She’d been right about the buses, too. It was nearly two hours before Boonzie finally got back to the village. On his way out of the police station he’d stopped at the reception desk and, as next of kin, been given an envelope containing some personal effects Ewan had had on him when they’d brought him in. There wasn’t much: wallet, loose change, keys. No phone. Boonzie guessed that the detectives were hanging onto that, for what it was worth.

As he unlocked Ewan’s front door to let himself inside, it felt wrong to be here alone. Boonzie wanted his presence to make as little impact as possible on his nephew’s home. If he had to stay here a few days, he’d kip on the sofa rather than use a bedroom, and wouldn’t use the kitchen. Boonzie had been trained to sleep rough, live off the land and leave no trace of his passing, and spent many years instilling those same skills into others. Old habits died hard.

But the moment he stepped inside the house, such thoughts were forgotten as he saw the obvious signs that someone else had been here. Someone not as worried about disrupting the place.

Ewan’s house had been completely turned over.

Chapter 10

Boonzie had seen burglaries before and knew immediately this was something different. Whoever had broken in had been searching for something. Drawers had been rifled, sofa cushions slashed and the stuffing pulled out. Even the carpets had been pulled up as though someone wanted to check the floorboards. It was a mess. This had been the work of more than a single intruder. More likely two or three, working in tandem to ransack the place and get out fast.

Boonzie soon found the intruders’ entry point, a broken utility room window in the rear, overlooking a weedy yard filled with bins, junk and a parked camper van. Access was through a lane that cut between the backs of the houses. The intruders had reached through the smashed glass to open the window and climb in. He secured the window shut and then returned to the main rooms, where most of the damage was, to look for any clues.

Ewan had used the small dining area off the living room as a basic home office, with a little workstation desk against one wall. Boonzie noticed the empty space on the desk, a rectangle of dust where something had been removed. There was a printer and scanner, a nest of tangled wires, a pair of disconnected computer speakers and a monitor screen, but the computer itself was missing. The intruders had taken it. But who were they, and what had they been looking for?