He typically took the Piper Cherokee, in which he’d learned to fly. But today he needed the extra space of the Twin Otter. Its original cabin seating had been stripped out and replaced by benches along either side, and its door had been permanently removed too, creating an open hatchway behind its starboard wing. A sturdy long steel platform step had been fitted beneath this hatchway for nervous parachutists to inch out onto, clinging grimly to the wing strut as they built themselves up to jump. But it also served as a step to help people climb aboard, as de Bruin did now before offering Ronan Calder a hand. But Calder brushed it irritably aside and made his own way up, before frowning in puzzlement at the block of broken masonry at the rear of the cabin. ‘What’s that for?’ he asked.

  ‘Ballast,’ explained de Bruin. ‘For when we don’t have a full load.’

  Andrei joined them aboard. They buckled themselves in while Victor taxied out of the hangar and to the end of the runway. They turned for take-off. Their propellers roared. They jolted along the pitted old concrete until they reached take-off speed, then lifted sharply up over the trees and banked into a turn before levelling off and heading east.

  Last night’s storm had largely cleared the sky of cloud, giving them a good view of the patchwork fields beneath. They quickly neared the coast. Boston appeared through the open hatchway. De Bruin tapped Calder on the arm to draw his attention to it. ‘Looks so pretty from up here, doesn’t it?’ he said, having almost to shout to make himself heard. ‘Clean. Attractive. Historic even. A lovely church, a fine market. You’d think people would be able to build good lives for themselves there, wouldn’t you? Yet the way my tenants moan! A dribble of water through their ceiling, it’s like they’re living beneath Niagara Falls. Their boiler won’t start. Put on an extra jersey, for goodness sake. And am I really supposed to go sponge mould off their walls myself?’

  ‘People have forgotten how to do for themselves,’ said Calder.

  ‘You are exactly right, Mr Calder,’ agreed de Bruin. ‘You are exactly right. People have forgotten how to do for themselves. You and me, we’re out of place in this modern age. We have expectations. We have standards. Isn’t that so?’

  Calder glanced at Andrei, sitting on his other side, his arms folded and gazing stolidly ahead. He’d been head of security for a dissident Russian oligarch when de Bruin had first met him, at one of his mother-in-law’s London bashes. He’d been struck not just by his extraordinary physique but by the coldness he’d radiated, like walking into an industrial freezer. When his boss had fallen, jumped or been thrown from his Park Lane penthouse balcony a few months later, de Bruin had checked to make sure that Andrei hadn’t been at fault, then he’d hired him to replace his previous bodyguard; because veterans of Russia’s Special Forces, to put it bluntly, were rarely afflicted by the kind of qualms that sometimes hobbled ex-members of the SAS.

  ‘I’d like to think so,’ said Calder.

  ‘Good. I’m glad. One of my expectations – you may think this is excessively pernickety of me, but it’s how I am, so it’s probably best you know – one of my expectations is that my employees don’t try to fuck me up the arse while telling me it’s a suppository.’

  ‘But I didn’t—’

  ‘I’m speaking, Mr Calder.’

  ‘Sorry. Sorry. I just—’

  ‘I’m speaking,’ he said again. He waited for Calder to fall quiet and drop his eyes. Then he continued. ‘As I said, one of my expectations is that my employees don’t try to fuck me up the arse. I don’t care whether they do this deliberately or through negligence, or because they have to take their son to the hospital. The bit I object to is the being fucked up the arse. Is that unreasonable of me, would you say?’

  ‘They couldn’t get an ambulance to us in time. Ask anyone. The service has fallen apart.’

  ‘It’s a disgrace,’ agreed de Bruin. ‘But it’s no excuse for turning your phone off.’

  ‘That was the hospital. They made us.’

  ‘You’re not listening, Mr Calder,’ said de Bruin. ‘I don’t care why. I care what. The reason I keep you around is to serve as a conduit between the legitimate and the illegitimate parts of my organisation. That’s how a shitty little struck-off accountant like you has made himself rich. Your one job is to keep that conduit open, or at least to notify me that it might fail so that I can make arrangements, should I – to pluck an example at random – happen to get advance notice of a raid, and need to get word out. Instead I got screwed.’

  ‘I was the one got screwed,’ said Calder. ‘It was me they arrested, remember? I’m the one on bail.’

  ‘And I’m the one who has to undo the damage and foot the bill,’ said de Bruin. ‘Do you know how much the drugs they seized were worth? Or are you offering to reimburse me?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Calder. ‘Truly. But what could I do? My son couldn’t breathe. He literally couldn’t breathe. Check with the hospital if you don’t believe me. It messes with your head when your kid can’t breathe. Did I panic? Yes. Of course I did. It’s what parents do. Imagine if it had been your Melanie who—’

  ‘Don’t bring my daughter into this.’

  ‘I’m just saying, I only did what you’d have—’

  ‘I’m warning you.’

  Calder took a long breath. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. That was wrong of me. I won’t let you down again. You have my word.’

  ‘That was what you told me last time we spoke,’ said de Bruin. ‘Yet something else went wrong last night. And what I need to know is, was that an accident, or was it deliberate?’ He leaned forward to give Andrei the nod, and Andrei took a stun gun from his pocket and pressed it crackling to Calder’s throat, making him twist and scream and convulse for several seconds before finally slumping unconscious, held in place only by his belt.

  THIRTEEN

  Elias couldn’t help but notice – and be impressed by – how old all the equipment in the barn was, kept alive by Dunstan Warne long after anyone else would have given it up for dead. Only the bunded fuel tank appeared new, made from toughened green plastic and positioned near the barn wall between the tractor and the ditch digger. It thus looked by far the most promising place for Elias to start his search.

  He unscrewed its fat plastic refill cap and peered inside. It looked to be less than a third full, and it smelled pungently of diesel, just as it should. He crouched down to examine the bottom of the tank. It didn’t sit directly on the brick floor, but rather on a base of the same toughened green plastic. He examined its casing more closely. There were two hairline joins at the end nearest the ditch digger, the more accessible of which was scratched and scuffed up, just as if it had been prised open by a flat-headed screwdriver. He felt a flicker of irritation that Mason and his team had missed it, even though he’d never have spotted it himself unless he’d actively been looking.

  He fetched a pair of latex gloves and a torch from his car, then a flat-headed screwdriver from Warne’s workshop. He rested his torch on the floor, angled to give himself light, then leaned his phone against the wall to film. He forced the tip of the screwdriver into the hairline join then levered it up. The whole front section of the casing came away, revealing a pair of steel rails inside, and well oiled castors, and a pair of catches locking it all in place. He flipped these up then went around the other side of the tank and put his shoulder to it. It budged, if only a fraction. He heaved again and it came more easily. He pushed it maybe two feet until it jolted to a stop, revealing a kind of manhole cover in the floor.

  He lifted this by its canvas strap, releasing a whiff of stale ammonia. It proved to be heavier and bulkier than he’d expected, made from a pair of steel disks either side of a fat layer of soundproofing foam, all held together by half a dozen steel rods. To his dismay, as he laid it down, he noticed some bloodied scratch marks on its underside, as might have been left by someone trying to claw their way out.

  He did his best to put this image from his mind, then knelt beside the shaft to point down his torch. Metal rungs in the wall led down to a vault maybe seven feet square, with a cement floor and breeze block walls. There was clearly no way this could have been put in without a man like Dunstan Warne knowing. No way. He’d obviously been involved somehow. Elias felt a little sad for Anna, that her memories of her uncle were about to be so tarnished, but mostly what he felt was satisfaction that his hunch had paid off.

  He lay on his front and reached his phone as far down inside as he could, to photograph the walls and floor. Then he put everything back as he’d found it. He took his laptop into the kitchen and transferred his photos onto it, to study them on its bigger screen. There were numerous elliptical stains on the vault walls, in the characteristic pattern of blood spatter, even though someone had clearly tried to scrub them off. There was graffiti too, most of which had been reduced by cleaning agent and elbow grease to an indecipherable blur; but several lines had been carved into one of the walls with a knife instead, and though someone had tried to scratch these out, he could still make out a list of Arabic names and a date.

  Elias felt agitated suddenly. He stood up to pace around the kitchen. That date, some six weeks ago, was inscribed into his memory almost as deeply as into the wall, for it had been one of the more humiliating of his career. He’d arrived at Lincolnshire Police’s Nettleham HQ at his usual early time to find it already buzzing. Serious and Organised Crime – the companion unit to his own Major Crimes – had just carried out multiple dawn raids on the Lincolnshire biker gang that his old boss and mentor Colin Vaughn had been jailed for leaking information to. And because they hadn’t fully trusted him, they’d deliberately kept him in the dark about it.

  The raids had proved a disappointment, even so. They’d caught a good number of the bikers still in their beds, and had found considerable stashes of cash and drugs. But they’d hoped to recover far more, and their top targets had all been away, seemingly tipped off at the last minute. And what did it mean, if anything, that on the very day that the gang had either been in custody or in hiding, someone had carved names into the wall, like a memorial?

  Elias sat back down again. Failure to notify Scene of Crime now would get him into serious grief if it were ever found out. Yet the few extra hours they’d gain by starting tonight wouldn’t make much difference. It would, however, surely bring Trevor Wharton here, to call one of his trademark press conferences and so let last night’s intruders know their vault had been discovered. That was the last thing Elias wanted. He wanted them believing all was still well. That way, with any luck, they might even risk another visit. If so, he intended to be here waiting.

  FOURTEEN

  Fifteen years or so ago, long before Anna had first arrived in this part of the world, the King John Hotel had been a working farm and equestrian centre run by a formidable woman called Helen Roth, who Uncle Dun had liked and much admired. But her children had had no interest in running it after her death, so they’d sold it to Gregory and Penny Scott, an investment banker and PR executive looking to downshift from their London lives.

  The Scotts had duly leased the fields to one of the farming conglomerates who managed much of the land around here, while converting the barn into a home for themselves, screened off behind a line of trees. Then they’d turned the house and stables into a boutique hotel that had done excellent business over the years, thanks to its timbered charm and well-tended gardens, its all-weather tennis courts and swimming pool.

  Uncle Dun had taken against the Scotts from the start, as much for their high-handed ways as for the noise and disruption they’d caused. But his initial irritation would no doubt have passed had they and their guests not treated Warne Farm as an extension of their own property, clomping across his fields and treading down his crops until in exasperation he’d planted a hawthorn hedge alongside the drainage ditch.

  Anna had naturally sided with her uncle in all this, to the extent that she’d never even set foot in the hotel before, despite it being the only place within miles for a drink or a bite to eat. Yet in truth she had nothing personal against the Scotts themselves. Whenever they bumped into each other, at the shops or out on walks, they treated each other with a kind of reserved cordiality. But there was nothing reserved about the way Penny reacted when she saw Anna arrive in reception. She cried out and hurried over to hug her and kiss her on both cheeks. ‘My poor dear!’ she said. ‘Your lovely uncle! I’m so terribly sorry. We’re all devastated. Devastated and heartbroken.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Anna.

  ‘Priya tells me you’ll be staying here tonight.’ She gestured at her receptionist, a plump, forty-something Indian woman with a sweet smile and ropes of long black hair done up in an elaborate knot. ‘I told her you’re to have our best free room. Our very best. As our guest, of course. Our honoured guest. We wouldn’t dream of charging you a thing.’

  ‘That’s so kind,’ said Anna, taken aback.

  ‘Nonsense. Nonsense. What are neighbours for, if not for times like these?’ She put her hand on Anna’s arm. ‘You must be shattered, absolutely shattered.’ Her teeth were amazingly white, like from a toothpaste commercial. ‘I mean they’re saying that something else happened last night. They’re saying there was a break in. By the same monsters who murdered your poor uncle.’

  ‘They don’t know that. Not for sure.’

  ‘But there was a break in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I knew it! I knew it!’ She turned away a moment and closed her eyes in what looked so like relief that Anna and Oliver exchanged puzzled glances. ‘Sirens blaring at that ridiculous hour, waking the entire neighbourhood.’ Her habit of stressing so many words meant that she barely stressed them at all. ‘Not that I needed waking, of course, not with all these dreadful smugglers running loose. But you must have been there at the time! You poor thing! How ghastly for you! How terrifying!’

  ‘It wasn’t much fun,’ admitted Anna. ‘But I’m really not supposed to talk about it.’

  ‘Of course. Of course. Then I’ll leave you in Priya’s capable hands. But if there’s anything we can do… anything at all. I remember from when my own dear father passed how gruelling it can be. All that paperwork and bureaucracy when you only want to curl up and cry. And the farm too. I can’t imagine you’ll want that headache. You’re far too young and pretty for such a life. You’d not believe the sheer drudgery involved! It never stops. You’d be well out of it, believe me.’

  Ah, thought Anna. So that was it. The Scotts had done very nicely out of this place, and were forever on the hunt for new projects. ‘I did live here for nearly three years,’ she pointed out. ‘I do have some idea of what’s involved.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Of course. But the world moves on. Farming too. It’s such a battle to keep ones head above water these days, especially after all these bad harvests. Even your poor uncle was having second thoughts.’

  Anna frowned. ‘Uncle Dun? Second thoughts?’

  Penny nodded vigorously. ‘He came to see us a month or so ago. He was terribly down. All that work for such little return. I know he loved the life, but small farms simply can’t compete with the conglomerates anymore. It’s crazy even trying. But he hated the thought of selling to them. It felt too like defeat. So he wondered if we’d be interested in a field or two. Of course we would! He was our neighbour! Anything to help.’

  ‘How kind,’ said Anna doubtfully.

  There was a basket on the counter filled with brochures and pamphlets touting local attractions. Anna and Oliver browsed idly through them once Penny had left and Priya was checking them in. A stack of photocopied leaflets beside the basket bore the hotel’s address and contact details, breakfast times, Wi-Fi password and the code for the front door, locked after eleven. A crude, hand-drawn map on its back showed the seawall, the local roads and the hotel grounds, with her uncle’s farm marked clearly as out of bounds. His complaints had finally paid off, it seemed. It also offered a short list of items for rent, including bicycles, field glasses, metal detectors, even a dinghy. ‘Fancy going for a sail?’ asked Oliver, when she showed it to him.

  ‘Sorry. Way too much to do.’

  ‘Probably wise. My navigation skills, we’d likely end up in Belgium.’

  Priya completed their check-in and opened the hotel guest book to its ribboned page for them to sign. Then, with another of her charming smiles, she selected two keys from the rack behind her and came around the desk to show them to their rooms.

  FIFTEEN

  León de Bruin squatted down by the Twin Otter’s open hatchway, the better to savour Ronan Calder’s expression as he recovered from his stun gunning. He was so groggy that it took him several seconds to realise his predicament, lying on his side on the platform step behind and beneath the aircraft’s starboard wing, his arms and legs taped to the block of masonry he’d remarked on earlier, hugging it to his belly like he was a contestant on the World’s Strongest Man trying to heave an Atlas stone up onto its stand. And the only thing stopping him from falling from the platform step into the sea below was Andrei holding onto his jacket collar – another source of amusement for de Bruin, as it happened, for Andrei’s one weakness was his very palpable discomfort with heights.

  ‘What’s going on?’ slurred Calder, sounding more confused than terrified.

  They were low enough by now for de Bruin to taste the salt upon his lips and see the Twin Otter’s black shadow rippling over the roiled grey water. Away to their south, he could make out the pursed mouth of the River Nene and the white dot of Warne Farm, scene of last night’s fiasco. He could picture it now, Anna Warne scrambling away across her bedroom carpet before getting back to her feet and picking up her bedside lamp, her baggy white cotton T-shirt clinging and translucent from the rain, the outline of her breasts and nipples, her dark brown hair wet and bedraggled, and a look of such imperious contempt in her eye! Just like that, he’d been thirteen again. Thirteen, and in love for the first time. Her name had been Carmen Trent. She’d been in his year at school, pretty rather than obviously beautiful, a bright-eyed English rose, all vitality and flushed skin. A little plump, maybe, but savvy enough to turn that into the kind of feminine curves that had reduced him to blushing imbecility. Moderate in her use of make-up, and her silky long hair so well brushed that it had taken on an almost hypnotic swishing quality whenever he’d sat behind her in class and she’d turned her head.