Even Money - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,53

there was equally no chance I was going to hand over what he had called the microcoder.

Stalemate ensued for the next fifteen minutes or so.

I was wondering what he was up to when he suddenly banged on the door, making me jump.

“Are you still awake in there?” he asked.

“What do you think?” I replied.

“Yeah, well, sorry and all that,” he said quite casually. “I’ll be off now, then.” He said it as if he’d just been around for a drink or something and it was time to go home.

“Who are you?” I said.

“Never you mind,” he said again. “But I didn’t kill your father.”

I heard him go down the stairs, and the third step, my new friend, creaked twice as he descended. Then I heard the front door being opened. Then it was slammed shut.

I went across to my bedroom window and looked down. The man had indeed left my house, and I watched the top of his head as he walked across the car-parking area and onto the road. He appeared to be cradling his right arm in his left, and, at one point, he turned briefly to look up at me, as if intentionally showing me his face. I recognized him immediately. It wasn’t the man with the close-set eyes who had stabbed my father in the Ascot parking lot—it was the elusive fourth stranger from his inquest.

I stood looking out my bedroom window for some time in case he came back. I neither saw nor heard any car drive away, and I was still very wary as I finally removed the chair from under the door handle and peeped out onto the landing.

I didn’t yet know how he’d made it into my house in the first place. I didn’t really relish going downstairs only to find him there once more, having simply gone around the block and back in through one of the rear windows that faced the garden.

The house was quiet, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there.

I stood at the top of the stairs straining to hear any sound from below, maybe a breath or a shuffle of feet. But there was nothing.

I crept silently down, avoiding step three, listening carefully and ready to run back up to my bedroom bolt-hole at the slightest noise. There was no one there. He really had gone away, and he’d not come back again. I turned on all the lights and went around the house to close the stable door now that the horse had bolted.

In truth, I’d made it far too easy for him. As well as the fanlight in my bedroom being open, so had the one in the living room, and he had simply put his arm through it, opened the big window beneath and climbed in. He’d left some muddy footprints on the fawn carpet under the window. No doubt, I should now call the police, and they could take photos of the prints and try to match them to a specific shoe size and manufacturer.

Instead, I used my handheld vacuum cleaner to clear up the mess.

The phone handset in the kitchen was off the hook. I picked it up and listened. Nothing. I replaced it on the cradle, then lifted it again and pressed REDIAL. The LED readout just showed 0. A female computer-generated voice stated that “The number you have called has not been recognized, please check and try again,” and that phrase was repeated about six times, and then it shut off completely, leaving the line dead.

Apart from the mud on the living-room floor, my nocturnal visitor, the fourth stranger, had been meticulously tidy in his search. The kitchen cabinets were all open but hardly disturbed, as were the sideboard cupboards in the dining room. He had been trying to be quiet.

However, far from answering any of the questions surrounding my father, my intruder had simply created new ones, and, in particular, was he working together with Shifty-eyes or did they represent different interests?

After all, he had only asked for the microcoder. There had been no mention of the considerable cache of money that had been hidden with it.

But if the fourth stranger knew where I lived, as he clearly did, then surely so could anyone else. I had, perhaps carelessly, freely given out my home address at the inquest, where the fourth stranger would have heard it. It now also would be in the official record. It wasn’t much of a leap to realize that the information could be obtained