The sun had emerged. It shone in actual rays off to their left, strobing a vast, open field of green. God’s fingers, Tanzie used to call them. Jess reached for the map in the glove compartment, ready to look up the location of the next services.

Mr Nicholls glanced at her. He seemed almost embarrassed. ‘Actually … you know what? I could really murder one of your sandwiches.’

18.

Ed

The Stag and Hounds B&B wasn’t listed in any accommodation guides. It had no website, no brochures. It wasn’t hard to work out why. The pub sat alone on the side of a bleak, windswept moor, and the mossy plastic garden furniture that stood outside its grey frontage suggested an absence of casual visitors or, perhaps, the triumph of hope over experience. The bedrooms were apparently last decorated several decades previously, and bore shiny pink wallpaper, doilied curtains and a smattering of china figurines in place of anything useful like, say, shampoo or tissues. There was a communal bathroom at the end of the upstairs corridor, where the sanitary-ware was a non-ironic avocado and the pink soap was bisected by dark grey fissures. A small box-shaped television in the twin room deigned to pick up three channels, and each of those with a faint static buzz. When Nicky discovered the plastic Barbie doll in a crocheted wool ball dress that squatted over the loo roll, he was awestruck. ‘I actually love this,’ he said, holding her up to the light to inspect her glittery synthetic hem. ‘It’s so bad it’s actually cool.’

Ed couldn’t believe places like this still existed. But he had been driving for a little over eight hours at forty m.p.h., the Stag and Hounds was twenty-five pounds per night per room – a rate even Jess was happy with – and they were happy to let Norman in.

‘Oh, we love dogs.’ Mrs Deakins waded through a small flock of excitable Pomeranians. She patted her head, on which a carefully pinned structure sat like a small ginger cottage loaf. ‘We love dogs more than humans, don’t we, Jack?’ There was a grunt from somewhere downstairs. ‘They’re certainly easier to please. You can bring your lovely big fella into the snug tonight, if you like. My girls love to meet a new man.’ She gave Ed a faintly saucy nod as she said this.

She opened the two doors and waved a hand inside.

‘So you’ll be in this one, Mr and Mrs Nicholls. And your children will be next door. There’s only the two rooms this side so you have the whole upstairs to yourself. We have a selection of cereals for breakfast or Jack will do you egg on toast. He does a lovely egg on toast.’

‘Thank you.’

She handed him the keys, held his gaze a millisecond longer than was strictly necessary. ‘I’m going to guess you like yours … gently poached. Am I right?’

Ed glanced behind him, checking that she was addressing him.

‘I am, aren’t I?’

‘Um … however they come.’ He didn’t really want to dwell on the thought of gelatinous white eggs.

‘However … they … come,’ she repeated slowly, her eyes not leaving his. She raised one eyebrow, smiled at him again, then headed downstairs, her pack of small dogs a moving hairy sea around her feet. From the corner of his eye he could see Jess smirking.

‘Don’t.’ He dropped their bags onto the bed.

‘I bags first bath.’ Nicky rubbed at the small of his back.

‘I need to revise,’ said Tanzie. ‘I have exactly seventeen and a half hours until the Olympiad.’ She gathered her books under her arm and disappeared into the next room.

‘Come and give Norman a walk first, sweetheart,’ Jess said. ‘Get some fresh air. It’ll help you sleep later.’

She unzipped a holdall, and pulled a hoodie over her head. When she lifted her arms, a crescent of bare stomach was briefly visible, pale and startling. Her face emerged through the neck opening. ‘I’ll be gone for at least half an hour. Or I … could make it longer.’ As she adjusted her ponytail she glanced towards the stairs and lifted an eyebrow at him. ‘Just … saying.’

‘Funny.’

He could hear her laughing as they disappeared. Ed lay down on the nylon bedspread, feeling his hair lift slightly with static electricity, and pulled his phone from his pocket.

‘So here’s the good news,’ said Paul Wilkes. ‘The police have completed their initial investigations. The preliminary results show no obvious motive on your side. There is no evidence that you extracted a profit from Deanna Lewis or her brother’s trading activities. More pertinently, there is no sign that you made any money at all from the launch of SFAX, other than the same share gains that would be made by any employee. Obviously there would be a higher proportion of profit, given your overall shareholding, but they can find no links to offshore accounts, or any attempt to conceal on your side.’

‘That’s because there were none.’

‘Also, the investigating team says that they have uncovered a number of accounts in Michael Lewis’s family’s names, which suggests a clear attempt to conceal his actions. They have obtained trading records which show that he was trading large volume immediately prior to the announcement – another red flag for them.’

‘Okay.’ He was still talking but the signal was patchy, and Ed struggled to hear him. He stood and walked over to the window. Tanzie was running round and round the pub garden, shrieking happily. The small yappy dogs were following her. Jess was standing, her arms folded, laughing. Norman was in the middle of the space, gazing at them all, a bemused, immovable object in a sea of madness. Ed thought he knew how he felt. He put his hand over his other ear. ‘Does that mean I can come back now? Is it sorted?’ He had a sudden vision of his office: a mirage in a desert.