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  'Oh, Adam, I'm fine. Are you bearing up?' I nodded, concentrating on getting some air back into my lungs. 'I saw you out on your motorbike the other day and I thought, I'm so glad he's doing something different, breaking the routine.'

  I looked at the old boy in surprise. I hadn't been on my Yamaha for weeks – not since before the conference, and before the accident. Max chattered on happily. 'And it was very kind of you to walk it back to the house, as it was quite late, and it does make rather a noise.'

  'Hmm,' was all I could find to say. He didn't look like he was suffering from dementia – I surreptitiously looked him over for signs of confusion, like forgotten shoes or a badly buttoned cardigan, but he was as immaculately turned out as ever, gardening in a sharply pressed shirt, carefully knotted tie and suit trousers. Fortunately a distraction arrived in the shape of his one-eyed cat, Nelson, who stepped out of the hedge with the air of one making an entrance, and the conversation turned onto a happily feline track until I could make my excuses and leave my neighbour to his weeding.

  I'd cooled down by now and so walked the few yards back to the house. On impulse, I stepped towards the workshop door to take a look at the bike.

  'Adam!' I jumped, and turning round saw Sarah's friend Judith standing on the doorstep, waving at me. I stepped across and despite my sweat she flung her arms around me and squeezed me hard.

  ‘Adam,’ she said into my ear, ‘are you ok?’

  I firmly put her back on her feet and stepped back. I had always felt Judith was a little too emotional for my liking. ‘I’m fine,’ I said, ‘just a bit hot from my run.’

  She smiled a watery smile and suddenly burst into tears. ‘Poor Sarah,’ she wept. Despite my dislike for the woman she almost set me off crying again, so I took her by the arm and pushed her through the front door and into the kitchen.

  ‘Get yourself a cup of coffee while I get changed,’ I said, ‘and I’ll be right back.’

  After a quick shower and a change of clothes I was back in the kitchen, and accepted another cup of coffee from a pink-faced but calmer Judith.

  ‘You look like you’re keeping on top of things,’ she said, gesturing round the tidy room. I shrugged, not wanting to say that obsessive cleaning had become one outlet for my rage and frustration. ‘Anyway, Don and I were wondering whether you’d like to come to dinner sometime soon?’

  God, no! Weeping Judith and dour Donald, an emotional pincher movement over a vegan meal, what a nightmare. ‘Yes, that would be lovely,’ I actually said.

  ‘Um, do you want a hand with any of Sarah’s clothes, or anything?’ Judith’s lips wavered and then she burst into a new wave of tears. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘it’s just that I opened my diary this morning and found a note that Sarah and I were going to go into Oxford shopping.’ She drew a ragged breath, and made an effort to calm down. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? Six weeks ago we made that date, never imagining…’ She smiled a wan smile. ‘You can’t turn the clock back, can you?’

  My phone rang suddenly, making us both jump.

  'Adam?'

  'Dave? What's up?' He sounded very agitated, which was unlike him.

  'Mate, Gilbert and Fuckwit Freddy are on the war-path and are demanding that you hand over your 122 sample to them.'

  Those bastards! 'Why?'

  'They're saying that you're getting kicked off the research team and that Fartbrain is taking over.'

  The shock ripped through me, jolting me in my seat and making me spill the remains of my coffee. Across the kitchen table I could see Judith staring.

  'Bugger that! I'm coming in now. Don't let them get in my lab, Dave, I don't care what you do, swallow the key if you have to, but don't let them in!'

  I jumped to my feet and began ushering Judith to the door.

  ‘Sorry, Judith, I absolutely have to go into work, it's an emergency.’

  Judith’s face sagged unhappily. ‘Oh, right,’ she stood up, trying to look busy and unconcerned but failing badly, ‘I’ve got to go anyway.’ She gathered up her bag and moved towards the door with agonising slowness. Tense with impatience, I managed to give a little wave as she smiled wanly and walked away down the drive.

  ‘I’ll give you a ring about dinner,’ she called back.

  ‘Great!’ I said, and slammed the door closed behind me as I ran to the car. Bloody Gilbert! As if I didn't have enough on my mind without him pulling a stunt like this. As I raced out onto the road I did vaguely think there was something I'd been about to do but had forgotten, but by the time I turned in the direction of Oxford it had slipped my mind entirely.

  I got into Oxford in record time, Fire Starter by The Prodigy providing a suitable soundtrack. I parked across three bays in the car park and took the front steps at a leap. As I galloped into the foyer, Norman was hovering at the main desk with a small padded envelope in his hands. On seeing me he took a step forward.

  'Dr Kitchener!' he called, neatly stepping into my path, 'this was dropped off for you. The courier said it was an urgent delivery.' I took the parcel, and looked at my name written in block capitals on the front. The handwriting seemed familiar but I couldn't place it.

  'I don't care what it is, I'm in a hurry, Norman.' I tried to push past him but he held up his hands to make me stop.

  'You've got to open it right away, the courier was very clear. Life and death, he said it was, life and death!'

  'Oh fuck it,' I said, stopping and ripping open the package. Gilbert could wait another 30 seconds. Inside the envelope was just a folded piece of paper saying: YOU'VE LENT IT TO TONY HITCHENS AT READING UNIVERSITY

  Leant what? What the hell? Some pointless fucking practical joke.

  Shaking my head at the porter, I shoved the envelope and contents into my pocket and ran up the stairs. As I emerged into the corridor I met the eye of a very relieved Dave, who had been standing in front of my office door whilst the head of the department had been shouting and raving at him to open it up. His nephew was lazing against the wall nearby, happy to watch the mayhem. The moment I appeared they both swung round and started haranguing me instead.

  'Open this fucking door!'

  'Oh, here he is, at long last.'

  I looked at Dave. 'Alright?'

  He nodded, and then asked bravely, 'Do you need me or...'

  I waved him off and he began backing towards his own domain immediately. 'I've got this.' I was furious, but knew that nothing would rile my boss and his little friend more completely than appearing calm and content. So I smiled at Gilbert's red face and Wright's mocking one, unlocked the door and flung it wide with a welcoming gesture. 'Gents.'

  They burst in like the bloody Sweeney. God knows what they were expecting – everything looked completely ordinary. I pushed past my boss whilst he was taking a breath prior to shouting again, and sat on my creaky chair. Over Gilbert's shoulder I could see Freddy wandering insolently around, looking for something to complain about, flicking at the equipment on the workbench and then moving on to rattle Terry's cage.

  'Stop doing that!' I said, worried the hamster would be scared. I got a self-satisfied smirk in reply and he bashed the cage again just to make a point. Terry scuttled into his fluffy bedding and stayed there.

  'Ok, Adam, I'm not wasting another fucking second on you,' said Gilbert, mopping his balding head with

  a hanky.

  'What's the hurry, Bill?' I asked, smiling at his beetroot face. 'Why the urgency?'

  'I'm flying to Florida tonight and if you make me late for my bloody plane...' Aha! No wonder he was in a vile mood. I was opening my mouth to make a smart reply when he leant in to jab a finger in my chest, 'Harvard are complaining that you're not moving quickly enough with the unbibium sample.'

  'Really?' Despite my efforts to stay calm I found myself fighting the impulse to shove my department head out of my office with extreme prejudice. 'Funny, I just heard back from Levi Goldbaum yesterday who told me that they are also finding problems in their analysis, and it's taking longe
r than expected. I sent you his results, did you bother to read them?'

  Gilbert's face twitched into a scowl. 'Well, that's not what I hear,' he bluffed, 'in fact they've instructed me to relieve you of this research project. I'm giving it to Fred.' He nodded back at his nephew, who smirked broadly, delighted that he was going to able to pass off all my research as his own.

  At that point I admit that I lost my cool. I felt my face flush with anger. 'Oh really? And what about the funding which, let me see, is in my name. How are you going to re-allocate that?'

  He smiled, and I realised he'd out-smarted me somehow. 'That's simple, you need some more time off to deal with your... loss.' He made the word sound like a weakness, as if I should be embarrassed that I was grieving for my wife. He moved his weight off the table, suddenly looming over me with his hand on my shoulder. I could smell the garlic he'd eaten for his lunch on his breath. 'You came back too soon, old chap. Best fuck off now and come back when you're feeling better. Or not at all.' And one final twist of the knife: 'I've already put all the paperwork through.'

  For a second I imagined smashing Gilbert's smug face off the sharp corner of my desk. White flashes flicked across my vision as I tried to remember to breathe. Then my temper and my energy just drained away: what was the point, after all? Sarah was dead, and nothing really mattered now anyway. I think Freddy would have been delighted if I'd thrown a punch, or screamed the office down, but I just couldn't be bothered. Let him have the fucking sample and may its completely baffling properties bring him joy.

  'Whatever,' I said wearily, and moved across to the safe, twirling the combination on autopilot. The door swung open, and revealed that the sample of unbibium was not inside.

  I stared at the safe for a few seconds. It had been there last night, the office had been locked and only I knew the combination to this safe. Where the hell had it gone?

  'Well?' snapped Gilbert, breaking me out of my fugue. 'Where is it?'

  The note in my pocket flashed into my mind.

  'Sorry,' I found myself saying as if I was suddenly reading a part, 'I forgot to mention that I'd lent the sample to Tony Hitchens at Reading. He's got that superconducting magnet system, after all. He's running some tests for me and will get the sample back once they're done.'

  Gilbert's face boiled with fury. It was an established truth in the physics world that he and Tony Hitchens were engaged in a blood feud, snatching projects and research funding from each other - just like the funding for the cryomagnetics suite which our own department had lost to the university down the road.

  'I'm sure he'll let you have it back if he knows it's for you, or Frederick.' I continued sweetly.

  Gilbert stepped right up to my face, his own livid with fury. 'Get that fucking sample back, NOW!' He whispered.

  Filled with a bizarre confidence, I took a half step until my face was just millimetres from his. 'Sorry, Gilbert, no can do. You've signed me off on compassionate leave, haven't you? You'll have to put in an official request to Reading, and God knows how long it'll be before they get back to you.' Knowing Tony, it would probably be the day after Hell

  froze over.

  He flinched back. I could see the cogs of his mind working. 'You've got a week!' he finally shrieked, and then slammed out of his office with Freddy trailing after him, scowling. Oh diddums, he couldn't get the bad boy's toy after all.

  'And fuck you.' I said, to the empty room.

  Feeling the adrenaline fading away I sank onto my chair and took a deep breath. My hands were shaking so I stepped out of the office for a minute to have a piss and wash my face in the sink. What the hell was going on? I hadn't leant the sample to Reading, and who had sent me that note? I shook my head in the cold water to wake me up a bit, and then remembering that I hadn't eaten yet today I stopped at the vending machine on the way back to buy a bar of chocolate.

  I was still munching when I walked back into my office and saw that the door to the safe was now shut. I stood there stupidly. I was sure I'd left it open - with the sample missing there hadn't been a reason to secure it. But now the door was closed and the dial had been spun so it was no longer sitting on the final number of the combination.

  I reached out and twisted the dial, opening the safe. And there inside, sitting innocently in its little plastic box, was the sample of 122 as if it had never been away.

  chapter four

  Saturday, 4 April 2015: 19.36

  I drove the car onto the gravel drive and stopped the engine. Keith Flint's spitting vocals cut out abruptly and in the sudden quiet I sat and rotated the afternoon's events in my mind - not thinking about them, because by any measure they made absolutely no sense.

  After I'd found the unbibium back in the safe I'd dashed back into the corridor to see if I could spot whoever had replaced it, but despite racing to the stairwell and rattling the door handles of locked and empty offices, I'd seen no-one. Somebody must have been watching, waiting for me to step out... After much fruitless rushing about I'd eventually given up and gone back into my own office to look again at the note and the 122 sample, before locking them both up in the safe and driving home.

  I popped the cassette out of the player and put it in my pocket, then clambered out of the car. As I went through the motions of feeding Fergus and picking up yet more post from the doormat I thought glumly that my vague idea of moving my research to the States might really need to happen now: Gilbert wasn't a man known for his patience and I'd really done a number on him this afternoon. And frankly the whole mystery business had freaked me out. I couldn't shake the feeling that someone had been in the house. I checked the obvious things - telly, passports – everything was where it should be. I looked at the cat: he was relaxed and sleepy, not bristling with alarm as I knew he would be if there'd been an intruder. In the end I found myself checking the door was locked and the windows closed about three times before I got a grip.

  I forced myself to eat a microwave meal and then wash up. As I stacked the plate onto the draining board I wondered whether Levi would have any news about transferring to Harvard and how soon I could politely prod him about it, and then I suddenly remembered a conversation I had had with a professor from CalTech on the first night of the Den Haag conference - he'd pretty much offered to fund me a research job there. The memory had been all but obliterated by the events of the following day, getting the phone call saying that Sarah...

  I bit off the train of thought and focused hard on the details of the Californian academic. John Williamson, yes, that was his name. Maybe I should just drop him an email. Two chances to leave Oxford would be better than one.

  Looking around, I realised that I hadn't actually opened my laptop since the day of the funeral. It took a few minutes of searching to uncover it, hidden under stratified layers of post and trashy fliers about pizza and double glazing. The battery was completely dead, so I rooted around a bit more to find the power cable and then had to leave it for a few minutes to let it charge up sufficiently to be able to switch on.

  My inbox was filled with messages from friends, colleagues and people I couldn't even place. I just didn't want to read all their kind words so blitzed down the screen, deleting everything. Then I clicked open my junk folder and started to do the same. As my hands went through the click and delete routine on autopilot my mind was already starting to compose the email to CalTech... suddenly my eyes rooted themselves to an email header on a message about two thirds down the screen:

  From Sarah Kitchener to Adam Kitchener, 12 April, 20:22pm.

  Sarah had sent me an email, the night she died. It had been sitting here in the junk folder all that time. I hardly ever checked that folder and my skin ran cold thinking I could have just deleted everything without ever knowing it was there. I gulped and clicked open the email. It contained a video file - this must have been why the email system had marked it out as potential spam.

  I felt tears gathering in my eyes as I clicked again and the video began to play.


  Sarah sat back in the chair, having switched on the web cam. She looked uncertainly at the screen for a second, checking it was recording, then looked straight at the camera.

  Her eyes were red and her face showed she'd been crying. As she began to speak, her voice quavered and she had to swallow hard before trying to talk again.

  'Adam, it's me.' She smiled a little, 'well, obviously. I know you won't see this video until later but I just wanted to speak to you. I miss you so much and I know you'd know what to do.'

  I put my hand over my mouth to sob. On screen, Sarah closed her eyes for a second and composed herself.

  'Best start at the beginning. The other day I got a tax demand relating to a property that I own.' What? 'I thought it must be a mistake, so I phoned the tax office and they said no, it was right - I'd apparently owned a house in Oxford since 1974.' She took a breath. 'So I checked the land registry and yes, it is true. A house in Headington, can you believe it? Number 3 Beechcroft Drive.'

  My mind was racing - we'd tried to buy a house in that pricey Oxford suburb a couple of years ago but couldn't afford it. And how come we didn't know about this house that was allegedly in her name?

  'It was totally crazy, and I still thought it was some admin mistake so I asked my Dad, and you know what he said?' Her voice was shaking, with sadness or anger, I couldn't tell which. 'He said,' she swallowed, 'he said that yes of course I owned this house, but that he and Mum had been renting it out for me all these years. Can you believe that?!'

  I could fucking believe it, that bastard man not saying a word and watching as we scraped to afford our crippling mortgage. My hands clenched compulsively.

  'He was very dismissive, you know what he's like.' Suddenly she dropped the pitch of her voice and did an impersonation of Richard Holland. 'Don't make a fuss, Sarah, of course your mother and I had your best interests at heart. There was no need to tell you.'

  She took another deep breath and wiped her eyes. 'I got the address from the land registry and went to see it.' Her lip trembled and tears streaked down her face. 'There's something I never told you, love, about what happened to my sister, Helen. She didn't just run away, she wasn't at home.' Sarah's face became a twisted mask of pain and despair, and I thought my heart would break watching it. 'There was a place that we used to be taken, a house... me and Helen. People would be there... men would be there...' She broke down and held her face in her hands and sobbed. My mind just turned to ice and I stopped breathing. 'I can't talk about that, I can't. But the day she went missing we were supposed to be there, both of us, but I was sick... I got food poisoning from something, and so I couldn't go. I was at home, asleep, and in the morning there were policemen in the house and Mum was telling me that Helen had run away, into a storm, and she was lost. I never saw her again, I never saw my sister again.'