“So you really don’t know. That’s interesting.”

Something about the words gave Breton a vague thrill of alarm. “Look,” he said tersely. “Either state your business or hang up.”

“Don’t get angry, John — I’ll be happy to do both those things. I called simply to make sure you and Kate were at home before I came over there. And now I’ll hang up.”

“Hold on for just one moment,” Breton snapped, aware that he was letting the unknown caller get too far under his skin. “You haven’t said what you think you’re going to get.”

“My wife, of course,” the voice replied pleasantly. “You’ve been living with my wife for almost exactly nine years — and I’m coming to take her back.”

The phone clicked and began to purr blandly in Breton’s ear. He tapped the rest button several times before realizing he was acting out a visual cliché implanted in his mind by old movies — once a caller has broken the connection, jiggling the rest never brings him back. Swearing under his breath, Breton put the phone down and stood beside it undecidedly for several seconds.

The whole thing must be a devious hoax, but who was behind it?

He knew only one confirmed practical joker — Carl Tougher, the geologist in Breton’s engineering consultancy. But when he had last seen Tougher, in the office that afternoon, the geologist had been grimly trying to sort out a snarl-up in a survey the company had undertaken for the siting of a cement works over by Silverstream. Breton had never seen him look more worried, and less like playing games, especially one so full of uneasy subtleties. This conversation had been meaningless — which was not too surprising considering the mentality of phone cranks — but there had been uncomfortable undertones in it as well.