Danny, he noticed, did not ask. He sipped his coke and blinked hard and Patrick knew that he was trying not to cry. He looked away and Harry turned his attention back to the next number on the list.
‘Ah, good morning.’ The fourth call now and so far nothing gained. ‘No, I’m not selling anything. I’m calling about Sharon Fielding … My son is a friend of Danny’s.’
Pause. Harry listened, then, to Patrick’s surprise he raised his voice and spoke angrily into the phone. ‘Look, I’ve got the boy here now, sitting at my kitchen table, tearing his heart out because he doesn’t know what the hell happened to his mother. If you can’t give me a few minutes of your time …’
Pause, Patrick heard a woman shouting down the phone.
‘I’m sorry if you feel like that,’ Harry said. ‘But whatever you might have thought she was still his mother. I’d have thought a little compassion …’
Harry stared angrily at the phone. ‘Hung up,’ he said.
‘What was all that about?’
Harry shrugged. ‘Danny, this Ellen March, was she a close friend?’
Danny shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I just found any numbers I could and writ them down. That was on a bit of paper under the phone book.’
‘Right. I see.’ Harry leaned back in his chair and stared at the remaining numbers.
‘What was her problem?’ Patrick asked.
Harry shrugged, but Patrick could tell this was something he didn’t want to talk about in front of Danny, so he let it go when his father simply said, ‘I think she was just touchy about a stranger asking her questions.’
Danny looked even more depressed than when he had first arrived. ‘You think it’s worth trying the rest?’ he asked.
Harry smiled at him. ‘Let’s give it a go.’ He glanced up at the kitchen clock. It was half past twelve. ‘Tell you what, you and Patrick make some lunch and I’ll do the rest of these on the other phone. The battery’s going on this one. I could hear it beeping on that last call.’
That wasn’t the only thing that needed beeping, Patrick thought. He’d caught enough of the woman’s language to register that.
Danny shrugged uncomfortably. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I guess so’
Patrick got up and went to the fridge. ‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘We’ve got ham and cheese and corned beef. Salad …’
Harry picked up the list and the phone and made his escape. One useful thing he had found out from Ellen March was that she wasn’t a friend of Sharon’s. From what she’d said to him, Harry would make a bet she was having an affair with Danny’s dad.
Twenty-Seven
Danny left just after two and Patrick wandered back upstairs to Rupert’s study. He had been flicking through the earlier journals he had noticed on Rupert’s shelf, looking for previous references to Kinnear. So far, he had found nothing and the journals did not appear to go back to the time of the robberies, but were obviously a habit Rupert had acquired only in the last ten years of his life.
A car pulling up on the gravel brought him to the window, thinking Alec and Naomi had returned. He was shocked to see Marcus.
‘Shit!’ Patrick muttered. He had left the journals and laptop downstairs in the dining room in plain view.
Racing downstairs he passed the front door as Marcus rang the bell for a second time. Harry was about to open it as Patrick dashed by, grabbing his record bag from the coat pegs as he ran.
‘Patrick?’ Harry had the door open now and Marcus was coming inside.
Patrick scooted into the dining room and grabbed the books and the ledger, stuffing them into his bag. Marcus stuck his head around the door to say hello just as Patrick was attempting to do the same with the laptop.
‘Hello, Patrick. How are you?’ Marcus smiled broadly, then his expression froze. ‘You’ve found Rupert’s laptop.’
‘No,’ Patrick lied. ‘It’s mine. I’ve been using it for homework.’
‘Homework? I thought you’d finished for the year.’
‘I have, but I’ve got a project to start. Get ready for next term. I’m carrying on with the same subjects, you see, so I can kind of get ahead.’
Marcus eyed him thoughtfully and Patrick knew he did not believe a word of it.
‘Coffee, Marcus?’ Harry asked. ‘Come on through. I was just washing up. Alec and Naomi should be here soon. Patrick, maybe you could give them a ring and find out how long they’re going to be?’
Patrick nodded. He waited until Harry had ushered the reluctant Marcus away and then ran upstairs. He put the bag in Rupert’s study and locked the door, slipping the key into his pocket. Then he sat down on the top step and called Naomi on his mobile, grateful when she said that they were almost home.
‘Marcus saw the laptop,’ he said. ‘I told him it was mine but he didn’t believe me. I’ve locked it in the study.’
‘Good,’ Naomi approved. ‘Patrick, you and Harry keep him amused, we’ll soon be there.’
It was interesting, Patrick thought as he rang off, that they had all come round to his way of thinking as regards Marcus just when, oddly enough, Patrick himself was starting to have some sympathy for the man. He sat for a minute more, analyzing where that feeling had come from and decided it was that he genuinely believed that Marcus cared for Rupert. And if he was scared of Kinnear, Patrick thought, no one could really blame him for that, but what they didn’t know for sure was if Marcus and Kinnear were in this together or if Marcus was just acting out of fear.
He thought about it as he went downstairs and joined his father but reached no conclusion. Marcus smiled at him as he came through into the kitchen. ‘They’re coming back,’ Patrick said. ‘Should be here in just a few minutes.’
‘Oh, good. I was just asking your father if you’d had any luck with the search.’
Patrick shook his head. ‘Rupert had some interesting stuff, though,’ he said. ‘Some great old books and that. He’s got maps from the 1640s when they drained the fens and all sorts.’
Marcus smiled again. A genuine smile this time. ‘He was working on a second book about the Fen Tigers,’ he said. ‘I don’t know all the details but I know one chapter concerned their descendants who still lived around here. He’d discovered that quite a few of the local families have roots going back to that time, including your neighbour, I believe.’
‘Our neighbour?’
‘Yes, the Fieldings at White Farm. He was quite enthused by it all.’
‘Did you know he wrote poetry?’ Patrick asked.
‘I knew he tried. I don’t recall him showing me any.’
‘Well, it’s not all that good. He was a much better prose writer,’ Patrick said. ‘Though I like bits. There’s one about the fenland skies that’s pretty good.’
‘You’ll have to show it to me.’
Patrick nodded. He heard Alec’s key in the front door and went to meet them. Behind him he heard Marcus ask Harry again about the laptop, saying how odd it was that Patrick had the same model.
‘I believe it’s a very common one,’ Harry said.
Patrick was surprised that Marcus even knew. Laptops tended to look similar, though Rupert’s wasn’t new and was certainly not as thin or light as many of the more modern ones. Maybe it was this that Marcus had noted. Whatever, Patrick was not easy about it.
After saying hello to Naomi and Alec he took himself back upstairs and into the study, then locked the door and fired up the laptop. In his excitement about the journals he had not taken so much time to look at the computer and, frankly, neither his dad nor Alec were that good.
Methodically, now, he began to open the files in ‘my computer’ and on the C drive, surveying what was there and comparing the different versions Rupert seemed to have saved. He was still involved when he heard Marcus leave and the car pull away, and then was startled when Alec, unable to access the study, knocked on the door.