Chapter Seventeen

       Oxfordshire

      They switched taxis twice and rode around the countryside in buses until Ben satisfied himself that they weren’t being followed. Just as the sun was beginning to set, they boarded a red double-decker in the village of Eynsham heading back towards the city. The top deck was empty and they sat at the back so they could watch the road behind them.

      ‘What are we going to do now?’ she asked.

      ‘I think we both know that Oliver’s death wasn’t an accident, Leigh.’ Ben put his hand on hers and squeezed it lightly, looking into her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I almost wish it had been.’

      She nodded sadly. ‘What was he doing there? What could have happened? He was just researching a book.’

      He rubbed his temples, thinking hard. ‘Did the coroner establish time of death, more or less?’

      ‘He died at ten thirty-four p.m. Why?’

      ‘That’s too precise,’ Ben said. ‘Nobody can pinpoint the moment that accurately.’

      ‘Dad’s old wind-up watch,’ she replied. ‘Oliver always wore it to remember him by. It stopped…’ It was tough to say it. ‘It stopped when he went in the water.’ She sniffed. A tear welled up in her eye and she wiped it away.

      ‘Are you OK talking about this?’ he asked.

      ‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’

      ‘Here’s how I see it,’ he said. ‘Oliver witnessed something. Why, and where, we don’t know. We only know what he witnessed, and it looks like some kind of ritual execution. But he must have been seen somehow. They came after him, but it took them a while to catch up with him. Just over an hour’s gap from when he witnessed the crime to when he died.’

      Leigh nodded and said nothing. She dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

      ‘I think he filmed the clip on a mobile,’ Ben went on. ‘Say he still had it with him when they caught him. Say the clip was still on it. They’d have thought they’d retrieved all the evidence.’

      ‘But then they saw my TV interview,’ Leigh said grimly.

      He nodded. ‘Months had gone by. They’d covered all their tracks. Case closed. Then suddenly there’s a whole new threat. You announced you had all the research notes Oliver had been sending you, including material posted the day he died that you hadn’t looked at yet. What if he’d sent you a copy of the evidence? That’s when they knew they had to come after you as well.’

      Leigh began to cry.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know this is hard for you. Do you want to stop?’

      ‘What I want is to find out what happened to him,’ she said through the tears. ‘But what can we do? Where do we even start? We can’t even go to the police.’

      Ben shook his head. ‘We are not going to do anything. It’s too dangerous for you. I’m going to take you somewhere safe, and then I’m going to go to Europe to start retracing Oliver’s footsteps. That’s the only way we’re going to figure this out.’

      ‘Where am I going to go?’

      ‘My place.’

      ‘Your place?’

      ‘It’s in Ireland. Very secluded, out on the west coast. You’ll be safe there. I’ll rent a car. We’ll drive up to Scotland. Ferry from Stranraer to Northern Ireland, and then across the border to Galway. That way, we avoid passport controls. Nobody will know where you are.’

      Her tears had stopped now, a growing look of defiance on her face. ‘And meanwhile you hop on a flight and go off on your own?’

      ‘Something like that.’

      She shook her head. ‘There’s no way, Ben, absolutely no way that I’m going to sit this out on some deserted beach in Ireland while you go off to the continent following Oliver’s trail on your own. This is my brother we’re talking about.’

      ‘What if I said you could come with me? You saw what happened today. People recognize your face. I can’t move around with you. I’d be better working on my own, and you’d be a lot safer.’

      ‘You’d be amazed what a scarf and a pair of shades can do. I’d keep my head down and not mention my name.’

      ‘And anyway, you can’t travel on your passport. It’s too traceable, and if there’s someone connected to the police involved in all of this, they’ll catch up with us the minute you step into Europe.’

      ‘What could the police have to do with this thing, Ben?’

      ‘I don’t know yet,’ he said.

      Leigh thought for a while, gazing out of the window at the naked trees flashing by. The bus rocked and swayed on the bumpy road. She nodded to herself, as though a sudden idea had come to her. ‘There is one way we could get out of the country and into France without being noticed.’