He hadconsidered waltzing innocently up to the high-tech video entry system mountedon the high brick wall beside the gates and simply asking to be permitted toview their archives. Owners of such stately homes he’d encountered onprevious jobs had been only too willing to allow him to delve into theirprivate papers. Somehow, he didn’t think the Windsor-Sackvilles would beso accommodating.
Morton had comeprepared, having rummaged around his father’s house for items he thought hemight need. He found a backpack, which he filled with a pair of NationalTrust binoculars, digital camera, an Ordinance Survey map of the area, a torch,box of matches, a bottle of water and a notepad and pen. The addition ofa pair of wire-cutters and a crowbar destroyed the image that he was thearchetypal country rambler.
Morton took asip of coffee and pulled out the camera to check if anything was still on thememory card. He legitimized his recent carefree rummaging and plunderingof his father’s personal belongings by thinking of himself as some kind ofexecutor-in-waiting. What with his mother being dead, Jeremy away inCyprus, it would fall to him to sort out his father’s affairs. Heblithely skipped through countless images of his father’s garden, then came toan out-of-focus image of his father, Jeremy, a young man and an old womanholding ice-creams up to the camera. The orange time-code stamp in thecorner dated the photos to last summer. He skipped the camera on to aphoto of his father with his arms around the old woman, whom Morton couldclearly identify as Madge, the lady who had spent most of Jeremy’s leavingparty washing up in the kitchen. She had seemed so nice, and yet here shewas, swanning around Coniston and the Lake District with his father, Jeremy andan unidentified man. The more photos Morton saw, the angrier hebecame. His father had taken this woman to Coniston and seeminglyrevisited all the places that they had gone to as a family just before hismother had died. He wasn’t sure what he was most angry at, the fact thathis father was apparently seeing someone else, or the fact that he hadn’t beentold about it. What was his father doing with an old, grandmotherlytype like her anyway? Then he realised that he was comparing her tohis mother as she was when she died. How old would his mother benow? Sixty-nine? Christ, she’d be a wrinkly old womanherself. He hovered over the ‘Erase All’ option but thought better of it,switched the camera off and tucked it away back in the rucksack before he didsomething he might regret.
He finished hiscake and coffee and left a generous tip, hoping that the buxom blonde wouldfind the money and not the scowling frump behind the till. With hissunglasses perched on his nose, Morton casually strolled across the street tothe gates of Charingsby. The village, bathed in total sunshine, wasentirely deserted, as if there had been some kind of an evacuation order. It sent a sinister chill down his spine when his eyes fell on the gothic,shadowy structure of St George’s Nursing Home, just a stone’s throw away fromthe Windsor-Sackvilles. He rested his head on the cold iron bars but,even with his head pressed to them, could only catch a glimpse of the house,tiny and obscure in the distance.
Morton slowlyambled along the road beside the village green, enjoying the warm sun on hisneck and a brief moment to take stock of the charming village. It lookedas though Charingsby, having been occupied by the Windsor-Sackvilles since thefifteenth century, had existed long before the majority of the village. Most of the houses along the main road provided a convenient hermetic sealaround the edge of the estate.
He continuedsteadily through the village, until he came to a public footpath post, whichwas slowly being strangled by an insidious weave of dark-green ivy. Thesign pointed perpendicular to the road, running beside a row of delightfulhouses, called Riverside Cottages. The map confirmed that a river, afterwhich the cottages were presumably named, ran across two fields then entered awood at the edge of the Charingsby estate. Morton took a swig of waterand stared at the river meandering into the distance; he just needed to followit and he’d be inside. He downed the drink, crossed into thefreshly-ploughed field and began to trudge through the calf-length grass aroundthe edge, keeping close to the river and trying to look as much like a rambleron a pleasant walk as he could.
As the safetyof the road slowly disappeared behind him, Morton wondered if he should quicklygive Juliette an update. He had given her a rough overview of his plans,but thought now might be a good idea to give her his exact location. Somewhere for the search party to start looking for him if he failed to returnhome tonight. He took his mobile out and, rather predictably, there wasno signal. That was that then.
When he enteredthe second field, which was being used for sheep-grazing, the footpath deviated,veering sharply away from the river in front of him. He knew that once hestepped foot off the path he lost all defence that he was simply enjoying awalk in the Sussex countryside.
It was now ornever.
With a deep anddecisive breath, he left the designated path behind and crossed the dry, crustybrown field towards the woods, carefully following the winding river. Asthe distance between him and the footpath increased, Morton half wondered if agun-mounted jeep would suddenly roar out of nowhere, just like he had seen ontelevision when people tried to approach Area 51 in the Nevada desert. But no gun-mounted jeep appeared, just a fat hare making a break for thehedgerow.
A few minuteslater, he reached the edge of the woods and realised that his plan of simplylifting a section of fencing and passing underneath wouldn’t be sostraightforward; at the boundary of the woods the
