Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,55
Cadogan Hall. Come and listen.’
‘I’d love to,’ I said. ‘Dinner after?’
‘Lovely,’ she said. She gave me a full-toothed smile with her broad mouth as the door closed and the taxi moved away. Suddenly she was gone, and I was left on the pavement feeling somewhat wretched and alone. Was I that desperate, I asked myself, that I would jump at the first girl that came along? Caroline was suing me for ten thousand pounds in damages and maybe I should have been more careful not to have told her so much. Perhaps she would use what I told her against me. But there had been a certain rapport between us, of that I was certain. Even on Friday evening, on the telephone, I was pretty sure that we would get on, and I think we had. I wasn’t being desperate, I told myself, I was being sensible. But why., then, did I feel such an ache from not still being with her?
I hailed another taxi and reluctantly told the driver to take me to King’s Cross station rather than to Tamworth Street in Fulham.
I caught the last train to Cambridge with less than a minute to spare. I sat and pondered what I had discussed with Caroline as the train pulled out of the station on the hour-and-ten-minute journey north-eastwards.
Somehow, putting my thoughts into words had made them sound rather more plausible. However, I still felt that the authorities would dismiss my theories as highly fanciful. But were they any more fanciful, I wondered, than thinking that a Middle East terror group had attempted an assassination of a foreign royal prince on Newmarket Heath?
I didn’t really believe it but, if I was right in thinking that the dinner had been poisoned to prevent someone being blown up, then I could safely assume that the bomb had, in fact, hit its intended target. So what made Delafield Industries so special that someone wanted to blow them up on their big day out in England? Who would want to kill or maim Elizabeth Jennings or Brian and June Walters, and why? Or was it the likes of Rolf Schumann and MaryLou Fordham who were the real targets?
I knew Delafield Industries made tractors and combine harvesters, but what else did they do? I resolved to look them up on the Internet in the morning, along with Mr Schumann.
I lay back against the headrest and thought about more pleasant things like the evening two weeks on Thursday at the Cadogan Hall. In truth, I wasn’t a great lover of classical music, but I would listen to anything with huge pleasure if I was able to have dinner with Caroline afterwards. Even the thought of it made me smile, although it was more than fifteen whole days away and that seemed a very long time to have to wait to see her again. Maybe I could entice her to Newmarket somewhat sooner than that, like tomorrow.
The train pulled into Cambridge station at twenty-five minutes past one in the morning. As always on the late-night stopping service, I had to force myself to stay awake so that I didn’t end up on the train at King’s Lynn or wherever.
I had left my car in the Cambridge station car park, as was usual when I went to London for the evening. At five in the afternoon nearly all the spaces had been full with commuters’ cars, but now my little Golf stood alone at the far end of the car park awaiting my return. I had drunk no more than half a bottle of wine throughout the evening as well as having had a full meal with coffee. It had been nearly three hours since Caroline and I had finished the wine, and I reckoned that I was fine to drive and well under the limit.
I was slightly surprised to find my car wasn’t locked. The driver’s door was not fully shut, only half-latched. I couldn’t actually remember leaving it like that, but, then, it wouldn’t have been the first time, not by a long chalk. After so many years of misuse, the door needed a good slam to get it shut properly. The manager of my garage had often tried, at great expense, to sell me a new door seal, but I had always declined his offers on the grounds that the cost of the seal was only a fraction less than what the whole car was worth.