explained Alice quickly. ‘We got home late and the lane was very noisy. It was our fault for leaving him in the car.’ She turned to her eldest son and ran a finger along the back of his hand. ‘Sorry, angel,’ she said. Tom ignored her.
‘Come on, Tom,’ said Gareth, ‘eat some lunch.’
Tom’s chair clattered loudly on the wooden floor as he pushed it back and jumped to his feet. ‘It wasn’t a bad dream!’ he yelled. ‘She’s real and Joe knows who she is. He lets her into the house and when she kills us all it will be his fault and I bloody hate him!’
He’d left the room before either of his parents had time to react. Alice stood quietly and followed him. Gareth drained his glass and poured himself another. Joe was looking at Harry with big blue eyes.
Half an hour later, Harry left the Fletchers’ house. After sending Joe and Millie off to play, Gareth had told him about the previous evening. Neither he nor Alice had ever seen anything of the girl that Tom continually talked about. Alice was taking him to the doctor in the morning.
The sky was threatening rain again as Harry walked down the drive. He stopped as he reached the family car. Someone had washed part of it. The driver’s door and bonnet were dusty and mud-spattered, but the rear window and the panels immediately below it were clean as a whistle. There were even marks in the dust where someone might have run a cloth. There was also, in the top corner of the rear window, a faint mark that might just have been a fingerprint. A red one.
34
16 October
THE KNOCK ON THE DOOR STARTLED HIM, EVEN THOUGH he’d been expecting it. Harry got up and turned down the music. As he stepped into the hallway he could see two tall figures behind the glass of his front door.
Mike Pickup, Jenny’s husband and Sinclair Renshaw’s son-in-law, was dressed in a tweed jacket and cap in muted colours, brown corduroy trousers and a knitted green tie. The man at his side wore a dark-grey pin-stripe suit that looked as though it had been handmade. Neither was smiling.
‘Good evening, Vicar,’ said Mike Pickup. ‘This is Detective Chief Superintendent Rushton.’
The detective gave Harry a brief nod. ‘Brian Rushton,’ he said, ‘Lancashire Constabulary. Pennine Division.’
‘Good to meet you,’ said Harry. ‘Please, come in.’
His visitors followed him into the study. Harry bent to remove the slumbering ball of ginger fur from one of the armchairs and then waited until both his guests had taken seats. The study was the largest room in his house. It was where he worked, received visitors, and sometimes held small prayer meetings. Thanks to the presence of two large Edwardian radiators, it was also the warmest room in the house; and invariably, where he found the cat.
He put the animal on the floor and gave it a shove under the desk. ‘Can I get you both a drink?’ he offered. ‘I have Irish whiskey,’ he went on, indicating the bottle already open on his desk. ‘There’s beer in the fridge. Or I can put the kettle on.’
‘Thank you, no,’ said Pickup, answering for both. ‘But don’t let us stop you. We won’t take up too much of your time.’ He stopped, clearly waiting for Harry to sit down. The detective chief superintendent, who was in his late fifties and whose dominant features were his narrow, slate-coloured eyes and heavy dark eyebrows, was slowly looking around the room.
Harry took the chair nearest the desk. He wasn’t entirely surprised to see the cat reappear and leap on to the arm of the detective’s chair.
He started to get up again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ll get rid of him.’
‘No, you’re fine, lad. I’m used to cats.’ Rushton held up one hand to keep Harry in his seat. ‘Wife has two at home,’ he said, switching his attention to the cat. ‘Siamese. Noisy little buggers.’ He reached up to stroke the cat behind its ears. The responding purr sounded like an engine being fired up.
‘I, on the other hand, am not used to cats,’ said Harry. ‘That one seems to have adopted me.’
Rushton raised his enormous eyebrows. Harry shrugged.
‘Maybe it’s part of the fixtures and fittings of the vicarage,’ he explained. ‘Or just an opportunist stray. Either way, it was waiting for me when I arrived and has been refusing to leave ever since. I haven’t fed it, not once, it just won’t go