We returned to the farm at Pebble Deeping and found Martha in a state of some distress. She sat in the kitchen, tucked up tight to the table with her elbows planted on the top and her face buried in her hands.

She had plainly finished crying recently, perhaps when she heard us returning and clattering through the farmhouse's flagstoned hall. Looking up as I entered the room marginally ahead of Ty, she jumped out of her chair and turned away from us; busying herself at the sink, a hand wiping at her face.

"Martha?" I said. Suddenly, my worries and anxieties regarding the previous events of the day were washed away by the trickle of her tears.

She said nothing but stifled a sniffle, still busy at the crockery and ostentatiously washing last-night's dishes. Ty had entered the kitchen quietly behind me. He looked at Martha's back and saw her shoulders shaking jerkily with fresh sobs. Catching my eye, he raised a quizzical brow.

I shrugged. He frowned at me and nodded violently towards her.

"I'll get some tea on," he said to no-one in particular and left to get some firewood for the hearth.

I crossed the kitchen to Martha, who still had her back to me, and placed my hand on her shoulder.

"What's wrong?" I asked softly.

"Nothing," she replied, her voice cracked.

I took her gently by the waist and turned her away from the sink. She looked up at me, her eyes wide and verdant green, liquid with tears. Her eyelashes were clumped, and her cheeks streaked. The strand of hair that was usually tucked behind her ear was plastered wetly to her cheek.

"OK. I have a problem." Droplets welled in her eyes again and I embraced her. She clung to me like a limpet for a few seconds, squeezing the air from my chest. She was stronger than she looked.

When she broke away from me, regaining herself a little and wiping her eyes, I sat her down at the table and took a chair opposite.

"Why don't you tell me what's wrong? We'll see what we can do," I said with my best soothing voice.

"How was I to know?" she said. "If they had sent a letter, I could have sorted it out. Sent the money."

Martha looked at me imploringly. I had a sinking feeling that this was not a little problem.

"What money?" I asked.

Martha's cheeks coloured, and her eyes dropped to the table where her fingers fidgeted absently.

"My father had not paid the insurance premium on the cottage for the last six months," she whispered without looking up, continuing instead to stare at her digits as they wriggled across the table.

"Oh," I said. It was all I could manage. That was not good.

"So ... the policy is void. Everything I have was ..." she stopped.

Gone my mind finished her sentence. Wiped out in an inferno started by God-knows-who.

"I know it's hard Martha, but you can buy more things eventually. At least you are safe." I tried to comfort her. She looked up at me as if I had just relieved myself into her favourite hat.

"My father's work. Years. My work! All gone ..." She fell silent again, I could see her mind churning, struggling to come to a decision.

"It's not just the money, or the work," she said pointedly.

"Oh?" I said.

On impulse, I reached across the table and took both of her hands in mine, holding them tenderly to stop them from dancing like drunk spiders. She looked across the table at me.

"No. The police said they had evidence to suggest that the fire was started deliberately. It was arson," her voice wavered again. Fear.

"No!" I said, trying to act as surprised as possible given the day I had already had.

"Somebody burned my home Satchmo. I think they were attempting to kill me. I'm scared," she whispered, tears reforming at the corner of her eyes.

There was really nothing I could say to that, so I gave the back of her hands what I hoped was a comforting stroke while my mind struggled for something more useful.

Ty returned in the nick of time; carrying steaming mugs and a small glass bottle plugged with a cork.

Martha broke her hands from my grip and wiped again at her face, making red marks appear under each puffy eye. I cocked my head, watching her as she tucked the loose strand of hair back behind her ear and sniffed loudly. She straightened her back, pushing out her chest and folded her hands in her lap.

"Right then," Ty said emphatically. "Who's for cuppa and a belt of the hard stuff?"

*

"So, here's the reality of the situation ..." Edge announced to the room.

We all sat at the table, having polished off two cups of hot and sweet herbal tea of Ty's own concoction. We had bolstered the brew with a hefty draught of liquor from a bottle he had produced, and the blood flowed warmer in my veins as a result.

"Somebody other than Michaels intends Martha, and maybe me, specific harm. To that end, Martha will stay here until we, or the police, can find out who this person is and neutralize them," Ty finished speaking and propped his feet on the table, crossed at the ankles.

It was a testament to my reassessment of him that I didn't blanch at his choice of the word 'neutralize'.

"Motive," I said, gazing at the ceiling. "What's the motive? People don't just try to kill others for no reason."

"You'd be surprised, Satchmo. But in this case, I agree. There must be something that connects me and Martha. The obvious link is the Professor and my uncle," Edge said counting the points on his dirty fingers.

"Yes, which brings us back to the gold," I mused.

"Somehow, someone finds out about the gold and sees the chance to make big money or achieve some academic kudos. Now they are trying to scare us off to give themselves a clean run," I suggested.

"Or maybe they think we already have the treasure and killing us makes it easier to obtain?" Martha said, her composure returned.

"So, what are our options? What can we seriously do?" I asked.

Ty glanced at Martha. "The police will do their thing with the arson. In the meantime, I suggest we do ours."

I wasn't sure that I liked this plan, even before hearing any of the details. I had witnessed what Ty's thing entailed, and I was pretty sure I didn't want it to become my thing.

"You need to look into who else could have known about the Professor's work, and the possibility of there being gold buried in Pebble Deeping," Ty suggested, looking at me. I nodded my assent with some relief.

"Martha and I will find the stuff before these bastards do," he continued. She smiled at him in response. It looked like I was out-voted on the plan front.

"There's still something odd about this business," she said faintly. Ty and I looked at her inquisitively.

"My father was an eccentric man, but he was no mad professor. He was anything but absent-minded, and he certainly would not have forgotten to pay the insurance premium. That means he couldn't afford to do so," she concluded, knotting her fingers together and squeezing.

"Is that odd?" I asked.

"He was extremely financially astute. We never wanted for anything because of money. His teaching and published work kept us comfortable. He had a hefty nest egg built up, and I just can't imagine how he couldn't afford the relatively cheap payments of his home insurance," she replied, gazing pensively out of the window.

"Maybe he missed the reminder letters?" Ty pointed out. Martha shook her head.

"I had better go into town tomorrow and confirm all of father's financial business," she decided.

"I'll drive you in. There are some people I need to check-in with and some phone calls to make," I said.

I had no idea yet as to how I was going to track whoever it was who was causing all this grief, but there were some brains that I could pick on the subject.

"If you'll excuse me, I have to go to the toilet and freshen up." Martha rose and swept out of the room, her trim hips swaying hypnotically. When she had gone, Ty sighed deeply.

"The root of all evil Satchmo," he said.

I raised a quizzical eyebrow at him. "Women?" I joked.

"Money," he continued, ignoring me. "This whole business stinks of it. It's a rotten smell, like death."

"Hmm. The gold?" I said.

"I'm not sure, but something tells me it's not that. Speaking of cash; how are you doing? Care for an advance on your fee?" he asked.

As it happened, I was rather short at the moment. I hadn't had anything in from the business since I went AWOL, and some folding wouldn't go amiss.

"That would be good, yes." I said.

Ty reached into his back pocket and retrieved a fat roll of twenties. He licked a finger theatrically and began counting out the notes, rubbing each between thumb and forefinger to make sure they were not stuck together.

"There's a thousand for you," he said, placing the bills in a pleasingly thick pile on the table. "... and there's another grand for Martha." He counted out and placed another identical wedge next to the first.

"Martha?" I said.

"She has just had everything so owns burned out from under her with no insurance. It may be that the Professor's accounts are not flush with money. She's a proud woman and won't take it as a gift, so you are to tell her it's a loan so that she can get the essentials," Ty explained.

The thought of going underwear shopping with Martha made blood flow in parts of me that had been cold for a long time. It also struck me as another potential barb to my previously punctured libido.

I resolved to allow her to tour the palace of glittering delights that was the Marks & Spencer lingerie department on her own.

I lifted the money from the table and felt the pleasing dryness of the paper. A brief query as to why Ty was carrying upwards of two grand in cash around flitted across my brain, but I dismissed it as another of his eccentricities. Walker had said he had no bank account, he lived off-paper and without records.

Fair enough, any kind of money was good for me. It saved hassles with the taxman and meant that the good people at Severn Trent Water might not disconnect my karzi in the next couple of months.

*

That night I dreamed of Martha.

The experience was so vivid, so real and complete that I felt I were reliving a memory, or rather living it through for the first time.

We were in a dormitory; sharing with faceless people who I sensed were friends and acquaintances, making the situation awkward. I felt that we were amid some sort of team at an event; a function or conference, and we were stealing a moment together.

We were both fully clothed on a single bed, made up with only a thin sheet and threadbare blanket. She lay and I sat with my feet on the floor.

There was an intimacy between us; an understanding implicit with lovers. I felt an aching deep within me that I could not pinpoint. Beside the bed was a plain table upon which a small round candle burned.

Dream Martha gazed up at me, her vivid green eyes full of a sorrow which bordered on pity. I cupped her cheek with my palm and stroked the silky skin of her face with the pad of my thumb. Her eyes widened, impossibly green now, her pupils were liquid, the flame dancing in those black holes like a tormented sprite.

"You know I want you," I had said in a hoarse whisper.

She took my hand from her face, intertwining her fingers with mine, the muscles in her toned arms proudly defined, then she nodded sadly.

"I can't have you," I said, each word burning my tongue. Martha shook her head slowly, as if explaining something to a child.

The intimacy I felt between us didn't diminish. I felt powerless, trapped on the brink of everything. People entered the room and busied themselves around us, preparing for bed.

No-one paid us the slightest heed, but I felt their presence was a barrier. I lay beside Martha, squeezed and uncomfortable on the single bed. She kept hold of my hand and rolled away from me onto her side. I followed suit and our bodies fit together like spoons.

I drew my arm around her and across her chest, holding her to me. She sighed, and I felt her shoulder blades relax against my ribs, her breath flitting across my knuckles. Her hair nestled in my face, still in a tight ponytail. It felt like spun silk and smelled of petals.

It was dark then, just like that, as is the way in dreams, and I couldn't see her, just feel her lying there breathing. So real.

"It's cold," she said.

I draped my share of the worn blanket over her and hugged her tight, never wanting her to feel the chill again. I lay there in my dream and prayed that the sun wouldn't rise, so I could hold her forever.

My vision jumped from lying with Martha to the woods at the bottom of Ty's property.

It was inky night and leaves rustled in the breeze. Twigs and undergrowth tangled around me, making me feel claustrophobic and on edge. In a clearing in front of me a body hung by its heels from the lowest bough of a heavy tree, the bark gnarled and twisted into a malevolent face in imagined moonlight.

The corpse swung too and fro, a smell rising from it like rancid meat.

Despite the dark, I could clearly see a deep russet slash worn around the throat like necktie. As it pitched, the cadaver spun to reveal its face; crusted in blood and shit and flies.

It wasn't the face of Jonah or Martha but my own that hung before me, a rictus grin on the lips as if it knew what was coming.

As I stared, the corpse's eyes swivelled in their sockets and fixed me with a glassy gaze. I was transfixed by my own dead eyes. As I watched, the smile spread across the face of my corpse and split into a smirk, then a deep throaty laugh so violent that it caused the body to jerk slightly on the rope, lifeless hands trailing patterns in the undergrowth beneath.

Soon the force of the corpse's laughter broke the crusted scab around the throat, and blood, fresh and scarlet, began to pour from the wound and down over the head. It bubbled at the corners of the mouth and turned the mirth into a sickening rasping gurgle.

Horrified, but unable to turn away, I watched my mutilated corpse mock me.

A gleam of steel in the moonlight caught my eye, twinkling amid the sanguine tide flowing from the gaping wound in its - my - throat. I reached over and pulled at the object, it was stuck somehow, and I had to twist and tug to get it free from the flesh.

Finally, the object gave, and I drew it from the neck, trailing a short length of line. Smeared with blood in the palm of my hand was a small fish hook, very much like the ones we used at the river.

Without warning, the corpse grasped my ankle with a meandering hand. I looked down just as it mouthed five simple words. Though I couldn't hear my own voice, I knew exactly what was said.

The one that got away.

*

When I woke in the morning, I didn't remember the trees, or the putrid smell of my dreamed body as it swung and taunted me.

I was not haunted by the sight of my own blood flowing so freely, or the words of my corpse.

No, the abiding image that remained was far worse and did me more harm as I carried it through the day. I remembered my hand held lovingly to Martha's face, the unrequited intimacy between us, the pity in her eyes as she shook her head and the smell of her hair as I laid my blanket around her.

Perhaps it would have been better if I had paid more attention to how my dream ended, and the smug smile on the face of my own corpse.