PA to both the Earl and Ralph, worked 8.00 to 4.00 and couldn’t walk the dog herself, on account of her clinical obesity. Ceri was always trying to pay Meredith for the dog-walking duties and Meredith always refused. It was her routine now, and never failed to clear her head for the day ahead.

She felt a wave of nausea threaten to flood her that morning when she left the cottage and saw Ralph’s car still sitting in the distant corner of the staff car park. She crunched over the gravel towards the Jag, feeling compelled to go and look at it up close. Even though she had been utterly certain that Ralph was stone dead when she ran out of the ice house to ring Pete, the only logical explanation was that he hadn’t really been dead at all. He’d woken up and staggered off somewhere. They should’ve checked inside the car last night, she thought, hope flaring: Ralph could well be snoring on the back seat, sleeping off his funny turn and alcohol stupor.

She approached the car and peered through the window, wishing Pete hadn’t already cycled off to his workshop, so that she could laugh with him at the sheer relief of seeing Ralph alive, after all that drama…