Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,38

negotiated with the incumbents. Sure, they said lazily, accepting the car’s keys, registration number and whereabouts. Leave it to them, they would fetch it at once, fix the tyres, replace the windscreen wipers, and it would be ready for collection in the morning.

It wasn’t until we were again on our way towards Eaton Square that Danielle said any more about her would-be attacker, and then it was unwillingly.

‘Do you think he was a rapist?’ she said tautly.

‘It seems … well … likely, I’m afraid.’ I tried to picture him. ‘What sort of clothes was he wearing? What sort of hood?’

‘I didn’t notice,’ she began, and then realised that she remembered more than she’d thought. ‘A suit. An ordinary man’s suit. And polished leather shoes. The light shone on them, and I could hear them tapping on the ground … how odd. The hood was … a woollen hat, dark, pulled down, with holes for eyes and mouth.’

‘Horrible,’ I said with sympathy.

‘I think he was waiting for me to leave the studio.’ She shuddered. ‘Do you think he fixed my tyres?’

‘Two flat at once is no coincidence.’

‘What do you think I should do?’

‘Tell the police?’ I suggested.

‘No, certainly not. They think any young woman driving alone in the middle of the night is asking for trouble.’

‘All the same …’

‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘that a friend of a friend of mine – an American – was driving along in part of London, like I was, doing absolutely nothing wrong, when she was stopped by the police and taken to the police station? They stripped her! Can you believe it? They said they were looking for drugs or bombs … there was a terrorist scare on, and they thought she had a suspicious accent. It took her ages to get people to wake up and say she was truly going home after working late. She’s been a wreck ever since, and gave up her job.’

‘It does seem unbelievable,’ I agreed.

‘It happened,’ she said.

‘They’re not all like that,’ I said mildly.

She decided nevertheless to tell only her colleagues in the studio, saying they should step up security round the parked cars.

‘I’m sorry I made you come so far,’ she said, not particularly sounding it. ‘But I didn’t want the police, and otherwise it meant waking Dawson and getting someone there to come for me. I felt shattered … I knew you would come.’

‘Mm.’

She sighed, some of the tension at last leaving her voice. ‘There wasn’t much in my purse, that’s one good thing. Just lipstick and a hair-brush, not much money. No credit cards. I never take much with me to work.’

I nodded. ‘What about keys?’

‘Oh …’

‘The front door key of Eaton Square?’

‘Yes,’ she said, dismayed. ‘And the key to the back door of the studios, where the staff go in. I’ll have to tell them in the morning, when the day shift gets there.’

‘Did you have anything with you that had the Eaton Square address on it?’

‘No,’ she said positively. ‘I cleaned the whole car out this afternoon … I did it really to evade Aunt Beatrice … and I changed purses. I had no letters or anything like that with me.’

‘That’s something,’ I said.

‘You’re so practical.’

‘I would tell the police,’ I said neutrally.

‘No. You don’t understand, you’re not female.’

There seemed to be no reply to that, so I pressed her no further. I drove back to Eaton Square as I’d done so many times before, driving her home from work, and it wasn’t until we were nearly there that I wondered whether the hooded man could possibly have been not a rapist at all, but Henri Nanterre.

On the face of it, it didn’t seem possible, but coming at that particular time it had to be considered. If it in fact were part of the campaign of harassment and accidents, then we would hear about it, as about the horses also: no act of terrorism was complete without the boasting afterwards.

Danielle had never seen Henri Nanterre and wouldn’t have known his general shape, weight, and way of moving. Conversely, nor would he have turned up in Chiswick when he had no reason to know she was in England, even if he knew of her actual existence.

‘You’re very quiet all of a sudden,’ Danielle said, sounding no longer frightened but consequently sleepy. ‘What are you thinking?’

I glanced at her softening face, seeing the taut lines of strain smoothing out. Three or four times we’d known what the other was thinking, in the sort