He held onto her as a rogue tear escaped from his right eye, and vanished into her top.
‘Wipe the file,’ Tamara directed. She was sitting beside Shaohao Chen in the kitchen of Cliff House, sipping a large glass of white wine. A faint whiff of smoke from the impromptu bonfire lingered in the air around them. She flicked her thumb and little fingernails together impatiently.
Shaohao laughed, peering at his laptop screen. He had managed to gain access to Morton’s computer, remotely. She had no idea how but she was now looking at a long list of folder names on his computer—his previous cases. She craned her neck to see. The Glazier Case. The Mercer Case. The Lovekin Case. The Stiltman Case. The Coldrick Case. And there, at the top was a newly created file—The Finch Case. Seeing it like that made her shudder.
‘Just wipe it,’ she repeated, rubbing the goose bumps that had risen on her arms. They had already looked at the contents of the file and it had troubled her greatly. Morton Farrier was on to them.
‘Tamara, if I just wipe this one, he’ll become suspicious. I need to wipe the whole thing.’
Tamara shrugged. Why would she care about that? ‘Just do it, clean the whole bloody computer out, for all I care. I just want that file irretrievable.’
She stood over him and watched. A few clicks of the mouse and the files vanished. Gone. She breathed more easily, sipped her wine and paced over to the window. The fire was dying down now, the contents wiped from existence, just like his computer files.
‘Do you think that’s it?’ Shaohao asked.
She thought for a moment, despite knowing the answer. She turned. ‘No.’
‘Then what are we going to do about him?’ he asked quietly. ‘Do you want me to deal with it?’
‘Not yet,’ she replied. ‘If he’s good at his job, then he’ll be coming to me fairly soon.’ She just needed to be patient and wait for him to come. And she needed to be ready when he did.
Morton felt as though he was back inside the womb. He was curled up in the foetal position with his duvet tucked under his chin. A pool of sunlight streamed in through the open sash window. Beside his bed was a cold coffee, brought to him with a kiss almost an hour ago when Juliette had left for work. For some time, he had just lain and watched the steam rising from the cup, gradually reducing to nothing; his warm cocoon refused to release him. He had slept surprisingly well. Each time that he had found himself semi-consciously wandering through his father’s letters and the conundrums that they proposed, he was able to flatten the thoughts instantly with the knowledge that he would, in just three weeks’ time, be on Cape Cod, conducting research on the ground, finding the answers for which he searched, with luck.
Outside, Rye was coming to life: the sounds of doors being opened and closed; the crunch of car tyres over the cobbles; seagulls cawing from the rooftops and unintelligible chatter. Then came the ten long strikes of the bells of St Mary’s Church. It was high time to get up.
He took a protracted amount of time shaving, showering and getting himself ready for the day ahead. Breakfast—bagel and coffee at the kitchen table—was also drawn out, whilst he re-read his father’s letters. He read them calmly now, feeling nothing of the agonising rush of his blood and borderline panic that he had experienced last night.
Then he thought of the Finch Case and his next steps. He wanted to try and trace the Susan Stubbs who had worked as a WAAF operator at Hawkinge during the war and write to her to suggest a possible meeting. Then there was the impossible task of researching William Smith and his family. He deliberated about which coffee shop to go to in order to conduct his work, then suddenly decided that it was too nice a day to be stuck indoors. On a whim, he phoned Barbara Springett and asked if he could pop over and see her. She told him that she would be home all day and that she had visitors who would be very pleased to meet him. Morton grabbed his laptop, his notepad and pen and the WAAF release papers that he needed her to sign and headed out to his car.
In keeping with the lightness of his mood, he had driven sedately to her house, arriving almost an entirely different person to that of his last visit here, much of which was now a blur. He rang the bell and waited. The door was opened and three people stood in front of him: Barbara, with a large smile on her face, another lady a few years her junior and a man of a similar age.
Morton inwardly gasped. He had missed something terribly huge in his research. The three of them were the spitting image of one another, all smiling together like some grotesque troupe act.
‘Morton, I’d like you to meet Paul and Rose—my delightful brother and sister,’ Barbara introduced. ‘Well, my half-brother and sister.’
Morton leant across and shook their hands. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he heard himself saying, his brain scrabbling around in the haze of his previous visit for any mention of half-siblings. He couldn’t make the dots join together.
‘You’ve noticed the resemblance, then,’ Barbara laughed. ‘Come on in, we’re so thrilled that you decided to call today of all days!’
‘We try to meet up about once a month, if we can,’ Rose added, as Morton entered the house.
‘So, is that it? Job done?’ Paul asked, standing back to let Morton go before him. ‘You’ve found all of our mother’s wartime secrets?’
The three of them laughed. Morton joined in.
‘No, not quite,’ he answered. ‘I’ve
