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you'll hardly know I'm there at all.'
But he was there, in the bathroom, splashing and singing like a careless child. Wield was acutely aware of his presence. His existence had been monastic for a long time. There had been another dark-skinned boy, a police cadet, who had ambushed his affections against his will, but nothing had come of it, and the cadet had been posted away. Sharman reminded him of that boy and he knew that, if anything, the danger was even greater now than then. But the danger to what? His way of life? What kind of life was it that a simple surge of desire put at risk?
    The youth's bag was lying on the floor. More to distract himself than anything else, Wield leaned forward, unzipped it and began to examine the contents. There wasn't much. Some clothes, shoes, a couple of paperbacks and a wallet.
    He opened the wallet. It contained about sixty or seventy pounds in fivers. In the other pocket were two pieces of paper. One had some names and telephone numbers scribbled on it. One name leapt out of the page. Mo. He made a note of the number and turned his attention to the other piece of paper. This was a timetable for coaches from London to the North. A departure time was underlined and the arrival time in Yorkshire. The latter was about ten minutes before Sharman's call to the Station. The little bastard hadn't hung about. So much for his talk of arriving here by chance!
    He heard the water running from the bath. Quickly he returned everything to the bag. He had no doubt that Sharman would emerge all provocatively naked and he rehearsed his own coldly scornful response as he demanded explanations.
    The door opened. The boy came into the room, his hair spiky from washing, his slim brown body enveloped in Wield's old towelling robe.
    'God, I enjoyed that,' he said. 'Any chance of some cocoa and a choc biscuit?'
    He sat on the sofa, curling his feet up beneath him. He looked little more than fourteen and as relaxed and uncalculating as a tired puppy.
    Wield tried not to admit to himself he was postponing a confrontation but he knew that it was already postponed. By his old standards this was a mistake. But he had felt all the old parameters of duty and action begin to thaw and resolve the moment Pascoe had said there was a call for Mac Wield.
One word, one phone call. How could something so simple be allowed to change a whole life? He stood and went to put the kettle on.
     

Chapter 4
     
    'Lexie! Lexie Huby! Hi. It's your cousin, Rod. Remember me?'
    'Oh. Hello,' said Lexie.
    She wished that Messrs Thackeray etcetera would invest in some lightweight phones. These cumbersome old bakelite things were not made for small hands, nor for heads whose ears and mouth were not a foot apart.
    'Hello to you too,' said the voice.
    'What do you want?'
    'Well, I'm up here again, didn't expect to be so soon after the funeral, but sometimes things work out that way, don't they? I'll tell you all about it when we meet.'
    'Meet?'
    'Yes. We didn't have much chance to talk after the funeral and I thought, wouldn't it be nice to have lunch and a tete-a-tete with my little cousin Lexie.'
    'What do you want to talk about?'
    'Well, old times, the sort of thing cousins do talk about,' said Lomas, sounding a little hurt.
    What old times? wondered Lexie. Their blood relationship was so tenuous as to make the title cousin an unwanted courtesy. As for old times, they'd only met on those rare occasions when Mrs Windibanks's hopeful forays north coincided with the Old Mill Inn Hubys' monthly tea visit. Mrs Windibanks had always treated them like the lady of the manor acknowledging the peasants, and Rod ignored the two girls altogether. Prior to the funeral, the last time they'd met had been at Aunt Gwen's sick-bed some three years earlier. The old lady had suffered her first stroke shortly after returning from a trip abroad. Arthur Windibanks had died in a car accident only a fortnight later leaving his widow in dire financial straits,