‘What is it?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘You winced.’
‘I was thinking about Lars.’
‘Oh.’ She shuffled closer to him under the covers, and kissed his lips. ‘Would you like breakfast? Sausages?’
‘You don’t have to get breakfast,’ Toby said. ‘We can fend for ourselves.’
Alice’s brows knitted in a mock frown. ‘Did I hear you just turn down sausages?’
Toby smiled. ‘No, you didn’t. And yes, I would love some sausages.’
‘And baked beans?’ Initially, Alice had disapproved of Toby’s fondness for baked beans as part of a morning fry-up, considering it weird, but in time he had persuaded her that it was, in fact, perfectly natural.
‘Yes please.’
Alice swung her legs out of bed and looked for her dressing gown, which was draped over a chair.
‘Alice?’
‘Yeah?’
‘There was quite a lot of discussion after you were arrested yesterday, about Craig’s death. Justin got upset; he didn’t believe it was an accident.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Alice was feigning indifference, but I could tell she was listening closely.
‘Lars claimed he had killed Craig.’
‘Really?’ A little more interest.
‘And then later your father told us about Craig’s death. And that it was him, not Lars who had killed Craig.’
Alice froze, her back to Toby. ‘He told you that?’
‘He did.’
Alice turned to Toby, her voice cold. ‘And by “us” you mean…’
‘Me and Megan. And then he told Brooke later on. After Lars was shot.’
‘I’m surprised.’
‘And then he told us about Pat Greenwald.’
‘What!’
‘About your mother’s peace activist friend. And the FBI’s suspicion that she had been in touch with the KGB. And Commander Driscoll had been in touch with her.’
‘Jesus! Why did Dad do that?’
‘We asked him to. We demanded that he tell us. You knew about it?’
‘Yeah. Mom told me. But she told me not to tell anyone else and definitely not let Dad know I knew.’
‘But why all these secrets?’ Toby said, letting his frustration show. ‘Wouldn’t it have been better all along if you or your father had told your sisters? And me?’
‘Toby! These are real, honest-to-goodness-secrets involving my parents and the KGB.’
‘Yes. And two people are dead.’
‘Because this stuff leaked out.’
‘Is that why?’ said Toby. ‘Do you know why Sam Bowen died? Why Lars was shot?’
‘No, Toby, I have no idea. Hey, I’m the one who has been locked up for two days.’
Toby paused. He didn’t want to start a shouting match with his wife. ‘I know,’ he said.
‘You haven’t told the police any of this, have you?’ Alice asked.
‘No. I can’t. Some guy was here from MI5 yesterday morning, with Admiral Robinson who was on the submarine with Bill. He made me sign the Official Secrets Act.’
‘Good.’
‘But after Lars was shot yesterday, I told the police I wanted to speak to MI5. Tell them what I know, and then they can tell the police.’
‘Why would you do that?’
‘Because you are a suspect, Alice. I want to get you off.’
Alice snorted in frustration. ‘My lawyer has a strategy for that! None of us says anything. Not me, not Dad, and certainly not you. That way the police have to prove I killed Sam Bowen. Talking to them will just help them find that proof.’
‘You see, that’s what I don’t get,’ said Toby. ‘If you didn’t kill Sam Bowen, why wouldn’t you or your hotshot lawyer want the police to know the truth?’
Alice glared at him. Frustration had turned to anger. ‘If?’
Toby stared back.
‘You said “if”, Toby. Why did you say “if”?’
‘I… I didn’t mean “if”. I meant… “since”. I meant “since”.
‘Well, you didn’t say “since”, did you?’
Toby hadn’t.
‘You think I killed Sam Bowen, don’t you, Toby?’
‘Of course I don’t,’ said Toby. ‘I would never think that.’
‘All right. If you genuinely don’t think I killed that poor guy, trust me. Do as I ask. You can tell MI5 about Dad killing Craig on the submarine – Admiral Robinson will know that anyway. But don’t tell them anything about Pat Greenwald. Anything. Do you understand?’
‘Won’t Admiral Robinson know about that too?’
‘He may or may not, I don’t know. That’s up to him to tell the police about if he does know. It’s not up to you. Now, will you promise me?’
Would he promise her? Didn’t he have a duty to tell the authorities what he knew? Maybe. But his wife was in big trouble. She was asking him for proof that he trusted her.
He had to trust her.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I promise.’
Alice went downstairs to make breakfast, and Toby followed her ten minutes later. As he reached the top of the stairs he heard an urgent whisper.
‘Toby!’
It was Megan, dressed in checked pyjama bottoms and a light grey T-shirt, beckoning him to her room.
He hesitated.
Her beckoning became more urgent. ‘I’ve got something to tell you. It’s to do with Pat Greenwald.’ She mouthed the last two words.
Toby joined her in her room. Which was tiny, and most of the floor space was covered in clothes from an open suitcase.
She flopped on to her unmade bed. He remained standing.
‘Pat Greenwald is dead.’ Megan quickly described what she had discovered from her Internet searches of the previous evening.
‘So you think Henry Greenwald might know something about his mother’s activities?’
‘Maybe. She might have left him papers. Or he might have seen something as a child.’
‘It’s worth a shot, I suppose. How are we going to contact him?’
‘Not we. Maya. I messaged her last night in New York, and she agreed to go and see him. Maya can be persuasive if she wants to be. Especially with men.’
‘Bill won’t like it if he finds out. And neither will Alice.’
‘If they find out,’ said Megan, with a mischievous smile.
FORTY-FIVE
After a satisfying plate of sausages, fried egg and baked beans for breakfast, Toby’s presence was requested at the police station in King’s Lynn to meet the MI5 officer, Prestwitch.
Having dutifully guarded Pear Tree Cottage overnight, the police had accepted breakfast from Alice and then left. Toby was on his own. He still had no idea how badly the man who had shot Lars wanted to kill him too, and it disturbed him, as it disturbed Alice.
He appreciated the drive alone in his car on the empty Sunday morning roads. It gave him time to think. He checked his mirror regularly, and was relieved that there was no would-be assassin following him.
His initial reaction to Lars’s death was to repeat to MI5 all he had been told by Bill, in the hope that they would pass the information on to the police who would use it to solve the two killings, and throw whoever was responsible behind bars before he could murder anyone else. Like Toby. Or Bill, or any of the Guth sisters.
But now things were not so simple.
Firstly, most of what Bill had told him would be known by Admiral Robinson. He was there in the control room on the submarine when Lars had attacked Commander Driscoll. He had arrested Bill for assaulting Craig. And he would almost certainly have been informed about the leak to the KGB, if only to answer questions from the FBI about it in 1996.
Had Robinson told MI5 any of this? And had Prestwitch told the police? These were questions Toby was curious to know the answers to.