Driving Force

Chapter 8

The computer man, perhaps twenty, with long light brown hair through which he ran his fingers in artistic affectation every few seconds, had given up trying to resuscitate our hardware by the time I got back to the office.

‘What virus?’ I asked, coming to a halt by Isobel’s desk and feeling overly beleaguered. We had flu, we had aliens, we had bodies, we had vandals, we had concussion. A virus in the computer could take the camel to its knees.

‘All our records,’ Isobel mourned.

‘And our accounts,’ chimed Rose.

‘It’s prudent to make back-ups,’ the computer man told them mock-sorrowfully, his young face more honestly full of scorn. ‘Always make back-ups, ladies.’

‘Which virus?’ I asked again.

He shrugged, including me in his stupidity rating. ‘Maybe Michelangelo... Michelangelo activates on March 6th and there’s still a lot of it about.’

‘Enlarge,’ I said.

‘Surely you know?’

‘If I knew, I’ve forgotten.’

He spelled it out as to an illiterate. ‘March 6th is Michelangelo’s birthday. If you have the virus lying doggo in your computer and you switch on your computer on March 6th, the virus activates.’

‘Mm. Well, March 6th was last Sunday. No one switched on this computer on Sunday.’

Isobel’s large eyes opened wider. ‘That’s right.’

‘Michelangelo is a boot-section virus,’ the expert said, and to our blank-looking expressions long-sufferingly explained. ‘Just switching the machine on does the trick. Simply switching it on, waiting a minute or two, and switching off. Switching on is called booting-up. All the records on the hard disk are wiped out at once with Michelangelo and you get the message saying “Fatal disk error.” That’s what’s happened to your machine. The records are gone. There’s no putting them back.’

Isobel stared at me, conscience-stricken, appalled and distressed. ‘You did tell us to make back-up floppy disks, I know you did. You kept on telling us. I’m ever so sorry. I’m so sorry.’

‘You should have insisted,’ Rose told me. ‘I mean you should have made us.’

‘You don’t even seem worried,’ Isobel said.

To the computer man I said, ‘Would the virus activate on back-up floppy disks?’

‘Pretty likely.’

‘But we’ve got hardly any,’ Isobel wailed.

We did, as it happened, have comprehensive back-up disks containing everything the two secretaries had entered up to and including the previous Thursday. I knew they’d found the daily back-up procedure a bit of a bore. I’d seen them leave it for days sometimes. I’d reminded both of them over and over to make copies and was aware they thought I nagged them unnecessarily. The computer seemed everlastingly reliable. In the end I’d taken to making daily back-ups myself on the terminal in my sitting-room, storing the disks in my safe. If you want a thing done properly, as my mother had been accustomed to say, do it yourself.

At that exact moment, though the copies existed, they couldn’t be reached owing to the axed state of the safe’s combinations.

I could have reassured them all about our records and normally would have done. Suspicion stopped me. Suspicion about I didn’t know what. But it was altogether too much of a coincidence for me that the computer should crash at that particular time.

‘You’re not alone,’ the computer man said. ‘Doctors, law firms, all sorts of businesses, have had their records wiped out. One woman lost a whole book she was writing. And it costs nothing to make back-ups.’

‘Oh dear.’ Isobel was near tears.

‘What exactly is a virus?’ Rose enquired miserably.

‘It’s a programme that tells the computer to jumble up or wipe out everything stored in it.’ He warmed to his subject. ‘There are at least three thousand viruses floating around. There’s Jerusalem II that activates every Friday the thirteenth, that’s a specially nasty one. It’s caused a lot of trouble, has that one.’

‘But what’s the point?’ I asked.

‘Vandalism,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Destruction and wrecking for its own sake.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘For instance, I could design a sweet little virus that would make all your accounts come out wrong. Nothing spectacular like Michelangelo, not a complete loss of everything, just enough to drive you mad. Just enough to make errors so that you’d be forever checking and adding and nothing would ever come out right.’ He loved the idea, one could see. ‘Once you’ve written a programme like that, you have to spread it. I mean, one computer can catch the virus from another, that’s the beauty of it. All you need is a floppy disk with the virus in it. Feed the disk into any computer and transfer the data on the disk into the computer — which is done all the time — and bingo, the computer then has the virus inside it, lying in wait.’

‘How do you stop it?’ I asked.

‘There are all sorts of expensive programmes nowadays for detecting and neutralising viruses. And a whole lot of people thinking up ways to invent viruses that can’t be got rid of. It’s a whole industry. Lovely. I mean, rotten.’

Viruses, I reflected, meant income, to him.

‘How do you find out if you have a virus?’ I asked.

‘The way to do it is to scan the info in any given computer. The disk I use to do that has more than two hundred of the commoner viruses on it. It will tell you if you’ve been infected by Michelangelo or Jerusalem II. If you’d called me last week, I could have done it.’

‘Last week we saw no need,’ I said. ‘And... um... if this Michelangelo thing activates only on March 6th, then obviously we didn’t have it on our computer last year on March 6th.’

Our expert parted with more information. ‘Michelangelo was invented some time after March 6th in 1991 and only works on IBM compatible machines like yours.’

‘That’s no comfort,’ I said.

‘Er... no. Still, I can clean up these machines for you and give you a virus-free set-up for the future. But you have to be careful what you feed into computers from the outside. Friends can lend you infected disks. And... do you have any other terminals?’

‘There’s one in my house,’ I said. ‘But someone’s vandalised it.’

The expert looked shocked. ‘You mean, a different virus?’

‘No, I don’t. I mean an axe.’

The physical smashing of a computer pained him, one could see. Internal malignant illnesses were his stock in trade. Axes came into malicious damage, he said.

‘Computer viruses are malicious damage, it seems to me,’ I said.

‘Yes, but it’s a game.’

‘Not if you’ve lost your life’s work,’ I pointed out.

‘If you don’t make back-ups, you’re a nutter.’

I agreed with him entirely about back-ups, but I didn’t think viruses a game. I thought them as wicked as chemical warfare. I’d heard of a computer virus that had wiped out a whole geological survey with the result that wells for water weren’t drilled in time and more than a thousand people in a desert region died. The author of that particular virus had been reported to be delighted with its effectiveness. Too bad about the dead.

I said, ‘I suppose there’s no way of telling whether this virus of ours was introduced into our system on purpose or by accident?’

He stared at me earnestly, hand busy through the hair.

‘It would be unfriendly to do it on purpose.’

‘Yes.’

‘Most viruses are spread by accident, like AIDS.’

‘How long can they lie dormant?’

‘You could have a virus quite a long time before it was triggered into life.’ His eyes held all the sad knowledge of his generation. ‘You have to take precautions.’

I told him I wished we’d known him sooner and mentioned the name of the firm we had dealt with in the past.

He laughed. ‘Half the computers they sold were awash with viruses. They used infected diagnostic disks themselves and they used to re-wrap vermin-ridden disks that people had returned to them in anger and sell them again to the great unsuspecting public. They vanished overnight because they knew March 6th would mean an army of furious customers suing their pants off. Even though March 6th was a Sunday, we’ve dozens of cases like yours to clean up this week. Not our own customers, but theirs.’

Isobel looked shocked. ‘But they were always so nice and helpful, coming out here whenever we needed them.’

‘And feeding in programmes that would keep you needing them, I shouldn’t wonder,’ the expert said with only half-disguised admiration.

‘If you do that to me,’ I said pleasantly, ‘your pants will be off for life.’

He regarded me thoughtfully. ‘I wouldn’t,’ he said, and added, as if safeguarding himself from future accusations of which he would be innocent, ‘Don’t forget the commonest reason for losing all files is pilot error. I mean, you can wipe everything off the hard disk just by typing DEL for Delete, followed by a Directory identification.’

We looked blank.

He said to Isobel, ‘Suppose you typed DEL star full stop star, that’s all it would take. Just as effective as Michelangelo. You’d lose everything for ever.’

‘No!’ She was horrified, predictably.

‘Yes,’ he smiled. ‘But people who write viruses see no fun in that.’

‘But why?’ Isobel asked, unhappily wailing. ‘Why do people want to write viruses to cause such trouble?’

‘To show off,’ I said.

The expert’s eyes widened. He didn’t care overmuch for that assessment, I thought. He tended too much to admire the expertise, not despise the self-indulgence.

‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘it’s true a lot of virus-writers sign their names into the programmes. There’s one called Eddie, he’s invented several.’

‘Just put us back in business,’ I interrupted, tiring suddenly of the whole subject. ‘Keep us clean from now on with regular checks. We’ll work out a maintenance agreement.’

‘Delighted,’ he said, the hand doing double time through the hair. ‘You’ll be up and running by tomorrow.’

I left him preparing to go while writing a list (expensive) of what we would need, and went along to my own office to telephone the makers of my safe.

‘An axe?’ They exclaimed, shocked. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I need the safe opened,’ I confirmed. ‘What can you do and how soon?’

They gave me the phone number of their nearest agent. The nearest agent would no doubt send a locksmith to look-see. Thank you, I said.

The nearest agent sounded unenthusiastic and doubtfully suggested a visit the following week.

‘Tomorrow,’ I said.

There was a sharp intake of breath. I could imagine the pursed lips, the judicial shaking of the head. Possibly Friday afternoon, they said. Possibly. As a great favour they might manage it.

I put the phone down reflecting that if I myself let that sort of general back-pedaling unwillingness creep into responses to requests for my services, I’d be twiddling my thumbs in no time. Not only did I myself drive anywhere anytime if I had no other driver available, but often at five minutes’ notice I’d hire an extra horsebox from a rival so as not to turn work down. I’d almost never been unable to get wheels out on the road. It was a matter of pride, of course, but the sort of pride that got things done.

Aziz came into the office to collect the keys of the Fourtrak in order to drive Lizzie to Heathrow. I handed them to him and reflexively asked him to drive her carefully.

‘Slow down for roundabouts?’ he asked, eyes brilliant.

‘Oh, God.’ I felt like laughing for the first time that morning. ‘Yeah. Get her to the shuttle on time.’

When he’d gone, I sat for a while thinking of this and that, and then I phoned the computer expert again. He answered at once, reporting contentedly that he was fixing yet another Michelangelo casualty and assuring me he’d be back with us tomorrow morning.

‘Fine,’ I said, ‘but... er... could you answer a question?’

‘Fire away.’

I said, ‘Can you change the date in the computer? Could you change its internal clock so that March 6th in the computer wouldn’t turn up at all? Could you change March 6th to March 7th?’

‘Sure,’ he said readily. ‘It’s a well-known way of avoiding March 6th. Switch the clock forward to March 7th then switch it back to the right date a couple of days later. Easy, if you know what you’re doing.’

‘And... you could advance or retard March 6th so that it activated on the actual March 5th or on the actual March 7th?’

‘Yes.’ A pause. ‘That would be positive malice. You’d have to know the virus was in there.’

‘But it would be possible? Possible to change the hours, too?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long would it take you to change the clock?’

‘Me personally? Say a minute, maximum.’

‘And if I did it myself?’

‘Well,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘if someone wrote down for you exactly what to do, step by step, or if you had an instruction book, you’d have to allow maybe five minutes of privacy, because you’d have to concentrate.’ He paused again. ‘Do you seriously think someone changed your clock? Because it’s set to the right date and time now, I’ll tell you.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I just asked.’

‘Anytime,’ he replied. ‘So long. See you tomorrow.’

I was fighting shadows, I thought. Seeing villains behind every bush. The great probability was that my computer, like so many others, had accidentally crashed. And if it hadn’t... then somewhere in its records there must be information I needed for unlocking surrounding mysteries. Information that some foe or other must know I possessed.

To destroy the records, it was easiest to type DEL star full stop star. Yet to do that one had to be present, and the disk failure would be instantaneous. Changing the computer’s clock to activate Michelangelo meant that any future hour could be chosen, like a time bomb going off.

Sandy Smith drove his police car into the farmyard and parked it outside the office window. He came in to join me, taking off his peaked cap and sitting, uninvited but welcome, in the chair across from mine.

‘Jogger’s inquest,’ he said, wiping his forehead.

‘How did it go?’

He shrugged. ‘Opened and adjourned, like I said. I identified him. Dr Farway gave evidence of death. The coroner looked at the photos and he’d read the post-mortem report. He adjourned pending further enquiries.’ Sandy sighed deeply. ‘I’d better warn you he wasn’t happy. I heard it said that Jogger died from crushing and dislocation of the atlas and that there were particles of rust embedded in his skin at the site of the injury.’

‘Rust!’ I repeated, not liking it.

‘There must be rust round the edges of your inspection pit,’ Sandy said.

‘I hope to God there is.’

We looked at each other blankly, still not wanting to put the obvious surmise into words.

Sandy said, ‘The post-mortem put his time of death at about noon.’

‘Did it?’

‘There will be a lot of enquiries.’

I nodded.

‘They’ll want to know what you were doing at the time,’ Sandy said. ‘They’re bound to ask.’

Picking flowers, putting them on my parents’ grave and driving to Maudie Watermead’s lunch. Not brilliant, as alibis went.

‘Let’s go along to the pub for a drink,’ I suggested.

‘I can’t.’ He looked a shade scandalised. ‘I’m on duty.’

‘We could drink Coke,’ I said. ‘I have to go and settle up for Jogger’s memorial.’

‘Oh.’ Sandy’s face looked relieved. ‘All right then.’

‘Can we go in your car? My Fourtrak’s out on an errand.’

He was reluctant to take me and uncomfortable in his refusal.

‘Don’t worry, Sandy,’ I said, tiredly teasing him. ‘I won’t compromise you. I’ll drive Jogger’s old van. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.’

He did want to, however. We drove in convoy to Jogger’s boozer and I gave the landlord a heavy cheque. The landlord was well pleased with the trade and had done his best with the signatures, which filled a sheet of paper the size of a tabloid newspaper and were accompanied by encouraging comments. ‘Poor old Jogger, jogged his last.’ ‘Up the apples and pears to the pearlies. Go for it, Jog.’

‘Upstairs to the pearly gates,’ Sandy interpreted, reading with me.

‘Gone to the great oil change in the sky,’ the landlord said, pointing. ‘That’s mine.’

‘Most appropriate,’ I assured him.

Half of Pixhill seemed to have signed their names but unfortunately all over the place, not in the tidy columns I’d envisaged. Most of my drivers were there, including Lewis, who had been in France collecting Michael’s two-year-olds on that Saturday night. I commented on it. The landlord agreed that more people had signed the memorial than had been with Jogger on his last evening. ‘They wanted to pay their respects,’ he explained.

‘And to drink the free beer,’ Sandy said.

‘Well... old Jogger was a good mate.’

‘Mm,’ I agreed. ‘So which of these people were actually here on Saturday? Sandy, you were here. You’ll know.’

‘I was off duty,’ he protested.

‘Your eyes were still working.’

Sandy looked at the crowded names and pointed out a few with a stubby finger.

‘Of your drivers, Dave definitely, he pretty well lives here. Also Phil and his missus, and Nigel who was chatting her up to Phil’s disgust, and Harve looked in. And Brett, the one who drove that dead man, Ogden, he was there definitely, even though he was supposed to have left Pixhill. He was grousing about you having got shot of him.’

His gaze moved over the names.

‘Bruce Farway! He’s signed it. I didn’t see him here.’

‘The doctor?’ The landlord nodded. ‘He often comes in with those book people who sit in that far corner putting the world to rights. He drinks Aqua Libra.’ He concentrated on the sheet, reading upside down. ‘A whole bunch of Watermead’s lads were here and some from half the stables in Pixhill. That new lady, Mrs English, some of her lads came. New faces. Not a bad bunch. And John Tigwood, he’s always in and out with those collecting boxes. And Watermead’s son and daughter, they were here Saturday, but they haven’t been in since so their names aren’t down, see?’

I asked, surprised, ‘Do you mean Tessa and Ed?’

‘Aye.’

‘But they’re under age,’ Sandy said pompously. ‘They’re not eighteen.’

The landlord took mild offence. ‘I’d only serve them soft drinks. They both like diet Coke.’ He glanced at me slyly. ‘She likes that Nigel, too. That driver of yours.’

‘Does he encourage her?’ I asked.

The landlord laughed. ‘He encourages anything with tits.’

‘You’ll be in trouble serving them without an adult,’ Sandy said.

‘She said Nigel was buying.’

‘You’ll be in trouble,’ Sandy repeated.

‘They didn’t stay long,’ the landlord said defensively. ‘They’d probably gone before you got here.’ He sniffed. ‘I daresay some of those lads aren’t eighteen either, if the truth be told.’

‘You be careful,’ Sandy warned. ‘You can lose your licence faster than blink.’

‘How early did Jogger get drunk?’ I asked.

‘I don’t serve drunks,’ the landlord said virtuously. Sandy snorted.

‘How early, then,’ I rephrased it, ‘did Jogger start talking about aliens, little green men and lone rangers?’

‘He was here from six o’clock until Sandy drove him home,’ the landlord said.

‘What rate of pints per hour?’

‘Two at least,’ Sandy said. ‘Jogger could knock ’em back with the best.’

‘He wasn’t drunk,’ the landlord maintained. ‘Maybe not fit to drive his van, but not drunk.’

‘Reeling a bit,’ Sandy said. ‘He was on about the aliens before I got here at eight or thereabouts. And telling the world, he was, about Poland having five on a horse last summer.’

‘Why?’ the landlord asked me. ‘What does it matter?’

‘Yes,’ Sandy said, ‘and what did Jogger mean?’

‘Heaven knows.’

‘Jogger knows in heaven.’ The landlord was delighted with his own wit. ‘Hear that? Jogger knows in heaven.’

‘Very good,’ Sandy said heavily.

‘Did anything else happen?’ I asked. ‘Who stole the tools out of his van?’

The landlord said he hadn’t a clue.

‘Dave told Jogger to shut up,’ Sandy said.

‘What?’

‘Jogger was getting on his nerves. Jogger just laughed so Dave took a swipe at him.’

The landlord nodded. ‘He knocked Jogger’s drink over.’

‘He hit Jogger?’ I said, astonished. Jogger, because of his fancy footwork, had been instinctively quick on his feet.

‘He missed him,’ Sandy said. ‘You have to get up early to hit Jogger.’

We all listened in silence to what he’d just said.

‘Yes, well...’ Sandy said, stirring. ‘Time I reported back on duty. Are you staying, Freddie?’

‘Nope.’

I followed him out, leaving the memorial with the landlord for framing and hanging on the wall.

‘That Tessa,’ Sandy said, putting on his official hat, ‘she’s a wild one. Not high-spirited, I don’t mean. I mean, well, borderline delinquent. I’d not be surprised if she ends up in court.’

I thought he exaggerated, but I took his estimation seriously. He spent his life with minor offenders: every local bobby did in villages, but he was particularly good at prevention as opposed to retribution. ‘I don’t suppose you could warn Michael Watermead, could you?’ he asked.

‘Difficult.’

‘Try,’ he said. ‘Save Mrs Watermead’s tears.’

I was startled by his imagery. ‘OK,’ I said.

‘Good.’

‘Sandy...’

He stopped in mid-step. ‘Yes?’

‘If someone killed Jogger... if he didn’t just fall... well, catch the bugger.’

He listened to the commitment in my voice. ‘And catch the bugger who took you to Southampton? Catch the bugger who smashed your car and your house and your sister’s little wings?’

‘If it’s possible.’

‘But you don’t trust my colleagues. You don’t help them.’

‘If they treated me as an ally, not a suspect, we’d get on better.’

‘It’s just their way.’

We looked at each other peacefully, long-time friends up to a point. Alone together, we’d have been allies in any investigation. With his colleagues taking charge, the professional fence rose between us like dragons’ teeth. No-man’s-land would keep him loyally in the opposing trenches, though surreptitiously he might send me semaphore messages. I’d have to settle for that. So would he.

I drove Jogger’s old van back to the farmyard and parked it again beside the barn. Its two rear doors were still unlocked and inside there was still nothing but some reddish grey dust. I drove my fingers through the dust and looked at them, not in the least happy with what I saw. The reddish particles among the grey were, to the unmagnified eye, suspiciously like rust.

Brushing the dust off my fingers I went into the barn and stood looking at the floor there, especially at the edges of the pit. There was grease in plenty, and general dirt. There would certainly be rust embedded in it. Steel and damp weather infallibly shed ferric oxide. Rust would be there.

All the same, in memory I surveyed Jogger’s lost tools; the old slider, the sharp axe, the jumbled small spanners, the loops of wire... all those, and the tyre lever. An old strong tyre iron, as long as one’s arm. Ferrous metal, a wide open invitation to rust.

I walked back to my office and wondered how much of my hovering nausea was due to the blow on my own head or the imagined scrunch of a rusty tyre iron into Jogger’s.

You’d have to get up early to hit Jogger...

He’d died about noon in broad daylight.

It had to have been an accident. I didn’t want him to have died simply because he’d worked for me. I could deal with attacks on myself. I didn’t want to bear the guilt of someone else’s death.

Aziz came back from Heathrow, his irrepressible good spirits hovering in a liquid smile even while he commiserated with me over the Jaguar.

‘It can’t have been easy to get a car to run at that speed into a helicopter. Not on flat land. Not without risking your neck.’

‘That’s no comfort,’ I pointed out.

‘I took a quick decko into the wreck,’ he said, bright-eyed. ‘I’d say the accelerator pedal was wedged down with a brick.’

‘A brick? I haven’t any bricks.’

‘What’s a brick doing there, then?’

I shook my head.

‘You’d have to be nippy,’ he said. ‘You’d have only seconds to get clear once you’d got up enough speed.’

‘It has automatic gears,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘It sets... set... off slowly, left to itself.’

He nodded happily. ‘Nice little problem.’

‘How would you solve it, then?’

He had already been thinking about it, as he answered without hesitation, ‘I’d wind down the driver’s window, for a start. I’d have a brick lashed to one end of a stick with the other end through the window. I’d slide into the driver’s seat, start the engine, put the gear lever in drive, slide out again at slow speed and shut the door, then through the window I’d push the accelerator down hard with the brick and jump away just before impact.’ He grinned. ‘Mind you, it would take nerve. And you’d have to start a good way back from the helicopter to get up enough speed for that amount of damage. You’d have to be running by the end.’

‘There must be a simpler way,’ I said. ‘No one would risk their life like that.’

‘You’re not dealing with common sense,’ Aziz said. ‘Your sister showed me the havoc in your sitting room. You’ve got a gold-plated wrecker on the loose. Can’t you hear him? He’s shouting at you. “Look at me, look at what I can do, see how clever I am.” That sort of character likes taking risks. It’s life’s blood. It gives him his buzz.’

I said flatly, ‘How do you know?’

The shining eyes flickered. ‘Observation,’ he said.

‘Observation of who?’

‘Oh, this person and that.’ He flapped a hand vaguely. ‘No one particular.’

I didn’t pursue it. He wasn’t going to tell me. I was interested, all the same, in his assessment. It matched pretty faithfully what the expert had said about the pattern of computer virus writers, the look-at-clever-me syndrome. The overpowering self-regard that could express itself only in destruction.

‘Does one wrecker,’ I asked slowly, ‘egg on another?’

His expression was street-smart beyond any other I’d met. ‘Ever heard of football yobbos?’

Murderous, I thought.

I thanked Aziz for driving Lizzie.

‘Nice lady,’ he said. ‘Any old time.’

I rubbed a hand over my face, asked Aziz to check with Harve about jobs for the next day and told Isobel and Rose I’d be back in the morning.

On the short way home I noticed that my neighbour had a small pile of bricks beside his gate. The bricks had been there for weeks, I realised. I’d never paid them any attention.

I stopped the jalopy by the wreck of the Jaguar and looked through the space that had once been the driver’s side window. There was indeed a brick — or the remains of one — jumbled in the squeezed space. The brick had broken into three pieces. Bricks were brittle. Brick dust was reddish, like rust.

I’m delirious, I thought.

I let myself into the house with the keys Aziz had brought from Lizzie and switched on the television in my bedroom to watch the racing at Cheltenham.

I sat in the armchair and then lay on the bed and then fell inexorably asleep as if brain-dead and stayed that way until long after the last horse had passed the winning post.

Thursday morning, Cheltenham Gold Cup day, once greeted with raised pulse and thudding hope, found me that particular week with a creaking stiffness in my limbs and a craving to curl up and let the world pass by.

Instead, driven by curiosity more than a sense of duty, I put on shirt and tie and drove to Winchester, pausing for five minutes on the way with Isobel and Rose. They could fill in the time before the arrival of the computer-reviver, I suggested, by making a list of everyone they could think of who’d set foot in their offices the previous week.

They looked at me blankly. Dozens of people had crossed their doorstep, it seemed, starting with all the drivers. I would take the drivers for granted, I said. Just list everyone else, and put a star against those that had been in on Friday. They were doubtful if they could remember. Try, I said.

I collected Dave from the canteen and took him with me to Winchester, though he was reluctant to go and spent the whole twenty-minute journey in unaccustomed silence.

The inquest on Kevin Keith Ogden, proved, as Sandy had promised, to be a comparatively simple affair. The coroner, quiet and businesslike, had read the paperwork before coming to the proceedings and, though thorough, saw no benefit in wasting time.

He spoke with kindness to a thin, miserable woman in black, who agreed that yes, she was Lynn Melissa Ogden, and yes, she had identified the dead man as her husband, Kevin Keith.

Bruce Farway, consulted, reported that he’d been called to the house of Frederick Croft on the previous Thursday evening and had determined Kevin Keith to be deceased. The coroner, reading aloud from a paper, accepted the post-mortem report that death had resulted from heart failure caused by a string of abstruse medical conditions that probably no one in the room understood except Farway, who was nodding.

The coroner had received a letter from Kevin Keith’s own doctor detailing the patient’s history and the pills he had been advised to keep taking. He asked the widow if the pills had been faithfully swallowed. Not always, she said.

‘Mr... er... Yates?’ asked the coroner, looking around for a response.

‘Here, sir,’ Dave answered hoarsely.

‘You gave a lift to Mr Ogden in one of Mr Croft’s horseboxes, is that right? Tell us about it.’

Dave made it as short as he could, sweating and uncomfortable.

‘We couldn’t wake him, like, at Chieveley...’

The coroner asked if Kevin Keith had shown any physical distress before that.

‘No, sir. He never said a word. We thought he was asleep, like.’

‘Mr Croft?’ the coroner said, identifying me easily. ‘You called Police Constable Smith when you’d seen Mr Ogden?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And Constable Smith, you called Dr Farway?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The coroner shuffled the papers together and looked neutrally at those present. ‘The finding of this court is that Mr Kevin Ogden died of natural causes.’ After a pause, when no one moved, he said, ‘That’s all, everyone. Thank you for your attendance. You have each behaved with commendable promptness and commonsense in this sad occurrence.’

He gave Mrs Ogden one last sympathetic smile, and that was that. We trooped out onto the pavement and I heard Mrs Ogden enquiring forlornly about taxis.

‘Mrs Ogden,’ I said, ‘can I give you a lift?’

She focused weak-looking grey eyes on my face and indecisively fluttered her hands. ‘It’s only to the railway...’

‘I’ll take you... if you don’t mind a Fourtrak?’

She looked as if she’d never heard of a Fourtrak but would have settled for an elephant if all else failed.

I persuaded Sandy to take Dave back to Pixhill and set off with Mrs Ogden who was not exactly crying but in a definite state of shock.

‘It didn’t take long, did it?’ she said defeatedly. ‘It didn’t seem much of a thing, did it? I mean, not at the end of someone’s life.’

‘Not a great thing,’ I agreed. ‘But you’ll have a service of thanksgiving, perhaps.’

She didn’t look cheered. She said, ‘Are you Freddie Croft?’

‘That’s right.’ I glanced at her, thinking. ‘When does your train leave?’ I asked.

‘Not for ages.’

‘How about some coffee, then?’

She said wanly that it would be nice and settled apathetically into an armchair in the empty front lounge of a mock-Tudor hotel. Coffee took its time coming but was fresh in a Cafétière pot, with cream and rosebudded china on a silvery tray.

Mrs Ogden, until then huddled palely into her black shapeless overcoat, began to loosen a little by undoing the buttons. Under the coat, more black. Black shoes, black handbag, black gloves, black scarf. An overstatement.

‘A terrible shock for you,’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘Your daughter must be a comfort.’

‘We never had a daughter. He made that up, to get lifts.’

‘Did he?’

‘He had to make things up.’ She gave me a sudden look of panic, the first crack in the ice. ‘He lost his job, you see.’

‘He was... a salesman?’ I guessed.

‘No. He was in sales. Under-manager. The firm got taken over. Most of the management were made redundant.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘He couldn’t get another job, you see. Not at fifty-four, with a bad heart.’

‘Life’s unfair.’

‘He’s been unemployed for four years. We’ve spent the redundancy money and our savings... the building society’s repossessing the house... and... and... it’s all too much.’

And he’d bounced cheques, I thought, and failed to pay hotel bills, and tried to live on scraps gleaned from a feeble transport scheme, travelling around free by lifts cadged on the basis of a sob story about a non-existent daughter’s wedding.

Lynn Melissa Ogden looked as hammered into the ground as a tent peg. She had greying straight brown hair tied back in the nape of her neck with a narrow black ribbon. No cosmetics. Pinched lines round her mouth. The cords of age in her neck.

I asked sympathetically, ‘Do you yourself have a job?’

‘I used to.’ The greyness in her skin looked like despair. ‘I worked in a greengrocer’s but Kev... well, he’s gone now, it can’t hurt to say it... Kev took some money out of their till, and they were pretty good about it, they didn’t get the police but they said I’d have to go.’

‘Yes.’

‘We were eating on that money.’ She trembled with futile anger. ‘Feeding ourselves on my wages and the things like rotting fruit and veggies that the shop couldn’t sell. How could he?’

‘He could have sold that ring, perhaps,’ I suggested. ‘I saw it on his finger... gold and onyx.’

‘That was a fake,’ she said dully. ‘He sold the real one months ago. He missed it so much... He cried, you know. So I bought him that one... it was rubbish, but he wore it.’

I refilled her coffee cup. She drank absently, the cup clattering on the saucer when she put it down.

‘Why did your husband want to go to the Chieveley service station?’ I asked.

‘He had to—’ She stopped and considered, then said, ‘I don’t suppose it matters anymore. He can’t get into any more trouble... I told him I couldn’t bear any more of it, but I did, of course. We’d been married thirty-three years... I loved him once but then... for a long time... I’ve been sorry for him, you see, and I couldn’t kick him out, could I? Because where would he go? And he hadn’t been home for weeks because the police had been round... I don’t know why I’m telling you...’

‘Because you need to tell someone.’

‘Oh, yes. And appearances, you see? I can’t tell our neighbours and we hardly have any friends left because Kev borrowed money from them...’

And never repaid. The words were as stark as if she’d actually said them.

‘So why was he going to Chieveley?’ I asked again.

‘People used to phone the house and ask him to take things for them from one place to another. I said he’d get into trouble doing that. I mean, he could have been carrying bits to make bombs, or drugs, or anything. Quite often he took dogs or cats... he quite liked that. He put an ad in Horse and Hound sometimes. People would pay his train fare to take their animals but he’d cash in the tickets and go thumbing. I mean, he hadn’t any pride left, you see. Everything had come apart.’

‘Wretched,’ I said.

‘We paid the phone bill,’ she said. ‘We always paid the phone bill. And I’d take the messages for him and he would phone me whenever he could use someone’s phone for nothing. But we couldn’t have gone on much longer...’

‘No.’

‘It’s a blessing for him, really, that he died.’

‘Mrs Ogden...’

‘Well, it is. He was ashamed, you see, my poor old boy.’

I thought of all their awful shared misery and judged that Kevin Keith had been undeservedly lucky to have had Lynn Melissa.

‘He wasn’t carrying an animal in my horsebox, though,’ I said.

‘No.’ She looked doubtful. ‘It was something to do with animals, though. It was an answer to the Horse and Hound ad. A woman phoned. She wanted Kev to meet someone at Pontefract service station and go to South Mimms service station and then go in your horsebox to Chieveley.’

‘Ah,’ I said.

She didn’t understand the depth of comprehension in my voice, but looked simply surprised by it.

‘Who was he going to meet at Chieveley?’ I asked.

‘She didn’t say. She just said someone would meet him when he got out of the horsebox. Someone would meet him and pay him and take what he was carrying, and that would be the end of it.’

‘And you agreed to that?’

‘Well, yes, of course I did. We lived on it, you see.’

‘Who was he meeting at Pontefract?’

‘She just said “someone” would meet him and give him a small carrier bag.’

‘Did she say what would be in it?’

‘Yes, she said a thermos flask but he wasn’t to open it.’

‘Mm. Would he have opened it?’

‘Oh, no.’ She was definite. ‘He’d be afraid of not being paid. And he always said what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.’

A recipe for disaster if ever I heard one.

She looked at her watch, thanked me for the coffee and said she’d better get along to the station, if I didn’t mind.

‘How about the train fare?’ I asked.

‘Oh... they gave me a voucher. The police or the court or someone. They gave me one to come down last Saturday, too, to identify him.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Everyone’s been kind.’

Poor Mrs Ogden. I drove her to the station and waited with her until her train came, though she said I needn’t. I would have liked to give her money to see her through some of her present troubles, but I didn’t think she would take it. I would get her address from Sandy, I thought, and send her something in remembrance of Kevin Keith, her poor old boy who seemed to have precipitated me into a maelstrom.