‘How much do you want and how much do I get in return?’
Dalton laughs nervously. ‘A hundred thousand for 10 per cent?’
Jake’s expression makes it clear that’s not going to work.
‘Twenty per cent?’
He says nothing. His attention is focused on the fried egg on Dalton’s plate.
‘Twenty-five?’ Dalton pleads, then adds, ‘At a push I could go to thirty.’
Jake quite likes the idea of saying he’s in media. No doubt it would increase his pulling power. At a stretch, he could even describe himself as a film producer cum distributor. ‘Maybe we can do a deal. But not at a hundred k and not for thirty per cent.’
Dalton looks disappointed.
A hundred thousand is nothing to Jake. He could even get his old man to stand the whole stash. If not, he could raise it if he cut down on the Cristal, skipped the winter skiing and tanked the overdraft. ‘Listen, Max. I’ll put fifty thousand into your company but for that I want fifty-one per cent of it.’
‘Controlling interest?’
‘Exactly.’
Finally, a glum Dalton spits out a reply, ‘I’m sorry. Forty-nine is really all I’m prepared to go to in terms of equity and for that I’d want seventy-five thousand.’
Jake smiles. ‘I want to help you not fuck you. But that slice is not worth seventy-five. I’ll go to fifty k for forty-nine per cent. Final offer.’
Dalton is in a bad place. With the landlord banging on the door for the rent. ‘All right.’
As Jake stands to shake on the deal, his iPhone buzzes. ‘Excuse me.’ It’s Caitlyn — he instantly recognises her number. He opens the text and when he unzips the picture attachment his eyes nearly pop. Beneath the Union Jack tattoo is: I have the flag. Do you have a pole big enough for it? 
Call me x.
Jake smiles across the table at Dalton and offers a hand. Could be that he gets to screw two people in one day.
28
Sammy is well enough to go to nursery but Megan’s mum Gloria insists on coming round to look after her granddaughter. For once the DI gets away without a lecture. She’s grateful. After the short drive to Devizes police station, she is at her desk sipping a cup of black tea in the open-plan CID room, reading the full statements of PCs Featherby and Jones.
Gideon Chase is lucky. Very lucky. If the two plods had been more than a village away when the 999 came in, they probably would have arrived too late. Featherby found him unconscious in the hall and managed to drag him outside, before calling the paramedics and fire brigade.
She studies the crime scene photographs, shots of flame-blackened brick walls and burned-out windows. The fire team’s report seems consistent with Chase’s account. No doubt the seat of the blaze was the curtain area of the downstairs study on the west side of the house. No doubt at all. That room and most of the corridor and the adjoining reception area have been gutted. It’ll cost a pretty penny to sort out.
The incident report in her hands says Chase slipped in and out of consciousness until the medics got him into the ambulance and cleared his lungs with pure oxygen. Seems to shoot down her theory that he might have been involved in his father’s death and got an accomplice to fake the attack. Unless of course the accomplice got greedy. In that case, an attempt to kill him would make sense.
But it doesn’t. None of it makes sense.
She puts down the papers and wonders again why Gideon lied to her. He seems decent enough. Intelligent, well turned-out, polite, maybe a bit quirky. But then academics are.
So why lie?
Does he know the man he surprised? Unlikely. Her info says Chase spent most of his childhood at boarding school and his father only moved to Tollard Royal in recent years. Until then they’d lived in more modest accommodation either in the east of Wiltshire or over in Cambridge where Nathaniel was a don.
So why? There are only a few other possibilities. Maybe he’s afraid. Many victims of crime are frightened to identify attackers in case they come back. Or someone else comes back. Fear of being victimised. Makes some sense.
Chase certainly isn’t fearless. Then again, he doesn’t strike her as being particularly afraid either. Not what her mum used to call cowardly custard. There’s another possibility. Maybe he knew the old man was involved in something and it was connected to the intruder at the house. Perhaps Gideon arranged to meet him there, they’d argued, the man threatened or assaulted him, Chase called the police.
It doesn’t fit. She glances down at the report again. There’s no doubt that he was unconscious and left for dead. The man who made the emergency call was calm and composed — not groggy from an assault and with a chest full of smoke.
But she feels close to the truth. Nathaniel Chase was up to something bad. She’s sure of it.
‘Baker!’
Megan looks up from her desk and her heart sinks. DCI Jude Tompkins is heading her way. These days the forty-year-old blonde is certifiably insane. Jumpier than a box of frogs. Her upcoming marriage — her second — is the cause of the manic personality shift.
‘Are you done with that suicide yet, Baker?’ She settles her crash-dieting-behind on the edge of Megan’s desk.
‘No ma’am.’ Megan fans out the PC statements. ‘I’m just going through the reports. There was a fire at the dead man’s house.’
‘I heard. What are we talking, burglars? Squatters?’
The DI explains. ‘The son went back there after we asked him in to talk to us. He found an intruder in the study about ready to torch the place.’
‘What was he, some kind of a junkie?’
‘We don’t know. He knocked our man unconscious and left him for dead. If a local patrol hadn’t been around the corner, the Chase family line would have come to a complete end in just forty-eight hours.’
Tompkins takes it in. Unsolved burglary, arson and attempted murder are not what she wants on her crime sheets. The whole division is under pressure to improve the figures. ‘I get that it’s more complicated than I thought. Can you juggle another case as well as this one?’
It’s not really a question. The DCI drops the file on Megan’s desk. ‘Sorry. It’s a missing person. Give it a look over for me.’
She watches the DCI turn and leave. Delegation is a wonderful thing. You just shift your garbage to someone else’s bin and leave them to jump on the lid until they get it to fit. ‘Boss, any chance of an extra pair of hands?’ she calls.
Tompkins stops and turns. A smile on her big round face.
Megan knows it’s hard to turn down a plea for help in an open office. She gives the DCI a desperate look. ‘Just for a day or two?’
Tompkins beams. ‘Jimmy Dockery. You can have Sergeant Dockery for forty-eight hours, then he’s back on vice.’
Megan shuts her eyes. Jimmy Dockery? She puts her hands over her ears, but it makes no difference. She can still hear the whole office laughing.
29
The Henge Master has been expecting the call.
It was simply a matter of when. He excuses himself and steps away from the highly distinguished company. He has two phones in his pocket. A BlackBerry that he uses publicly and a cheap Nokia that is a ‘burner’, a no-contract, non-traceable phone with credit he can purchase almost anywhere. He takes out the Nokia. It’s Cetus.
‘Can you speak?’
‘Wait a moment.’ The Master walks into an open courtyard. ‘Go on.’