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‘There’s a tap out the back,’ said the man, turning. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

Detective Inspector Sloan sat back, saying casually to Jack Haines as if by way of conversation, ‘You don’t happen to know a man called Norman Potts, do you?’

The nurseryman visibly stiffened. ‘Of course I know him, Inspector. He’s my stepson,’ he said between gritted teeth.

‘Coffee?’ said Mandy Lamb into the silence.

‘I thought you’d never ask,’ said Detective Constable Crosby.

‘I had hoped I’d seen the last of him when his mother died,’ growled Haines. ‘But no such luck. He sued me for more of her estate than she’d left him. And lost.’ He took a deep breath and asked, ‘What’s he been up to now?’

‘Nothing that I know of,’ said Sloan blandly. ‘Should I?’

‘Harassment, for starters,’ said Haines. ‘Came here wanting me to tell him where his wife – his ex-wife, that is – was.’

‘And?’

‘I told him to get lost.’

‘And did he?’ enquired Crosby with interest.

‘Haven’t seen him since,’ growled Haines. ‘Or wanted to, come to that. Like I said, I had hoped I’d seen the last of him. He’s nothing but trouble as far as I’m concerned. And to his ex-wife too, from all accounts.’

‘Tell me,’ invited Sloan.

Detective Inspector Sloan had barely settled back at his own desk at Berebury Police Station before he was summoned to Superintendent Leeyes’ office.

‘Have you got anything else to add to this peculiar shopping list of yours, Sloan?’ asked his superior officer testily.

‘Not just yet, sir, thank you.’ The reported iniquities of Norman Potts as a husband and stepson had slid easily off Jack Haines’ tongue. They comprised a catalogue of domestic violence and included a threat heard by Haines to take revenge on a woman – and the legal profession – whom Potts swore to Jack Haines had stripped him of half his worldly wealth by way of a divorce.

Perhaps, noted Sloan, Norman Potts had already taken revenge too, on a nurseryman who had refused to play
ball with a disgruntled stepson. The policeman didn’t know that.

Not yet.

And Jack Haines certainly wasn’t saying anything about that.

Not yet, either.

Sloan gave the superintendent an edited version of Norman Potts’ reputation as represented by his stepfather and his former wife.

Leeyes grunted.

The detective inspector glanced down at his notebook. ‘So, sir, I’ve put out a general call for this Norman Potts as a witness in connection with damage caused at the two nurseries.’

‘In connection with,’ Superintendent Leeyes rolled the phrase round his tongue appreciatively. ‘I like it.
Non-committal
, and better than that old chestnut about helping the police with their enquiries.’

‘Yes, sir.’ In his time, Sloan been assaulted by men said to be helping the police with their enquiries and it hadn’t been of any help at all.

‘The press don’t like anything non-committal,’ said the superintendent with some satisfaction. ‘By the way, Sloan, did I say that I’ve put you down for your personal development discussion for Friday morning?’

‘Right, sir. Thank you, sir.’ He swallowed. ‘I’ll make a note of that. And in the meantime,’ Sloan plunged on, ‘Crosby is checking on the other local nurseries to see if they’ve had any trouble too. Although,’ he added realistically, ‘I would have thought we’d have heard by now if they had.’

‘Perhaps there’s an orchid-hater at large,’ suggested the superintendent. ‘Can’t stand ’em myself.’

‘And in the matter of the MISSPER …’ began Sloan. He wasn’t very fond of orchids himself either but didn’t think this was the moment to say so.

‘I don’t like Missing Persons cases, either,’ trumpeted Leeyes immediately. ‘Never have. In my experience they’re neither fish, flesh nor good red herring. If you find them alive and kicking nobody gives you any credit for it. Worse than that, if they didn’t want to be found in the first place, you get all the blame and if you find them dead, then you get all the blame too.’

‘Up to a point, sir.’ He coughed. ‘There are one or two matters to be noted about Enid Osgathorp’s absence, though. I think she is unlikely to have extended her holiday voluntarily since she had arranged to collect some orchids for a demonstration she had agreed to give tomorrow evening. They’re still waiting for her to pick up at Jack Haines’ place.’

Leeyes sniffed. ‘They weren’t caught up in the general orchid destruction then?’

‘No.’

‘I wonder why not?’ he mused.

‘I couldn’t say, sir. Not at this stage.’

‘And this battered wife …’

‘We don’t know that she was actually battered …’ protested Sloan.

‘Emotionally battered, then,’ said Leeyes, who didn’t normally admit to believing in the existence of the condition.

‘Marilyn Potts,’ said Sloan, ‘was quite guarded about
him.’ He hoped his personal development interview with the superintendent would be less challenging than this one.

‘Do I understand that she’s the one who is going to give this talk on orchids instead of the missing person?’

‘That’s what I was told, sir.’

‘So you’ve haven’t got very far, have you?’

‘Not yet, sir,’ said Sloan, biting down hard on any response at risk of jeopardising the aforementioned personal development interview.

The superintendent reached forward into his in-tray for a piece of paper. ‘Well, you’ll be pleased to hear that you’ve got your search warrant. You’d better go and have another look at Canonry Cottage before anyone else gets in there and muddies the waters.’

Mary Feakins reluctantly made the effort to heave herself out of her chair at the kitchen table of The Hollies where she had been taking a little rest between times. Then she walked towards the sink belatedly to begin washing up the breakfast dishes. She hadn’t been able to face doing them earlier, bending over being a sure invitation to nausea. Today her routine domestic activities had been disturbed not only by the bout of morning sickness that had come on first thing but by their visits to the plant nursery and their lawyer in Berebury.

Until she reached the kitchen sink the only thoughts in her mind had been an imaginary confrontation with her doctor in which she was challenging him in the matter of morning sickness and his promises that hyperemesis gravida
would not in the nature of things last for much longer.

She stood at the sink for a moment or two, hesitating while wondering whether bending over it now would still bring about another wave of sickness. There was a window above the sink and she allowed her glance to stray outside and into the back garden while she steadied herself against the working surface and tried to suppress the rising feeling of sickness. What she could see there was an unexpected pyramid of white smoke that suddenly billowed out into a cloud that obscured her view from the window. Just as quickly the smoke dispersed and she was able to take a second look and saw that it was rising from a burning pile of rubbish. Beside it was the figure of her husband who appeared to be furiously piling more and more things on the bonfire.

The washing up abandoned, she opened the back door and sailed across the garden towards the bonfire. ‘Benedict Feakins, what on earth do you think you’re doing out here?’

‘Just having a simple bonfire,’ he said, poking something under a pile of leaves. ‘Nothing more, nothing less.’

‘But look at what you’re putting on it.’ She frowned. ‘That looks like a hairbrush to me.’

‘It is,’ he said, his back still bent almost double.

‘And surely that’s a toothbrush, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. It’s only some of Dad’s old things, that’s all.’ Benedict kept his head down and muttered, ‘I cleared out his bedroom this morning. Everything there reminded me of him too much.’

She stared at him and then said in a softer tone, ‘I didn’t think you minded losing him so much as that.’ 

‘Well, I did,’ he mumbled, trying to straighten up, ‘and that’s all there is to it.’

‘Sorry.’ Mary Feakins stepped back a pace.

‘I’m getting rid of all Dad’s clothes too,’ he said, a rising note in his voice. ‘I just can’t stand seeing all his things everywhere. They’re going to the charity shop first thing tomorrow morning.’

‘I understand,’ she said, all womanly sympathy now.

‘I can’t explain the feeling,’ he said in a choked voice. ‘It came over me like a tidal wave yesterday and made me feel quite wretched.’

‘There’s lots of things that can’t be explained,’ said his wife cheerfully. ‘Like my pica gravidarum.’ From quite early on in her pregnancy, Mary Feakins had developed a marked predilection for cold herring. ‘The doctor tells me that it’s quite common.’

‘Your craving fetishes are quite different, Mary,’ he said seriously. ‘This isn’t like eating coal. It’s more like … oh, I don’t know that I can put it into words.’

‘Don’t even try,’ she said kindly. ‘Look here, I’ll go back indoors and let you get on with it.’

‘Bless you,’ he said and obviously meant it.

Mary was bent over the sink again and was lowering some dirty plates into it when she was struck by a sudden thought. Wiping her soapy hands on a towel, she left the sink and went into their sitting room. Standing on the sofa table there was a studio photograph of her late
father-in-law
set in a silver frame. Lifting it carefully, she carried it out of the room and upstairs. Then she laid it safely under some spare sheets inside the linen cupboard. Benedict Feakins never opened the doors of the linen cupboard. 

She was back at the kitchen sink in no time at all. Minutes later, a new and different thought in her mind now, she went back to the sitting room. The first time she had been concentrating on the photograph of her
father-in-law
but now she was looking for something that wasn’t there but had been yesterday.

The urn containing Benedict’s father’s cremated ashes which were awaiting burial in Pelling churchyard was missing.

Detective Constable Crosby came into Detective Inspector Sloan’s office and laid his notebook down on the desk. ‘I’ve done the rounds of the other nurseries, sir, like you said. Seen the lot of them and none of them have had their greenhouse doors left open last night or at any other time. Joe Girdler hasn’t got any greenhouses, anyway. Only roses. Rows and rows of them. Out of doors.’

‘Him, I know,’ said Sloan, quondam rosarian.

‘The Leanaig brothers have got lots of greenhouses but no orchids and nothing at all happened at their place last night,’ said Crosby. He suddenly realised that he needed to consult his notebook again and reached across Sloan’s desk to retrieve it. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ He flicked over a page or two. ‘Staple St James Nurseries only do hardy plants and the Berebury Garden Centre has greenhouses galore although only one with orchids in. They say they had no trouble last night but …’ He fell silent.

‘But?’ prompted Sloan. In the last analysis a policeman relied on his sense of smell – that indefinable feeling that things weren’t what they should be – a feeling that couldn’t be put into words and some held couldn’t be
taught. It was something he was waiting to see if Detective Constable Crosby had.

‘But their head honcho, Bob Steele, wasn’t happy with the police coming there.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘I could tell. He was edgy. Demanded to know why we’d come to see him before I could get a word in. Not a happy bunny.’

‘Did you ask him if he knew Norman Potts?’ Perhaps, after all, Crosby was developing that sense of smell. Aggressive interviewees always had an agenda of their own. Idly, Sloan wondered what it could be with Bob Steele.

The constable nodded. ‘I did, like you said, sir. He told me he’d heard the name, that’s all. He was quite cagey about it.’

‘Or Capstan Purlieu Plants?’

‘He knew them all right. Real specialists, he called the two women. Didn’t sound as if he particularly liked them, though, or was bothered about them as competitors.’ Crosby scratched his head. ‘Called ’em small fry.’

‘And Jack Haines and his nursery at Pelling?’ said Sloan, deciding that it didn’t sound as if the great gardening Goliath that was the Berebury Garden Centre was all that worried about the little David of the gardening world that was Capstan Purlieu Plants either. ‘What did he say about him?’

‘Bob Steele said he knew him too. He went a bit quiet when I started asking him a bit more about Jack Haines and he clammed up straightaway. He said he didn’t know all that much more about either Haines or his nursery except in the way of trade.’

‘And Enid Osgathorp?’ 

‘Said he’d never heard of her but that there were a lot of old lady gardeners about, gardening being the new sex, and he couldn’t be expected to know them all or t’other from which, could he?’

Detective Inspector Sloan lifted a sheet of paper off his desk. ‘I can tell you that there is someone who has heard of her, Crosby. The receptionist at a hotel in the wilds of Carmarthenshire. She got in touch with us after getting our general request. She says they had been expecting a Miss Enid Osgathorp of Pelling to arrive there three weeks ago. She’d made the booking about a couple of months ago for a fortnight’s stay, full board, earlier this month. She never showed up at their hotel, though.’ Sloan read out from the piece of paper. ‘The Meadgrove Park Country House Hotel.’

‘Sounds posh, sir.’

‘It’s not bad,’ said Sloan warmly, quoting from the paper in front of him. ‘Five star, set in ten acres of landscape, extensive gardens, notable cuisine, fine wines and good fishing. You name it and it seems the Meadgrove Park Country House Hotel would appear to have it.’

‘Does herself well, then, this Miss Osgathorp, when she’s not at home,’ concluded Crosby, whose landlady was notable for her cheese-paring.

‘It would have set her back a good bit more than your average bed and breakfast,’ agreed Detective Inspector Sloan. Holidays in the Sloan household usually had to be traded against the redecoration of the sitting room or saving for the long overdue replacement of the family car.

Crosby frowned. ‘There was nothing very grand about that bungalow of hers in Pelling, though, was there, sir?
Looked very ordinary from the outside to me.’ He sniffed. ‘And on the small side too.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Sloan, rising to his feet, ‘we shall find it very different from the inside. Let’s go and see for ourselves now we’ve got the search warrant.’

Canonry Cottage, though, was as ordinary on the inside as it had been on the outside. It was furnished in the simple, spare style that had been popular forty years before and was – save for a light scattering of dust on the flat surfaces equating to three weeks without dusting – very neat and clean. Such ornaments as there were could only be described as tourist trophies – and that kindly.

The two policemen had entered with care aided by a set of keys only allowed out of the police station on a very secure basis, the distinction between master keys and skeleton ones being only a semantic one. They noted again the postal delivery that had been pushed back over the hall carpet when the door had been opened before. Sloan peered down at a postmark. ‘Someone didn’t come in here until almost a week after the missing person is said to have left,’ he said, straightening up again, frowning. ‘That’s very odd.’

Detective Constable Crosby screwed up his face in thought. ‘Then whoever came in had plenty of time, didn’t they, sir, if they thought they had another week before she was due back home?’