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They were young, they were in love, and they never wasted money on newspapers or wasted time listening to anything but disc jockeys on the radio. They hadn’t heard anything about the jet airliner that had crashed into the sea, and the lovely face of Sigrid Thorsen staring out at them from the front pages on the newspaper vending machines meant nothing at all.

CHAPTER THREE
    AS THE DAY cleared, a few hardy Sunday sailors took out their boats to get the feel of the sea, found it rougher than they had bargained for and scurried back to harbour. The slips were well occupied by the time Simon rounded the breakwater and brought the small cruiser into port. Approaching the dock, he could see Chester, Hannah’s cook-turned-athletic director, waiting in Simon’s black XKE. Chester was a handsome black with a Phi Beta Kappa key on his watch chain, a ready wit and a pair of strong arms ready to make fast the boat as soon as he saw Simon at the wheel.
    Hannah’s been up on the tower with a pair of binoculars most of the day,” he reported. “She sent me down here to meet you about an hour ago.”
    Simon got his gear and the Meechum report out of the cabin and began to lock up. “Sorry to cause so much trouble,” he said. “Hannah shouldn’t have worried. I could take a cab up to the heights.”
    He glanced up at the bluff rising high above the marina. The late sun glinted on the three-storeyed tower of The Mansion that was visible to the initiated who knew where to look. For all he knew, Hannah might have the glasses focused on him now.
    “Don’t flatter yourself,” Chester said. “She didn’t spend all that time looking for you. Somebody’s building a house just below yours and Hannah’s fascinated. It’s a man—a bachelor with grey hair and a yellow Porsche. There’s romance in the air.”
    “I’m jealous,” Simon said.
    “You should be. Ready to go? Don’t take that oilskin jacket off. I put the top down when the sun came out and the wind’s a little chilly in the highlands.”
    Simon tossed his bag and the zipper case into the jump seat and climbed in next to the wheel. Chester could do the driving. After fighting the sea all afternoon, he was happy to relax.
    “When did all this romancing start?” Simon demanded.
    “Right after Hannah came back from Las Vegas. She went for the night of Wanda’s opening, remember? Then she came back because she’s got this little theatre thing going. Getting Wanda started turned her on, I guess. Well, to get to the hall she’s using for the group to practise in, she passes that view lot that’s been vacant all this time—only now it’s being built upon. Wild, Simon. This cat’s building something that looks like a flying saucer launching pad with stained glass windows.”
    “Who is he?”
    “Nobody knows yet. We’re still at the rumoursville stage. But the house will run into many pennies.”
    “He must have a name.”
    “It doesn’t show up with binoculars.”
    Simon owned a Jaguar for the speed factor, and Chester wasn’t shy about using the accelerator. They left the marina behind, sped past the new Civic Centre with its new city offices designed to impress the tourists and depress the taxpayers, and then nosed up into the area called The Heights where Simon’s restored mansion dominated a sprawl of modern cliff dwellers. Chester gestured briefly at a building site where a structure in Early Martian seemed to be mushrooming from an open wound in the hill and then, at the next corner, took a sharp right into a driveway where the high, wrought-iron gates stood open in welcome. Hannah’s bright red Rolls, vintage of 1926, an era when she was a reigning queen of stage and screen, was parked in the open garage. Chester pulled in alongside and cut the motor.
    “Delivered—one Simon Drake as per instructions,” he said.
    Chester grabbed Simon’s bag as he got out of the car. Simon took the zipper case and started towards the house. Within steps of the