‘You’re unfair to the police,’ she observed.
‘I dare say.’
‘The solutions, I do agree, seem as far away as ever.’
‘Sandy Smith,’ I said, ‘says it’s a matter of asking the right questions.’
‘Which are?’
‘Yes, well, there’s the rub.’
‘Think of one.’ She drank her coffee, smiling.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘What do you think of Aziz?’
‘What?’ She was surprised; almost, I would have said, disconcerted.
‘He’s odd,’ I remarked. ‘I don’t know how he could have caused any of my troubles, but he turned up in my farmyard the day after Jogger died and I gave him Brett’s job because he speaks French and Arabic and had worked in a Mercedes garage. But my sister says he’s far too bright for what he’s doing and I respect my sister’s insight. So why is Aziz working for me?’
She asked how my sister knew Aziz and I explained about the day he fetched the old horses, and that he’d driven Lizzie to Heathrow the next morning.
‘That Tuesday night, when I ended up in Southampton Docks, I don’t know if Aziz helped to put me there.’
‘Oh, no,’ she said, shocked. ‘I’m sure he didn’t.’
‘Why are you so sure?’
‘It’s just... he’s so cheerful.’
‘One can smile and smile and be a villain.’
‘Not Aziz,’ she said.
To be honest, my gut reaction to Aziz was the same as Nina’s: he might be a rogue but not a villain. Yet I did have villains about me, and I badly needed to know them.
‘Who killed Jogger?’ she asked.
I said, ‘Who would you put your money on?’
‘Dave,’ she said, without hesitation. ‘He’s got a violent streak that he never shows you.’
‘I’ve heard about it. But not Dave. No, I’ve known him too long.’ I could hear the doubts creeping into my own voice, despite my conviction. ‘Dave didn’t know about the containers under the floorboards.’
‘One can grin a little boy grin and be a villain.’
Against all probability I laughed, my cares unaccountably lifting.
‘The police will find Jogger’s killer,’ Nina said, ‘and you will have no more trouble and I will go home and that will be that.’
‘I don’t want you to go home.’
I said it without thinking, and surprised myself as much as her. She looked at me thoughtfully, unerringly hearing what I hadn’t meant to say.
‘That’s loneliness speaking,’ she said slowly.
‘I’m happy alone.’
‘Yes. Like I am.’
She finished her coffee and patted her mouth on a napkin with an air of finality.
‘Time to go,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the dinner.’
I paid the bill and we went out to the cars, hers and mine, both our workhorse wheels.
‘Goodnight,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘See you in the morning.’ She climbed without pause or tension into her seat, adept at unembarrassing partings. ‘Good night, Freddie.’
‘Night,’ I said.
She drove away with a smile, friendly, nothing else. I wasn’t sure whether or not to feel relieved.
Sometime during the night I woke suddenly, hearing again in my mind Sandy’s insistent voice, ‘You have to ask the right questions.’
I’d thought of a question I should have asked, and hadn’t. I’d been slow and dim. I would ask the question first thing in the morning.
First thing in the morning, rousing me from depths of renewed slumber, the telephone bell brought Marigold’s loud voice into my wincing ear.
‘I’m not too happy about your friend Peterman,’ she said, coming at once to the point. ‘I’d like your advice. Can you call round here? Say, at about nine o’clock?’
‘Mm,’ I said, surfacing as sluggishly as any half-drowned swimmer. ‘Yes, Marigold. Nine o’clock. Fine.’
‘Are you drunk?’ she demanded.
‘No, just asleep.’ In bed, supine, eyes shut.
‘But it’s seven already,’ she pointed out severely. ‘The day’s half over.’
‘I’ll be there.’ I fumbled the receiver towards its bedside cradle.
‘Good,’ her voice said from a distance. ‘Great.’
Sleep was alluring, sleep a temptress, sleep as beckoning as a drug. Only the remembrance of the essential question I hadn’t asked got me out of bed and into the bathroom.
Saturday morning. Coffee. Cornflakes.
Still bleary-brained, I padded from the kitchen into the wreck of the sitting-room and switched on the computer. There was no crash of hard disk. I called up Isobel’s new entries of details of the drivers and found them still basic and abbreviated: names, addresses, dates of birth, next-of-kin, driving licence numbers, journeys driven that week, hours spent at the wheel.
Invading her privacy, I typed Nina’s name, and read her address, care of Lauderhill Abbey, Stow-on-the-Wold, and her age, forty-four.
Nine years older than myself. Eight and a half, to be accurate. I drank my second cup of coffee very hot and wondered how much that age gap mattered.
I answered four telephone calls in quick succession, receiving, altering, agreeing to trips for that day and typing them into the programme for Isobel, who worked in the office most Saturday mornings from eight until noon. At ten to eight she phoned me herself, reporting her arrival, allowing me gratefully to switch the business line to the farmyard.
I drove along there myself to watch the day’s journeys begin and to sort out any last-minute hitches, but again Isobel and Harve seemed to have everything running smoothly.
Nina (forty-four) gave me a small hello smile as she arrived to go to Lingfield, her appearance as determinedly unattractive as ever. Harve, Phil and the crowd were in and out of the canteen, stretching, picking up worksheets, flirting mildly with Isobel. Any Saturday morning. Another race day. Twenty-four hours in a life.
Most of the fleet had gone by eight-thirty. I went into Isobel’s office to find her typing the day’s adjusted programmes into her computer, working mostly from what I’d typed in at home.
‘How’s things?’ I asked vaguely.
‘Always frantic.’ She smiled, happy enough.
‘I want to ask you to remember something.’
‘Fire away.’ She went on typing, looking at the screen.
‘Um,’ I said, ‘last August...’ I paused, waiting for more of her attention.
‘What about last August?’ she asked vaguely, still typing. ‘You go away in August.’
‘Yes, I know. When I was away last August, what did Jogger find in the inspection pit?’
She stopped typing and looked at me in puzzlement.
‘What did you say?’ she asked.
‘What did Jogger find in the pit? Something dead. What did he find dead in the pit?’
‘But Jogger... he was dead in the pit, wasn’t he?’
‘Last Sunday Jogger was dead in the pit, yes. But last August, apparently he found something else dead there... a dead nun, he said, but it can’t have been a dead nun. So can you remember what he found? Did he tell you? Did he tell anyone?’
‘Oh.’ Her forehead developed lines of thought as she raised her eyebrows. ‘I do vaguely remember, but it wasn’t anything to worry you about. I mean, it was so silly.’
‘What did he find?’
‘I think it was a rabbit.’
‘A rabbit?’
‘Yes. A dead rabbit. He said it was crawling with maggots or something and he threw it in the skip. That was all.’
‘Are you sure?’ I asked doubtfully.
She nodded. ‘He didn’t know what else to do with it, so he threw it in the Dumpster.’
‘I mean, are you sure it was a rabbit?’
‘I think so. I didn’t see it. Jogger said it must have hopped in there somehow and once it had fallen into the pit of course it couldn’t get out.’