Linua woke from an uncomfortable dream that involved trying to fight bloodsucking hungry ghosts while armed only with chopsticks. It was a relief to wake up, until she realised she had slept completely through her alarm, and it was two hours later than she normally got up. She started to scramble hurriedly out of bed, winced at the stiffness in her ribs, and suddenly recalled the events of the previous night.

Quite a lot of things had happened after the police had arrived. People in bulky reflective gear with radios had tramped in and out of the house for some time. Someone had sat Linua down on a sofa, gone through a check for concussion, and looked at her ribs—bruised, but not broken, thankfully—and Helged had made everyone innumerable cups of tea. Grandmother had followed the police around, querulously demanding that they do something. They had searched the garden and shone lights into the trees around the house, inspected the library, and the window, and taken a statement from Linua. Before departing, they had promised someone from the police station would be around in the morning.

The best thing about it, from Linua’s perspective, was that she had been proscribed from engaging in strenuous physical activities. That meant no wushu for at least three weeks. It was almost worth it, until she moved too carelessly again, and hissed in pain. She cautiously got dressed in the same clothes from last night—the jeans and the pastel blue top with lace sleeves—and went downstairs.

Grandmother was in the sitting room with a cup of tea on the low table front of her. She hurriedly lurched from the sofa as soon as she saw Linua, who found herself subjected to a barrage of questions. Was Linua alright? How did she feel? What had she thought she was doing, tackling a thief like that? Grandmother had called Castle Yi and given them a piece of her mind!

“How is it Castle Yi’s fault?” Linua asked reasonably, following Grandmother into the sitting room.

“It’s all that wishu training!” Grandmother snapped.

“Wushu.”

“Wishu, washu, whatever! You should have run away, not let him hit you like that!”

“He jumped at me from behind a curtain in the library, Grandmother. If I hadn’t had any wushu training…” Linua’s voice trailed away. What would have happened if he’d won the encounter? What had he been after? She shivered.

“What were you doing in the library at that time of night anyway?” Grandmother demanded.

“I couldn’t sleep. I was looking for a book to read.” Linua had told the police the same story and no-one had questioned it.

“Oh dear, oh dear, I don’t know what this city’s coming to,” Grandmother said. “We should have just stayed in Shinboa.”

“Shinboa has a much higher crime rate than Herkow,” Helged said, as she came in with a tray bearing yet more tea and, promisingly, a bread roll stuffed with bacon and egg, which she handed to Linua.

Grandmother seemed determined to find fault with everything this morning. Her eye fell on the tea tray which Helged had just set down.

“There are too many cups! We don’t need four cups!”

“Those are for the police, Madame,” Helged said.

Grandmother stared at her.

“The police?”

“Yes, there’s a car just coming up the driveway now.”

These police consisted of a man and a woman, wearing office clothes rather than police uniforms, but their coats had a certain military cut to them. The man was spare and shrewd-looking with dark hair, and the woman was blonde with a heavy, square build and bright, warm eyes. They introduced themselves as Detective Constables Fellow and Sipps.

“We just wanted to go over the events of last night,” DC Sipps said. She was the policewoman, and she gave Linua a nice, sympathetic smile.

“We told them last night what happened,” said Grandmother.

“Of course, but it helps to go over things again just in case you remember things you forgot before.” DC Sipps got out a small notepad and a pen. “Tell me what happened in your own words, Linua.”

“Well…”

“She got up in the middle of the night to get a book because she couldn’t sleep,” Grandmother said.

There was a slight pause.

“I see.” DC Sipps made a note on her notepad. She addressed Linua; “Did anything wake you?”

Linua shook her head.

“Linua had been sick all evening, and went to bed early,” Grandmother said. “Her sleep patterns were all disrupted.”

DC Sipps tapped her pen thoughtfully on her notepad. She exchanged a quick, sidelong glance with DC Fellow.

“Lady Leylan,” DC Fellow said. “It would be enormously helpful to us if you could show me where the intruder gained entry to the building.”

“Your lot saw all that last night,” Grandmother snapped.

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“Yes, but the Chief Inspecter has tasked me with looking at the doors and windows so that I can give you recommendations as to how to improve your locks and make the house safer for you,” DC Fellow said smoothly.

“Oh! I see!” The ill humour on Grandmother’s face immediately cleared at the prospect of a senior officer taking such an interest.

Once DC Fellow had escorted Grandmother out, DC Sipps gave Linua another assessing glance, but followed it up with a friendly smile.

“Okay,” she said. “So, nothing woke you up? You didn’t hear anything?”

“No.”

“What happened when you woke up?”

“I went downstairs.”

“Quietly, or did you walk normally.”

“Quietly. I didn’t want to wake Grandmother.”

“Could the thief have heard you?”

Linua hesitated.

“Yes, there is a squeaky floorboard in my room, which is directly over the library. He might have heard me getting out of bed.”

“Did you go straight to the library?”

“Yes.”

“Was the door ajar or closed?”

“It was closed.”

“What happened then?”

“I opened the door and went in. I noticed that that the computer was switched on at the plug, which was unusual. Grandmother always turns that off after she’s used it.”

DC Sipps consulted her notepad.

“Yesterday you told the first responders that the intruder jumped at you in the dark. You didn’t switch the light on?”

Uh. Linua felt her cheeks heat up.

“No,” she said.

“So, how could you see that the computer was switched on at the plug?”

“Um,” Linua said.

DC Sipps waited.

“Do you have to tell my Grandmother this?” Linua asked.

“Not unless she demands to see your statement.”

Linua bit her lip.

“I went downstairs to use the computer.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“I always use it in the middle of the night. I wanted to see if my friends had sent me messages.”

“I see.” DC Sipps made another note.

“I didn’t put the light on in the library. I knelt down to switch the computer on at the plug. That’s when I noticed the power switch was already on. And the computer was warm.”

“Where were you standing when this happened?”

Linua explained the layout of the library, with the desk by the window, facing into the room.

“I was standing on the other side of the desk from the window, with my back to the room, facing the window.”

“Were the curtains open?”

“Yes, they were half open. There was moonlight from Ningal.”

“Is that normal for the curtains to be open?”

“No, Helged normally goes around and draws them in the evening when it gets dark.”

Another note went into the notepad.

Linua described the intruder leaping at her, presumably from behind the half-drawn curtain. He had vaulted over the desk towards her. She described the fight. She was reluctantly impressed with DC Sipps, who managed to help her remember things that, at the time, she had barely noticed, such as the fact that the intruder had been right-handed.

“It’s impressive that you managed to gain the upper hand,” DC Sipps said, carefully.

Linua stared at her.

“I’ve had eight years of wushu training. I practice for three hours a day,” she said. “It would be embarrassing if I hadn’t beaten him.”

It had been a close thing, closer than Linua felt comfortable with. DC Sipps’s eyebrows rose as she processed this.

“And you saw his face?”

“Yes.” Linua described the face paint.

“Would you recognise him again?”

Linua hesitated.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

She went on to recount how Grandmother had woken up, the sounds they had heard in the library as the intruder escaped, and the fading roar of a motorbike.

“So your Grandmother didn’t see him?”

Linua swallowed.

“No.”

“I see.” DC Sipps made a note.

“I’m not making any of this up!”

DC Sipps held up a hand.

“It’s okay Linua, I don’t suspect that. It would have been helpful to have an independent witness to identify him in case we ever do catch him, that’s all.”

“Oh.”

Then DC Sipps hit her unexpectedly from another angle.

“The officers last night found tracks where a moped had been wheeled into the forest. Was it a moped or a motorbike that you heard?”

“Er.” Linua fidgeted. DC Sipps waited patiently. “It definitely sounded like a motorbike. Um. But last night a friend came to see me. He has a moped.”

“A boyfriend?” DC Sipps sounded entirely neutral as she said this, but Linua couldn’t help flushing with colour to the roots of her hair.

“Kind of,” she muttered, staring at her hands, which she had clutched together in her lap.

“Is your Grandmother aware that this boyfriend came to visit you? Does she know him?”

“No. And yes. He ... uh … well, he’s part of the Astronomy Club. That I go to. Which has other people in too. There are five of us.”

“Can you tell me what happened when he came?”

Linua sighed.

“I pretended to have a headache earlier this evening, but instead I sneaked out. He met me in the village and we went to the beach and met up with the rest of the Astronomy Club. We had ice cream and hot chocolate, and met up with our other friends. Then he drove me home.”

“Did he just drop you off? Why did he wheel his moped into the forest?”

“I didn’t want Grandmother to hear it. So we stopped further down the drive, and he walked me as far as the summer house. We stayed there for a few minutes, then he left.”

“What time did he leave?”

“About half past nine.”

“How old is your boyfriend?”

“He’s seventeen.”

DC Sipps made another note.

“Can you give me his name and address?”

Linua stared at her in alarm.

“Why?”

“So that I can check with him. He might have noticed something odd. The intruder might already have been waiting in the forest.”

Linua continued to look at her suspiciously.

“Or,” DC Sipps said calmly, “I can speak to your Grandmother and ask her to provide his name and address. I just want to ask him a few questions, that’s all.”

“Alright, alright!”

But after DC Sipps had taken Eret’s full name and address she started asking about his build.

“He’s tall and slim.”

“Like the intruder?”

“No! Eret’s…” Linua had to think. “Eret’s a bit taller. A bit slimmer. The intruder was definitely shorter, and more heavily built.”

DC Sipps made a note again.

“This is the last question, Linua,” she said, with another lovely smile. Linua was beginning to mistrust those smiles. “Have you any idea why this man might have broken into your house?”

“Um.” Should Linua tell her about the missing artefact at the museum? Was that why the man had broken in?

The silence stretched and she became aware that DC Sipps was still sitting there patiently waiting for a response.

“Maybe?” Linua said.

DC Sipps waited some more.

“Well, um…” Linua described the project at the museum, and the missing artefact, and the research the Astronomy Club had done. She didn’t mention Bead. Given how suspicious DC Sipps had seemed even of Eret, it didn’t seem right. Bead had been nice. And she knew he hadn’t been the man who had broken in. Bead was a lot bigger and heftier.

DC Sipps asked a few questions and made a lot of notes.

“Thank you for speaking to me, Linua. I’m going to confer with DC Fellow just now. If you could wait here, please, in case I have any other questions.”

“Okay.”

DC Sipps went out. Linua heard the murmur of voices and the telephone being used. After about fifteen minutes, DC Sipps came back in, and explained that she wanted Linua to go over the whole thing again.

“We often find that people sometimes remember additional details they’d forgotten before,” she explained to Linua, along with one of her special smiles.

Linua repressed a sigh, and complied.

By the time the police finally left it was mid-morning.