Jason frowned, thinking of the coincidence of the car he’d seen turning into the estate earlier. ‘Cadillac?’

‘Great big thing – from the sixties – beats me what kind of an idiot wants to bring one of them things up a country lane.’

‘Did they have an accident, then?’

Fears nodded, almost gleefully. ‘Oh yes, they had an accident all right.’

‘What happened?’

‘I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you.’ Fears looked down, as if studying runes in the bottom of his tankard. ‘You’ll know when it starts happening to you. Time goes all wrong.’ He looked up and gave him a malevolent smile. ‘Time slips.’ He made a chopping motion with his right hand. ‘Time-slips. Time goes all peculiar on you. That’s what they’ve all said. It goes out of kilter. They’ve all said that.’

‘Time-slips?’ Jason frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ll know. You’ll know.’

‘They’ve all said? Who is all?’

‘You’ll find out.’

‘Is that what caused the accident – with Roland Fortinbrass? Something to do with timing? Did he misjudge it? Get the timing wrong? Did he turn across your path because he thought he had more time?’

Fears peered back into his tankard.

‘Are you sure I can’t buy you at least a half?’

‘I’m very sure, thank you. Like I said, I don’t want no drink from a dead man.’

47

Tuesday 18 December

Half an hour later, Albert Fears left the pub without saying goodbye. Jason sat at a table and took a bite from his soggy roast chicken and bacon sandwich. It had been served up a while ago, but he hadn’t wanted to step away from the old man, who was in full flow. He ate slowly, barely noticing the taste as he mulled over everything Fears had told him.

A rock promoter with a young family had bought Cold Hill House in 1983. He had builders working there for months, discovering more and more what a money pit the place was. Eventually, part of the house had been made sufficiently habitable to move into, but on the morning he and his family arrived, part of the roof, which hadn’t yet been touched, collapsed, bringing down an avalanche of masonry on their car; an old, classic Cadillac convertible, crushing them all to death. It was witnessed by the removals men, who had pulled up in their lorry behind them.

It was a weird coincidence, he thought, that he’d seen an old, classic Cadillac barely an hour ago, turning into the estate, and followed by a removals lorry.

The O’Hare family.

The name inscribed, four times, on the family mausoleum he had photographed in the graveyard earlier, and which he checked now on his phone. Johnny, Rowena, Felix and Daisy.

Once again, Fears had told him, the partially condemned ruin had remained boarded up and empty for years. Because it was a listed building, and one deemed to be of architectural significance, a steady stream of developers who wanted to demolish it and build an entirely new house on the grounds were refused permission.