Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,106
was thankful when we touched down gently at Heathrow on time at seven o’clock on Monday morning.
Caroline was waiting for me just beyond passport control, sitting on a bench alongside Viola, who was safely stashed away out of sight in her made-to-measure black case. While she was not quite a Stradivarius, Viola was still much too valuable to have travelled across the Atlantic in the aircraft hold.
‘Where do we go from here?’ she asked, as I sat down next to her.
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
‘Do you think it’s safe to go back to my place?’ she said.
‘When do you have to be back with the orchestra?’ I asked her.
‘Wednesday lunchtime,’ she said. ‘We have a couple of days off now before rehearsals for the concerts on Thursday and Friday at Cadogan Hall. But I’ve got to do some personal preparation before then.’
‘We are going to stay with my brother for a couple of days,’ I said.
‘Are we, indeed? And where does he live?’
‘East Hendred,’ I said. ‘It’s near Didcot in Oxfordshire.’
I had no intention of using my mobile for a while, so I called Toby on an airport pay phone in the baggage hall to tell him we were coming today.
‘Will it be safe?’ Caroline said.
‘I don’t know.’ It worried me that it might not be totally safe for my brother’s family either. But it was a chance I had to take. ‘I don’t know if anywhere could be totally safe,’ I said to her. ‘But I can’t hide for ever. I need to find out why Komarov is trying to kill me.’
‘If you’re sure it’s him,’ she said, ‘don’t you think it’s time you talked to the police?’
‘I will,’ I said. ‘After I’ve spoken to my brother and showed him the metal ball. Then I’ll call the police.’
So it wasn’t the boys in blue I called next from the pay phone. It was Bernard Sims, my irrepressible lawyer.
We collected first our luggage and then the rented Ford Mondeo from the airport hotel car park where I had left it the previous Wednesday. Fortunately it had an automatic gearbox and driving mostly one handed was relatively simple, so we joined the crawl-crawl, non-rush rush-hour traffic along the M4 into London. Caroline insisted on going to her flat to get some fresh clothes even though I wasn’t very keen on the idea, if only because East Hendred was in the opposite direction. I, personally, didn’t have any fresh clothes. Other than a couple of items I had abandoned at Carl’s house, all the clothes I owned were here in my suitcase.
‘I absolutely have to go home,’ said Caroline. ‘I also need some fresh strings for my viola, I have only two left.’
‘Can’t we just buy some?’ I asked her.
She just looked at me for an answer, her head on its side, her mouth pursed.
‘OK, OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll take you home.’
So we went to Fulham, but I insisted on driving up and down Tamworth Street at least three times to see if anyone was sitting in any of the parked cars watching her flat. Neither of us could spot anyone, so I stopped the car on the corner and Caroline went into her flat while I sat outside keeping watch with the engine running. No one came and there were no shouts, but I felt uneasy nevertheless.
I was beginning to think that Caroline had been rather a long time when she reappeared and came sprinting back to the car. She threw a holdall on to the back seat as she jumped in. There was something urgent about her movements.
‘Go,’ she said, slamming the door. I didn’t need telling twice and we sped away. ‘Someone’s been in my flat,’ she said.
‘How do you know?’ I asked.
‘I thought it was a bit odd when I went in,’ she said, turning her head to see if we were being followed. ‘There was a dirty footprint on one of my letters on the mat under the letter box. 1 told myself that I was being paranoid. That footprint could have been on the letter before it was pushed through the door. But I am also certain someone’s been in my bathroom, in my medicine cabinet.’
‘How?’ I asked again.
‘My bathroom cabinet is so full of stuff that it tends to all fall out when you open the door. It takes a knack to stop it happening, and someone didn’t have it. Everything in there is now in a slightly different place.’