Dead Men's s Boots

But either Juliet bought my reasoning or she couldn’t be bothered to have an argument about it. She appeared at my elbow a moment later and walked on past me at a fast clip.

‘You’re too sentimental,’ she snapped back over her shoulder.

‘I know. I’m all about puppy dogs and scented letters.’

We got back into our spavined car and I turned it around with difficulty. It was hard to control with two tyres out, and the grinding noise I was hearing was probably the front axle doing something it shouldn’t.

We bumped and ground our way to the tiny hamlet of Caldwell, and out of it again on a road that made the previous dirt track look like a superhighway.

‘Someone told those guys we were coming,’ I said to Juliet.

‘I know.’

‘The same someone who put a tinkler on my passport number. Our card’s been marked. Not here: back in England.’

She nodded without answering. She was looking out of the window at the rolling fields, her expression distant and cold.

The Seaforth farm was hard to tell at first from the surrounding woodland and scrub, because its fields were a dense tangle of weeds and young trees out of which an ancient, weathered scarecrow with a face made of sun-bleached sacking protruded like a shipwrecked sailor going down for the third time. But catching a glimpse of th«a gweae farmhouse through a gap in the foliage, I wrestled the uncooperative car off the road and parked it a few yards away from an iron cattle-gate whose white paint was two-thirds flaked away.

‘This must be the place,’ I said. ‘At least, there’s sod-all else out here. Want to go take a look?’

Juliet glanced at me, her expression suggesting that that wasn’t a question in need of an answer. We got out and approached the gate. The heavy chain and rusting padlock made it clear that it wasn’t in daily use. Juliet climbed over without preamble, and I followed more slowly, leaning out past the overgrown hedge to get a better look at the house.

It was in as bad a state of repair as the gate: the wood of the boards warped and dry, the shingled roof settled into a lazy concave bowl. An old mattress lay flopped over the porch rail like a heaving drunk, next to a wooden swing that looked as though it had seen better centuries. Hard to believe that anyone still lived here.