‘Well, Naomi doesn’t agree,’ she told him tartly.
‘Naomi, I don’t have the resources to—’
‘Um, I don’t think you’ll need them,’ Harry informed him. ‘Patrick and I will stay. We’re with Alec on this.’
‘Harry?’
‘Alec, if the roles were reversed, you and Naomi would be there. You’ve both proved that time and again. I’ll make arrangements for new doors, locks, maybe a panic button?’
‘I can arrange a direct line, yes,’ Fine conceded.
‘That’s good,’ Harry said. ‘And maybe you know a decent locksmith?’
Fine sighed. ‘I can manage that as well. But Alec, Harry … I don’t think—’
‘What you mean,’ Patrick butted in, ‘is that you don’t see how my dad and Alec can protect a blind woman and a boy.’
‘I wasn’t going to put it quite like that.’
‘’S’all right,’ Patrick told him. ‘We’ve been in worse scrapes. And Dad’s right. You don’t walk out on a friend.’
Fine left soon after and so did Harry, Patrick staying on to help with the practicalities of Naomi getting back to the hotel. ‘I’ve brought your laptop,’ Naomi told Alec, ‘and the disks and your other stuff. Keep you out of mischief.’
‘Thanks, love. But I’ll be out sometime today.’
‘You won’t,’ she told him. ‘I talked to the ward sister this morning. They want you here for another day.’
‘Then I’ll discharge myself.’
‘No. No, you won’t. I’m fine now. I have Harry and Patrick and you need more time to heal and rest. Alec, I’m not going to argue about this. Play with your files and get some rest and I’ll be back for proper visiting this afternoon.’
‘I’m fine,’ Alec protested.
‘So fine you got out of bed this morning and fell flat on your face. That fine? The sister told on you.’
‘Vertigo. That’s all.’
‘I’m not listening.’
She got up from her seat by his bed and kissed him. ‘Nothing is ever simple, is it?’
‘No,’ Alec agreed regretfully. ‘It never is.’
They left the ward and collected Napoleon from his place in the waiting room. Patrick took her arm and Naomi reflected that he seemed to have grown again. She thought of the shy fourteen year old he had been when she had first met him three years before, small for his age and terribly unsure of himself. Patrick had grown up.
She paused to switch her phone back on and found she had a missed calclass="underline" Marcus.
Of course, she hadn’t told him what had happened to Alec.
Once in the taxi she called him back. ‘Are we still on for Fallowfields today?’ he wanted to know.
She had, she realized, forgotten all about the promised search. To be reminded now was irrationally and absurdly irritating. ‘No,’ she told him. ‘It won’t be possible.’ Quickly and perhaps more acerbically than his enquiry had warranted, she told him why.
Marcus was shocked; she could hear it in his voice, but to her astonishment, once he had expressed his horror and his sympathy he asked again, ‘So we won’t be going to Fallowfields today?’
‘No, Marcus. Frankly, that’s the last thing on my mind just now.’
‘Naomi dear, if you gave me the key, I could make a start. One less job for you.’
Naomi frowned. ‘For one thing, Marcus, it isn’t just a question of the key. The police secured the doors and windows. It will take more than a key to get in. For another, I’d much rather wait until Alec is up and about before we do anything more.’
Silence on the other end of the phone. She could feel Marcus working out what to say next. Why so impatient? she wondered. What was so important?
‘Marcus? Are you still there?’
‘Of course. I’m sorry, of course. You must be too concerned about Alec to want the bother of such secondary things.’
‘I’ll call you, let you know.’
‘Problems?’ Patrick asked as she rang off.
‘I don’t know,’ Naomi told him, wondering at the tension in Marcus’s voice. It came to her again that there was something Marcus wasn’t telling.
Seventeen
Two days later they returned en mass to Fallowfields. Harry had been as good as his word. New locks secured the front door and the French windows had been reinforced and re-glazed with a deadbolt added.
‘Best we could do with that.’ Harry was apologetic. ‘Anything more would have meant replacing the entire lot and that’s a major undertaking. Be a shame, anyway, to take the French windows away and replace them with one of those patio things.’
Naomi stepped out on to the terrace. She listened to the garden noises as she had on the day the men had broken in. Somehow, she had expected them to have changed, to have registered the aggression and violence that had interrupted the peace of this garden, but the birds sang and the trees whispered and the scent of roses continued to fragrance the air. She breathed deep and tried to relax.
She hadn’t wanted to come back here and her palms felt clammy, sweat trickled down into the waistband of her linen trousers. Her head felt as though a band had been tightened around it; a band with extendable rods that reached down to press upon her shoulders.
‘We started to clear up the mess,’ Patrick said, ‘but we only did enough to make the floor safe for Napoleon. There was broken glass and stuff.’
Napoleon, Naomi smiled, not her. Patrick had his priorities right.
‘We thought we should leave it in case the stuff they chucked about might give us a clue to what they were looking for.’
‘Did they go upstairs?’ Marcus asked.
‘Um, yes,’ Harry said. ‘Into the study.’
‘The study?’ Naomi was puzzled. ‘No, the police arrived. They didn’t have time to get into the study.’
‘Which means they came back later.’ Alec’s tone was flat, emotionless. He had been discharged the evening before and spent a restless night at the hotel. He was still in pain from his ribs, Naomi knew, but more than that, he’d had time for the implications of the attack to sink in and to consider what might have happened to Naomi had the police not arrived.
He was not a happy man.
‘Fine didn’t know about the second break-in?’
‘Fine secured the place as best he could but he didn’t have the resources to keep anyone on watch. Harry, did you notice anything when you got here? Was the place secure?’
‘The front was and the side gate. To be truthful I didn’t take a good look round the back. DS Fine sorted out the locksmith and the carpenter and I just waited for them to arrive and left them to it. I mean, I did stay, but I sat in the car and listened to the radio, I’m afraid. I didn’t like to, you know, go inside until I had you with me.’
Harry and his old fashioned sensibilities, Naomi thought.
‘Well, we should let Reg Fine know,’ Alec said. ‘And meantime, everyone keep out of the study. I doubt there’ll be prints but you never know.’
‘But the study …’ Marcus began. ‘Surely that is likely to be … Anyway, don’t you already have prints from that terrible man?’
‘We’ve identified one,’ Alec said. ‘We know there were two. Until the crime scene investigator’s had another chance to look around we keep out.’
‘What state’s the kitchen in?’ Naomi asked. ‘If Patrick gives me a hand I’ll make us all some coffee.’
Setting Napoleon free to wander in the garden, she and Patrick made their way back through the dining room and into the kitchen. She could hear Alec taking charge and allocating tasks. ‘Watch the steps,’ she told Patrick. ‘The kitchen is on a slightly lower level.’ She reflected that to an outsider it might sound odd to be giving that advice to a sighted person but she knew Patrick. He’d grown fast lately and seemed not to have worked out yet where his newly extended limbs ended. She closed the door behind them.
‘Open the back door, will you, Patrick. Let some fresh air in. Then you can tell me what you don’t like about our friend Marcus.’