Enquiry - By Dick Francis Page 0,24

stewing steak and dog meat, it is straight, though come to think of it there isn’t all that difference, ’specially as maybe your eyes don’t look at things the same. Do they? I damn well wish you could talk, mate.’

I clicked shut the door of the car and startled him, and he swung round with the torch searching wildly. The beam caught me and steadied on my face.

The boy said, ‘You come near me and I’ll set my dog on you.’ The dog, however, was still squatting and showed no enthusiasm.

‘I’ll stay right here, then,’ I said amicably, leaning back against the car. ‘I only want to know who lives in that cottage over there, where the lights are.’

‘How do I know? We only come to live here the day before yesterday.’

‘Great… I mean, that must be great for you, moving.’

‘Yeah. Sure. You stay there, then. I’m going now.’ He beckoned to the dog. The dog was still busy.

‘How would it be if you could offer your Mum the price of the stewing steak? Maybe she wouldn’t tell your Dad, then, and neither you nor the dog would get a belting.’

‘Our Mum says we mustn’t talk to strange men.’

‘Hm. Well, never mind then. Off you go.’

‘I’ll go when I’m ready,’ he said belligerently. A natural born rebel. About nine years old, I guessed.

‘What would I have to do for it?’ he said, after a pause.

‘Nothing much. Just ring the front door bell of that cottage and tell whoever answers that you can’t stop your dog eating the crocuses they’ve got growing all along the front there. Then when they come out to see, just nip off home as fast as your dog can stagger.’

It appealed to him. ‘Steak probably costs a good bit,’ he said.

‘Probably.’ I dug into my pocket and came up with a small fistful of pennies and silver. ‘This should leave a bit over.’

‘He doesn’t really have to eat the crocuses, does he?’

‘No.’

‘O.K. then.’ Once his mind was made up he was jaunty and efficient. He shovelled my small change into his pocket, marched up to Charlie’s front door, and told Mrs West, who cautiously answered it, that she was losing her crocuses. She scolded him all the way down the path, and while she was bending down to search for the damage, my accomplice quietly vanished. Before Mrs West exactly realised she had been misled I had stepped briskly through her front door and shut her out of her own house.

When I opened the sitting-room door Charlie said, without lifting his eyes from a racing paper, ‘It wasn’t him again, then.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘It was.’

Charlie’s immature face crumpled into a revolting state of fear and Mrs West leaned on the door bell. I shut the sitting-room door behind me to cut out some of the din.

‘What are you so afraid of?’ I said loudly.

‘Well… you…’

‘And so you damn well ought to be,’ I agreed. I took a step towards him and he shrank back into his armchair. He was brave enough on a horse, which made this abject cringing all the more unexpected, and all the more unpleasant. I took another step. He fought his way into the upholstery.

Mrs West gave the door bell a rest.

‘Why did you do it?’ I said.

He shook his head dumbly, and pulled his feet up on to the chair seat in the classic womb position. Wishful regression to the first and only place where the world couldn’t reach him.

‘Charlie, I came here for some answers, and you’re going to give them to me.’

Mrs West’s furious face appeared at the window and she started rapping hard enough to break the glass. With one eye on her husband to prevent him making another bolt for it, I stepped over and undid the latch.

‘Get out of here,’ she shouted. ‘Go on, get out.’

‘You get in. Through here, I’m not opening the door.’

‘I’ll fetch the police.’

‘Do what you like. I only want to talk to your worm of a husband. Get in or stay out, but shut up.’

She did anything but. Once she was in the room it took another twenty minutes of fruitless slanging before I could ask Charlie a single question without her loud voice obliterating any chance of an answer.

Charlie himself tired of it first and told her to stop, but at least her belligerence had given him a breathing space. He put his feet down on the floor again and said it was no use asking those questions, he didn’t