Risk

7

Thursday morning I went back to the office and tried to take up my life where it had left off.

The same smell of typewriters, filing cabinets, reams of paper. Same bustle, adding machines, telephones. Same heaps of too much work. All familiar, all unreal.

Our two assistants, Debbie and Peter, had had a rough time, they said aggrievedly, trying to account to everyone for my unaccountable absence. They had reported my disappearance to the police, who had said I was over twenty-one and had the right to duck out if I wanted to, and that they would look for me only if I’d committed a crime, or was clearly a missing victim. They had thought I had merely gone off on a celebratory binge after winning the Gold Cup.

‘We told them you wouldn’t have gone away for so long,’ Peter said. ‘But they didn’t show much interest.’

‘We wanted them to get in touch with Mr King, through Interpol,’ Debbie complained. ‘And they laughed at the idea.’

‘I expect they would,’ I said. ‘So Trevor is still on his holiday?’

‘He’s not due back until Monday,’ Peter said, surprised that I should have forgotten something I knew so well.

‘Oh yes...’

I spent the morning re-organising the time-table and getting Peter to make new appointments to replace those I’d missed, and the afternoon discovering that as far as the police were concerned, my troubles were still of little interest. I was back home, wasn’t I? Unharmed? Without having to pay a ransom? Was there any form of extortion? No. Was I starved? No. Beaten? No. Tied with ropes, straps, shackles? No. Was I sure it wasn’t a practical joke? They would look into it, they said: but one of them remarked that he wouldn’t mind a free fortnight’s trip to the Mediterranean, and his colleague laughed. I gathered that if I seriously wanted to get to know, I would have to do the investigating myself.

I did want to know. Not knowing felt dangerously unsafe, like standing behind a bad tempered horse. If I didn’t know why I’d been taken the first time, how was I to stop it happening again?

Thursday evening I collected my Dolomite, which had been moved to the Cheltenham racecourse manager’s front drive. (‘Where on earth have you been? We traced that it was your car through the police.’) Next I drove to the house of the racecourse valet to pick up my wallet and keys and racing saddle. (‘Where on earth have you been? I gave the racecourse manager your car keys, I hope that’s all right.’) Then I drove back to my cottage (having spent the previous night in an airport hotel), and with faint-hearted caution let myself in.

No one was waiting there in the dark, with coshes or ether or one-way tickets to sail lockers. I switched on all the lights and poured myself a stiff Scotch and told myself to calm down and take a better grip.

I telephoned to the trainer I regularly rode early morning exercise for (‘Where on earth have you been?’) and arranged to start again on Monday: and I rang a man who had asked me to ride in a hunter ’chase, to apologise for not turning up. I saw no reason not to answer the questions about where I’d been, so I told them all: abducted and taken on a boat to Minorca, and I didn’t know why. I thought at least that someone might come up with a possible explanation, but everyone I told sounded as flummoxed as I felt.

There wasn’t much food in the cottage, and the steak in the fridge had grown whiskers. I decided on spaghetti, with chopped up cheese melting on it, but before starting to cook I went upstairs to change new jacket for old sweater, and to make a detour to the bathroom.

I glanced casually out of the bathroom window and spent a frozen instant in pure panic.

There was a man in the garden, looking towards the downstairs rooms of the cottage. The light from the sitting-room window fell brightly on his face.

I hadn’t consciously remembered him, but I knew him at once, in one heart-stopping flash of the inner eye. He was the fake St. John’s Ambulance man from Cheltenham races.

Behind him, in the road, stood a car, with gleams of light edging its roof and windows. A second man was levering himself out of the passenger’s seat, carrying what looked like a plastic bag containing cotton wool. A third figure, dimly seen, was heading through the garden to the back of the house.

They couldn’t, I thought: surely they couldn’t think they would trick me again. But with three of them, they hardly needed tricks.

The St. John’s man waved his arm to the man by the car, and pointed, and the two of them took up positions, one on each side of my front door, out of sight of anyone opening it from the inside. The St. John’s man stretched out an arm and rang my bell.

I unfroze.

Wonderful how terror sharpened the wits. There was only one place I could hide, and that was in my bedroom. The speed with which I’d gone over the side of the boat was nothing compared with my disappearance inside the cottage.

Downstairs in the sitting-room the huge old fireplace had at one side incorporated a bread-oven, which the people living there before me had removed, constructing instead a head-high alcove with display shelves. Wanting a safe place in which to keep valuables, they had opened the upper part of the bread-oven space into the bedroom above, where it formed a sort of box below the floor of the built-in wardrobe. Not having much in the way of valuables, I stored my two suitcases in there instead.

I opened the wardrobe door, and pulled up the hinged flap of flooring, and hauled out the cases.

The door bell rang again, insistently.

Lowering myself into the space took seconds, and I had the wardrobe door shut and the flap of floor almost in place when they burst in through the front door.

They rampaged through the place, opening and slamming doors, and shouting, and finally gathering all together downstairs.

‘He must be bloody here.’

‘Britten! Britten, come out, we know you’re here.’

‘The effing bastard’s scarpered.’

I could hear every loud word through the chipboard partition between my hiding place and the sitting room. It felt horribly vulnerable sitting there, level with the picture over the mantelshelf, practically in the room with them, hidden only by a thin piece of wall.

‘He couldn’t have seen us coming.’

‘He never got out of the back, I’ll tell you that for sure.’

‘Then where the bleeding hell is he?’

‘How about those suitcases of his upstairs?’

‘No. He ain’t in them. They’re too small. And I looked.’

‘He must be meaning to bleeding scarper.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Take another butcher’s upstairs. He must be here somewhere.’

They searched the whole house again, crashing about with heavy boots.

One of them opened the wardrobe above me for the second time, and saw nothing but clothes, as before. I sat under their feet and sweated, and felt my pulse shoot up to the hundreds.

‘Look under the bed,’ he said.

‘Can’t. The bed’s right on the floor.’

‘How about the other bedroom, then?’

‘I looked. He ain’t there.’

‘Well, bleeding well look again.’

The wardrobe door closed above me. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and tried to ease my legs without scraping my shoes on the wall and making a noise. I was half sitting, half lying, in a recess about three feet long by two feet deep, and just wide enough for my shoulders. My knees were bent acutely, with my heels against the backs of my thighs. It was a bad position for every muscle I could think of.

Two of them came into the sitting-room, one after the other.

‘What you got there? Here, let me see.’

‘None of your bleeding business.’

‘It’s his wallet. You’ve got his wallet.’

‘Yeah. Well, it was in his bedroom.’

‘Well, bleeding well put it back.’

‘Not likely, he’s got thirty quid in it.’

‘You’ll effing well do as I say. You know the orders, same as I do. Don’t steal nothink, don’t break nothink. I told you.’

‘You can have half, then.’

‘Give it to me. I’ll put it back. I don’t trust you.’ It was the St. John’s man talking, I thought.

‘It’s bloody stupid, not nicking what we can get.’

‘You want the fuzz on our necks? They didn’t bloody look for him last time, and they won’t bloody look for him this time, either, but they will if they find his place has been turned over. Use your bloody loaf.’

‘We ain’t got him yet.’

‘Matter of time. He’s round here some place. Bound to be.’

‘He won’t come back if he sees us in here.’

‘No, you got a point there. Tell you what, we’ll turn the lights off and wait for him, and jump him, like.’

‘He left all the lights on, himself. He won’t come in if they’re off.’

‘Best if one of us waits in the kitchen, like, and the other two in the garden. Then when he gets here we can jump him from both sides, right, just as he’s coming back through the door.’

‘Yeah.’

Into these plans there suddenly came a fresh voice, female and enquiring.

‘Mr Britten? Mr Britten, are you there?’

I heard her push the front door open and take the step into the sitting-room.

The voice of my next-door-neighbour.

Yes, Mrs Morris, I’m here, I thought. And it would take more than me and a small plump senior citizen to fight off my unwanted guests.

‘Who are you?’ she said.

‘Friends of his. Calling on him, like.’

‘He’s away,’ she said sharply.

‘No he’s not. He’s back. His car’s round the side. And he’s having a drink, see? Whisky.’

‘Then where is he? Mr Britten?’ she called.

‘Ain’t no use, lady. He’s out. We’re waiting for him, like.’

‘I don’t think you should be in here.’ A brave lady, old Mrs Morris.

‘We’re friends of his, see.’

‘You don’t look like his friends,’ she said.

‘Know his friends, then, do yer?’

A certain nervousness crept into her voice, but the resolution was still there.

‘I think you’d better wait outside.’

There was a pause, then the St. John’s man said, ‘Where do you think he could be? We’ve searched all over for him.’

Let her not know about this hiding place, I prayed. Let her not think of it.

‘He might’ve gone to the pub,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you go down there? To the Fox.’

‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘Anyway, I think I’ll just see you out.’

Intrepid little Mrs Morris. I heard them all go out, and shut the front door behind them. The lock clicked decisively. The cottage was suddenly still.

I lay quiet, listening for their car to start.

Nothing happened.

They were still there, I thought. Outside. Round my house. Waiting.

On the mantelshelf, the clock ticked.

I cautiously pushed up the flap over my head, and sat up, straightening knees, back and neck, with relief.

The light in my bedroom was still on, shining in a crack under the wardrobe door. I left the door shut. If they saw so much as a shadow move they would know for sure I was inside the house.

I reflected that I had had a good deal too much practice at passing uncertain hours in small dark places.

The lock clicked on my front door.

One gets to know the noises of one’s own house so well that sight is unnecessary for interpretation. I heard the unmistakeable sound of the hinges, and the gritty sound of a shoe on the bare flagstones of the entrance hall. Then there were quiet noises in the sitting room itself, and low voices, and the squeak of the door to the kitchen. They had come back in a way that would not bring Mrs Morris.

I sat rigidly, wondering whether to slide down into the smaller space and risk them hearing my movements, or stay with head and shoulders above floor level and risk them searching my clothes’ cupboard yet again. If I coughed or sneezed, or as much as knocked the chipboard with my elbow as I slid down into the safer hiding place, they would hear me. I sat immobile, stretching my own ears and wondering despairingly how long they would stay.

Breathing evenly was difficult: controlling my heartbeat was impossible. Acute anxiety over a period of hours was highly shattering to the nerves.

From time to time I could hear them moving and murmuring, but could no longer distinctly hear their words. I supposed that they too were hiding, waiting out of sight for me to come home. It was almost funny when one thought of it: them hiding behind the furniture and me within the walls.

Unfunny if they found me. More like unfaceable.

I took a deep shaky breath, one of many.

Someone began to come quietly upstairs. The familiar creaks of the old treads fizzed through my body like electric shocks. The risk of moving had to be taken. I tucked my elbows in and bent my knees, and eased myself back under the floor. The flap came down hard on my hair and I thought wildly that they must have heard it: but no one arrived with triumphant shouts, and the awful suspense just went on and on.

I got pains from being bent up, and I got cramps, but there was nothing I could do about that except surrender.

One of them spent a good time in my bedroom. I could hear his footfall through the floorboards, and the small thuds of drawers shutting. Guessed he was no longer looking for me, but at what I owned. It didn’t make his nearness to me any safer.

The fear seemed endless; but everything ends. I heard them murmuring again in the sitting room, and shutting the kitchen door. The man upstairs went down again. More murmurings: a chorus. Then silence for a while. Then a step or two in the hall, and the click of the front door closing.

I waited, thinking that only one of them had gone out.

Their car started. Shifted quietly into gear. Drove off.

I still lay without moving, not trusting that it was over, that it wasn’t a trick: but the absolute quietness persisted, and in the end I pushed up the flap of the floor and levered myself with much wincing and pins-and-needles onto my bedroom carpet.

The lights were still on, but the black square of window was grey. The whole night had passed. It was dawn.

I threw a few things into one of the suitcases and left the cottage ten minutes later.

The Yale lock on the front door showed no signs of forcing, and I guessed they must have opened it with a credit card, as I myself had done once when I’d locked myself out. My car stood untouched where I’d left it, and even my half-drunk glass of Scotch was still on the sitting-room table.

Feeling distinctly unsettled I had a wash, shave and breakfast at the Chequers Hotel, and then went to the police.

‘Back again?’ they said.

They listened, made notes, asked questions.

‘Do you know who they were?’

‘No.’

‘Any evidence of a forced entry?’

‘No.’

‘Anything stolen?’

‘No.’

‘Nothing we can do, sir.’

‘Look,’ I said, ‘these people are trying to abduct me. They’ve succeeded once, and they’re trying again. Can’t you do a damn thing to help?’

They seemed fairly sympathetic, but the answer was no. They hadn’t enough men or money to mount a round-the-clock guard on anyone for an indefinite period without a very good reason.

‘Isn’t the threat of abduction a very good reason?’

‘No. If you believe the threat, you could hire yourself a private bodyguard.’

‘Thanks very much,’ I said. ‘But if anyone reports me missing again, I won’t have gone by choice, and you might do me a favour and start looking.’

‘If they do, sir, we will.’

I went to the office and sat at my desk and watched my hands shake. Whatever I normally had in the way of mental and physical stamina was at a very low ebb.

Peter came in with a cable and his usual expression of not quite grasping the point, and handed me the bad news. CAR BROKEN DOWN RETURNING WEDNESDAY APOLOGIES TREVOR.

‘You read this?’ I asked Peter.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, you’d better fetch Mr King’s list, for next week, and his appointment book.’

He went on the errand and I sat and looked blankly at the cable. Trevor had sent it from some town I’d never heard of in France, and had given no return address. He wouldn’t be worried, wherever he was. He would be sure I could take his extra few days in my stride.

Peter came back with the list and I laced my fingers together to keep them still. What did people take for tranquillisers?

‘Get me some coffee,’ I said to Peter. His eyebrows rose. ‘I know it’s only a quarter past nine,’ I said, ‘but get me some coffee... please.’

When he brought the coffee I sent him to fetch Debbie, so that I could share between them the most urgent jobs. Neither of them had a good brain, but they were both persistent, meticulous plodders, invaluable qualities in accountants’ assistants. In many offices the assistants were bright and actively studying to become accountants themselves, but Trevor for some reason seemed always to prefer working with the unambitious sort. Peter was twenty-two, Debbie twenty-four. Peter, I thought, was a latent homosexual who hadn’t quite realised it. Debbie, mousy-haired, big-busted, and pious, had a boyfriend working in a hardware shop. Peter occasionally made jokes about screws, which shocked her.

They sat opposite my desk with notebooks poised, both of them looking at me with misgiving.

‘You really look awfully ill,’ Debbie said. ‘Worse even than yesterday. Grey, sort of.’ There seemed to be more ghoulish relish in her voice than concern.

‘Yes, well, never mind that,’ I said. ‘I’ve looked at Mr King’s list, and there are a few accounts that won’t wait until he gets back.’ There were two he should have seen to before he went, but no one was perfect. ‘Certificates for the solicitors, Mr Crest, and Mr Grant. I’m afraid they are already overdue. Could you bring all the papers for those two in here, Debbie? Later, I mean. Not this instant. Then there are the two summonses to appear before the Commissioners next Thursday. I’ll apply for postponements for those, but you’d better bring all the books in here, Debbie, anyway, and I’ll try and make a start on them.’

‘That’s the Axwood stables, is it? And Millrace Stud?’

‘Not the stud; that’s the week after. Mr King can deal with that. The Axwood stables, yes, and those corn merchants, Coley Young.’

‘The Coley Young books aren’t here yet,’ Peter said.

‘Well, for crying out loud, didn’t you do what I said two weeks ago, and tell them to send them?’ I could hear the scratch in my voice and did my best to stop it. ‘O.K.,’ I said slowly. ‘Did you ask them to send them?’

‘Yes, I did.’ Peter tended to look sulky. ‘But they haven’t come.’

‘Ring them again, would you? And what about the Axwood stables?’

‘You checked those yourself, if you remember.’

‘Did I?’ I looked back as if to a previous existence. The two summons to appear before the Commissioners were not particularly serious. We seldom actually went. The summonses were issued when the Inland Revenue thought a particular set of accounts were long overdue: a sort of goad to action. It meant that Trevor or I asked for a postponement, did the accounts, and sent them in before the revised date. End of drama. The two summonses in question had arrived after Trevor had left for his holidays, which was why he hadn’t dealt with them himself.

‘You said the petty cash book hadn’t arrived,’ Peter said.

‘Did I? Did you ask them to send it?’

‘Yes, I did, but it hasn’t come.’

I sighed. ‘Ring them again.’

A great many clients saw no urgency at all in getting their accounts done, and requests from us for further information or relevant papers were apt to be ignored for weeks.

‘Tell them both they really will have to go before the Commissioners if they don’t send those books.’

‘But they won’t really, will they?’ Peter said. Not the brightest of boys, I thought.

‘I’ll get adjournments anyway,’ I said patiently, ‘but Trevor will need those books to hand the second he gets back.’

Debbie said, ‘Mr Wells rang three times yesterday afternoon.’

‘Who is Mr Wells? Oh yes. Mr Wells.’

‘He says one of his creditors is applying to have him made bankrupt and he wants to know what you’re going to do about it.’

I’d forgotten all the details of Mr Wells’ troubles. ‘Where are his books?’ I asked.

‘In one of those boxes,’ Debbie said, pointing. A three-high row of large cardboard boxes ran along the wall under the window. Each box had the name of the client on it, in large black letters, and each contained the cash books, invoices, receipts, ledgers, paying-in books, bank statements, petty cash records, stocktakings and general paraphernalia needed for the assessment of taxes. Each of the boxes represented a task I had yet to do.

It took me an average of two working days to draw up the annual accounts for each client. Some audits took longer. I had roughly two hundred clients. The thing was impossible.

Trevor had collared the bigger firms and liked to spend nearly a week on each. He dealt with seventy clients. No wonder Commissioners’ summonses fell on us like snow.

Peter and Debbie did most of the routine work, checking bank statements against cheque numbers, and against invoices paid. Someone extra to share that work would only help Trevor and me to a certain extent. Taking a third fully equal partner would certainly reduce the pressure, but it would also entail dividing the firm’s profits into three instead of two, which would mean a noticeable drop in income. Trevor was totally opposed. Amalgamation with the London firm meant Trevor not being boss and me not going racing... a fair sized impasse, all in all.

‘Debbie and I didn’t get our pay cheques last week,’ Peter said. ‘Nor did Bess.’ Bess was the typist.

‘And the water heater in the washroom is running cold,’ Debbie added. ‘And you did say I could go to the dentist this afternoon at three-thirty.’

‘Sorry about all the extra work,’ Peter said, not sounding it, ‘but I’m afraid it’s my Friday for the Institute of Accounting Staff class.’

‘Mm,’ I said. ‘Peter, telephone to Leyhill Prison and ask if Connaught Powys is still there.’

‘What?’

‘Leyhill Prison. Somewhere in Gloucestershire. Get the number from directory enquiries.’

‘But...’

‘Just go and do it,’ I said. ‘Connaught Powys. Is he still there.’

He went out looking mystified, but then he, like Debbie, dated from after the searchingly difficult court case. Debbie went to fetch the first batch of the papers I needed, and I began on the solicitors’ certificates.

Since embezzlement of clients’ trust monies had become a flourishing industry, laws had been passed to ensure that auditors checked every six months to see that the cash and securities which were supposed to be in a solicitor’s care, actually were there. If they weren’t, Nemesis swiftly struck the solicitor off the Roll. If they were, the auditor signed the certificate and pocketed his fee.

Peter returned as if he’d come from a dangerous mission, looking noble.

‘The prison said he was released six weeks ago, on February 16th.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I had a good deal of trouble in getting through.’

‘Er... well done,’ I said. He still looked as if he thought more praise was due, but he didn’t get it.

If Connaught Powys had been out for six weeks, he would have had a whole month to fix me up with a voyage. I tried hard to concentrate on the checking for the certificates but the sail locker kept getting in the way.

Solicitor Grant’s affair tallied at about the third shot, but I kept making errors with Denby Crest’s. I realised I’d always taken clarity of mind for granted, like walking: one of those things you don’t consciously value until you’ve lost it. Numbers, from my infancy, had been like a second language, understood without effort. I checked Denby Crest’s figures five times and kept getting a fifty thousand pounds’ discrepancy, and knowing him, as he occasionally did work for us, it was ridiculous. Denby Crest was no crook, I thought in exasperation. It’s my useless muddle-headed thought processes. Somewhere I was transposing a decimal point, making a mountain out of a molehill discrepancy of probably five pounds or fifty pence.

In the end I telephoned his office and asked to speak to him.

‘Look, Denby,’ I said, ‘I’m most awfully sorry, but are you sure we’ve got all the relevant papers?’

‘I expect so,’ he said, sounding impatient. ‘Why don’t you leave it for Trevor? He gets back to England tomorrow, doesn’t he?’

I explained about the broken-down car. ‘He won’t be back in the office until Wednesday or Thursday.’

‘Oh.’ He sounded disconcerted and there was a perceptible pause. ‘All the same,’ he said, ‘Trevor is used to our ways. Please leave our certificate until he gets back.’

‘But it’s overdue,’ I said.

‘Tell Trevor to call me,’ he said. ‘And now, I’m sorry, but I have a client with me. So if you’ll excuse me...’

He disconnected. I shuffled his papers together thankfully and thought that if he wanted to risk waiting for Trevor it was certainly all right by me.

At twelve-thirty Peter and Debbie went out to lunch, but I didn’t feel hungry. I sat in shirtsleeves before the newly tackled sea of Mr Wells’ depressing papers: put my elbows on the desk, and propped my forehead on the knuckles of my right hand, and shut my eyes. Thought a lot of rotten thoughts and wondered about buying myself a one-way ticket to Antarctica.

A voice said, ‘Are you ill, asleep or posing for Rodin?’

I looked up, startled.

She was standing in the doorway. Young, fair, slender pretty.

‘I’m looking for Trevor,’ she said.

One couldn’t have everything, I supposed.