I’ve been having my own thoughts about this. ‘I completely disagree. Assuming he can’t track us on a single cab ride across a city – he’s not a Jedi – this is the perfect place.’
‘Meaning?’
‘We should stay here, order some food in, and just keep a low profile. The alternative, of course, would be to get on a cross-Channel ferry – a grim one, from one of the quiet ports – and go abroad for a bit. But wherever we do it, we should just do six weeks of nothing, and hope the cops catch whoever killed the guy without any further involvement from us.’
Em and Elle look at each other. ‘Al, that soundsawful.’ Jonny nods.
‘Do you have any better ideas?’
Elle pipes up. ‘I think we should go to the police.’
‘Really?’
She nods, firmly. ‘We didn’t kill anyone. We hardly did anything wrong. Maybe we have the evidence that helps the police catch whoever did this. I think we have a duty to help out. Yes, we were breaking in, but this will take priority. And we can always claim he invited us there.’
Jesus, I think. Even the Good Samaritan must have had better self-preservation instincts than this. ‘On no previous acquaintance, El? What are we going to say? “We were in the house, we broke in five minutes before he was shot, but the killer was a mysterious fifth person who none of us saw or heard, so now we’ll be on our way, you’re welcome”?’
Elle thinks about that, and Em chips in. ‘So sorry, love, but I think the horrible man is right. It’s not much of an option given the circumstantial evidence. Jonny?’
‘I’ve got nothing.’
‘All right,’ Em says. ‘So we can’t go to the police. Al’s lying-low plan sounds too boring to even imagine. There must be something else.’
We all sit there for a few seconds, too shattered to even think of what other course of action might be open.
Until Em sits up. ‘Obviously, we have to find out a bit more.’
‘What?’
‘We find out who this man was—’
‘No. I’m sorry, butabsolutelynot,’ I say. ‘This is the worst idea yet.’
‘First we’ll find out who he was,’ Em continues, ‘and then we can work out who would have wanted to kill him.’
‘Are you nuts? We’re not the Scooby-Doo gang, Em.’
‘Why not?’
‘We haven’t got a dog,’ says Elle.
Jonny chips in. ‘We haven’t even got a van any more.’
‘Thank you, Jonny,’ I say. ‘And the Scooby-Doo gang weren’t investigating actual live murderers. They were dealing with … I don’t know, elderly perverts in fairgrounds. This is serious.’
‘Of course it is,’ says Em. ‘But I’m not proposing doing anything stupid.’ (I decide not to interrupt here.) ‘We don’t have tosolvethecase. It might just be worth finding out who this man was and making a few enquiries. Discreet ones. So that when the police inevitably catch up with us – which, I’m sorry Al, they clearly will – we can point them in a different direction.’
It’s not the police I’m worried about. I think again of the description Tariq gave of the bowling-ball man who’s after us, and get an unnervingly sharp mental image of being headbutted by him.
Em goes on. ‘What did he say about money again?’
‘Who?’
‘The guy. After he was shot. He said the money was in the outbuilding.’
‘He was rambling.’
‘Might be worth looking into, though.’
