Hale chose a café in Rye and a meeting time of three o'clock.
Relf would have preferred the police station. Hale refused.
When they arrived, he was sitting near the back with a pot of tea and a pair of spectacles on the table.
In person he seemed smaller than he had on the screen. His face was weathered, his hair grey. Two fingertips were missing from the left hand resting around his cup.
Relf stopped beside the table.
"Hello, Arthur."
"David."
"Not for a long time."
Relf sat opposite him. Eleanor took the third chair.
Hale nodded to her.
"Dr Harcourt."
"You said you would give us the names when we met," Relf said.
Hale reached inside his coat.
"Slowly."
He stopped.
"A notebook."
"Put it on the table."
It was worn, held closed with an elastic band.
"Everything I remember," Hale said.
Relf left it where it was.
"Why now?"
"Weller's been arrested."
"You knew about that before you called."
"Yes."
"What else?"
Hale looked at Eleanor.
"Whoever sent the postcard knows I'm alive."
"Who was it?" she asked.
"I don't know."
"You've brought us here because you're afraid of someone you won't name?" Relf said.
"Someone I can't name."
"Then why this café?"
Hale glanced towards the other tables.
"People around. Two ways out. I'd rather be here than somewhere quiet."
Eleanor had noticed the customers without paying much attention to them. Now she found herself looking at the man reading beside the window and the couple waiting at the counter.
Relf drew the notebook towards him.
"The seven."
Hale opened it and began reading.
Relf wrote down the names and asked for the dates beside them. At the fourth, he looked up briefly, then returned to his notes.
Hale reached the sixth and paused.
"The last one," Relf said.
"Michael Vale."
Eleanor looked at him.
"Vale?"
"Yes."
"Any relation to Martin?"
"His brother."
She glanced at Relf. He was watching Hale.
"When did he die?" Relf asked.
"2024. He was fifty-eight."
"How?"
"A fall from a bell tower."
"Where?"
"Canterbury."
"Was he a ringer?"
"Yes."
"Was Martin with him?"
"No."
Eleanor sat back.
She had spent hours with Martin in the tower. He had talked her through the danger around the frame and insisted that nobody move a bell while someone was close to it. He had never mentioned a brother.
"Was the death investigated?" Relf asked.
"It was treated as an accident."
"What makes you connect it to the cipher?"
"Michael found something."
"That doesn't establish how he died."
"I know."
Relf waited.
"A transcription," Hale said. "From a bell in Hong Kong."
"Which one?"
Hale gave them the name. Eleanor wrote it down.
"Did he make the transcription himself?" Relf asked.
"He sent me a photograph. He thought the inscription had been altered."
"The cast lettering?"
"Not the lettering. There was a plate fixed beneath it."
"When was it added?"
"I don't know."
"What did the plate say?"
Hale turned to another page and pushed the notebook across the table.
Six characters were copied there.
Eleanor bent closer. The arrangement was familiar: the same form of coordinates they had been working through in Bull's notes.
"Did you decode them?" she asked.
"No."
"Why not?"
Hale looked at the page rather than at her.
"Michael died two days later."