I shook my head.
“Mac is trying, and he is almost getting it right, almost. But there is something missing. A confidence, or something? I don’t know.”
Nikki was looking about the place.
She spotted an older woman at the cashier’s. The woman checked on something below the counter, then went back into the kitchen.
“I’m going to talk to her,” she said, going up to talk to her before I could say a word.
Nikki went up to the counter, looked around and when no one was watching, slipped into the back of the diner. She was away for a long time, but when she got back, she had a big grin on her face.
“Come on, I got it!”
“Got what?”
“An address for the estate!”
Triumphantly, she held her phone up high.
“It’s called West Wood and it’s outside of town.”
I put down money for our bill and we got into the car, driving through the city as fast as I could.
“When I mentioned the Moorcroft name, she said she remembered the daughter, Natalie, said she went to school with her? It seems they grew up in the house. Natalie’s brother, Robert, he sounds like he might be Mac and Jade’s father.”
I nodded. “Robert could be right.”
“Anyway, she says the house is towards the north-east. She showed me on Google Maps, she couldn’t remember the exact avenue but there are only about two or three up there. We’ll find West Wood soon enough.”
After a while she said, “She said she’d been at a party there when she was younger. It was quite place back then. One of the top families in the city.”
I nodded. “Mac said his mother was the second Mrs. Moorcroft. The first wife died, and then his father married their mother.”
We drove around a tree-lined avenue, one huge estate after another. Walls and gates and tall trees lined the road. This was old money, going back centuries, protected by banks and institutions.
“Wait, what was that?”
I drove back and saw a gate, set back from the road.
“That looks familiar…”
I got out of the car and walked up to the gate.
Right enough, faded and neglected, there was a sign that read West Wood.
“This is it!”
I parked the car under the trees, and we got out.
If Jade was here, I didn’t want to warn her about our arrival. We had to get into the estate somehow. The gates were high though, and the thick hedge that surrounded the property did not offer an opportunity for climbing.
“Do you think there are cameras?” Nikki whispered.
“There may have been, once, but not anymore.”
We walked up to the gate and had a look around. It seemed impossible to get in. Nikki walked along the hedge and I followed her. A couple of yards down the way, she found a spot where the leaves were not as thick, and we could break a way through. She held a light for me, and I broke the branches and twigs, to allow for an opening for us to get through.
We made it, acquiring several scratches and cuts along the way.