Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,64

reservoir to the master cylinder coming loose.’ He had lost me.

‘But can you tell if it was done on purpose?’ I asked him.

‘Difficult to tell,’ he said again. ‘Might have been. The joins are still tight so someone would have had to split the metal pipe.’ He pointed. ‘It could have been done by flexing it up and down a few times until it cracked open due to fatigue. You know, like bending a wire coat hanger back and forth until it snaps.

‘Would that make the brakes fail immediately?’ I asked.

‘Not necessarily,’ I said. ‘It might take a while for the air to seep from the cracked pipe into the master cylinder. A few hefty pumps on the pedal might be needed.’

I thought about the hefty pumps I had given the pedal on the way home from Cambridge station.

‘Can you tell by looking if that’s what happened here?’ I said.

He again inspected the jumble of broken pipes. ‘The accident seems to have smashed it all. It would be impossible to tell what had been done beforehand.’

‘Would the police accident investigators have any better idea?’ I asked him.

He seemed a bit offended that I had questioned his ability. ‘No one could tell from that mess what it was like before the accident,’ he said with some indignation.

I wasn’t sure that I totally agreed with him but I didn’t think it was time to say so. Instead, I paid him half an hour’s labour cost in cash and used my mobile phone to call a taxi.

‘Do you have the keys of the car?’ I asked the man.

‘No, mate,’ he said. ‘Never seen them. Thought they were still in it.’

They weren’t. I’d looked. ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘They wouldn’t be much use now anyway.’ But they had been on a silver key fob. A twenty-first-birthday present from my mother.

‘Can I send it off to the scrap then?’ he asked.

‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘Wait until the insurance man has seen it.’

‘Will do,’ he said. ‘But don’t forget, you’re the one paying for the storage.’

What a surprise.

‘Well, that wasn’t very conclusive,’ said Caroline as we sat in the taxi taking us back to Newmarket. ‘What do you want to do now?’

‘Go home,’ I said. ‘I’m feeling lousy.’

We did go home but via the supermarket in Newmarket. I sat outside in the taxi as Caroline went to buy something to eat for supper, as well as a bottle of red wine. I was pretty sure that the painkillers I was taking didn’t mix too well with alcohol, but who cared.

I lay on the sofa and rested my aching head while Caroline fussed around in the kitchen. Once or twice she came and sat down next to me but soon she was up and about again.

‘Relax,’ I said to her. ‘I won’t eat you alive.’

She sighed. ‘It’s not that. I’m restless because I haven’t got my viola here to play. I usually practise for at least two hours every day, even if I’m performing in the evening. I haven’t played a note since the day before yesterday and I’m suffering from withdrawal symptoms. I need my fix.’

‘Like me and my cooking,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I just get the urge to cook even if there is no one to eat it. The freezers at the restaurant are full of stuff I intend getting round to eating one day.’

‘Shame there’s none of it here,’ she said.

‘I could call and ask one of my staff to bring some over.’

‘No,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’ll take my chances and cook for the cook. It also might be better not to mention anything about this to your staff.’

‘Why not?’ I said.

‘They might get the wrong idea.’

‘And what, exactly, is the wrong idea they might get?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘If they knew I was staying here, they might jump to the wrong conclusions.’

I wasn’t sure I liked the way the conversation was going. Too much analysis of any situation was apt to make it appear somewhat stupid, whereas uninhibited and thought-free actions were more often an accurate reflection of true feelings. The raw and honest emotion of last night in the hospital was in danger of being consumed by too much good sense and the weighing-up of consequences.

‘What do you play when you practise?’ I asked changing the subject. ‘And don’t say the viola.’

‘Finger exercises mostly,’ she said. ‘Very boring.’

‘Like scales?’ I had been forced to do hours of scales on the piano when I was a child. I had