Come to Grief

Chapter 6

Ginnie Quint was gardening in a large straw hat, businesslike gloves and gray overall dungarees, waging a losing war on weeds in flower beds in front of the comfortable main house of Twyford Lower Farms.

‘Hello, dear Sid!’ She greeted me warmly, standing up, holding the dirty gloves wide and putting her soft cheek forward for a kiss of greeting. ‘What a nice surprise. But Ellis isn’t here, you know. He went to the races, then he was going up to the Regents Park apartment. That’s where you’ll find him, dear.’

She looked in perplexity over my shoulder to where the Norman Picton contingent were erupting from their transport.

Ginnie said uncertainly, ‘Who are your friends, dear?’ Her face cleared momentarily in relief, and she exclaimed, ‘Why, it’s Archie Kirk! My dear man. How nice to see you.’

Norman Picton, carrying none of Archie’s or my social-history baggage, came rather brutally to the point.

‘I’ m Detective Inspector Picton, madam, of the Thames Valley Police. I’ve reason to believe you own a blue Land-Rover, and I have a warrant to inspect it.’

Ginnie said in bewilderment, ‘It’s no secret we have a Land-Rover. Of course we have. You’d better talk to my husband. Sid… Archie… what’s all this about?’

‘It’s possible,’ I said unhappily, ‘that someone borrowed your Land-Rover last night and… er… committed a crime.’

‘Could I see the Land-Rover, please, madam?’ Picton insisted.

‘It will be in the farmyard.’ Ginnie said. ‘I’ll get my husband to show you.’

The scene inexorably unwound. Gordon, steaming out of the house to take charge, could do nothing but protest in the face of a properly executed search warrant. The various policemen went about their business, photographing, fingerprinting and collecting specimens of dusty earth from the tire treads. Every stage was carefully documented by the assisting constable.

The warrant apparently covered the machinery and anything else behind the front seat. The two sticking-up handles that had looked to Jonathan like those of a lawn mower were, in fact, the handles of a lawn mower — a light electric model. There were also a dozen or so angle iron posts for fencing, also a coil of fencing wire and the tools needed for fastening the wire through the posts. There was an opened bag of horse-feed nuts. There was a rolled leather apron, like those used by farriers. There were two spades, a heavy four-pronged fork and a large knife like a machete wrapped in sacking.

The knife was clean, sharp and oiled.

Gordon, questioned, growled impatiently that a good workman looked after his tools. He picked up a rag and a can of oil, to prove his point. What was the knife for? Clearing ditches, thinning woodland, a hundred small jobs around the fields.

There was a second, longer bundle of sacking lying beneath the fencing posts. I pointed to it noncommittally, and Norman Picton drew it out and unwrapped it.

Inside there were two once-varnished wooden handles a good meter in length, with, at the business end, a heavy arrangement of metal.

‘Lopping shears,’ Gordon pronounced. ‘For lopping off small branches of trees in the woods. Have to keep young trees pruned, you know, or you get a useless tangle where nothing will grow.’

He took the shears from Picton’s hands to show him how they worked. The act of parting the handles widely away from each other opened heavy metal jaws at the far end; sharp, clean and oiled jaws with an opening wide enough to grip a branch three inches thick. Gordon, with a strong, quick motion, pulled the handles towards each other, and the metal jaws closed with a snap.

‘Very useful,’ Gordon said, nodding, and rewrapped the shears in their sacking.

Archie, Picton and I said nothing.

I felt faintly sick.

Archie walked away speechlessly and Gordon, not understanding, laid the sacking parcel back in the Land-Rover and walked after him, saying, puzzled, ‘Archie! What is it?’

Picton said to me, ‘Well?’

‘Well,’ I said, swallowing, ‘what if you took those shears apart? They look clean, but in the jaws… in that hinge… just one drop of blood… or one hair… that would do, wouldn’t it?’

‘So these shears fit the bill?’

I nodded faintly. ‘Mr Kirk saw the colt’s leg, like I did. And he saw the foot.’ I swallowed again. ‘Lopping shears. Oh, Christ.’

‘It was only a horse,’ he protested.

‘Some people love their horses like they do their children,’ I said. ‘Suppose someone lopped off your son’s foot?’

He stared. I said wryly, ‘Betty Bracken is the fifth bereaved owner I’ve met in the last three weeks. Their grief gets to you.’

‘My son,’ he said slowly, ‘had a dog that got run over. He worried us sick… wouldn’t eat properly…’ He stopped, then said, ‘You and Archie Kirk are too close to this.’

‘And the Great British public,’ I reminded him, ‘poured their hearts out to those cavalry horses maimed by terrorists in Hyde Park.’

He was old enough to remember the carnage that had given rise to the daily bulletins and to medals and hero status bestowed on Sefton, the wonderful survivor of heartless bombs set off specifically to kill harmless horses used by the army solely as a spectacle in plumed parades.

This time the Great British public would vilify the deed, but wouldn’t, and couldn’t, believe a national idol guilty. Terrorists, yes. Vandals, yes. Idol… no.

Picton and I walked in the wake of Archie and Gordon, returning to Ginnie in front of the house.

‘I don’t understand,’ Ginnie was saying plaintively. ‘When you say the Land-Rover may have been taken and used in a crime… what crime do you mean?’

Gordon jumped in without waiting for Picton to explain.

‘It’s always for robbery,’ he said confidently. ‘Where did the thieves take it?’

Instead of answering, Norman Picton asked if it was Gordon Quint’s habit to leave the ignition key in the Land-Rover.

‘Of course not,’ Gordon said, affronted. ‘Though a little thing like no ignition key never stops a practiced thief.’

‘If you did by any chance leave the key available — which I’m sure you didn’t, sir, please don’t get angry — but if anyone could have found and used your key, would it have been on a key ring with a silver chain and a silver horseshoe?’

‘Oh, no,’ Ginnie interrupted, utterly guilelessly. ‘That’s Ellis’s key ring. And it’s not a silver horseshoe, it’s white gold. I had it made especially for him last Christmas.’

I drove Archie Kirk back to Newbury. The unmarked car ahead of us carried the four policemen and a variety of bagged, docketed, documented objects for which receipts had been given to Gordon Quint.

Lopping shears in sacking. Machete, the same. Oily rag and oil can. Sample of horse-feed nuts. Instant photos of red-dragon logo. Careful containers of many lifted fingerprints, including one sharply defined right full hand-print from the Land-Rover’s hood that, on first inspection, matched exactly the right hand-print from the Coke can held by Jonathan at the lake.

‘There’s no doubt that it was the Quint Land-Rover in my sister’s lane,’ Archie said. ‘There’s no doubt Ellis’s keys were in the ignition. But there’s no proof that Ellis himself was anywhere near.’

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘No one saw him.’

‘Did Norman ask you to write a report?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’ll give your report and Jonathan’s statement to the Crown Prosecution Service, along with his own findings. After that, it’s up to them.’

‘Mm.’

After a silence, as if searching for words of comfort, Archie said, ‘You’ve done wonders.’

‘I hate it.’

‘But it doesn’t stop you.’

What if he can’t help it…? What if I couldn’t help it, either?

At the police station, saying good-bye, Archie said, ‘Sid… you don’t mind if I call you Sid? And I’m Archie, of course, as you know… I do have some idea of what you’re facing. I just wanted you to know.’

‘I… er… thanks,’ I said. ‘If you wait a minute, I’ll phone the equine hospital and find out how the colt is doing.’

His face lightened but the news was moderate.

‘I’ve reattached the tendon,’ Bill reported. ‘I grafted a couple of blood vessels so there’s now an adequate blood supply to the foot. Nerves are always difficult. I’ve done my absolute best and, bar infection, the foot could technically stay in place. The whole leg is now in a cast. The colt is semiconscious. We have him in slings. But you know how unpredictable this all is. Horses don’t recover as easily as humans. There’ll be no question of racing, of course, but breeding… I understand he’s got the bloodlines of champions. Absolutely no promises, mind.’

‘You’re brilliant,’ I said.

‘It’s nice,’ he chuckled, ‘to be appreciated.’

I said, ‘A policeman will come and collect some of the colt’s hair and blood.’

‘Good. Catch the bugger,’ he said.

I drove willy nilly without haste in heavy traffic to London. By the time I reached the pub I was half an hour late for my appointment with Kevin Mills of The Pump and he wasn’t there. No balding head, no paunch, no drooping beer-frothed mustache, no cynical world-weariness.

Without regret I mooched tiredly to the bar, bought some whisky and poured into it enough London tap water to give the distiller fits.

All I wanted was to finish my mild tranquilizer, go home, find something to eat, and sleep. Sleep, I thought, yawning, had overall priority.

A woman’s voice at my side upset those plans.

‘Are you Sid Halley?’ it said.

I turned reluctantly. She had shining black shoulder-length hair, bright light-blue eyes and dark-red lipstick, sharply edged. Naturally unblemished skin had been given a matte porcelain powdering. Black eyebrows and eyelashes gave her face strong definition, an impression her manner reinforced. She wore black clothes in June. I found it impossible to guess her age, within ten years, from her face, but her manicured red-nailed hands said no more than thirty.

‘I’m from The Pump,’ she said. ‘My colleague, Kevin Mills, has been called away to a rape.’

I said, ‘Oh,’ vaguely.

‘I’m India Cathcart,’ she said.

I said ‘Oh’ again, just as vaguely, but I knew her by her name, by her reputation and by her writing. She was a major columnist, a ruthless interviewer, a decon structing nemesis, a pitiless exposer of pathetic human secrets. They said she kept a penknife handy for sharpening her ball-points, She was also funny, and I, like every Pump addict, avidly read her stuff and laughed even as I winced.

I did not, however, aim to be either her current or future quarry.

‘I came to pick up our exclusive,’ she said.

‘Ah.’Fraid there isn’t one.’

‘But you said.’

‘I hoped,’ I agreed.

‘And you haven’t answered your phone all day.’

I unclipped my mobile phone and looked at it as if puzzled, which I wasn’t. I said, making a discovery, ‘It’s switched off.’

She said, disillusioned, ‘I was warned you weren’t dumb.’

There seemed to be no answer to that, so I didn’t attempt one.

‘We tried to reach you. Where have you been?’

‘Just with friends,’ I said.

‘I went to Combe Bassett. What did I find? No colt, with or without feet. No Sid Halley. No sobbing colt owner. I find some batty old fusspot who says everyone went to Archie’s house.’

I gazed at her with a benign expression. I could do a benign expression rather well.

‘So,’ continued India Cathcart with visible disgust, ‘I go to the house of a Mr Archibald Kirk in the village of Shelley Green, and what do I find there?’

‘What?’

‘I find about five other newspapermen, sundry photographers, a Mrs Archibald Kirk and a deaf old gent saying “Eh?” ’

‘So then what?’

‘Mrs Kirk is lying, all wide-eyed and helpful. She’s saying she doesn’t know where anyone is. After three hours of that, I went back to Combe Bassett to look for ramblers.’

‘Did you find any?’

‘They had rambled twenty miles and had climbed a stile into a field with a resident bull. A bunch of ramblers crashed out in panic through a hedge backwards and the rest are discussing suing the farmer for letting a dangerous animal loose near a public footpath. A man with a pony-tail says he’s also suing Mrs Bracken for not keeping her colt in a stable, thus preventing an amputation that gave his daughter hysterics.’

‘Life’s one long farce,’ I said.

A mistake. She pounced on it. ‘Is that your comment on the maltreatment of animals?’

‘No.’

‘Your opinion of ramblers?’

‘Footpaths are important,’ I said.

She looked past me to the bartender. ‘Sparkling mineral water, ice and lemon, please.’

She paid for her own drink as a matter of course. I wondered how much of her challenging air was unconscious and habitual, or whether she volume-adjusted it according to who she was talking to. I often learned useful things about people’s characters by watching them talk to others than myself, and comparing the response.

‘You’re not playing fair,’ she said, judging me over the wedge of lemon bestriding the rim of her glass. ‘It was The Pump’s Hotline that sent you to Combe Bassett. Kevin says you pay your debts. So pay.’

‘The Hotline was his own idea. Not a bad one, except for about a hundred false alarms. But there’s nothing I can tell you this evening.’

‘Not can’t. Won’t.’

‘It’s often the same thing.’

‘Spare me the philosophy!’

‘I enjoy reading your page every week,’ I said.

‘But you don’t want to figure in it?’

‘That’s up to you.’

She raised her chin. ‘Strong men beg me not to print what I know.’

I didn’t want to antagonize her completely and I could forgo the passing pleasure of banter, so I gave her the benign expression and made no comment.

She said abruptly, ‘Are you married?’

‘Divorced.’

‘Children?’

I shook my head. ‘How about you?’

She was more used to asking questions than answering. There was perceptible hesitation before she said, ‘The same.’

I drank my scotch. I said, ‘Tell Kevin I’m very sorry I can’t give him his inside edge. Tell him I’ll talk to him on Monday.’

‘Not good enough.’

‘No, well… I can’t do more.’

‘Is someone paying you?’ she demanded. ‘Another paper?’

I shook my head. ‘Maybe Monday,’ I said. I put my empty glass on the bar. ‘Goodbye.’

‘Wait!’ She gave me a straight stare, not overtly or aggressively feminist, but one that saw no need to make points in a battle that had been won by the generation before her. I thought that perhaps India Cathcart wouldn’t have made it a condition of continued marriage that I should give up the best skill I possessed. I’d married a loving and gentle girl and turned her bitter: the worst, the most miserable failure of my life.

India Cathcart said, ‘Are you hungry? I’ve had nothing to eat all day. My expense account would run to two dinners.’

There were many worse fates. I did a quick survey of the possibility of being deconstructed all over page fifteen, and decided as usual that playing safe had its limits. Take risks with caution: a great motto.

‘Your restaurant or mine?’ I said, smiling, and was warned by the merest flash of triumph in her eyes that she thought the tarpon hooked and as good as landed.

We ate in a noisy, brightly lit, large and crowded black-mirrored restaurant that was clearly the in-place for the in-crowd. India’s choice. India’s habitat. A few sycophantic hands shot out to make contact with her as we followed a lisping young greeter to a central, noteworthy table. India Cathcart acknowledged the plaudits and trailed me behind her like a comet’s tail (Halley’s?) while introducing me to no one.

The menu set out to amaze, but from long habit I ordered fairly simple things that could reasonably be dealt with one-handed: watercress mousse, then duck curry with sliced baked plantains. India chose baby egg-plants with oil and pesto, followed by a large mound of crisped frogs’ legs that she ate uninhibitedly with her fingers.

The best thing about the restaurant was that the decibel level made private conversation impossible: everything anyone said could be overheard by those at the next table.

‘So,’ India raised her voice, teeth gleaming over a herb-dusted cuisse, ‘was Betty Bracken in tears?’

‘I didn’t see any tears.’

‘How much was the colt worth?’

I ate some plantain and decided they’d overdone the caramel. ‘No one knows,’ I said.

‘Kevin told me it cost a quarter of a million. You’re simply being evasive.’

‘What it cost and what it was worth are different. It might have won the Derby. It might have been worth millions. No one knows.’

‘Do you always play word games?’

‘Quite often.’ I nodded. ‘Like you do.’

‘Where did you go to school?’

‘Ask Kevin,’ I said, smiling.

‘Kevin’s told me things about you that you wouldn’t want me to know.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like it’s easy to be taken in by your peaceful front. Like you having tungsten where other people have nerves. Like you being touchy about losing a hand. That’s for starters.’

I would throttle Kevin, I thought. I said, ‘How are the frogs’ legs?’

‘Muscular.’

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘You have sharp teeth.’

Her mind quite visibly changed gears from patronizing to uncertain, and I began to like her.

Risky to like her, of course.

After the curry and the frogs we drank plain black coffee and spent a pause or two in eye-contact appraisal. I expected she saw me in terms of adjectives and paragraphs. I saw her with appeased curiosity. I now knew what the serial reputation-slasher looked like at dinner.

In the way one does, I wondered what she looked like in bed; and in the way that one doesn’t cuddle up to a potential cobra, I made no flicker of an attempt to find out.

She seemed to take this passivity for granted. She paid for our meal with a Pump business credit card, as promised, and crisply expected I would kick in my share on Monday as an exclusive for Kevin.

I promised what I knew I wouldn’t be able to deliver, and offered her a lift home.

‘But you don’t know where I live!’

‘Wherever,’ I said.

‘Thanks. But there’s a bus.’

I didn’t press it. We parted on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. No kiss. No handshake. A nod from her. Then she turned and walked away, not looking back: and I had no faith at all in her mercy.

On Sunday morning I reopened the small blue suitcase Linda had lent me, and read again through all the clippings that had to do with the maimed Kent ponies.

I played again the videotape of the twenty-minute program Ellis had made of the child owners, and watched it from a different, and sickened, perspective.

There on the screen he looked just as friendly, just as charismatic, just as expert. His arms went around Rachel in sympathy. His good-looking face filled with compassion and outrage. Blinding ponies, cutting off a pony’s foot, he said, those were crimes akin to murder.

Ellis, I thought in wretchedness, how could you?

What if he can’t help it?

I played the tape a second time, taking in more details and attentively listening to what he had actually said.

His instinct for staging was infallible. In the shot where he’d commiserated with the children all together, he had had them sitting around on hay bales in a tack room, the children dressed in riding breeches, two or three wearing black riding hats. He himself had sat on the floor among them, casual in a dark open-necked jogging suit, a peaked cap pushed back on his head, sunglasses in-pocket. Several of the children had been in tears. He’d given them his handkerchief and helped them cope with grief.

There were phrases he had used when talking straight to the camera that had brought the children’s horrors sharply to disturbingly visual life: ‘pierced empty sockets, their eyesight running down their cheeks,’ and ‘a pure-bred silver pony, proud and shining in the moonlight.’

His caring tone of voice alone had made the word pictures bearable.

‘A silver pony shining in the moonlight.’ The basis of Rachel’s nightmare.

‘In the moonlight.’ He had seen the pony in the moonlight.

I played the tape a third time, listening with my eyes shut, undistracted by the familiar face, or by Rachel in his comforting hug.

He said, ‘A silver pony trotting trustfully across the field lured by a handful of horse-nuts.’

He shouldn’t have known that.

He could have known it if any of the Ferns had suggested it.

But the Ferns themselves wouldn’t have said it. They hadn’t fed Silverboy on nuts. The agent of destruction that had come by night had brought the nuts.

Ellis would say, of course, that he had made it up, and the fact that it might be true was simply a coincidence. I rewound the tape and stared for a while into space. Ellis would have an answer to everything. Ellis would be believed.

In the afternoon I wrote a long, detailed report for Norman Picton: not a joyous occupation.

Early Monday morning, as he had particularly requested it, I drove to the police station in Newbury and personally delivered the package into the Detective Inspector’s own hands.

‘Did you talk about this to anybody?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Especially not to Quint?’

‘Especially not. But…’ I hesitated, ‘they’re a close family. It’s more than likely that on Saturday evening or yesterday, Ginnie and Gordon told Ellis that you and I and Archie were sniffing round the Land-Rover and that you took away the shears. I think you must consider that Ellis knows the hunt is on.’

He nodded disgustedly. ‘And as Ellis Quint officially lives in the Metropolitan area, we in the Thames Valley district cannot pursue our inquiries as freely as we could have.’

‘You mean, you can’t haul him down to the local Regents Park nick and ask him awkward questions, like what was he doing at 3.00 a.m. on Saturday?’

‘We can ask him ourselves if the Met agrees.’

‘I thought these divisions were being done away with.’

‘Cooperation is improving all the time.’

I left him to sort out his problems and set off to drive to Kent. On the way, wanting to give Rachel Ferns a cheering-up present, I detoured into the maze of Kingston and, having parked, walked around the precincts looking for inspiration in the shops.

A windowful of tumbling puppies made me pause; perhaps Rachel needed an animal to love, to replace the pony. And perhaps Linda would not be pleased at having to house-train a growing nuisance that molted and chewed the furniture. I went into the pet shop, however, and that’s how I came to arrive at Linda Ferns’ house with my car full of fish tank, water weeds, miniature ruined castle walls, electric pump, lights, fish food, instructions, and three large lidded buckets of tropical fish.

Rachel was waiting by the gate for my arrival.

‘You’re half an hour late,’ she accused. ‘You said you’d be here by twelve.’

‘Have you heard of the M25?’

‘Everyone makes that motorway an excuse.’

‘Well, sorry.’

Her bald head was still a shock. Apart from that, she looked well, her cheeks full and rounded by steroids. She wore a loose sundress and clumpy sneakers on stick-like legs. It was crazy to love someone else’s child so comprehensively, yet for the first time ever, I felt the idea of fatherhood take a grip.

Jenny had refused to have children on the grounds that any racing day could leave her a widow, and at the time I hadn’t cared one way or another. If ever I married again, I thought, following Rachel into the house, I would long for a daughter.

Linda gave me a bright, bright smile, a pecking kiss and the offer of a gin and tonic while she threw together some pasta for our lunch. The table was laid. She set out steaming dishes.

‘Rachel was out waiting for you two hours ago!’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you’ve done to the child.’

‘How are things?’

‘Happy.’ She turned away abruptly, tears as ever near the surface. ‘Have some more gin. You said you’d got news for me.’

‘Later. After lunch. And I’ve brought Rachel a present.’

The fish tank after lunch was the ultimate success. Rachel was enthralled, Linda interested and helpful. ‘Thank goodness you didn’t give her a dog,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand animals under my feet I wouldn’t let Joe give her a dog. That’s why she wanted a pony.’

The vivid fish swam healthily through the Gothic ruins, the water weeds rose and swelled, the lights and bubbles did their stuff. Rachel sprinkled fish food and watched her new friends eat. The pet shop owner had persuaded me to take a bigger tank than I’d thought best, and he had undoubtedly been right. Rachel’s pale face glowed. Pegotty, in a baby-bouncer, sat wide-eyed and open-mouthed beside the glass. Linda came with me into the garden.

‘Any news about a transplant?’ I asked.

‘It would have been the first thing I’d told you.’

We sat on the bench. The roses bloomed. It was a beautiful day, heartbreaking.

Linda said wretchedly, ‘In acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which is what Rachel’s got, chemotherapy causes remission almost always. More than ninety per cent of the time. In seven out of ten children, the remission lasts forever, and after five years they can be thought of as cured for life. And girls have a better chance than boys, isn’t that odd? But in thirty per cent of children, the disease comes back.’

She stopped.

‘And it has come back in Rachel?’

‘Oh, Sid!’

‘Tell me.’

She tried, the tears trickling while she spoke. ‘The disease came back in Rachel after less than two years, and that’s not good. Her hair was beginning to grow, but it came out again with the drugs. They re-established her again in remission, and they’re so good, it isn’t so easy the second time. But I know from their faces — and they don’t suggest transplants unless they have to, because only about half of bone-marrow transplants are successful. I always talk as if a transplant will definitely save her, but it only might. If they found a tissue match they’d kill all her own bone marrow with radiation, which makes the children terribly nauseous and wretched, and then when the marrow’s all dead they transfuse new liquid marrow into the veins and hope it will migrate into the bones and start making leukemia-free blood there, and quite often it works… and sometimes a child can be born with one blood group and be transfused with another. It’s extraordinary. Rachel now has type A blood, but she might end up with type O, or something else. They can do so much nowadays. One day they may cure everybody. But oh… oh…’

I put my arm around her shoulders while she sobbed. So many disasters were forever. So many Edens lost.

I waited until the weeping fit passed, and then I told her I’d discovered who had maimed and destroyed Silverboy.

‘You’re not going to like it,’ I said, ‘and it might be best if you can prevent Rachel from finding out: Does she ever read the newspapers?’

‘Only Peanuts.’

‘And the television news?’

‘She doesn’t like news of starving children.’ Linda looked at me fearfully. ‘I’ve wanted her to know who killed Silverboy. That’s what I’m paying you for.’

I took out of my pocket and put into her hands an envelope containing her much-traveled check, torn now into four pieces.

‘I don’t like what I found, and I don’t want your money. Linda… I’m so very sorry… but it was Ellis Quint himself who cut off Silverboy’s foot.’

She sprang in revulsion to her feet, immediate anger filling her, the shock hard and physical, the enormity of what I’d said making her literally shake.

I should have broken it more slowly, I thought, but the words had had to be said.

‘How can you say such a thing?’ she demanded. ‘How can you? You’ve got it all wrong. He couldn’t possibly! You’re crazy to say such a thing.’

I stood up also. ‘Linda…’

‘Don’t say anything. I won’t listen. I won’t. He is so nice. You’re truly crazy. And of course I’m not going to tell Rachel what you’ve accused him of, because it would upset her, and you’re wrong. And I know you’ve been kind to her… and to me… but I wouldn’t have asked you here if I’d thought you could do so much awful harm. So please… go. Go, just go.’

I shrugged a fraction. Her reaction was extreme, but her emotions were always at full stretch. I understood her, but that didn’t much help.

I said persuasively, ‘Linda, listen.’

‘No!’

I said, ‘Ellis has been my own friend for years. This is terrible for me, too.’

She put her hands over her ears and turned her back, screaming, ‘Go away. Go away.’

I said uncomfortably, ‘Phone me, then,’ and got no reply.

I touched her shoulder. She jerked away from me and ran a good way down the lawn, and after a minute I turned and went back into the house.

‘Is Mummy crying?’ Rachel asked, looking out of the window. ‘I heard her shout.’

‘She’s upset.’ I smiled, though not feeling happy. ‘She’ll be all right. How are the fish?’

‘Cool.’ She went down. on her knees, peering into the wet little world.

‘I have to go now,’ I said.

‘Goodbye.’ She seemed sure I would come back. It was a temporary farewell, between friends. She looked at the fishes, not turning her head.

‘Bye,’ I said, and drove ruefully to London, knowing that Linda’s rejection was only the first: the beginning of the disbelief.

In Pont Square the telephone was ringing when I opened my front door, and continued to ring while I poured water and ice from a jug in the refrigerator, and continued to ring while I drank thirstily after the hot afternoon, and continued to ring while I changed the battery in my left arm.

In the end, I picked up the receiver.

‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’

The Berkshire voice filled my ear, delivering not contumely, but information. Norman Picton, Detective Inspector, Thames Valley Police.

‘You’ve heard the news, of course.’

‘What news?’ I asked.

‘Do you live with your head in the sand? Don’t you own a radio?’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Ellis Quint is in custody,’ he said.

‘He’s what?’

‘Yes, well, hold on, he’s sort of in custody. He’s in hospital, under guard.’

‘Norman,’ I said, disoriented. ‘Start at the beginning.’

‘Right.’ He sounded over-patient, as if talking to a child. ‘This morning two plainclothes officers of the Metropolitan Police went to Ellis Quint’s flat overlooking Regents Park intending to interview him harmlessly about his whereabouts early Saturday morning. He came out of the building before they reached the main entrance, so, knowing him by sight, they approached him, identifying themselves and showing him their badges. At which point,’ Picton cleared his throat but didn’t seem able to clear his account of pedestrian police phraseology, ‘…at which point Mr Ellis Quint pushed one of the officers away so forcefully that the officer overbalanced into the roadway and was struck by a passing car. Mr Quint himself then ran into the path of traffic as he attempted to cross the road to put distance between himself and the police officers. Mr Quint caused a bus to swerve. The bus struck Mr Quint a glancing blow, throwing him to the ground. Mr Quint was dazed and bruised. He was taken to hospital, where he is now in a secure room while investigations proceed.’

I said, ‘Are you reading that from a written account?’

‘That’s so.’

‘How about an interpretation in your own earthy words?’

‘I’m at work. I’m not alone.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Did Ellis panic or did he think he was being mugged?’

Picton half laughed. ‘I’d say the first. His lawyers will say the second. But, d’you know what? When they emptied his pockets at the hospital, they found a thick packet of cash — and his passport.’

‘No!’

‘it isn’t illegal.’

‘What does he say?’

‘He hasn’t said anything yet.’

‘How’s the officer he pushed?’

‘Broken leg. He was lucky.’

‘And… when Ellis’s daze wears off?’

‘It’ll be up to the Met. They can routinely hold him for one day while they frame a charge. I’d say that’s a toss-up. With the clout he can muster, he’ll be out in hours.’

‘What did you do with my report?’

‘It went to the proper authorities.’

Authorities was such a vague word. Who ever described their occupation as ‘an authority’?

‘Thanks for phoning,’ I said.

‘Keep in touch.’ An order, it sounded like.

I put down the receiver and found a handwritten scrawl from Kevin Mills on Pump letterhead paper in my fax.

He’d come straight to the point.

‘Sid, you’re a shit.’