To the hilt

CHAPTER FOUR

She no longer slept in the big bedroom we'd shared, but in the old guest room, in a new queen-sized romping ground suitable for passing fancies.

She had slotted a new luxurious bathroom into what had once been her father's dressing-room. Downstairs the house might be as I remembered it, but upstairs it was not.

'This is not a precedent,' Emily said, taking off layers down to a white lace bra. 'And I don't think it's wise.'

'Bugger wise.'

'You obviously haven't been getting enough.'

'No, I haven't.' I switched off the lights and drew back the curtains, as I'd always done. 'How about you?'

'I'm known as a dragon. There aren't many with the guts of St George.'

'Do you regret it?'

She rustled out of the rest of her clothes and slid naked between the sheets, her curved shape momentarily silhouetted against a window oblong of stars. I took off my clothes and felt ageless.

'Rumours run round Lambourn like the pox,' she said. 'I'm bloody careful who I let into this room.'

We stopped talking. We had never, I supposed, been inventive or innovative lovers. There had been no need. Front to front with hands and lips and tongues we had shivered with sensual intense arousal, and that at least hadn't changed. Her body to my touch was long known and long forgotten, like going back to an abandoned building: a newly explored breast, familiar concave abdomen, hard mound of pelvis, soft dark warm mystery below and beyond, known secretly but never explored by spotlight since, in spite of her forthright public face, she was privately shy.

I did what I knew she liked, and as ever my own intensest pleasure came in pleasing her. Entry was easy, her readiness receptive. Movement strong and rhythmic, an instinct shared. When I felt her deep pulse beating, then too I took my own long moment; sometimes in the past it had been as good as that, but not always. It seemed that in that way also we had grown up.

'I've missed you,' she said.

'I, too.'

We slept peacefully side by side, and it was in the morning in the shower that she looked at my collection of bruises with disbelief.

'I told you,' I said mildly. 'I got mugged.'

'Trampled by a stampede of cows, more like.'

'Bulls.'

'OK, then. Bulls. Don't come downstairs until the first lot has gone out.'

I'd almost forgotten I was there to steal a horse. I waited until the scrunching hooves outside had diminuendoed into the distance and went down for coffee and toast.

Emily came in from the yard, saying, 'I've saddled and bridled Golden Malt. He's all ready for you, but he's pretty fresh. For God's sake, don't let him whip round and buck you off. The last thing I want is to have him loose on the Downs.'

'I've been thinking about anonymity,' I said, spreading honey on toast. 'Have you still got any of those nightcaps you put over their heads in very cold weather? A nightcap would hide that very white blaze down his nose. And perhaps boots for his white socks…'

She nodded, amused. 'And you'd better borrow a helmet from the cloakroom, and anything else you need.'

I thanked her and went into the large downstairs cloakroom where there was always a haphazard collection of jackets, boots, gloves and helmets for kitting out visitors. I found some jodhpur boots to fit me (better than trainers for the job) and tied my hair up on the top of my head with a shoelace before hiding the lot under a shiny blue helmet. I slung round my neck a pair of jockeys' goggles, the big mica jobs they used against rain and mud… fine disguise for a black eye.

Emily, still amused, said no one would recognise the result. 'And do borrow one of those padded jackets. It's cold on the Downs these mornings.'

I fetched a dark-coloured jacket and said, 'If anyone comes looking for the horse, say I had authority to take him, and I took him, and you don't know where he is.'

'Do you think anyone will come?' She was curious more than worried, it seemed.

'Hope not.'

Golden Malt eyed me with disillusion from inside his nightcap. Emily gave me a leg-up onto his back and at this point looked filled with misgiving.

'When the hell did you last sit on a horse?' she asked, frowning.

'Er… some tune ago.' But I got my feet into the stirrups and collected the reins into a reasonable bunch.

'How often have you actually ridden since you left here?' Emily demanded.

'It's all in the mind,' I said. Golden Malt skittered around unhelpfully. It looked a long way down to the ground.

'You're a bloody fool,' she said.

'I'll phone you if anything goes wrong… and thanks, Em.'

'Yes. Go on, then. Bugger off.' She was smiling. 'I'll kill you if you let him get loose.'

I'd reckoned that the first three hundred yards might be the most difficult from the point of view of my deficient riding ability as I had to go that distance along a public road to reach the track that led up to the Downs; but I was lucky, there were few cars on the road and those that were had drivers who slowed down for racehorses. I touched my helmet repeatedly in thanks and managed to steer a not-too-disgraceful course.

No one wound down a window and called to me by name or linked the camouflaged horse to Emily. I was just on one of hundreds of Lambourn equine residents, large as life but also invisible.

Golden Malt thought he knew where he was going, which helped at first but not later. He tossed his head with pleasure and trotted jauntily up the rutted access to the downlands which spread for fifty miles east to west across central southern England - from the Chilterns to Salisbury Plain. I felt more at home on the Downs than in Lambourn itself, but even there solitude was rare: strings of horses cluttered every skyline and trainers' Land Rovers bumped busily in their wake. Lambourn's industry lay out there on the sweeping green uplands in the wind and the prehistoric mornings. I had thought that they would be world enough: that I could live and work there… and I'd been wrong.

Golden Malt began to fight when I turned him to the west at the top of the hill, instead of continuing to the east. He ran backwards, he turned in small circles, he obstinately refused to go where I tried to point his head. I didn't know whether expert horsemen with legs of iron would have forced him to obey in a long battle of wills: I only knew that I was losing.

I remembered suddenly that one day I'd stood beside Emily on the trainers' stand at a race meeting watching one of her horses refuse to go down to the start. The horse had run backwards, cantered crabwise, turned in circles, ignored every instruction and used his vast muscle power to make a fool of the slight man on his back. And that man had been a tough experienced jockey.

Across the years I heard Emily's furious comment, 'Why doesn't the bloody fool get off and lead him?'

Oh Em, I thought. My dear wife. Thank you.

I slid off the stubborn brute's back and pulled the reins over his head, and walked towards the west, and as if his entire nature had done an abracadabra, Golden Malt ambled along peacefully beside me so that all I had to worry about was not letting him step on my heels.

Emily's anxiety that I would get lost on the bare rolling grassland didn't take into consideration the boyhood training I'd had in following deer across unmapped Scottish moorlands. The first great rule was to determine the direction of the wind, and to steer by its angle on one's face. Stalking a deer was only possible if one were down wind of him, so that he couldn't smell one's presence.

The wind on that particular September day was blowing steadily from the north. I headed at first straight into it and then, when Golden Malt was used to its feel, veered slightly to the left, plodding purposefully across the green featureless sea as if I knew my bearings exactly.

I could see glimpses of villages in the lower distances, but no horses. When I'd walked about a mile I tried riding again, scrambling clumsily back into the saddle and gathering the reins; and this time, as if unsure in his isolation from sight and sound of his own kind, Golden Malt walked docilely where I asked.

I risked another trot.

No problem.

I crossed a footpath or two and skirted a few farms, setting dogs barking. There was no great need for pinpoint accuracy at that stage of the journey because somewhere ahead lay the oldest path in Britain, the Ridgeway, that still ran east-west between the Thames at Goring Gap to West Kennet, a village south-west of Swindon. Although from there on it had disappeared, it was likely the Druids had walked it to reach Stonehenge. True to its name, it ran along the highest ground of the hills because once, long before the Romans came with Julius Caesar, the valleys had been wooded and prowled by bears.

In the age of cars, the Ridgeway path beckoned walkers, and to lone horse-thieves it was a broad highway.

When I reached it I almost missed it: trotted straight across and only belatedly realised that I'd been expecting more of a production than a simple rutted track. Indeed, I retraced my steps and stopped Golden Malt for a rest while I looked around for helpful signposts, and found none. I was on high ground. The track ran from east to west, according to the wind. It was definitely a path. It had to be the right one.

Shrugging, I committed the enterprise and turned left, to the west, and trotted hopefully on. All paths, after all, led somewhere, even if not to Stonehenge.

I had chosen a longer route than essential in order to avoid roads, and it was true that the Ridgeway didn't represent the straightest line from A to B, but as I didn't want to get lost and have to ask the way and draw attention to myself, I considered the extra time and miles well spent.

The path turned south-west at roughly where I expected and led across a minor road or two and, to my relief, proving to be the real thing, delivered me to Foxhill.

Emily's friend took my quiet arrival for granted.

'Mrs Cox,' I said, 'says she will call by in a day or two to pick up the saddle and bridle.'

Tine.'

'I'll be off, then.'

'Right. Thanks. We'll look after the old boy.' She patted the chestnut neck with maternal and expert fondness, and nodded to me cheerfully as I left, not querying my assertion of thumbing a lift back to Lambourn.

I thumbed a lift to Swindon instead, however, and caught a train to Reading, and called on a powerful area bank manager who wasn't expecting a padded jacket, jodhpur boots and a shiny blue riding helmet with jockeys' goggles.

'Er…' he said.

'Yes. Well, I'm sorry about the presentation but I'm acting for my stepfather, Sir Ivan Westering, and this is not my normal world.'

'I know Sir Ivan well,' he said. 'I'm sorry he's ill.'

I handed him a certified copy of the power of attorney and Ivan's Alternate Director letter which, although much creased by now through having been folded into my shirt pocket for the cross-country expedition, worked its customary suspension of prompt ejection, and, smooth man that he was, he listened courteously to my plea for the workers at the brewery to receive their wages as usual for this present week, and for the pensioners to be paid also, while the insolvency practitioner, Mrs Morden, tried to put together a committee of creditors for a voluntary arrangement.

He nodded. 'I've already been approached by Mrs Morden.' He paused thoughtfully, then said, 'I've also talked to Tobias Tollright. He told me you would come here on your knees.'

'I'll kneel if you like.'

The faintest of smiles twitched in his eye muscles, and vanished. He said, 'What do you get out of this personally?'

Surprised, I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything, a feeble absence of answer that seemed not to bother him.

'Hmph.' He sniffed. He looked at his fingers. He said, 'All right. The wages cheques will be honoured for this week. We'll allow the pensioners seventy-five per cent. Then we'll see.' He stood up, holding out a smooth white hand. 'A revelation doing business with you, Mr Kinloch.'

I shook his hand and breathed deeply with relief on the way out.

With an hour and a half to spare before the intimidating prospect of my appointment with Mrs Margaret Morden, fairy godmother to near-bankrupt Cinderellas, I bought more throwaway razors, a small tube of shaving cream and another comb - the Euston collection being still in London - and in a pub tried to put a tidier face on things. Nothing but time, though, would unblack the eye. I drank half a pint of King Alfred Gold to get reacquainted with what I was trying to save and turned up promptly on the lady's threshold.

A word or two had gone ahead of me, I gathered, as she knew at once who I was and welcomed me without blinking. The power of attorney was yet again carefully inspected, a certified copy accepted and ready to be filed away, and a copy of Ivan's letter taken, as had been done also at Tollright's firm, and the bank. Mrs Morden gave me back Ivan's open-sesames and requested me, in my turn, to sign an authorisation for her to act for the brewery. This was not handshake-gentleman's-agreement-land, this was paper-trail responsibility.

Mrs Margaret Morden looked somewhere in the ageless forties, and was not the severe businesswoman I'd expected. True, her manner was based on self-confidence, and formidable intelligence shone in steady grey eyes, but she was dressed not in a suit but in a soft calf-length dress of pink and violet printed silk, with a ruffle round the neck.

Involuntarily I smiled, and from her satisfied change of expression realised that that was exactly the aim of her clothes; to encourage, to soften prejudice, to mediate, to persuade.

Her office was spacious, a cross between functional grey and leather-bound law books, with a desk-like shelf the whole length of one wall, bearing six or seven computer monitors, all showing different information. A chair on castors stood ready before them waiting, it seemed, to roll her from screen to screen.

She sat down in a large black chair behind a separate executive-sized desk and waved me to the clients' (slightly smaller) chair facing. There were brewery papers already spread out on the desk: she and Tobias between them had obviously wasted no tune.

She said, 'We have here a serious situation…'

The serious situation was abruptly made worse by the door crashing open to admit a purposeful missile of a man, with a flustered secretary behind him bleating (as in a thousand film scripts), 'I'm very sorry, Mrs Morden, I couldn't stop him.'

The intruder, striding into centre-stage, pointed a sharp finger at my face and said, 'You've no right to be here. Out.' He jerked the finger towards the door. 'Any negotiations needed by the King Alfred Brewery will be performed by me.'

He was quivering with rage, a thin fiftyish man going extensively bald and staring fiercely through large glasses with silvery metal rims. He had a scrawny neck, a sharp Adam's apple and megawatt mental energy. He told me again to leave.

Mrs Morden asked calmly, 'And you are…?'

'Madam,' he said furiously, 'in the absence of Sir Ivan Westering I am in charge of the brewery. I am the acting managing director. This wretched young man hasn't the slightest authority to go round interviewing our auditor and our bank manager, as I hear he's been doing. You will disregard him and get rid of him, and I will decide whether or not we need your services at all, which I doubt.'

Mrs Morden asked non-committally, 'Your name?'

He gasped as if amazed that she shouldn't know it. 'Finch,' he said sharply, 'Desmond Finch.'

'Ah, yes.' Mrs Morden looked down at the papers. 'It mentions you here. But I'm sorry, Mr Finch, Mr Kinloch has an undoubted right to act in Sir Ivan's stead.'

She waved a hand towards the certified copy of the power of attorney, which lay on her desk. Finch snatched it up, glanced at it, and tore the page across. 'Sir Ivan's too ill to know what he's doing,' he pronounced. 'This farce has got to stop. I am in charge of the brewery's affairs and I alone.'

Mrs Morden put her head on one side and invited my comment. 'Mr Kinloch?'

Ivan, I reflected, had deliberately by-passed Desmond Finch in giving me his trust, and I wondered why. It would have been normal for him to have passed his power to his second-in-command. If he hadn't done so - if he had very pointedly not done so - then my obligation to my stepfather was absolute.

'Please continue with your work, Mrs Morden,' I said without heat. 'I will check again with Sir Ivan, and if he wants me to withdraw from his affairs, then of course I will.'

She smiled gently at Finch.

'It's not good enough,' he said furiously. 'I want this… this usurper out now. This minute. At once. Mrs Benchmark is adamant.'

Mrs Morden lifted her eyebrows in my direction, no doubt seeing the arrival of total comprehension in my face.

'Mrs Benchmark,' I explained, 'is Patsy Benchmark, Sir Ivan's daughter. She would prefer me out of her father's life. She would prefer me… er… to evaporate.'

'Let me get this right,' Margaret Morden said patiently, 'Sir Ivan is Mrs Benchmark's actual father, and you are his stepson?'

I nodded. 'Sir Ivan had a daughter, Patsy, with his first wife, who died. He then married my widowed mother when I was eighteen, so I am his stepson.'

Finch, loudly and waspishly, added, 'And he is trying to worm his way into Sir Ivan's fortune and cut out Mrs Benchmark.'

'No,' I said.

I couldn't blame Margaret Morden for looking doubtful. Patsy's fear was obsessive but real.

'Please try to save the brewery,' I said to Mrs Morden. 'Sir Ivan's health may depend on it. Also, the brewery will be Patsy's one day. Save it for her, not for me. And she won't thank you, Mr Finch, if it goes down the tubes.'

It silenced them both.

Finch gaped and made for the door, and then stopped dead and came back to accuse with venom: 'Mrs Benchmark says you have stolen the King Alfred Gold Cup. You've stolen the golden chalice and you're hiding it, and if necessary she will take it back by force.'

Hell's teeth. 'Where is it?'

My ribs ached.

The King Alfred Gold Cup. It. The it that the demons had been looking for. The it that I didn't have, not the it that I did have.

'You look tired, Mr Kinloch,' Mrs Morden said.

'Tired!' Finch was deeply sarcastic. 'If he's tired he can go back to Scotland and sleep for a week. Better, a month.'

Good suggestion, I thought. I said, 'Was the Cup kept at the brewery?'

Desmond Finch opened and closed his mouth without answering.

'Don't you know?' I asked with interest. 'Has there been a rumpus, with policemen flourishing handcuffs? Or did Patsy just tell you I'd taken it? She does have a galvanic way of neutralising people's common sense.'

The second-in-command of the brewery made an exit as unheralded as his entry. When the air had settled after his departure, Mrs Morden asked if by any chance I had a replacement certified copy of the power of attorney which, owing to Ivan's foresight in giving me ten, I had. I gave her one: five left.

'I need further instructions,' she said.

'Such as, carry on?'

'I am willing to, if you will give me a handwritten assurance releasing me from any proceedings arising from work done on your say-so. This is by no means a normal request, but little about this particular insolvency now seems normal.'

I wrote the release to her dictation, and signed it, and she had it witnessed by her secretary as being supplemental to the authorities to act that I'd already given her.

'I hope to bring together the brewery's main creditors on Monday,' she said. 'Telephone me tomorrow for a progress report.'

"Thank you, Mrs Morden.'

'Margaret,' she said. 'Now, these depressing numbers…'

I walked back to Pierce, Tollright and Simmonds, where the auditor and I became Tobe and Al and went out for an early beer.

I told Tobias of Desmond Finch's visit to Margaret Morden, a tale that resulted in much vicious chewing of an innocent toothpick but an otherwise diplomatic silence.

'Have you met him?' I asked, prompting.

'Oh yes. Quite often.'

'What do you think of him?'

'Off the record?'

'This whole pub,' I said, 'is off the record.'

Even so, his caution took its time. Then he said, 'Desmond Finch gets things done. He's a very effective lieutenant. Give him a programme he understands, and he will unswervingly carry it out. His energy pumps the blood round the brewery, and it is his persistence that makes sure that everything that ought to be done, is done.'

'You approve of him, then?'

He grinned. 'I applaud his work. I can't stand the man.'

I laughed. 'Thank God for that.'

We drank in harmony. I said, 'What was Norman Quorn like?' Norman Quorn was the Finance Director that had vanished with the cash. 'You must have known him well.'

'I thought I did. I'd worked with him for years.' Tobias took out a toothpick and swallowed beer. 'The last person, I would have thought, to do what he did. But then, that's what they always say.'

'Why was he the last person?'

'Oh. He was coming up to retirement. Sixty-five. A grey, meticulous accountant. No fun in him. Dry. We went through the firm's books together every year. Never a decimal out of place. It's my job of course to pull out invoices at random and make sure that the transactions referred to did in fact take place, and in Quorn's work there was never the slightest discrepancy. I'd have bet my reputation on his honesty.'

'He was saving everything up for the big one.'

Tobias sighed. Another toothpick took a mauling. 'He was clever, I'll give him that.'

'How did he actually steal so much? I've been reeling at the figures with Margaret Morden.'

'He didn't go round to the bank with a sack, if that's what you mean. He didn't shovel the readies into a suitcase and disappear through the Channel Tunnel. He did it the new-fashioned way, by wire.' He sucked noisily. 'He did it by electronic transfer, by routing money all over the place via ABA numbers - those are international bank identification numbers - and by backing up the transactions with faxed authorisations, all bearing the right identifying codes. He was too damned clever. I may have believed I could follow any tracks, but I've lost him somewhere in Panama. It's a job for the serious fraud people, though Sir Ivan wants to hush up the whole thing and won't call them in, and of course it wouldn't save the brewery if he did. Margaret Morden is the best hope for that. The only hope, I'd say.'

We refilled the half-pints in suitable gloom.

I said tentatively, 'Do you think Quorn could have stolen the King Alfred Cup? The actual gold chalice?'

'What?' He was astonished. 'No. Not his style.'

'But electronic transfers were his style?'

'I see what you mean.' He sighed deeply. 'All the same…'

'Desmond Finch says that Patsy Benchmark - have you met Ivan's daughter? - is accusing me of having stolen the Cup. She's persuasive. I may yet find myself in Reading Gaol.'

'Writing ballads a la Oscar Wilde?'

'You may jest.'

'I've met her,' Tobias said. He thought through another toothpick. 'The fact that no one seems to know where this priceless gold medieval goblet actually is, does not mean that it's been stolen.'

'I drink to clarity of mind.'

He laughed. 'You'd make a good auditor.'

'A better slosher-on of paint.'

I considered his friendly harmless-looking face and imagined the analytical wheels whirring round as fast in him as they were in me. Benevolent versions of Uncle Joe Stalin's vulpine smirk hid unsmiling intents from presidents to peasants and all points in between. Yet trust had to begin somewhere, or at least a belief in it.

I asked, 'What happened first? The disappearance of Norman Quorn, or your realisation that the books were cooked, or my stepfather's heart attack? And when was the Cup first said to be missing?'

He frowned, trying to remember. 'They were all more or less at the same time.'

'They can't have been simultaneous.'

'Well, no.' He paused. 'No one seems to have seen the Cup for ages. Of the other three… I told Sir Ivan one morning about two weeks ago… he was in his London house… that the brewery was insolvent, and why. He told me to cover it up and keep quiet. Quorn had already gone away for a few days' leave, or so the brewery secretaries said. Sir Ivan collapsed in the afternoon. I could get no instructions after that from anyone until you came along. The whole financial mess simply got worse while Sir Ivan was in hospital because no one except him could make decisions and he wouldn't talk to me. But the bank wouldn't wait any longer.'

'What about Desmond Finch?'

'What about him?' Tobias asked. 'Like I told you, he's a great lieutenant but he needs a general to tell him what to do. He may say now he's in charge, but without Mrs Benchmark prodding him from behind he'd be doing the same as he's been doing for the past two weeks, which is telling me he can't act without Sir Ivan's orders.'

It all, in a way, made sense.

I said, 'Margaret Morden says I don't have to go to the creditors' meeting on Monday.'

'No, better not. She'll persuade them if anyone can.'

'I asked her to root for the race.'

'Race? Oh yes. King Alfred Gold Cup. But no trophy.'

'The winner only ever gets a gold-plated replica. Never the real thing.'

'Life,' he said, 'is full of disillusion.'

When I reached the house in Park Crescent, Dr Keith Robbiston was just leaving, and we spoke on the steps outside with my mother holding the door open, smiling while she waited for me to go in.

'Hello,' Robbiston greeted me fast and cheerfully. 'How's things?'

'I finished the pills you gave me.'

'Did you? Do you want some more?'

'Yes, please.'

He instantly produced another small packet: it seemed he carried an endless supply. 'When was it,' he asked, 'that you fell among thieves?'

'The day before yesterday.' It felt more like a decade. 'How is Ivan?'

The doctor glanced at my mother and, clearly because she could hear, said briefly, 'He needs rest.' His gaze switched intensely back to me. 'Perhaps you, you strong young man, can see he gets it. I have given him a powerful sedative. He needs to sleep. Good day to you now.' He flapped a hand in farewell and hurried off in a life taken always at a run.

'What did he mean about rest?' I asked my mother, giving her a token hug and following her indoors.

She sighed. 'Patsy is here. So is Surtees.'

Surtees was not the great nineteenth-century storyteller of that name, but Patsy's husband, whose parents had been bookworms. Surtees Benchmark, tall, lean and of the silly-ass school of mannerism, could waffle apologetically while he did you a bad turn, rather like his wife. He saw me through her eyes. His own never twinkled when he smiled.

My mother and I went upstairs. I could hear Patsy's voice from the floor above.

'I insist, Father. He's got to go.'

An indistinct rumble in return.

As her voice was coming from Ivan's study I went up and along there with my neat mother following.

Patsy saw my arrival with predictable rage. She too was tall and lean, and stunningly beautiful when she wanted to charm. The recipients of her 'Darling!' greetings opened to her like sunflowers: only those who knew her well looked wary, with Surtees no exception.

'I have been telling Father,' she said forcefully, 'that he must revoke that stupid power of attorney he made out in your name and give it to me.'

I put up no opposition but said mildly, 'He can of course do what he likes.'

Ivan looked alarmingly pale and weak, sitting as ever in his dark red dressing-gown in his imposing chair. The heavy sedative drooped already in his eyelids, and I went across to him, offering my arm and suggesting he should lie down on his bed.

'Leave him alone,' Patsy said sharply. 'He has a nurse for that.'

Ivan however put both hands on my offered forearm and pulled himself to his feet. His frailty had worsened, I thought, since the day before.

'Lie down,' he said vaguely. 'Good idea.'

He let me help him towards his bedroom and, short of physically attacking me, Patsy and Surtees couldn't stop me. Four practised thugs had been beyond my fighting capabilities, but Patsy and her husband weren't, and they had sense enough to know it.

As I went past him, Surtees said spitefully, 'Next time you'll scream.'

My mother's eyes widened in surprise. Patsy's head snapped round towards her husband and with scorn she shrivelled him verbally, 'Will you keep your silly mouth shut.'

I went on walking with Ivan into his bedroom, where my mother and I helped him out of his dressing-gown and into the wide bed where he relaxed gratefully, closing his eyes and murmuring, 'Vivienne… Vivienne.'

'I'm here.' She stroked his hand. 'Go to sleep, my dear.'

He couldn't with so powerful a drug have stayed awake. When he was breathing evenly my mother and I went out into the study and found that Patsy and Surtees had gone.

'What did he mean?' she asked perplexed. 'Why did Surtees say, "Next time you'll scream"?'

'I dread to think.'

'It didn't sound like a joke.' She looked doubtful and worried. 'There's something about Surtees that isn't… oh dear… that isn't normal.'

'Dearest Ma,' I said, teasing her, 'almost no one is normal. Look at your son, for a start.'

Her worry dissolved into a laugh and from there to visible happiness when from the study phone I told Jed Parlane that I would be staying down south for another twenty-four hours.

'I'll catch tomorrow night's train,' I said. 'I'm afraid it gets to Dalwhinnie at a quarter past seven in the morning. Saturday morning.'

Jed faintly protested. 'Himself wants you back here as soon as possible.'

'Tell him my mother needs me.'

'So do the police.'

'Too bad. See you, Jed.'

My mother and I ate the good meal Edna had cooked and left ready, and spent a peaceful, rare and therapeutic evening alone together in her sitting-room, not talking much, but companionable.

'I saw Emily,' I said casually, at one point.

'Did you?' She was unexcited. 'How is she?'

'Well. Busy. She asked after Ivan.'

'Yes, she telephoned. Nice of her.'

I smiled. My mother's reaction to my leaving my wife had been as always calm, unjudgmental and accepting. It was our own business, she had implied. She had also, I thought, understood. Her sole comment to me had been, 'Solitary people are never alone,' an unexpected insight that she wouldn't enlarge or explain, but she had long been accustomed to the solitary nature of her son's instincts, that I had tried -and failed - to stifle.

In the morning, when everyone had slept well, I talked for much longer than previously with Ivan.

He looked better. He still wore pyjamas, dressing-gown and slippers, but there was muscle tone and colour in his face, and clarity in his mind.

I told him in detail what I'd learned and done over the two days I'd spent in Reading. He faced unwillingly the whole frightening extent of the plundering of the brewery and approved of the appointment of Margaret Morden as captain of the lifeboat to save the wreck.

'It's my own fault things got so bad,' Ivan sighed. 'But, you know, I couldn't believe that Norman Quorn would rob the firm. I've known him for years, moved him up from the accounts department, made him Finance Director, gave him a seat on the Board… I trusted him. I wouldn't listen to or believe Tobias Tollright. I'll never be able to trust my own judgment again.'

I said, intending to console, 'The same thing happens to firms every year.'

He nodded heavily. 'They say the greater the trust the safer the opportunity. But Norman… how could he…?'

His pain was more personal than financial, the treachery and rejection harder to bear than the actual loss, and it was the heartlessness of that personal treachery that he couldn't endure.

'I wish,' he said with feeling, 'that you would take over and run the brewery. I've always known you could do it. I hoped when you married that efficient and attractive young woman that you would change your mind and come in with me. So suitable. You could live in Lambourn in her training stables and manage the brewery in Wantage, only seven miles away. Perfect. A life most young men would jump at. But no, you have to be different. You have to go off and live on your own, and paint.' His voice wasn't exactly contemptuous, but he found my compulsion wholly incomprehensible. 'Your dear mother seems to understand you. She says you can't keep mountain mist in a cage.'

'I'm sorry,' I said inadequately. I could see the sense of the life path he'd offered. I didn't know why I couldn't take it. I did know it would result in meltdown.

I changed the subject and said I'd asked Margaret Morden to get the creditors if possible to keep the Cheltenham race alive; to get them to realise that the seventeenth running of the King Alfred Gold Cup would underpin public faith in the brewery and boost the sales that would generate the income that alone would save the day.

Ivan smiled. "The Devil would like you on his side.'

'But it's true.'

'Truth can subvert,' he said. 'I wish you were my son.'

That silenced me completely. He looked as though he were surprised he had said it, but he let it stand. A silence grew.

In the end I said tentatively, 'Golden Malt…?'

'My horse.' His gaze sharpened on my face. 'Did you hide it?'

'Did you mean me to?'

'Of course I did. I hoped you would, but…'

'But,' I finished when he stopped, 'you are a member of the Jockey Club and can't afford to be in the wrong, and the creditors may want to count Golden Malt an asset and sell him. And yes, I did steal him out of Emily's yard but any sleuth worth his salt could find him, and if he has to vanish for more than a week I'll have to move him.'

'Where is he?'

'If you don't know, you can't tell.'

'Who does know, besides you?'

'At present, Emily. If I move him, it will be to shield her.' I paused. 'Do you have any proof that you personally own him? Bill of sale?'

'No. I bought him as a foal for cash to help out a needy friend. He paid no tax on the gain.'

'Tut.'

'You can't see that six years down the road your good turn will bite you.'

The telephone buzzed at his elbow, and he made a gesture asking me to answer it for him. I said 'Hello?' and found Tobias Tollright at the other end.

'Is that you, Al?' he asked. 'This is Tobe.' Fluster and insecurity in his voice.

'Hi, Tobe. What's up?'

'I've had this man on the phone who says Sir Ivan has revoked your powers of attorney.'

'What man?'

'Someone called Oliver Grantchester. A solicitor. He says he's in charge of Sir Ivan's affairs.'

'He certified all the copies of the power of attorney,' I said. 'What's wrong with them?'

'He says they were a mistake. Apparently Patsy Benchmark got Sir Ivan to say so.'

'Hold on,' I said, 'while I talk to my stepfather.'

I rested the receiver on the table and explained the situation to Ivan. He picked up the receiver and said, 'Mr Tollright, what is your opinion of my stepson's business sense?'

He smiled through the reply, then said, 'I stand by every word I signed.' He listened, then went on, 'My daughter misinformed Mr Grantchester. Alexander acts for me in everything, and I give my trust to no one else. Clear?' He gave me back the telephone and I said to Tobias, 'OK?'

'My God. That woman. She's dangerous, Al.'

'Mm… Tobe, do you know any good, honest, discreet private investigators?'

He chuckled. 'Good, honest and discreet. Hang on…' There was a rustle of pages. 'Got a pencil?'

There was a pencil on the table but no notepad. I turned over the box of tissues, in Ivan's fashion, and wrote on the bottom of it the name and phone number of a firm in Reading. 'Thanks, Tobe.'

'Any time, Al.'

I disconnected and said to Ivan, 'Patsy is also going around telling people I've stolen the chalice, the King Alfred Cup.'

'But,' he said, undisturbed, 'you do have it, don't you?'