There was also, I supposed, the third man, old muscle and sun glasses. The beef of the organisation. I didn’t think I would ever forget him: raincoat over heavy shoulders, cloth cap over forehead, sun glasses over eyes... almost a disguise. Yet I hadn’t known him. I was positive I’d never seen him anywhere before. So why had he needed a disguise at one-thirty in the morning when he hadn’t expected to be seen by me in the first place?
All I knew of him was that at some point he had learned to box. That he was of sufficient standing in the trio to make his own decisions, because neither of the others had told him to hit me: he’d done it of his own accord. That Ganser Mays and Jody felt they needed his extra muscle, because neither of them was large, though Jody in his way was strong, in case any of the swindled victims cut up rough.
The afternoon faded and became night. All I was doing, I thought, was sorting through the implications and explanations of what had happened. Nothing at all towards getting myself out of trouble and Jody in. When I tried to plan that, all I achieved was a blank.
In the silence I clearly heard the sound of the street door opening. My heart jumped. Pulse raced again, as in the stable. Brain came sternly afterwards like a schoolmaster, telling me not to be so bloody silly.
No one but Owen had the new keys. No one but Owen would be coming in. All the same I was relieved when the lights were switched on in the hall and I could hear his familiar tread on the stairs.
He went into the dark sitting-room.
‘Sir?’
‘In the bedroom,’ I called.
He came into the doorway, silhouetted against the light in the passage.
‘Shall I turn the light on?’
‘No, don’t bother.’
‘Sir...’ His voice suddenly struck me as being odd. Uncertain. Or distressed.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I couldn’t find the car.’ The words came out in a rush. The distress was evident.
‘Go and get yourself a stiff drink and come back and tell me about it.’
He hesitated a fraction but went away to the sitting-room and clinked glasses. I fumbled around with an outstretched hand and switched on the bedside light. Squinted at my watch. Six-thirty. Allie would be at Heathrow, boarding her aeroplane, waving to her sister, flying away.
Owen returned with two glasses, both containing scotch and water. He put one glass on my bedside table and interrupted politely when I opened my mouth to protest.
‘The hair of the dog. You know it works, sir.’
‘It just makes you drunker.’
‘But less queasy.’
I waved towards my bedroom armchair and he sat in it easily as before, watching me with a worried expression. He held his glass carefully, but didn’t drink. With a sigh I propped myself on one elbow and led the way. The first sip tasted vile, the second passable, the third familiar.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What about the car?’
Owen took a quick gulp from his glass. The worried expression intensified.
‘I went down to Newbury on the train and hired a taxi, like you said. We drove to where you showed me on the map, but the car didn’t seem to be there. So I got the taxi driver to go along every possible road leading away from Mr Leeds’ stable and I still couldn’t find it. The taxi driver got pretty ratty in the end. He said there wasn’t anywhere else to look. I got him to drive around in a larger area, but you said you’d walked from the car to the stables so it couldn’t have been more than a mile away, I thought.’
‘Half a mile, no further,’ I said.
‘Well, sir, the car just wasn’t there.’ He took another swig. ‘I didn’t really know what to do. I got the taxi to take me to the police in Newbury, but they knew nothing about it. They rang around two or three local nicks because I made a bit of a fuss, sir, but no one down there had seen hair or hide of it.’
I thought a bit. ‘They had the keys, of course.’
‘Yes, I thought of that.’
‘So the car could be more or less anywhere by now.’
He nodded unhappily.
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘I’ll report it stolen. It’s bound to turn up somewhere. They aren’t ordinary car thieves. When you come to think of it we should have expected it to be gone, because if they were going to deny I had ever been in the stables last night they wouldn’t want my car found half a mile away.’
‘Do you mean they went out looking for it?’
‘They would know I hadn’t dropped in by parachute.’
He smiled faintly and lowered the level in his glass to a spoonful.
‘Shall I get you something to eat, sir?’
‘I don’t feel...’
‘Better to eat. Really it is. I’ll pop out to the take-away.’ He put his glass down and departed before I could argue and came back in ten minutes with a wing of freshly roasted chicken.
‘Didn’t think you’d fancy the chips,’ he said. He put the plate beside me, fetched knife, fork and napkin, and drained his own glass.
‘Be going now, sir,’ he said, ‘if you’re all right.’
8
Whether it was Owen’s care or the natural course of events, I felt a great deal better in the morning. The face peering back at me from the bathroom mirror, though adorned now with two days’ stubble, had lost the grey look and the dizzy eyes. Even the bags underneath were retreating to normal.
I shaved first and bathed after, and observed that at least twenty per cent of my skin was now showing bruise marks. I supposed I should have been glad I hadn’t been awake when I collected them. The bothersome aches they had set up the day before had more or less abated, and coffee and breakfast helped things along fine.
The police were damping on the matter of stolen Lamborghinis. They took particulars with pessimism and said I might hear something in a week or so; then within half an hour they were back on the line bristling with irritation. My car had been towed away by colleagues the night before last because I’d parked it on a space reserved for taxis in Leicester Square. I could find it in the pound at Marble Arch and there would be a charge for towing.
Owen arrived at nine with a long face and was hugely cheered when I told him about the car.
‘Have you seen the papers, sir?’
‘Not yet.’
He held out one of his own. ‘You’d better know,’ he said.
I unfolded it. Allie had been right about the gossip columnist. The paragraph was short and sharp and left no one in any doubt.
Red-face day for Steven Scott (35), wealthy racehorse owner, who was scooped by police from a Soho gutter early yesterday. At Marlborough Street Court, Scott, looking rough and crumpled, pleaded guilty to a charge of drunk and incapable. Save your sympathy. Race-followers will remember Scott recently dumped Jody Leeds (28), trainer of all his winners, without a second’s notice.
I looked through my own two dailies and the Sporting Life. They all carried the story and in much the same vein, even if without the tabloid heat. Smug satisfaction that the kicker-of-underdogs had himself bitten the dust.
It was fair to assume that the story had been sent to every newspaper and that most of them had used it. Even though I’d expected it, I didn’t like it. Not a bit.
‘It’s bloody unfair,’ Owen said, reading the piece in the Life.
I looked at him with surprise. His usually non-committal face was screwed into frustrated anger and I wondered if his expression was a mirror-image of my own.
‘Kind of you to care.’
‘Can’t help it, sir.’ The features returned more or less to normal, but with an effort. ‘Anything I can do, sir?’