The Melting Man

CHAPTER TWO

Whoever it was took another shot at me just before I reached the boathouse. The bullet whined overhead, too close for comfort. Angry, frightened and short of breath, I reached the shelter of the side of the boathouse.

I looked back along the pier. The two men were fishing on the lake, not even looking in my direction. There's nothing like a fisherman for being truly absorbed in his sport.

I poked my head round the far side of the boathouse and eyed the near pines. To my surprise a man in jeans and a Windbreaker came out of the cover of the trees and began to run up the side of them. In his hand he carried a rifle.

Sportingly, I gave him fifty yards' start and then went after him, doing a zigzag along the outer row of pines so that I had cover most of the way. The ground sloped gently upwards and where the pines finished was a five-barred gate.

The man with the rifle vaulted it and stooped to pick something out of the grass near the hedge on the other side. It was a motor scooter. He slung the rifle over his back by the sling. Seeing this, I sprinted. I saw the movement of his right leg as he kicked the engine start.

I reached the gate just as he drove away fast down a rough lane. I leaned on the gate and watched him, making a mental note of the number of the scooter. JN4839. Twenty yards from me, he twisted his head back over his shoulder to look at me. I gave him a wave and the bastard briefly waved back. His face was coal-black.

I went slowly back to the pier wondering what I had done to incur the wrath of the coloured races. Nothing as far as I knew, recently. As I reached the end of the pier the boat was just pulling in.

It was being rowed by a little jockey of a man with a face like a shrivelled lemon. Round his neck was a pair of field-glasses. This, I guessed, was Tich, the chauffeur. He was in shirt and trousers and had a big cigar clamped into the corner of his mouth and on his head was an old cloth cap stuck about with trout-flies. Sitting in the stern, on a comfortable chair-arrangement which had been fitted, was Cavan O'Dowda.

While they made the last twenty yards I had time to get a good look at him. Standing, I reckoned he would go about six feet six, and he had more than the girth to go with it. He would have had trouble packing himself into my overnight sleeper. When he'd been made there must have been a lot of spare material lying around which they'd decided to get rid of. I put him at somewhere around sixty. He was wearing a light blue siren-suit and gum-boots. His head was pumpkin-shaped and large enough, if it had been one, to take a prize anywhere. So far as I could see he had no neck and his hair was so close-cropped that it looked like a faint powdering of red-brown dust. He was wearing dark Polaroid glasses and had a cigar clamped into the corner of his mouth. His hands were huge, backed with a faint down of ginger hair — but they were good hands, capable and sensitive, as I saw when he began to fish later.

As the boat steadied at the bottom of the pier steps, O'Dowda said, 'You Mr Carver?'

'Just.'

He gave no sign of being aware of the irony. 'Get in,' he said.

As I went down the steps, he took off his glasses to rub his eyes and I saw that they were light blue, much too small for his face, and embedded in a puffy setting of fat wrinkles. He was not only the most unwholesome-looking millionaire I'd ever seen, he was the biggest as well.

I settled myself in the bow.

'Take her out again, Kermode.'

Tich began to pull away from the pier and I watched O'Dowda over the back of his head.

'Nice of you to come,' said O'Dowda. 'Good of Miggs to recommend you. He must make a couple of thousand every year out of me. Welcome, of course. Real character, Miggs. Thought we heard a shot back there just now.'

'Two,' I said. 'Somebody using your bell-post or me for target practice. I followed him up to the edge of the wood and he rode away on a scooter.'

The big face showed no surprise.

He just said, 'Kermode,' and nodded at a basket at the chauffeur's feet. Tich stopped rowing, dug in the basket and handed a flask over his shoulder to me. I unscrewed and swallowed. It could have been Courvoisier VSOP. I handed the flask back. Tich took it with one hand and held the other out to me with a cigar in it. I lit up as he began rowing.

'Ever fished?' Irish his name might be but I couldn't hear a spot of accent. It was a big, resonant voice. If anything there was a transatlantic touch to it — Canadian, maybe.

'My father, rest his soul,' I said, 'taught me how to tie a turle knot when I was five.'

'And damn right he was. More fish have been lost from a boshed-up half-blood than most people know. Take Kermode's rod.'

The rod was at my side, half over the bows. It was a Hardy job and Tich had got a Bloody Butcher on the point and a couple of Invictas as droppers.

I said, 'What have you got in here?'

O'Dowda, beginning to fish, said, 'Rainbow and brown. And a few gillaroo. Know them?'

'No.'

'Irish. Find 'em in Lough Melvin and Erne. They don't do so well.'

I worked out some line, false-casted once or twice to get the feel of the rod — it was a beauty — and then made a cast of about twenty yards. It wasn't bad, considering I hadn't touched a rod for a year. I knew O'Dowda was watching me. O'Dowda, I reckoned, was a man who watched everything and everybody around him.

Tich held us in the wind-drift and we wet-fly-fished down the length of the lake. Halfway down I saw the quick water-bulge out by my flies and the sharp knock of a take. I struck, the line sang, and the rod-tip bowed. I played him for about five minutes and then he came in, tired, flashing his flanks, and Tich put the net under him. It was a rainbow on one of the Invicta droppers. A nice fish, just over two pounds, I guessed. I unhooked him and tapped his nose with the priest. He lay on the boards, the sunlight bringing up boldly the broad carmine band down his side, the bright colour that fades so soon with death. I looked at the bordering pine woods. The black bastard could easily come back.

'Not bad,' said O'Dowda. 'You can have him for dinner. The chef has a way of grilling 'em with a Parmesan cheese flavouring that's out of this world. Not enough to kill the flavour of the fish. Just enough to bring it up. Did you get any kind of look at the man who shot at you?'

'No. Not really. He was away before I was close enough. It has occurred to me, though, that he might come back.'

'He won't.'

'I'm glad to hear it.'

'Anyway, he wasn't after you. He was after me. Just made a target mistake. Badly briefed.'

We were in close to the tree-lined bank now. O'Dowda did a neat switch-cast and dropped his flies just off a clump of lily-pads. A moment later he was into a fish and Tich finally netted a big brown trout for him. Watching O'Dowda, I was wondering how badly briefed a man had to be to mistake me for him. If I took this job, I was thinking, there would have to be substantial danger money.

We fished for an hour. O'Dowda got three brace of brown trout. I got a brown and then hooked something that finally smashed my trace and got away.

'Must have been a big one,' I said.

'You rushed him a bit,' said Kermode.

'Out of practice,' said O'Dowda. Then he slewed his head at me and gave me a Polaroid look. 'Little fish land easy. Big fish… well, the time element is in geometric not arithmetic proportion. For big fish, you need time and patience. That's why I'm a millionaire.' He laughed and it was a sound like flood water rising rapidly in an underground tunnel. I didn't like the sound and — I had a strong feeling — I didn't like him.

O'Dowda looked at his watch and gave Kermode a nod. Kermode reached into the hamper at his feet and pulled out a hand microphone on a flex. He spoke into it. 'Mr O'Dowda's car. Five minutes.'

He replaced the microphone and we began to row back to the landing stage.

O'Dowda saw me looking at the hamper, and said, 'Time and patience, Mr Carver. And always keep in contact with the outside world. Life is full of sudden emergencies.'

I said nothing. I had no real quarrel with his philosophy. But you had to be a millionaire to be able to afford it.

There was a big navy blue Ford Zephyr station wagon waiting for us in the turning space when we arrived. In the driving seat was a small, neat-looking man of about forty. He had a bristly little toothbrush moustache, large teeth and hard agate-coloured eyes which he kept moist by constant blinking. I wasn't introduced to him but from the conversation I gathered th3t he was called Durnford and was O'Dowda's secretary.

The only item of conversational interest on the way to the house was O'Dowda saying, 'I want a full report on how that fellow got in, Durnford.'

'It's the public bridle path, sir.' His voice, even to O'Dowda, was clipped, sharp, just as he had been to me on the phone. 'We've got no legal right to close it.'

'Then find some other way.'

That was all. The millionaire's solution. No legal right — then find some other way.

The house was a great square construction of rag stone. You went through a small archway into an inner courtyard that was flagged with great paving stones and lined with a small raised walk, the balustrade of which was marked every few yards by nude classical statues, mostly of women with expressionless faces and large thighs. The entrance hall was small and one entered through mahogany doors which, I later learned, were steel-lined. O'Dowda and I got into a lift, went up two floors and stepped out into a long picture gallery. A manservant was waiting and O'Dowda instructed him to take me to my room. O'Dowda then gave me a nod and disappeared in one direction while I followed the manservant in the other, walking gingerly on the highly polished floorboards to avoid slipping.

'Dinner,' said the servant as he left me, 'will be in one hour.'

'You'd better leave me a map of the place. Otherwise I'll get lost.'

'It won't be necessary, sir.' He went.

I had a bedroom and a bathroom. From the bedroom window I could see the park. Outside the window was a small balcony, big enough to take a deckchair. Standing on it, I could see that all the other rooms on this side of the wing had similar balconies.

My Brighton pyjamas and dressing gown had been laid out on the downturned bed. There were cigarettes and a glass, siphon, water-jug, ice and four bottles on a silver tray on top of a low dressing table. The carpet gave little wheezy gasps as I trod on it. There were two water-colours of the fishing lake, and there wasn't a piece of furniture which didn't have the shining, well-kept patina of age. The bathroom was chrome and marble and the toilet flushed with just the hint of a faint sigh. The bath-towel was so big it really needed two men to handle it. I finished my inspection of the luxuries and went back to the silver tray to fix myself a whisky and soda. Underneath the soda siphon was a little piece of pasteboard with a message in ink on it.

I want to come and talk to you late tonight. So don't scream when I arrive. Julia.

I sipped my drink, staring out at the now darkening parkland. Tich Kermode wore field-glasses. He could have seen the man run out of the woods. They would be good glasses and they could have seen as much as I saw. And clearly, from O'Dowda's remark to Durnford, the incident had been reported over the radio to the house. If the two bullets had been meant for O'Dowda then he was being remarkably calm about it. If they were meant for me, then he was being remarkably cavalier about his concern for a guest. But, as he was a millionaire, I suppose he'd long ago given up having a normal person's reaction to abnormal events. Not that that made me any happier. And what the hell did Julia want?

I finished my drink and picked up the telephone by the bed. It was a house-phone and somewhere, probably in some basement office, a girl asked if she could help me. I gave her Miggs's number. She said she'd call me, and I went and got another drink.

Miggs came through in about three minutes. He started his usual jossing act, but I cut through it and he knew at once that it wasn't the time or place. I was willing to bet that every phone call that went out of the house was monitored, or would be for a guest of my standing.

I said, 'See if you can get me a line on a motor scooter, don't know the make, number JN4839. Gubby at the Yard will do it for you, and you can let Wilkins know.'

'Okay. Will do.'

I put the phone down, and went through for a bath. The cabinet held a wide range of bath essences. I chose Floris, No. 89, and soaked for half an hour.

He was wearing a green smoking jacket, a loose white silk shirt open at the neck, tartan trousers and black patent-leather slippers. He had a glass of brandy in one hand and a cigar in the other. I sat opposite him, similarly armoured, except that my cigar wasn't as big as his — my choice — and I hadn't been poured — his doing — so much brandy as he had given himself.

The manservant had come for me and escorted me to the dining room, a small private one off his study, where we had dined alone; a clear soup and sherry, the trout, lightly flavoured with Parmesan cheese and a good Mersault, and then fillet of beef, spinach en branche, roast potatoes and a claret that was nameless to me, out of the decanter, but which was so good that we had finished it between us. Overall he ate and drank twice as much as me, but I suppose given his size it was reasonable. Apart from that it was evident that he enjoyed the delights of the board for their own sake. In fact, I was sure that he was a man who enjoyed most of the world's delights for their own sake, which, of course, would make him dangerous if anyone got in the way of his getting what he wanted. Through dinner he had talked of fishing and his various houses. I didn't have to say anything. I just listened, and wondered when he would get around to business. Okay, he had this house, a London house, another in Cannes, a château just outside Evian, a flat in Paris, the fishing rights on an Irish river, the shooting over a few thousand acres of Scotland — oh, and an estate in the Bahamas where he went for the golf and big-game fishing — and, boy, wasn't it good to be alive and have all that. Not that he said that, but it was there. Naturally, as the claret mellowed me, I felt jealous. Why not? I've got nothing against wealth. I would have settled for a third of what he had and been happy for life. Not that I wasn't happy as I was, but a little more cash to go with it would have taken the greyness out of Monday mornings. I should add that somewhere in the catalogue he mentioned that he had six cars in the garage at this place, and quite a few in other places — so why was he concerned about the loss of a Mercedes 250SL? To him that was like losing a bicycle.

He fixed me now with his tiny, fat-set blue eyes, all comfortable in his chair, his tartan trews wrinkled up a little to show two inches of big, pale leg above his wrinkled black silk socks, and said, 'You don't seem to be in any hurry to talk business?'

I said, 'I haven't got any business with you. You have business with me. If it's urgent you'd have got it off your chest on the lake.'

He considered this to see whether he liked it then decided he had no feeling either way, and said, 'Miggs gave you a good write-up.'

I said, 'That's what friends are for. But sometimes they exaggerate.'

'How much do you make a year?'

It's funny. They can't keep away from it.

'Less than you spend on fishing and shooting — but if you're going to be a client I'm hoping this is going to be a big year.'

He considered that, too, fractionally, before he laughed. Then, rather surprisingly, he said in a friendly voice, 'You've got the usual conventional idea about millionaires, haven't you? And you've picked one of the two conventional responses. Truculent, to-hell-with-you. The other is an anxious subservience. I get tired of both. Why not just be natural?'

'You're asking for the impossible. But I apologize if I sound truculent. Why not just tell me what the job is and let me get on with it — if I take it.'

'You'll take it — otherwise you wouldn't be here. Anyway, the job is simple. I've lost a motor car. To be exact a Mercedes-Benz 250SL. The registration is 828 Z-9626. It's red, hard-top, 1966 model…'

As he was talking I was thinking that I wouldn't have minded one myself. They sold in England at around three thousand pounds… elegant, distinctive lines, a car designed for zestful driving, modern without being tied to short-lived fashion, bold design and technical perfection… I could hear Miggs giving that patter if he were trying to sell one.

'It was lost, somewhere between Evian and Cannes. My stepdaughter Zelia was driving it. This was two weeks ago.'

He paused and blew a cloud of cigar smoke.

'You notified the police?'

'Yes. But I have no faith in them. They have their hands full of other stuff. They'll be content to wait until it turns up — or if it doesn't, well…'

He shrugged his shoulders.

'If it doesn't, will it break your heart? You're insured against theft, I presume?'

'Yes.'

'Then why do you particularly want this car back?'

'Let's say I do. I don't like losing things. I want it back and I want to know who's had it and where it has been. Every detail.'

We faced one another across almost immobile layers of cigar smoke.

I said, 'You want more than that.'

He smiled at me, cradling the brandy-glass in his big palms. 'Could be.'

'You want something that was in it.'

'Obviously.'

'Hidden in it?'

'Yes. Miggs was right about you.'

'Forget Miggs. A child could read the message. Did your daughter know that something was hidden in it?'

'No.'

'Does she now?'

'No.'

'Or your other daughter?'

'No. And I don't wish it to be known to either of them. Not that it concerns them in any way.'

'And am I to know what is hidden in it?'

'Not unless it becomes absolutely essential for the recovery of the car. Now ask the other question, Mr Carver.'

'Which is?'

'Is whatever is in it something illegal, something prohibited by law, say, drugs, gold bullion, diamonds and so on.'

'Well?'

'It is nothing that would interest the police at all. Something purely private. Let's just say papers.'

'Did you inform the police of these hidden papers?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'Because, admirable though police organizations are, if they knew I wanted the car because of the hidden papers in it, then the fact might leak out in their inquiries — and I don't want it to be known that I don't care a damn about the car, but only what is in it. The fewer people who know, the better. More brandy?'

I shook my head. He refilled his glass.

'Where,' I asked, 'did all this happen?'

'Some place on the way down to Cannes. Durnford will give you what details he has. But to get the full facts you will have to see Zelia. I'm hoping that you will get more out of her than I have been able to.'

'Why do you say that?'

'Although I'm very fond of her, she is very unsympathetic towards me. But the fact is that she stayed at a hotel on the way to Cannes. Next day she drove off… Forty-eight hours later she turned up at Cannes without the car.'

'And what was her story?'

'She hasn't got one.'

'She's got a tongue. She's got to have a story.'

'Not Zelia. Her memory is a complete blank for those forty-eight hours.'

'You believe this?'

'I've had her examined by two of the best amnesia specialists in France. They confirm that she is suffering from loss of memory.'

'People sometimes forget because the truth is too unpleasant to remember.'

'Exactly.'

'And why would you think she'd open up for me?'

'I don't know that she will. In that case your job is so much harder. But if she hasn't lost her memory, then she might let something slip that will help. I want the car back. I want you to get it. I think you're the man to do it.'

'Because Miggs recommended me?'

'Originally, yes. Since then I've made other inquiries. They confirm Miggs entirely. You have weaknesses — some of which I share, I may say — but if you take a job you don't go back on it. Correct?'

'If the money is right.'

'You can write your own terms. See Durnford about that. You have carte blanche for all expenses while you work for me. Everything. That includes any temporary relaxation or pleasure calculated to keep you going in full trim on this job. Over and above all, I'll add a bonus of one thousand pounds if you find the car and the papers.'

'Even though they may not now be in the car?'

'Quite so. But I think they are. No one could find them accidentally.'

I said, 'Why travel important papers in a car driven by your daughter who knew nothing about them?'

He smiled. 'Because they were important.'

'You could have mailed them from Evian to Cannes, registered.'

His smile broadened. 'Come, Mr Carver. Don't tell me you've never heard of mail being lost in transit?'

'And a car can be stolen.'

'Life is full of uncertainties. Can you think of a foolproof way of moving a valuable object from one point to another?'

'No. Not if somebody else wants that valuable object or bunch of papers.'

'Exactly.'

I stood up.

'How many people knew that you were going to ask me down here?'

He stood up too.

'Myself, Julia, Tich Kermode, Durnford, some of the household staff, and Miggs, of course. And the two or three people from whom I made inquiries about you. Why?'

'Because I have a feeling that those two bullets today were meant for me.'

'I assure you they weren't.'

'Why are you so sure?'

'Because in the last month I have had three telephone calls, threatening my life. And this evening, just after we got back, there was another. It was a man. If I remember the phrasing correctly it went: You were lucky today. But I'll get you, you bastard.'

He gave me a fat smile. He could have been lying, of course.

'You don't seem worried.'

'I may not show it, Mr Carver, but I am. I like living. But anyway, the attempt on my life has nothing to do with this business. Do you want to see Durnford now, or in the morning?'

I looked at my watch. It was past twelve.

'He'll be in bed.'

'I can always get him up.'

Sure, if you're a millionaire what does another man's sleep mean? But I didn't feel like dealing with those blinking agate eyes tonight.

'The morning will do.'

'All right. And before you leave, get a list from Durnford of my movements during the next week or so. I want you to report progress to me as often as you can.' He drained his brandy-glass and winked at me. 'I'm a big man, Mr Carver. I've got big appetites. I like life and I'm prepared to like people. But I'm a millionaire. Nobody really likes me.'

'I shouldn't think that thought keeps you awake at night.'

For the first time using a thick Irish accent, he said, 'You're bloody right, boyo.'

The moment my head hit the pillow I was away. It was two hours later when I woke. I lay there for a while trying to place myself and wondering what had wakened me. Then there came a flicker of torchlight on the balcony outside my open window. It flicked off and, against the pale night sky, I saw a shape move to the window and into the room. Almost immediately I heard the quick scrape of a chair. A woman's voice said, 'Damn the blasted thing.'

I remembered Julia's note, sat up in bed and switched on the bedside light.

She was standing just in the room, one hand on the back of a chair, the other stretched down to rub her left ankle. She was in a short evening dress and her dark hair was ruffled.

She looked at me crossly and said, 'You knew I was coming. Why did you leave that damned chair there?'

'It was there when I came. What was the balcony crossing like tonight, rough?'

'Keep your voice down.'

She turned and pulled the curtains across the window. Then she came and sat on the end of the bed. Even with my eyes still full of sleep she looked good. She curled up her left leg and went on rubbing her ankle. It was a nice leg.

I said, 'Can I do that for you?'

'You stay where you are.'

I said,' "A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, to let the warm Love in." '

'What the hell's that?'

'Keats. I've got a weakness for him and quite a few others. And when I'm embarrassed I always fall back on poetry.'

'Just fall back on your pillow and don't move.'

I did, and lit a cigarette, then tossed the packet and lighter down to her.

It was a pleasure just to look at her. The thing she had which had hit me in the office was still there, and I knew there was no fighting against it. She was in the grand luxe class compared with most other girls I had known — ones who had merited a detour only; but this one, if I could find the energy, was well worth a special journey.

As she lit up I said, 'Why this secret, nocturnal visit?'

'You don't know this house. It's like a prison. Modern. Every security device. Walk down a corridor and a television eye or whatever picks you up. Open a door and a red light flicks on in the basement ops room. Nobody can get above the ground floor at night without a special lift key.'

'Millionaires have feudal habits. You wouldn't be a damsel in distress, would you?'

'I want to talk to you — sensibly.'

'Go ahead.'

'Why did you ask what it was about step-daddy that I didn't like?'

'I was just making conversation.'

'Liar.'

'What have you got against him?'

'Nothing. He's generous and kind.'

'Well, that's that. Can I go back to sleep now?'

She went over to the dresser and got herself an ashtray and then settled on the end of the bed, legs curled up underneath her.

'Why,' she asked, 'is he so keen to get his Mercedes back? He's insured — and God knows, we've got enough cars.'

'He wants it back. That's enough for me — so long as he pays the rate for the job.'

She stretched one leg out, and wiggled her toes inside the nylon.

'Meaning you don't intend to discuss the matter in detail?'

'Yes.'

'Because he asked you not to?'

To change the subject, and still far from sure why she had made this visit, I said, 'Tell me about Zelia.'

'Why?'

'I'm going to see her. I want to get details of how and where and, maybe, why she lost the car. So far, I'm told, she hasn't come across with much. Loss of memory, she says.'

"That's right. She's had treatment for it, but it hasn't helped.'

'It never does if people don't want to remember.'

'Why the devil do you say that?' There was a high-voltage flash of anger in her eyes.

'It was just a kind of general observation. Is she younger than you?'

'Almost two years.'

'What about your mother — can't she get anything out of her?'

'Mother died a few years ago.'

'I see. You're fond of Zelia, aren't you?'

'Of course I am. She's my sister.' There was no doubting her sincerity. On the other hand, there was no doubting the fierce, almost passionate, protective feeling that was coming from her as she talked about her sister.

I said, 'Before we get to the real reason for your coming here, do you think you could answer a few questions about Zelia and so on without biting my head off if I touch you on a sore spot?'

She gave me an obstinate little look, then softened it and said, 'I'll try.'

'Good. You know Zelia well, you're very close to her?'

'Yes.'

'She lost this car and her memory. Do you think she really knows what happened but is clamming up just to annoy O'Dowda… say, to get back at him for something?'

I wasn't there, but I was near it. I could tell from the movement of her body, the lift of her chin, as she considered it.

'Neither of us get on too well with our stepfather, but I'm sure that's not the reason. She really has lost her memory and… All right, I'll admit it — I don't think she wants to remember.'

I could have gone in straight away from there but I didn't think it was wise because I knew that once I did I might not get any more from her — and there was a lot more I wanted if eventually I was going to get my hands on O'Dowda's thousand-pound bonus. Mercenary, but there it is. I was in business for money.

I said, 'How many times has O'Dowda been married?'

'Twice. He married his first wife in 1926. They had a son. She died ten years later.'

'The son was the one killed alongside Miggs?'

She nodded. 'He was nineteen. He got into the army early by faking his age. I think he was the only person that O'Dowda really loved.'

I made no open comment that she, too, had now called him O'Dowda.

'After that?'

'He married my mother in 1955. She was a widow. Zelia was twelve and I was fourteen at the time.'

She looked at me, waiting for my next question. I didn't put it. I just contented myself with looking. She sat there, her dark hair a little disordered, gipsy eyes deep and large, and posed in a way that would have made a Goya1 want to strip and paint her, and I knew that she was reluctant to come to the real point of her visit.

I said, 'What kind of social life does Zelia have? I mean, is she a friendly, out-putting type? Does she get on well with men? Lots of friends?'

She shook her head. 'She keeps herself to herself. She's very lovely, but men don't interest her.'

I said, 'Then what's the problem? What are you doing here?'

She frowned. 'I don't get you.'

'Oh yes you do — you've been making the signals for a long time. Maybe you don't want to put it in words. You'd like it to come from me, perhaps. Look, she's mislaid a car. It could have been stolen from her. She could have sold it… Oh, there are lots of things that could have happened. But none of them would have inhibited her from telling O'Dowda about it — except one. And that one thing would have to be something to do with Zelia, something that happened to her that she doesn't want anyone to know about. Not even you — though I've an idea you can guess at it. Right?'

'How can you possibly know that?'

I shrugged. 'I've been digging dirt professionally for a long time. I know the form. Millionaires' daughters don't have anything to worry about. Money can fix anything. Except one — their personal pride, shame, anguish, or whatever. So what is it you want to ask me to do?'

She was silent for a while, and then she said, 'I think, maybe, I was wrong about you. I don't see how you could have known all this, but you do. Yes, there is something I want you to do. That's why I'm here and why I came this way. I wouldn't want him to know. For Zelia's sake, I just want you to say you can't do this job. I just want her left alone. This job doesn't matter to you. You can get another. But I don't want Zelia hurt—'

'And particularly you don't want me to find out what happened and hand the information on to O'Dowda.'

'Of course I don't. It would kill Zelia.' I lit myself another cigarette.

'You'd even pay me something for chucking the job in?'

'Of course. That's what you're interested in, isn't it? Money.'

'Show me someone who isn't. But I'm also interested in logic.'

'What do you mean?'

'If I kick this job in, then O'Dowda will hire someone else. When he wants something he gets it, doesn't he?'

'If money could buy it, he'd organize the weather the way he wants it, and the crops could go to hell.'

She slid off the bed with an angry movement, and began to grope for her shoes.

'Then you'd have someone else to deal with. O'Dowda wants that car. You might find yourself landed with someone who lacked my sense of discretion. Someone who wouldn't care a damn about Zelia. Might even get a big laugh from it all.'

'You're just saying that you're not going to give up a good job.'

'Could be. And it's no good you being indignant about it. I'm going to find his car for him. That means I may have to find out about Zelia's missing forty-eight hours. But it doesn't mean I have to tell anyone else about it. Not you, not O'Dowda. My contract is to find the car. The small print at the bottom of the form has a clause which says that I don't have to supply details of all my operations or betray any confidential information or sources. That suit you?'

She looked down at me, worked up, not sure whether to let it all slide and ignore me, or give me a blasting. Not because she had so much against me, but because she was worrying about Zelia, as maybe she had always worried about her, fighting for her, as maybe she had always fought her battles, and yet wanting to clear the load of her emotions with a first-class row with someone so that she would feel better afterwards.

'I don't have much choice, do I?'

'As a matter of fact, you do. I pointed it out to you just now — and you can make it. Either you settle for me, or for the next chap that comes along to take my place. Well?'

From somewhere outside a little owl screeched, and I kept an Indian expression of graven nothingness on my face while the night breeze flapped the curtains and this gorgeous wind-on-the-heath girl looked down at me as though she couldn't make up her mind which dagger to stick in my heart.

Then she said, 'You do anything to hurt Zelia, and I'll make it my business to find some way of hurting you.'

I gave her a big, boyish grin. 'Fair enough. And thanks for the vote of confidence.'

She moved to the window, picking up her torch. I liked the way she moved. In fact, I liked the way she did everything, even when she got angry with me, but from a personal point of view I couldn't kid myself that I had made a good start with her. Which was a pity, because not for a long time had I met anyone with whom I would have preferred to make a good start.

From the window, she said, 'Do you mind switching off the light?' Her hand was on the curtain, ready to draw it.

'Why?'

'Because there are two men who take it in turns to patrol the grounds at night. I don't want an audience for my balcony scramble.'

I switched off the bedside light, heard the curtain sing back, felt the fresh night air billow into the room, and saw her shape slide across the long rectangle of pale night sky. I lay back then and thought about millionaires, about how ready O'Dowda had been to haul Durnford out of bed after midnight, how he had poured himself a bigger brandy than the one he had given me, about the dozen or so cars and almost as many houses, about the purple grouse moors and the peaty Irish loughs and the public right of way to the lake which had to be stopped up somehow… and I thought how wholesome it would be to be a millionaire and not to have to go digging around in other people's dirt but to have minions ready at hand to clear up your own. And then I thought of Zelia who didn't have any time for men. That hadn't pleased old Mother Nature and I was prepared to bet that, as usual, she had chosen an awkward moment to do something about it. And then I went to sleep and dreamt of walking over MacGilli-cuddy's Reeks with Julia, wind and rain in our faces, and the same song in both our hearts. At least my dreams never let me down.

Breakfast was brought to me in bed by the manservant. I rolled over and sat up to find tomato juice, two poached eggs on toast, a pot of coffee, marmalade and all the trimmings under my bleary eyes.

The manservant said, 'Good morning, sir.'

I said, 'I don't think so.'

He just looked at me, puzzled.

I said, 'I've never known a good morning which began at six-thirty.'

Pompously, as though he were reading out a club rule which every member should have had at heart, he said, 'Mr O'Dowda, sir, believes in early rising. Breakfast is always served between half past six and seven.'

I lay back and nodded at the tray. 'Take that away and bring it back at a quarter to eight. And I'd like boiled eggs, not poached. Two and a half minutes. And if Mr O'Dowda is checking the breakfast programme tell him that because of a professional ulcer I'm under doctor's orders not to rise or eat before seven-forty-five.'

I rolled over and went into a light sleep filled with unpleasant dreams about millionaires.

I got my boiled eggs on the dot.

And I was in the secretary's office just after nine. Durnford looked bad-tempered. He had probably already done a full day's work. I did my best not to look at him much because it was still too early in the morning for me to face those blinking cold agate eyes, the big teeth and the nicotine-stained wisp of moustache. If I did my best not to look at him, he did a much better best of not wasting time on me. I didn't know it then, of course, though he might have done, but time wasn't going to improve our relationship. We both knew quite instinctively that we were never going to like one another, which in many ways was a good thing. We knew exactly how we stood with one another, and weren't going to waste time over any damned nonsense about brotherly love.

He quibbled over my terms and I stuck fast. He gave way.

He gave me a list of O'Dowda's movements, addresses and so on for the next two weeks and against two of them he had made a red asterisk. They were the names of hotels, and at these, if I wanted him, I was to make personal or telephone contact before eight at night. After that hour on no account was he to be disturbed.

I said, 'Why?'

Durnford just ignored the question.

He gave me an itinerary of Zelia's movements with the Mercedes from Evian, so far as they knew it, and her present location which was on O'Dowda's yacht at Cannes.

I said, 'Do you really think she has lost her memory?'

Stiffly, he said, 'If Miss Zelia says she has, then she has. I have never had occasion to doubt her word.'

'That's good to hear. By the way — how does she get on with her stepfather?'

He considered this, then said curtly, 'Not well.'

I said, 'How did her mother get on with him?'

Something moved in him, briefly but violently, and I couldn't miss the quick tremor of control as he held it back.

'I don't see the relevance of that question. You're being hired to find a car.'

'Which includes finding a reason for Miss Zelia's loss of memory, which might arise from a lot of things. However, let's stick to the car if you don't care to discuss O'Dowda's marital relationships.'

'I don't,' he said.

He then gave me details of the Mercedes and a colour photograph of it, and a list of banks abroad which were being informed of my credentials and on whom I could call for cash. He then stood up to indicate that he was finished with me. Although I had been going to ask him some questions about O'Dowda, about his business interests and so on, I decided not to. I could get them elsewhere. So I stood up and made for the door which he showed no signs of opening for me.

From the door I said, 'What are you going to do about that public footpath?'

For the first time, and not because he was warming to me I'm sure, he showed signs of being human.

'If you think, Mr Carver, that working for a man like Mr O'Dowda is a picnic, get it out of your mind. He expects results.'

'No matter how?'

He blinked his eyes rapidly as though I had suddenly let in too much light, and said, 'Usually, yes.' He looked at his watch. 'Kermode is waiting to take you to the station. You should get the ten-ten easily.'

I half opened the door.

'Kermode,' I said, 'will run me up to London. Otherwise the job's off. Yes, or no?'

It took him some time, and I was damned sure that the station ploy had been his idea. When you work for a millionaire it's therapeutic sometimes to pass a few of the bitchinesses off on to somebody else.

He said, 'In that case, yes.'

Kermode drove me to London in the Ford station wagon. I sat alongside him and he talked fishing, horses, shooting, women and politics all the way. Of the lot he talked fishing most, and never once said a word about O'Dowda which was other than respectful and admiring. Tich Kermode was O'Dowda's man right down to the tip of the O'Dowda cigar he smoked.

I got into the office just before twelve. I had to use my key because Wilkins was out. I didn't know where. The note in her typewriter said, Back after lunch.

On my desk was a quarter-sheet of paper with a typewritten message from her.

I sat back and stared at the sheet, Joseph Bavana, West African. To block a public footpath could take time, even for a millionaire. But to wipe out a human being, that was easy — if you were an O'Dowda, and had two or three private guards around the estate. You just sat working a mallard and claret along the edge of the weeds for a brown trout while Kermode passed your instructions over the radio-telephone. Durnford's eye-blinking rate must have gone up as he listened to them.

The telephone rang on the outside line.

'Carver here.'

'And it's Guffy here, dear boy. Don't bother to come round here. I'll be with you in five minutes.'

He rang off, and I stared into space. It was a thing I frequently did. You just stare into it and after a little while you find yourself thinking about absolutely nothing at all, which is, while it lasts, comforting.