'But the CRP!' I argued. 'You're not telling me Saint Sam would be happy about it if he knew.'

'Maybe he does know. Or D'Arblay one or the other, or both.'

'If they don't yet, they soon will.'

'Alyssa, don't . . .'

'No, don't worry I'm not about to march into the principal's office. But if Cole does his job and gets hold of this same list, he'll be over here asking questions right away.'

We walked on a little way then my messy feelings spilt out of my aching heart and I told Hooper out of the blue, 'Jack and I argued.'

'When?'

'Last night, after you left.'

He paused, glanced at me then kept on walking. 'There's no point me asking if you're OK.'

'No.'

'Is there anything I can do?'

'No thanks anyway.' There was nothing anyone could do now that Jack and I had said how we both felt about my trip to see Adam Earle.

'Talking of Cole . . .' Hooper was the first to spot the police Range Rover at the gates. 'I guess his computer guys already found the list.'

An hour later I stood across the desk from Saint Sam.

Inspector Cole had been and gone, and I was sitting in Justine's European literature class when the call came via Luke.

'Dr Webb's office now,' he'd told me out in the corridor after he'd knocked on the door and Justine had given me permission to leave her class.

'What's wrong? Am I in trouble again?'

'He didn't say sorry.' Luke still hadn't come out of the traumatized, post-Paige phase and he seemed detached from the events taking place around him.

'How did he look?'

'I didn't see him. D'Arblay gave me the message.'

'Thanks, Luke!'

'Hey, don't shoot the messenger,' he'd muttered as he walked away, and I'd realized, too late, that I'd been too harsh.

Now I stood in the principal's office feeling like a prisoner awaiting sentence.

'These are my conditions for allowing you to stay at St Jude's until the end of term,' Saint Sam began in funereal tones. 'First, you must stay inside school grounds at all times. If for any reason you need to go into the village, you must ask my permission. You will not under any circumstances go alone. There will always be a member of staff with you.'

So I was a prisoner and this was my sentence.

'Let me be clear this is because we can't risk a repeat of yesterday's events at Ainslee Westgate. And, before you speak, you need to know that Inspector Cole has given me a clear picture of the danger he feels you may be in from members of this right-wing splinter group the Campaign for Racial Purity. Again, Alyssa, let me finish.'

'No, Dr Webb, you have to listen.' I was fired up enough to find my voice at last. 'Did the inspector also tell you that Guy Simons is on the CRP committee?'

'Stop there.' He raised his pale, slim, scholarly hands as if to push me away. 'I don't wish to discuss members of staff with you.'

But I wasn't finished. 'And Matthew Cooke is on the list too. He's Micky and Chris Cooke's father, who works at the Queen Elizabeth morgue. Micky could have been the one who dumped Lily's bag at Tom Walsingham's house. Oh, and by the way his older brother, Chris, is definitely the guy in the grey hoodie who attacked Paige's horse and stole the motorbike and tried to run me over! Inspector Cole knows all of this.'

'We've been informed, Alyssa.' This was D'Arblay speaking as he came through the door connecting Saint Sam's office with his own. 'Christopher Cooke was in fact the main reason behind Inspector Cole's latest visit.'

'Why? What did he say?'

The bursar stood at my side of the principal's desk, his right hand resting lightly on the polished surface. He drummed his forefinger once, twice, three times. I noticed for the first time that he wore a gold ring on the third finger of his right hand. 'The inspector informed us that they take your allegations seriously.'

'Extremely seriously,' Saint Sam echoed. He looked and sounded weary, unlike D'Arblay who was as smooth and dapper as ever.

'So much so that early this morning they went to Cooke's house with a warrant for his arrest,' D'Arblay said. 'They've taken him to Ainslee police station for questioning.'

chapter sixteen.

Suddenly I was obsessed with hands.

Saint Sam in his wisdom had decided to move me from the room I'd shared with Lily and Paige to a smaller single room overlooking the quad, and I was staring out of the window down on a waterlogged winter lawn and paved walkways.

Hands Saint Sam's, which were pale and meticulously clean; D'Arblay's stubbier and manicured.

Not so much hands as rings, in fact. I was remembering the one I'd seen on the third finger of D'Arblay's right hand two narrow, interlocked bands, one white gold, the other a deeper rose-gold colour wondering where I'd seen one just like it before.

It wouldn't be long before I remembered my memory just needed the right trigger. Meanwhile I would arrange and rearrange my hairbrush and shampoos on my new bedside cabinet. I would re-hang my clothes in my wardrobe, arranging them by colour. I would get my possessions in perfect order.

At lunchtime Jack knocked on my door. 'Are you coming to eat?'

My heart leaped to hear his voice and see his face, but I tried to act casual. 'Thanks, but I'm not really hungry.'

'Come anyway,' he insisted.

We decided not to have lunch. Instead we walked in the grounds for a while then went for coffee in the sports centre.

'This is better than the dining room,' I sighed as we sat in a quiet corner of the mezzanine overlooking the tennis courts.

Jack didn't say much, just waited for me to start communicating.

'Thanks for not giving up on me,' I said. A night and a morning had never felt so long. Every minute of it I'd dreaded that Jack would never speak to me again.

He nodded.

'I honestly didn't mean to block you out,' I went on.

'I know you didn't.'

'I'll try not to do it again.'

'Cool.'

'And I do trust you.'

He smiled, reached across the table and took my hand.

Hands pale and scholarly, manicured and stubby, or long-fingered, lithe and square-nailed like Jack's. Hands wearing rings, hands with nicotine-stained fingers clutching me by the throat, forcing me towards the edge of a train platform.

'Oh shit!' I gasped, standing up then sitting again in two jerky stages.

I reran yesterday's attack.

Two guys one over six feet tall in a knitted cap, with a shell-shaped tattoo on his neck. The shorter one snatched my bag, they ran with it over the bridge and into the toilets. The tattooed one burst out ahead of the short guy, his tattoo grabbing my attention as he hooked his arm round my neck and dragged me towards the edge of the platform. He was a drinker and a smoker I could smell both on his breath as he choked me and forced me down. His hands were bony and strong. He wore a ring two bands of interlocked gold. 'Shit!' I said again.

'Hooper it's me, Alyssa.'

I called him from the sports centre while Jack absorbed the implications of what I was saying.

'Hey, Alyssa.'

'Listen, is there any chance of you finding out any more about the CRP?'

'What kind of thing?'

'Like, do they get some kind of membership badge when they join?'

'Jeez, Alyssa, they're not the boy scouts!'

'I know. Maybe not a badge more a special type of ring. Can you find that out for me?'

'I guess.' Hooper sounded curious, as I'd hoped he would. 'OK, yeah I'll try. Where are you now, by the way?'

'With Jack in the sports centre.'

'Are you two . . . ?'

'Yeah, I think we're good again, thanks.' Maybe not as good as before it was too early to tell. But at least Jack had knocked on my door and we were talking. He hadn't given up on me, thank God.

'Cool. Speak later.'

'It would make sense,' I told Jack as soon as I came off the phone.

He shook his head. 'You're saying D'Arblay belongs to the CRP as well as Guy Simons. I'm not sure, Alyssa.'

'Think it through. We already said that D'Arblay would be one of the few people who knew the history of St Jude's well enough to recognize the parallels between Lily's death and Eleanor Bond's in 1938. We asked why hadn't he made the connection especially when the info about the missing tooth emerged remember!'

'I guess.'

'And actually D'Arblay could be the one who told them there was no CCTV footage from the attack on Mistral, which would mean he's been hiding evidence. Plus, look at all the times he wanted me and Paige to leave before the end of term. You see what I'm saying he didn't want us here asking questions and stirring things up.'

'So Guy and D'Arblay together they would both be aware of the CRP threats against members of Robert Earle's family?'

'They'd have to be,' I told him. 'Then when the whole thing blew up and Lily was actually killed, they were desperate to cover up their involvement, especially when her death looked like robbing the school of Earle's million-pound donation.'

Jack gave a wry smile. 'You know I never liked the guy. He's always been a control freak, but I never thought he would be involved with an extremist group. And this theory only hangs together if D'Arblay does turn out to be a member of the CRP,' he reminded me.

'Yeah, that's why I plan to focus on Guy for now,' I decided. 'Because you remember what we read in Lily's diary Guy was with Harry when they visited Paige's house for the Horse Trials. And on the day Lily disappeared we know that Guy Simons was the last person at St Jude's to see her alive.'

It should have been straightforward for me and Jack to track down our head of PE, to watch him closely and pick up any dodgy behaviour that might drag him into the centre of the CRP involvement in Lily's death. But life around here is never simple.

In fact, we'd checked out the sports centre and Guy's small office beside the weights room, drawn a blank and decided to head for the main school building when a food-delivery van drew up in the car park. The driver from Askwith's Fruit and Vegetables stepped out, quickly followed by our favourite Rottweiler journo, Emily Archer. She must have bribed the guy from Askwith's to smuggle her past the police cordon.

'Jesus, you never give up!' I groaned as she ignored Jack and made a beeline for me. 'Anyway, you're wasting your time I still can't talk to you.'

She darted across my path. 'Don't walk away, Alyssa not before you hear what I have to say. I'm here to share information, not ask questions.'

I stared at her with grudging respect. 'So share.'

'First of all, the police questioned Chris Cooke earlier today.'

'I already know that, thanks.'

'And they released him without charge. I thought you should be aware so you didn't risk bumping into him by accident.'

My heart did one of those stop-start lurches. 'When did that happen?'

'An hour ago. I gather from sources inside the station that he gave them an alibi for both the motorbike hit-and-run and the break-in to the stable yard. Inspector Cole will check the alibis, but meanwhile they decided they didn't have grounds to hold him.'

'Thanks,' I told Emily. 'But I'm not about to bump into Chris Cooke I'm grounded. He can't get into St Jude's and I can't get out.'

'If I can get in, so can Chris Cooke,' she pointed out. 'Be warned.'

'OK, I'll keep it in mind.'

Emily Archer seemed satisfied on that score and moved on. 'Secondly, I've been doing some research into Lily Earle's family and came up with some interesting connections.'

'Why are you telling me this?' I interrupted, while Jack stood between me and gusts of icy wind blowing across the car park and the Askwith's man carried trays of apples, bananas, cabbages and tomatoes into the school kitchens.

Emily took the interruption patiently. 'It's not stuff that's in the public domain, but it may be something Lily talked about with you and Paige.'

'I doubt it. Lily didn't talk about her family.' And, anyway, I was anxious to follow up my own Guy and D'Arblay suspicions. 'Sorry, I have to go.'