‘Now I know four eagles,’ says Kendrick.
‘If you break a heart around a wheel,’ says Ibrahim, ‘and I’m just thinking out loud here, Kendrick, are we to take it that Heather Garbutt wants us to take an anagram of the word “heart” and combine it with another word for “wheel”？’
‘Maybe,’ says Kendrick. ‘Maybe she might do.’
‘Or,’ says Ibrahim, ‘if it is “cleft in two”， perhaps she wants us to place a word for “wheel” within the two broken parts of “heart”。’
‘Perhaps,’ nods Kendrick. ‘She has messy handwriting, doesn’t she? I have good handwriting, but only if I concentrate.’
‘We need another word for “wheel”，’ says Ibrahim. ‘As a noun we have “disc”， “hoop”， at a push, “circle”。 As a verb –’
‘A verb is a doing word,’ says Kendrick.
‘Quite so,’ agrees Ibrahim. ‘Which would give us “rotate”， “revolve” and, again, “circle”， such are the joys of the English language.’
‘What’s a hundred, times a hundred, times a hundred?’ asks Kendrick.
‘A million,’ says Ibrahim, with a puff on his cigar. ‘Let’s say that an anagram of “heart” is “Ath er …” and we add a word for “wheel”， I wonder would “hoop” work here? We fold “Ath er” around “hoop” and we come up with the name “Ath Hooper”。 Not a name, Kendrick. And the word “around” can often signify the letter c in a cryptic crossword, from the Latin circa.’
‘The gladiators spoke in Latin,’ says Kendrick. ‘And Julius Caesar.’
‘So we add the c to the front of our answer. I wonder if you might search the name “Cath Hooper” for me, and report back on anyone from either the Kent and Sussex area, or anyone with links to organized crime.’
Kendrick busies himself for a moment. ‘There’re about a thousand.’
‘Hmm – give me the top two,’ says Ibrahim.
‘OK,’ says Kendrick. ‘One is in Australia, and one is dead.’
‘Hmm,’ says Ibrahim again. ‘The dead one. Did she die recently? Was she murdered?’
Kendrick scrolls down his page. ‘She died in 1871. In Aberdeen. Where’s Aberdeen?’
‘Scotland,’ says Ibrahim.
‘Maybe that’s a clue?’
Ibrahim continues to read the poem, with the awful realization that perhaps it is just a poem. Then he sees it.
‘Did she write anything else?’ asks Kendrick. ‘Because this seems quite a hard one.’
‘She wrote a note, before she died,’ says Ibrahim, still looking over his new clue, testing it for strength.
‘A note?’
‘A note, yes,’ says Ibrahim. ‘Foretelling her death. But I don’t think your grandad would want me to show you it.’
‘Pleeeeease,’ says Kendrick. ‘I won’t tell Grandad.’
‘I don’t suppose it will do any harm,’ says Ibrahim. It’ll keep Kendrick occupied for a few moments while he cracks the code. He finds Chris’s original email and sends over the image of Heather Garbutt’s note. He then returns to the matter at hand, and begins to read out loud from the poem again.
I recall, as a child, in the brook where we played
When our secrets were kept, and our promises made