Harri grimaced. ‘I didn’t sack him off.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Sabih said.

‘We went on three dates and he broke up with me. And no, he wasn’t weird. At least not with me. I liked him. I liked him a lot.’

Sabih whistled. ‘And now you want to lock him up?’

‘I want to find the truth,’ Harri corrected him. She still hoped that wouldn’t involve Ben being locked up.

‘So, what’s the plan?’

‘We go to the cottage,’ she replied. ‘See what he’s got in that Land Rover.’

‘If we find anything, I’m calling it in,’ Sabih said.

She knew it wasn’t up for negotiation. ‘Deal.’

Chapter 27

Clouds lingered over the moon, wispy and faint, as though smudged by a heavenly hand. Harri followed the lane from the main road and drove through the patchwork landscape. To her right the high ridge of Hen Cloud and beyond it the massed cliffs of the Roaches. To her left, the silver shimmer of Tittesworth Reservoir.

She and Sabih had chewed over the investigation, but had fallen silent once she’d turned off the main road, as though even from six miles away their voices might alert Ben to their presence.

Harri switched off the headlights as they rounded the last bend before Longhaven, and she coasted to a halt in a lay-by about a quarter of a mile from the cottage.

‘Ready?’ she asked.

Sabih nodded, and the two of them got out. A dog barked in the distance, and a small creature shrieked a death cry from somewhere on the ridge. Harri shivered at the cool wind that touched her neck. She zipped up her black bomber jacket and thrust her hands into the pockets of her matching black jeans. Sabih was also clad all in black. They’d clearly had the same idea about being stealthy. He fell in beside her, and they walked swiftly towards the Ashas’ cottage.

Harri glanced at her former partner and saw a familiar look of anticipation. She missed this, but unless she found the man who filmed her chasing Alan Munro, she had to accept there was no way she was ever getting her job back.

They were about to start up the drive when the front door opened. Harri grabbed Sabih and pulled him down, and they took cover behind the drystone wall that marked the edge of the garden.

‘What?’ Sabih whispered.

Harri signalled him to look, and they peered over the top of the wall. She saw Ben dragging Elliot out of the house, and was suddenly aware of how loud everything was, her breathing, the crunching of loose stone underfoot, the pounding of her heart. She prayed Ben wouldn’t hear, but she needn’t have worried. He was too focused on the reluctant boy.

‘I don’t want to go,’ Elliot protested.

‘You don’t have a choice,’ Ben told him. ‘Everything has its time and this is yours. You can’t fight it. I told you one day you’d have to leave.’

‘Please,’ Elliot said pathetically. ‘I don’t want to go. This is my home.’