Eventually I follow the coward’s path and climb the stairs back to bed.
9
The next morning, Jonny’s cooking as I get downstairs. He doesn’t have Elle’s knack of making it seem easy; the kitchen looks like a polecat was left uncaged in it overnight. He has emptied every single cupboard. On the plus side, he’s produced a stack of pancakes the size of my head. The flatscreen TV on the other side of the room by the sofas – told you it was a big kitchen – is blaring away with the morning news. Apparently the government is preparing to hold its nose and sign a huge new deal with the dubious foreign trading giant of Qumar, despite significant doubts and internal protests. I know just how the government feels.
‘Morning,’ he says. ‘Sleep well?’
‘Oh, like a log. Totally uninterrupted rest, no weird encounters or threats at all.’
‘That’s good. I’m hacking my sleep at the moment.’ I would ask for details, but he’s distracted – half his attention is on the TV, which is currently reporting on sewage in rivers, while the rest of him is stirring the remaining batter with a rolling pin, then scraping it off the pin with a Sabatier knife.
‘Morning, all!’ Elle and Em clatter in and start piling into the pancakes. I take a plate, look in the cutlery drawer – Jonny has managed to use up most of the implements, so I’ll be eating mine with an oyster fork – and sit.
‘Three have been on the floor,’ Jonny says. ‘But there’s only a fourteen per cent chance you’ll pick one of those, assuming you eat two. If you eat more, it rises to—’
‘Thanks, Jonny.’
I meet Em’s gaze. She smiles as sweetly as if four hours ago she didn’t just blackmail me into the worst idea of my life so far. I can feel the notebook still in my top pocket where she tucked it. Elle gives me an equally sweet smile, and I realise I haveno idea at allwhether she knows too.
Em might have my prints, but at least I’ve kept Rule 1 intact so far. At least she didn’t get my name out of me.
‘Anyway,’ she says, getting out her laptop. ‘Task one is to find out who our murder victim was.’
‘Land Registry,’ I say. ‘Simple.’
‘Jonny, can you hide our tracks effectively if Al’s looking up something here?’
Jonny smears his hands with a tea towel and leans over Em’s shoulder. His fingers blur briefly, and when Em swivelsthe screen, I can see he’s opened a browser I’ve never heard of before with the Land Registry site open.
‘Al?’
I log in using my interloping account – nothing like my real name – pay my £3, and put in the address of the house.
‘Right. Larksfoot, Bridling. Here we go …’
And that’s when I get my next surprise.
‘It’s not here.’
‘You said everything was on there.’
‘It is, but … Well, not everything. A house goes on the Registry when it’s sold.’
‘When did they start doing that?’
‘Long time ago. More than a century, I think.’
‘So this house hasn’t changed hands since then?’
‘Apparently not. Not on the open market, anyway.’ This is weird. It’s the first place I’ve ever come across that isn’t on the register.
‘So it was his ancestral home or something? Does that mean he was posh?’
‘It’s possible.’ I think of Sausage Fingers’ spiky grey hair and cross red face. ‘But … I don’t know. He didn’t seem posh to me.’
‘We’ll think of something to track him.’
‘How?’
