A/N: Wow, so many people have read this! I hope to do justice to your expectations! What are your thoughts so far? I've updated so often partly because I know people are reading…enjoy

Present day, Antigua

A pound went to the church, as it had done every year since she was eight. A pound's worth of pocket money, then a pound from her paper round, a pound from her bar job, a pound from her student loan…

…a pound from her salary working for a laboratory; a pound from her job as a legal secretary…

Even though she had moved from home in Leicester to London, Dinah Severn had always made the journey once a year to put in a donation at the church of St. Mary's. Far from the diocese city of Salisbury, it gained her one thing, something she had learned at a very young age, something which had been assured when she had access to the legal writs that she was processing for the law firm.

Peppercorn rent was something well known, but less so was a law - never overturned in statute - that a property unclaimed could be purchased by a donation to the closest church, that donation being twenty shillings for twenty years.

Dinah Severn had diligently added a pound to the donations at St. Mary's, Wareham, Dorset, for twenty years, noting this donation in the visitor's book. Legally, Beacon Hill cottage was hers, as long as she lived in it for at least one part of the year.

And, it turned out, that counted when she rented it out, and so, she had made it into a rental cottage, for holiday makers, or a place friends could stay.

Unfortunately…

Unfortunately that had made her an enemy. Dinah had even visited Seaton, where the man's mother had run a rescue sanctuary. He claimed that he owned the land, that it belonged as an extension to the sanctuary.

"I'll see you in court," were the last words that Noel Svendsen had left her with, as the latest party of guests had arrived at the cottage. That had been three years ago, and Dinah had not seen Mr. Svendsen in court. In fact, the very next time she had seen him was when she was arrested in London for shaking a rug after 8am in the town of Watford, the day after shaking a rug after 8am in Bushey.

It was an experiment, to test the law. She had repeated it in Epping, Dartford, Reigate - all towns out of the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police of Greater London, and again in towns just inside. Watford was without; Bushey: within.

Dinah had then repeated the test at Houghton, Erith and Epsom to no ill effects. Not so on the morning of 1st June, outside the Royal hotel at Bushey, a police car arrived and arrested her.

"Obscure laws, whatever next?" her friend had laughed. And Dinah had been released after a few hours, for nothing she had done had broken the law.

"And you are…?" Dinah had asked him.

"DI Charlie Hulme," he had told her.

"And you are intimate with the law, Inspector Hulme, the law on which the Met is based?" To his credit, the man had laughed, and leaned back in his chair.

"You wanted to get arrested to see if the 1839 Metropolitan Police Act still applied?"

"I would say what I shook was indeed not a rug, but a doormat, Inspector Hulme." Dinah glanced at the table. It had a rubber back and had been, before she had picked it up at 7.58am that morning, been in front of the inner door of the hotel - not inside, not outside. And Dinah had surveyed the guests on arriving at the Royal the day before on whether it was a rug or a doormat, by dropping her purse and asking if they could get it "from the rug" or "from the doormat".

Popular opinion had been that it was a doormat. However, when she had picked it up that morning, Dinah, having checked with a hapless PCSO that Bushey was indeed in Met jurisdiction and also, the time, had shouted that she was shaking the "hotel's rug" out there on the pavement.

"Laws have to have an Act of Parliament to repeal them - you should know that, Miss - "

"Ms - " DI Hulme lifted his head and looked at Dinah.

"Ms Severn, member that you are of the Law Commission." He smiled, as if he had caught her out in something.

"Indeed, the Statute law repeals are something I find extremely interesting. I am studying them in readiness for my training in the legal profession - " she leaned over and pointed to her employer, the name at the top of the page. "All done within their knowledge, using the…doormat. Unless PCSO Wyatt has another opinion?"

She watched as DI Hulme got to his feet, scraping the chair underneath the interview table and striding to the door. It closed, heavily, and he returned a few minutes later.

"PCSO Wyatt believes this to be a doormat, and that you had misidentified it," he told her.

And it was then when she saw him, as Hulme led her from the station: woollen suit, briefcase, walking through the reception area.

Dinah wanted to scream, to cry out, to run to him. But DI Richard Poole had passed by, and she was, before she could do anything, at the doors of the police station.

"My thanks, DI Hulme," Dinah said to him. He turned, and gave her a scowl.

"Go, Ms Severn, before I do you for wasting police time."

But it hadn't been a waste, not for her. She discussed her action research with her boss, Henry Holly, the following afternoon, and he had recommended her for training within his practice. And Dinah had confirmation - as if she needed it - that Beacon Cottage was hers, and not Noel Svendsen's.

Much good that was doing her now, however. Bundled into a boat, hands behind her back, bag over her head, Dinah Severn was being taken across the water to God knew where…

…she knew where, or she could guess where…

Because she had followed the man across the ocean to the Caribbean, and had, before that, found the contraband at her cottage.

So she had told him, told the man she trusted, the man she loved the most in all of her life, the man who had shunned her for so many years because of her mother and his father…

This was a mere setback. Beaten, bleeding and having witnessed a brutal murder, Dinah Severn knew exactly what she was going to do next.