McLoud as he pottered around his house, listening to Radio Four and humming Bert Kampfert’s Swingin’ Safari. Then the doorbell rang.
Dana eyed the clock on the dashboard. ‘Right on time,’ she said, as she pressed the engine start button.
‘Where are we going?’ James asked.
‘Now he’s inside, we can drive up to the house. We’ll get better reception and we can wade in if Ewart tries anything funny.’
‘Ewart was on campus when the secretary and the scientist were killed,’ James said. ‘I don’t think he’s a murderer.’
Dana nodded as she indicated left and pulled out of the turning. ‘Maybe not, but if he’s made a deal with Hilton, tidying up the loose ends might well be part of it.’
It was a narrow road, so she pulled up on the kerb two doors from McLoud’s house, on the opposite side of the street. The road was on a slight hill, and they had a good view down towards the front of number fifty-seven. Ewart had parked a Lexus in the driveway.
‘Is that one of the CHERUB pool cars?’ James asked.
‘Don’t think so,’ Dana said. ‘At least, I’ve never seen it if it is.’
James shook his head. ‘So where did the money for that come from, I wonder?’
‘Patch the sound through then,’ Dana said.
James tapped a stylus on the palmtop screen and the background noise from inside the house came through the speakers in the dashboard. James flipped through the different signals until he picked up the sound from the bug stuck to the conservatory window.
‘Green fingers,’ Ewart said, as a cup and saucer chinked.
‘My wife,’ Jason McLoud said. ‘Gardening not my forte I’m afraid. Do have a seat.’
‘So how long have you been retired?’
‘Oh, I still dabble with a bit of freelance work. That’s the good thing with journalism, you can cut out the nine to five grind, but you don’t have to give up completely. Now, John Jones told me you worked for a newspaper in Dubai?’
James and Dana were surprised to hear John’s name.
‘That’s right,’ Ewart lied. ‘Nice weather, no income tax, but it gets dull reporting on property development and horse racing. So now I’m back here doing some real journalism. Freelance to start with, but I’m looking for a job on a national paper.’
‘How long have you known John?’
‘A few years.’
‘He’s with the firm, you know,’ McLoud said.
‘MI5?’ Ewart gasped incredulously. ‘I never realised. I met John at the Dubai Arms Fair a few years back. He bought me a few beers and told me that he was a security consultant. I bumped into him a few weeks ago and mentioned that I was doing a story on Hilton Aerospace. He told me to contact you because you know more about the Hiltons than anyone.’
‘I’ve covered Hilton Aerospace for nigh on thirty years. You’ve got to tread carefully. The defence industry is very tight-knit and if you step on Lord Hilton’s toes, you’ll find that an awful lot of people stop answering your phone calls.’
‘I realise that,’ Ewart said. ‘But I want to pursue the story. I mean, if Hilton really was involved with the death of Denis Obidin, the story would be a huge boost for my career.’
‘True, but you’re messing with the big boys if you go up against Hilton. It’s not just within the defence industry. He bought his son’s way into politics. Son’s a junior minister already: good-looking boy, excellent speaker, could be going all the way to the top.’
‘Prime Minister,’ Ewart grinned.
‘I forget which one, but a Sunday paper did an article about a year back on the ten people under thirty-five who are most likely to become future Prime Ministers. Sebastian Hilton was ranked third.’
‘So when did this Sarah Thomas first contact you?’ Ewart asked.
‘The day after Madeline Cowell died. She called me up out of the blue and invited me to Madeline’s funeral. I couldn’t go because we were flying off to Portugal for a few days at my sister’s place.
‘When I got home a week later, Sarah Thomas had left me another message and said that she’d like to talk to me about a possible story on Hilton Aerospace. I meant to call her back, but I had a heap of messages on the machine and to be honest, I’m in my seventies and the old brain misfires from time to time. So I didn’t think any more about her message until I got the call from John Jones asking if I’d heard anything suspicious about the deaths of Clare