I’d used the time before he’d rung to hunt for any sign of Jacob’s Irish contacts, as Sean had suggested, feeling like a thief as I’d systematically gone through Jacob’s desk and papers. I’d bunged the resulting half-dozen- name list down the fax to Sean’s office number. Now it was up to him.
Unless, of course, the stealthy intruder downstairs at this moment was indeed Jacob.
I padded on silent bare feet across the polished floorboards and slowly pulled open the bedroom door, praying it wouldn’t creak. At the end of the landing I could see the faint glow of a light on somewhere below. As I tiptoed towards the stairs I reached out and picked up a copy of a bike magazine that was lying on a chest of drawers and took that with me.
I descended with controlled haste, keeping to the outside of the treads. As I went I rolled the magazine up into a tight baton with its thick spine to the outside.
In the hallway downstairs I halted, listening. Over to my left the grandfather clock against the kitchen wall ticked sonorously. Under the study door a thin band of light was showing and I could hear movement inside.
Suddenly, the door opened and a man walked out so quickly we nearly collided. I don’t know who was more shocked by the abruptness of the encounter but he let out a surprised yelp and took an instinctive swipe at my head.
I ducked under the clumsy blow and jabbed him in the Adam’s apple with the coiled end of the magazine. He staggered back, choking, hands up to his throat. I pivoted sideways and brought the rigid edge of the spine slashing up, hard, onto the inner bone of his right elbow, then jabbed again on the backstroke, this time to the collection of nerves centred in his solar plexus. If it had been a sword I was holding, I would have run him through.
As it was, my attacker went down with a crash, overturning a chair. One of the dogs – probably Beezer – finally began to bark behind the kitchen door, frenzied little yaps that sounded neither big nor menacing. More’s the pity.
I flicked on the lights in the hallway and found that my intruder was a young man with longish dark hair, wearing a T-shirt and bike leather trousers. He’d been carrying a backpack that he’d dropped when he’d fallen and he was currently trying to clutch at all the points I’d hit with the hand that still worked. I waited until he had the breath to speak. At least I’d brought something to read.
“Fuck me,” he gasped eventually. It was more of an exclamation than an instruction. There was the faintest trace of an Irish lilt to his voice and something about his face was familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Certainly not enough to be able to justify him creeping about in Jacob and Clare’s house in the middle of the night, that’s for sure.
“Who are you?” I said.
“Fuck that!” he countered hotly. “Who the hell are
“If you’d just answer the question,” I said mildly, rolling the magazine up again, “we’d get along a lot better.”
“You could be anyone,” he said, wary, rubbing at his throat and not taking his eyes off what I was doing with my hands. “I’m not telling you anything until I know what the hell you’re doing here.”
I sighed. If there was one thing my time in the States had taught me, it was how to communicate with stroppy teenagers in terms they’d understand. This one looked twenty at a push, but I’d be willing to bet he wouldn’t be allowed into a nightclub without having to show his ID.
“Tell me what I want to know,” I said, conversational, leaning over him, “or I’ll hit you again.”
He reared back, shocked, then a gleam of laughter appeared and a big grin broke through his natural mistrust. His shoulders came down a fraction.
“Well if you’re a burglar, you’re the prettiest thief I’ve seen in a long time,” he said. “OK. My name’s Jamie – Jamie Nash.”
“Nash?” I repeated, confused. Jacob’s name was Nash. “But—”
He nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “Jacob’s my dad.”
***
I put the coffee down on the kitchen table in front of Jamie and sat opposite, picking up my own cup. He smiled in thanks and, now I knew the connection, I could see Jacob’s smile there, Jacob’s eyes.
The family resemblance was clear, but Jacob had never mentioned having any children. He rarely talked about his ill-fated marriage to Isobel but I suppose it wouldn’t have been kind to do so in front of Clare.
“How’s the arm?” I asked.
“I may play the piano again,” he said, rueful, flexing it gingerly, “but I wouldn’t bet on it. Where did you learn to hit people like that? With a rolled up magazine, for Christ’s sake.”
“Self-defence classes,” I said shortly and didn’t add that I’d been the one teaching them. “It means I’m classed as having had training and if I’d beaten you up with a chair leg they’d have thrown the book at me.” I smiled at him as I took a sip of coffee. “This way you’re the one who gets laughed out of court.”
He snorted. “Remind me never to ask you to housetrain a puppy,” he said. “You’d beat the poor little bastard to death inside the first week.”
“So you don’t know whereabouts in Ireland your dad might be?” I asked.
He’d just taken a drink of his own coffee and he shook his head vigorously and swallowed before he spoke. “Didn’t even know he was away,” he said. “Ironic, isn’t it? He’s over there and I’m over here.”
Beezer jumped up onto Jamie’s lap and bounced up and down a few times, trying to lick his chin. He stared at the terrier without really seeing her, ruffling her ears in a reflex gesture. “Shit this is bad,” he muttered. He glanced at me with an almost fearful curiosity. “About Clare, I mean. How is she?”
I repeated my father’s diagnosis, such as it was. “Do you know her well?”
His gaze passed over me briefly, then slid away. “Not really,” he said with an awkward shrug. “I haven’t
