raincoat over heavy shoulders, cloth cap over forehead, sun glasses over eyes… almost a disguise. Yet I hadn’t known him. I was positive I’d never seen him anywhere before. So why had he needed a disguise at one-thirty in the morning when he hadn’t expected to be seen by me in the first place?
All I knew of him was that at some point he had learned to box. That he was of sufficient standing in the trio to make his own decisions, because neither of the others had told him to hit me: he’d done it of his own accord. That Ganser Mays and Jody felt they needed his extra muscle, because neither of them was large, though Jody in his way was strong, in case any of the swindled victims cut up rough.
The afternoon faded and became night. All I was doing, I thought, was sorting through the implications and explanations of what had happened. Nothing at all towards getting myself out of trouble and Jody in. When I tried to plan that, all I achieved was a blank.
In the silence I clearly heard the sound of the street door opening. My heart jumped. Pulse raced again, as in the stable. Brain came sternly afterwards like a schoolmaster, telling me not to be so bloody silly.
No one but Owen had the new keys. No one but Owen would be coming in. All the same I was relieved when the lights were switched on in the hall and I could hear his familiar tread on the stairs.
He went into the dark sitting-room.
‘Sir?’
‘In the bedroom,’ I called.
He came into the doorway, silhouetted against the light in the passage.
‘Shall I turn the light on?’
‘No, don’t bother.’
‘Sir…’ His voice suddenly struck me as being odd. Uncertain. Or distressed.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I couldn’t find the car.’ The words came out in a rush. The distress was evident.
‘Go and get yourself a stiff drink and come back and tell me about it.’
He hesitated a fraction but went away to the sitting-room and clinked glasses. I fumbled around with an outstretched hand and switched on the bedside light. Squinted at my watch. Six-thirty. Allie would be at Heathrow, boarding her aeroplane, waving to her sister, flying away.
Owen returned with two glasses, both containing scotch and water. He put one glass on my bedside table and interrupted politely when I opened my mouth to protest.
‘The hair of the dog. You know it works, sir.’
‘It just makes you drunker.’
‘But less queasy.’
I waved towards my bedroom armchair and he sat in it easily as before, watching me with a worried expression. He held his glass carefully, but didn’t drink. With a sigh I propped myself on one elbow and led the way. The first sip tasted vile, the second passable, the third familiar.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What about the car?’
Owen took a quick gulp from his glass. The worried expression intensified.
‘I went down to Newbury on the train and hired a taxi, like you said. We drove to where you showed me on the map, but the car didn’t seem to be there. So I got the taxi driver to go along every possible road leading away from Mr Leeds’ stable and I still couldn’t find it. The taxi driver got pretty ratty in the end. He said there wasn’t anywhere else to look. I got him to drive around in a larger area, but you said you’d walked from the car to the stables so it couldn’t have been more than a mile away, I thought.’
‘Half a mile, no further,’ I said.
‘Well, sir, the car just wasn’t there.’ He took another swig. ‘I didn’t really know what to do. I got the taxi to take me to the police in Newbury, but they knew nothing about it. They rang around two or three local nicks because I made a bit of a fuss, sir, but no one down there had seen hair or hide of it.’
I thought a bit. ‘They had the keys, of course.’
‘Yes, I thought of that.’
‘So the car could be more or less anywhere by now.’
He nodded unhappily.
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘I’ll report it stolen. It’s bound to turn up somewhere. They aren’t ordinary car thieves. When you come to think of it we should have expected it to be gone, because if they were going to deny I had ever been in the stables last night they wouldn’t want my car found half a mile away.’
‘Do you mean they went out looking for it?’
‘They would know