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just gone to sleep and it seemed a shame to disturb him? I could hardly refuse to look after my own son.
    Mark decided to wake up and grizzle as soon as she had gone out so I took him downstairs and carried him around the garden; for some reason he loves looking at trees and leaves moving in the breeze. My mobile rang and I sat down in a little arbour to answer it.
    Whoever it was hung up as soon as I spoke.
    â€˜That’s the second time it’s happened today,’ I told Mark. I gazed down at him and he looked up at me. ‘So you’re going to be a garden designer one day? A landscape painter? Or just a man who cuts people’s grass?’
    I could not get the little house in Bath out of my mind. Despite all the horror surrounding it, it just cried out to be restored. I had worked out colour schemes and renovation ideas for the interior as well as plans for both the front and back gardens.
    My mobile rang again.
    â€˜The dental records are a positive match,’ James Carrick said. ‘Imelda Burnside. The dentist told us that she’s been his patient, on the NHS, for around two years. He thinks she worked as a carer for the elderly. The checking goes on, of course – Patrick’s doing that – but it doesn’t appear, unless it is the same woman and she lived a double life, that this is anything to do with serious criminals. Only the bastard who killed her, of course.’
    I had only just put the phone back in my pocket when it rang yet again.
    â€˜Whatever Alex takes a fancy to, she gets,’ a man’s voice rasped. ‘Remember that.’ The line went dead.

FIVE
    I t appeared that while the house was still a crime scene all matters concerning its sale were definitely frozen. I confirmed this when I rang the agents to impress on them that I was still interested in purchasing it. Polite persistence on my part elicited the information that a higher offer had been received but, as before, matters were on hold. I was desperate to know whether it was the owner’s solicitor who had panicked when the price had been dropped so drastically in an effort to get a sale or whether they had been acting on the instructions of someone else – the nephew who might be due to inherit? – as surely the owner, the old lady, was incapable.
    Carrie returned, we established that Katie had a slight temperature and some of the other children were away from school with bad colds so she was popped into bed and instantly went to sleep. TLC and something tempting to eat would be administered later. The youngest, also fast asleep by now, was laid in his pram in the garden. Their mother, actually feeling light-hearted, happy even, that she had established a link between Alexandra and someone who was nasty enough to make veiled threats, went back to work.
    I sobered up, fast. This woman knew where I, we, lived. Did one confront her with what had happened? No, she would deny any involvement and accuse me of making yet more trouble. She would insist that she did not know my mobile number. How had she got hold of it? Had Patrick given it to her for some reason? At least that could quickly be established.
    There was one completely unbiased element in all this: James Carrick.
    â€˜You’ll have to get Patrick on board,’ was his advice. ‘I haven’t had time to do any checking on her – as usual I’m up to my ears in work. Sorry to be a bit blunt but you are folk also with the means of finding out such things. But I promise I’ll get back to you, Ingrid, when things aren’t so manic here and help if I can. And please be careful.’
    I then called Michael Greenway only to be told by his deputy, Andrew Bayley, that he had taken a two days’ well-earned leave. He went on to ask if he himself could help. I decided not to involve him: he worked mostly in the main office and I did not want to risk my worries being aired to all and sundry. Men gossip.
    Patrick