had been trust, an instinct strong enough to carry him to thetelephone after three silent years. He finished the scotch and stood up, filling his lungs with a deep breath as if making resolves.
‘Come with me, then,’ he said.
I nodded.
He went over to the chest of drawers and from the bottom drawer, which I hadn’t checked, produced a briefcase. I might have guessed it would be there somewhere: even in the direst panic, he wouldn’t have left behind the lists of his gold shares or his currency exchange calculator. He started with the briefcase to the door, leaving me to bring the suitcase, but on impulse I went over again to the telephone and asked for a taxi to be ready for us.
‘But your car’s here,’ Malcolm said.
‘Mm. I think I’ll leave it here, for now.’
‘But why?’
‘Because if I didn’t tell anyone you were going to Newmarket Sales, and nor did you, then it’s probable you were followed there, from… er… here. If you think about it… the car that tried to kill you was waiting in the sales car-park, but you didn’t have a car. You went there by taxi. Whoever drove at you must have seen you and me together, and known who I was, and guessed you might leave with me, so although I didn’t see anyone following us tonight from Newmarket, whoever-it-was probably knew we would come here, to this hotel, so… well… so they might be hanging about in the courtyard where we parked, where it’s nice and dark outside the back door, waiting to see if we come out again.’
‘My God!’
‘It’s possible,’ I said.‘So we’ll leave through the front with the doorman in attendance, don’t you think?’
‘If you say so,’ he said weakly.
‘From now on,’ I said, ‘we take every exaggerated precaution we can think of.’
‘Well, where are we going in this taxi?’
‘How about somewhere where we can rent a car?’
The taxi-driver, however, once we’d set off without incident from the hotel, bill paid, luggage loaded, doorman tipped, informed us doubtfully that nine o’clock on a Tuesday night wasn’t going to be easy. All the car-hire firms’ offices would be closed.
‘Chauffeur-driven car, then,’ Malcolm said.‘Fellows who do weddings, that sort of thing. Twenty quid in it for you if you fix it.’
Galvanised by this offer, the taxi-driver drove us down some backstreets, stopped outside an unpromising little terraced house and banged on the door. It opened, shining out a melon-slice of light, and gathered the taxi-driver inside.
‘We’re going to be mugged,’ Malcolm said.
The taxi-driver returned harmlessly, however, accompanied by a larger man buttoning the jacket of a chauffeur’s uniform and carrying a reassuring peaked cap.
‘The firm my brother-in-law works for does mostly weddings and funerals,’ the taxi-driver said.‘He wants to know where you want to go.’
‘London,’ I said.
London appeared to be no problem at all. The driver and his brother-in-law climbed into the front of the taxi which started off, went round a corner or two, and pulled up again outside a lock-up garage. We sat in the taxi as asked while the two drivers opened the garage, disclosing its contents. Which was how Malcolm and I proceeded to London in a very large highly-polished black Rolls-Royce, the moonlighting chauffeur separated from us discreetly by a glass partition.
‘Why did you go to the sales at all?’ I asked Malcolm. ‘I mean, why Newmarket? Why the sales?’
Malcolm frowned. ‘Because of Ebury’s, I suppose.’
‘The jewellers?’
‘Yes… well… I knew they were going to have a showroom there. They told me so last week when I went to see them about Coochie’s jewellery. I mean, I know them pretty well, I bought most of her things from there. I was admiring a silver horse they had, and they said they were exhibiting this week at Newmarket Sales. So then yesterday when I was wondering what would fetch you… where you would meet me… I remembered the sales were so close to Cambridge, and I decided on it not long before I rang you’
I pondered a bit. ‘How would you set about finding where someone was, if you wanted to, so to speak?’
To my surprise he had a ready answer. ‘Get the fellow I had for tailing Moira.’
‘Tailing…’
‘My lawyer said to do it. It might save me something, he said, if Moira was having a bit on the side, see what I mean?’
.‘I do indeed,’ I agreed dryly. ‘But I suppose she wasn’t?’
‘No such luck.’ He glanced at me. ‘What do you have in mind?’