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all that aside for the moment. Let me tell you about my cousin’s house.’
    She traced the failing bulb to the converted oil lamp on the dresser, went to switch it off, leaving the big kitchen ochre-lit and full of sepia shadows.
    The Golden Valley was in the extreme west of the county, green pillows under the headboard of the Black Mountains. An area of hidden villages, its nearest towns in Wales.
    Adam Malik had never intended to live there. Certainly not in a crumbling medieval farmhouse where the only neighbours were sheep.
    ‘We grew up in the same industrial area of the west Midlands,’ Khan said. ‘I am… what you’d think of as godfather to his daughter. At university, he took up with a woman of white, English stock. Nicole. Now Nadya.’
    ‘She converted to Islam?’
    ‘Oh, yes. Her father is a Herefordshire heritage builder… Dennis Kellow?’
    Merrily shook her head. At one time, the Welsh border seemed to have more heritage builders than heritage.
    ‘I do realize,’ Khan said, ‘that many of these chaps are well-spoken cowboys. Claiming to have worked extensively for the National Trust and numbering the wealthier estate agents among their drinking companions. Choose your heritage builder with care. Kellow, however, has been one of the exceptions – painstaking, not cheap, and impatient with clients who expected quick and cosmetic results. He’d been working, on and off, for several years, on an ancient farmhouse owned by the scholar Selwyn Kindley-Pryce.’
    ‘I must be sounding very ignorant, here, Mr Khan, but…’
    ‘I wouldn’t worry. Eminent but not terribly well known.Pryce’s income fluctuated. He’d have restoration work done when he could afford it, until ill-health forced him to move out, with the work far from finished. And when its sale to a film director fell through, Kellow saw his chance. I think he’d been planning for some time to sell his business and retire, but he wasn’t the kind of man to buy himself an expensive armchair, if you see what I mean. He wanted to retire into a project – a labour of love.’
    Khan described it: large, rambling, six bedrooms, barns and a hundred acres of land. More than just a house, far more, and even during the property slump it had been beyond the resources of Dennis Kellow. However, it failed to sell to anyone else and he’d ended up renting it, in the hope of buying at a future date.
    ‘The opportunity eventually presented itself when his sonin-law obtained a senior consultancy at Hereford Hospital, and was in need of a home.’
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘I’m not sure of the details – indeed, it’s none of my business – but I believe they agreed to buy the house between them and share the renovation costs. The house would eventually pass to the Maliks.’ Khan raised his eyes to the beams. ‘After my experiences at Wychehill, I would have urged Adam to run a mile, but he’s more of a romantic than me. Even more of an
Englishman
than me.’
    Was that possible? Merrily said nothing.
    ‘The thought of becoming a country gentleman… you know? Madness. However, an element of urgency crept in when Dennis Kellow had a stroke.’
    ‘Oh God. Serious?’
    ‘Caught quite early. He’s recovered and wants to continue with his
life project
. Promising to take it slowly, calm down, improve his diet… and, of course, with a doctor in the house…’
    ‘No better safety net than that. That mean they’ve moved in now, the Maliks?’
    ‘Some months ago.’
    ‘OK.’ Merrily fired up her e-cig. ‘So we have an old house, a man with health problems and… did you say there was a baby?’
    ‘A teenage girl. Aisha.’
    ‘Right. And, erm…’
    ‘Something else. Another, unwanted, member of the household. Which the Maliks thought their imam in Worcester might deal with. Until he informed them that he was unable to assist.’
    ‘Because? Can we spell this out?’
    ‘Because this is an old house. A
very
old house. And whatever is happening there