Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,54

habit,’ he said with irony, ‘but what else can one do?’ He gave me a sketchy wave and went into his room, and I continued on up to see if I were still to sleep among the bamboo shoots, which it seemed I was.

I dozed on top of the bedclothes for an hour or so and then went down, out, and round the back to get the car to fetch Danielle.

I thought, as I walked quietly into the dark, deserted alley, that it really was a perfect place for an ambush.

TWELVE

The alley was a cobbled cul de sac about twenty feet wide and a hundred yards long, with a wider place at the far end for turning, the backs of tall buildings closing it all in like a canyon. Its sides were lined with garage doors, the wide garages themselves running in under the backs of the buildings, and unlike many other mews where the garages had originally been built as housing for coaches and horses, Falmouth Mews, as it was called, had no residential entrances.

By day, the mews was alive and busy, as a firm of motor mechanics occupied several of the garages, doing repairs for the surrounding neighbourhood. At night, when they’d gone home, the place was a shadowy lane of big closed doors, lit only from the windows of the buildings above.

The garage where Thomas kept the Rolls was further than halfway in. Next, beyond, was a garage belonging to the mechanics, which Thomas had persuaded them to rent temporarily to the princess, to accommodate Danielle’s car (now recovered from the menders by Thomas). My Mercedes, unhoused, was parked along outside Danielle’s garage doors, and other cars, here and there along the mews, were similarly placed. In a two-car family, one typically was in the generous sized lock-up, the second lengthways outside.

Around and behind these second cars there were a myriad hiding places.

I ought to have brought a torch, I thought. Tomorrow I would buy one. The mews could shelter a host of monsters … and Beatrice knew what time I set off each night to Chiswick.

I walked down the centre of the alley feeling my heart thud, yet I’d gone down there the night before without a tremor. The power of imagination, I thought wryly: and nothing rustled in the undergrowth, nothing pounced, the tiger wasn’t around for the goat.

The car looked exactly as I’d left it, but I checked the wiring under the bonnet and under the dashboard before switching on the ignition. I checked there was no oil leaking from under the engine, and that all the tyres were hard, and I tested the brakes with a sudden stop before turning out into the road.

Satisfied, I drove without trouble to Chiswick, collecting Danielle at two o’clock. She was tired from the long day and talked little, telling me only that they’d spent all evening on a story about snow and ice houses which she thought was a waste of time.

‘What snow and ice houses?’ I asked, more just to talk to her than from wanting to know.

‘Sculptures for a competition. Some of the guys had been out filming them in an exhibition. Like sandcastles, only made of snow and ice. Some of them were quite pretty and even had lights inside them. The guys said the place they were in was like filming in an igloo without a blanket. All good fun, I guess, but not world news.’

She yawned and fell silent, and in a short while we were back in the mews: it was always a quick journey at night, with no traffic.

‘You can’t keep coming to pick me up,’ she said, as we walked round into Eaton Square.

‘I like to.’

‘Litsi told me that the man in the hood was Henri Nanterre.’ She shivered. ‘I don’t know if it makes it better or worse. Anyway, I’m not working Friday nights right now, or Saturdays or Sundays, of course. You can sleep, Friday night.’

We let ourselves into the house with the new keys and said goodnight again on her landing. We never had slept in the same bed in that house, so there were no such memories or regrets to deal with, but I fiercely wished as I walked up one more flight that she would come up there with me: yet it had been no use suggesting it, because her goodnight kiss had again been a defence, not a promise, and had landed again any way but squarely.

Give her time … Time was