was room in the box for the lighthouse, so they took that, too. Yale solemnly wrote a receipt on a page of his notebook and gave it to me, and with him carrying the box we went out into the daylight, blinking as our eyes adjusted after the gloom.
As we walked back in the general direction of the trestle table, Smith said,‘We’ve put all the clothes we’ve found on a table in the garage. I’m afraid they’re mostly torn and unwearable, but you might want to see. All the personal things we’ve salvaged are in a cardboard carton. Do you want to take those today, or wait until we’re finished?’
‘Look now, take later,’ I said.
Smith half smiled.‘They’re in that box under the table.’
I squatted down beside the brown cardboard carton and opened the top flaps. Inside there was quite a good collection of dusty bits and pieces, more than I would have imagined. I picked out one of Malcolm’s precious brushes and ran my finger over the gold and silver chased backing. The dust came off and the metal shone in the sunlight. He would be pleased, I thought.
‘We’ve found five of those,’ Smith observed.‘Two are badly dented, the others look all right.’
‘There were eight,’ I said.‘In his dressing-room.’
He shrugged.‘We might find more.’
I turned over a few things in the box. Mostly they were uninteresting, like a bottle of aspirins from the bathroom. At the bottom, I came across one or two things of my own - an empty spongebag and the tape recorder.
I lifted the recorder out, straightened up and put it on the table. Pressed the start button. Absence of results.
‘It was just a chance you might want it,’ Smith said philosophically, ‘It doesn’t work as it is, but you might want to get it mended.’
‘Probably cheaper to buy a new one,’ I said. I pressed the rewind and fast-forward buttons pointlessly, and then the eject button, which worked. The plastic lid staggered open, revealing a tape within. I had to think for a minute which tape it was and thenremembered it was only the one from my answering machine; nothing interesting. I shut the lid and put the recorder back in the box under the table.
‘If you find my camera, now that would be good news,’ I said, straightening again.
Yale had lost interest and was preparing to leave.
‘Was it yours?’ said Mr Smith, ‘It’s in the skip, I’m afraid. Badly smashed.’
‘Oh well…’
‘Were you insured?’
I shook my head.‘Never thought of it.’
Smith made sympathetic gestures and went back to the rubble. The superintendent said I should telephone him the following morning without fail. He ran his thumb and finger down his moustache and asked me if I now knew who had bombed the house.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t. Do you?’
He wouldn’t say he didn’t, but he didn’t. He picked up the Lego box and marched off with it, and I went to look at the clothes in the garage.
Nothing was worth saving, I thought. All highly depressing. My jodhpur boots with the toes flattened, Malcolm’s vicuna coats with triangular tears. I left it all as it lay and started out on a quick hike round the garden to make sure all was well with the gold, and came upon Arthur Bellbrook digging potatoes within six feet of it. My heart jumped a bit. His was undisturbed.
We exchanged good mornings and remarks about the weather. He asked what he should do with the potatoes and I told him to take them home. He nodded his thanks. He complained that the pick-up trucks for the rubbish skips were ruining the lawn. He said souvenir hunters had stripped Mrs Pembroke’s fancy greenhouse of every single geranium, including the cuttings, but not to worry, without glass in the windows they would have died in the first frost. It had been a mild autumn, but frost would come soon.
He looked along the length of the kitchen garden, his back towards the end wall. He would dig everything over, he said, ready for winter.
I left him bending again to his task, not sure whether he was a guardian of the gold or a threat to it. Malcolm had a nerve, I thought, hiding his stockpile in that place and seeing Arthur work close to it day after day. Malcolm had more nerve than was good for him.
I drove to the pub in Cookham, where they were getting used to my hours, took a bath, put on trousers, shirt and jersey and, accompanied by Norman West’s