He said it was high-powered stuff and it was going to cause a stink when it got out. Quite excited about it. And it’s the same one he’s been on for ages.’

‘Are any of the organisations involved? You know, Greenpeace and so on?’

‘I don’t think so. He never said they were. In fact – ’ she frowned again, considering – ‘he seems to be doing this one all alone. Usually there’s his friends tramping in and out – scruffy lot, and don’t some of ’em smell! But their hearts are in the right place, I suppose – and having meetings in his bedroom and making leaflets and placards and I don’t know what. But there’s been none of that this time, so I suppose he’s been doing it on his own. If it was deadly secret, maybe he couldn’t trust anyone else.’ She stared at nothing for a moment, and then said, ‘Except he did have this journalist person who was going to help him, a high-up, he said, who’d been in the government.’

‘Ed Stonax?’ Hart asked.

‘Could have been,’ she said. ‘Yes, I think that was his name. He was into all that eco stuff himself, this journalist, which was why Danny went to him. He sent him a load of stuff just recently – documents and that.’

‘Danny sent it to Mr Stonax?’

‘Yes, and sent it registered post, so that shows you how important it was. Danny was going up to London to see him after, only he had his accident.’ For a moment she faltered, as the jagged spike of the accident refused to fit into the woolly shape of her reality. ‘He sent me flowers,’ she went on. ‘When he heard about it.’

‘Mr Stonax did?’

‘He rang to see why he hadn’t heard from Danny, and I told him. And the next day these flowers arrived. Those big lilies that smell. Ever so posh.’ She looked round vaguely as if she expected to see them. ‘They don’t last long, that sort, but they’re nice.’

‘That was kind of him.’

‘Danny always said he was a real gentleman. A right proper sort. He was upset when he heard about the accident. It wasn’t Danny’s fault, you know,’ she added anxiously. ‘He wasn’t a tearaway. He wouldn’t have been speeding or anything. He was never in trouble that way. You can check if you like – never even had any points on his licence. It was a hit-and-run driver, they said – your lot said, only the locals, I mean. Hit-and-run.’ She paused, staring again. ‘So I suppose they’ll never find out who it was.’

She looked strangely stunned by the end of the last sentence. Hit-and-run, Danny with a broken neck and never coming home again, were things outside her experience. At some point she would have to come to terms with them, but for the moment her mind was defending itself like anything against realisation.

‘Would you mind if I had a look at Danny’s room?’ Hart asked.

Mrs Masseter jerked out of a reverie, and smiled as though she was glad to do so. ‘You can have a look, and welcome, but if it’s his papers or anything to do with his protests you’re interested in, you won’t find anything like that. Your lot have already got them.’

‘My lot?’

‘The police. A policeman came that same day and said they wanted all his papers and his computer. It was quite late when he came. Mike – my husband – had just gone, and I thought it was him come back when the doorbell rang. But no, he’d gone off home to be with her. Said she’d be upset, though what she’d got to be upset about I don’t know.’

‘This policeman—’ Hart prompted.

‘He was one like you,’ Mrs Masseter said, and as Hart was thinking he must have been black, she added, ‘not in uniform, I mean. A plain-clothes one, a detective, whatever you call yourselves.’

‘Did he give his name?’

‘Yes, it was Inspector something.’ She frowned. ‘I’ll think of it in a minute. It was an ordinary name, like Black. I think it began with a B. Or a G. Was it Green? Anyway, he said he wanted Danny’s things, and he went upstairs, and come down with all his papers in plastic bags – two lots he had to do, to take ’em all. And he took Danny’s computer – not the television bit, but the box bit that sits under his desk.’

Hart had a bad feeling about it. It was just not the way things were done. She got out her brief and showed it to Mrs Masseter again. ‘Did he show you his identification, like this?’

‘No, he just said he was Inspector whateveritwas – was it Sampson? No, not Sampson, but something like that. Strong, was it? Anyway, he said could he have Danny’s papers.’

‘Did he say why he wanted them?’

‘Well, no. I suppose it was some police thing. I mean, Danny wasn’t in trouble. I suppose it was because of the accident he wanted them.’

Hart rolled her mental eyes. ‘And you didn’t ask to see his identification?’

She frowned a little. ‘Well, it would’ve been rude, wouldn’t it? Like calling him a liar. Strong. I’m sure now he said his name was Strong – Inspector Strong.’

‘But if you didn’t see his ID, how did you know he was a policeman?’ Hart asked in despair.

‘Well, he said he was. Anyway, who else could he have been?’

Who indeed, Hart thought. ‘Would you mind if I just had a look at his room anyway?’

‘No, dear. You go ahead. It’s the one at the front.’

Hart climbed the narrow, cardboard stairs, turned carefully on the midget-sized landing, and took the one step necessary to bring her to the open bedroom door. The room was about eleven foot square, with a window on to the street, and a street lamp directly outside which must have flooded the room all night with yellow light through the thin curtains. They were patterned with lions, and matched the duvet cover on the single bed under the window, smoothed out and pulled taut by a mother’s hand. There was no dust anywhere, the carpet had been hoovered, and there was very little lying about. Either he had been a very tidy boy – boy? He was nearly thirty, she reminded herself – or his mother had put everything away.

The walls were bare except for two posters neatly put up with Blu-tack, one of an African elephant on the veldt, the other the famous view of the earth from outer space, all blue and white and romantic.

Along one wall was a cheap desk unit with shelving above and a wheeled office chair in front of it. On the desk the VDU, keyboard and printer sat forlornly, their wires fed down the trough cut in the back and leading to nothing but the footprints in the carpet where the box had stood. She couldn’t know, therefore, anything about the computer, but the printer was a very good one and the screen a new-looking nineteen-inch flat. In contrast to everything else about this house, it looked as though nothing had been stinted on the IT front.

But all the shelves and the drawers were empty. ‘Inspector Strong’ had taken no chances and cleared everything out. At the end of the desk there was a CD player with speakers, but there were no CDs anywhere to be seen. Strong must have taken those as well, perhaps on suspicion that a computer data disc might be hidden among them.

There was hardly room for anything else, except an upright chair with a haversack resting on it. Hart looked inside just in case, but it was empty except for half of a Snickers wrapper and a box of Bluebell matches. She lifted up the liner at the bottom and searched in the corners of the pockets, but there was nothing there but ancient crumbs and fluff. And that left only the beside table on which stood a bedside lamp with a frieze of cut-out elephants round the shade, a travelling alarm clock, a set of house-keys attached to a rubber fried egg, a water flask on a strap of the sort runners carry, and a paperback book. Presumably it was what Danny had been reading in bed.

Hart picked it up. Elephant Song. Either Inspector Strong hadn’t seen it – which was possible because it was behind the flask and not visible until you reached the table, and he must have been in a hurry – or he hadn’t thought it important. She flicked through to see if anything had been scribbled in it, but the pages were clean. But there was something – a piece of paper, folded into a long thin strip as though it was being used as a bookmark. She opened it out. It was a printed letter from Reading Borough Libraries. The following book(s) are overdue. Failure to return the book(s) may lead to increasing fines.

There was only one title: Analysis of Risks Associated with Nuclear Submarine Decommissioning, Dismantling and Disposal. Unsurprisingly, it had an asterisk beside it and was marked ‘Special Loan – Reading University Library’.

Well, how’s about that for light bedtime reading, Hart thought to herself. She turned the paper over. On the blank back of the form, in a scrawly, unformed handwriting in blue biro, was a sort of list.

Clydebrae

Scottish War Museem St Vincent St

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