Ten thirty-five.
‘Look,’ Pete said persuasively. ‘You said you had a great deal to do today, and honestly, I don’t think...’
The walkie-talkie crackled.
I practically leapt towards the front of the car and reached in for it.
‘Sir?’
‘Yes, Owen.’
‘A blue horsebox just came out of his road and turned south.’
‘Right.’
I stifled my disappointment. Jody’s two runners setting off to Chepstow, no doubt.
‘What’s that?’ Pete Duveen said, his face appearing at my shoulder full of innocent enquiry.
‘Just a radio.’
‘Sounded like a police car.’
I smiled and moved away back to the rear of the car, but I had hardly got Pete engaged again in useless conversation when the crackle was repeated.
‘Sir?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘A fawn coloured box with a red slash, sir. Just turned north.’ His voice trembled with excitement.
‘That’s it, Owen.’
‘I’m on my way.’
I felt suddenly sick. Took three deep breaths. Pressed the transmit button.
‘Charlie?’
‘Yes.’
‘The box is on its way.’
‘Halle-bloody-lujah.’
Pete was again looking mystified and inquisitive. I ignored his face and took a travelling bag out of the boot of my car.
‘Time to go,’ I said pleasantly. ‘I think, if you don’t mind, I’d like to see how my horse behaves while going along, so could you start the box now and take me up the road a little way?’
He looked very surprised, but then he had found the whole expedition incomprehensible.
‘If you like,’ he said helplessly. ‘You’re the boss.’
I made encouraging signs to him to get into his cab and start the engine and while he was doing it I stowed my bag on the passenger side. The diesel engine whirred and coughed and came to thunderous life, and I went back to the Cortina.
Locked the boot, shut the windows, took the keys, locked the doors, and stood leaning against the wing holding binoculars in one hand and walkie-talkie in the other.
Pete Duveen had taken nine and a half minutes from Jody’s road to my lay-by and Jody’s box took exactly the same. Watching the far hill through raceglasses I saw the big dark blue van which contained Owen come over the horizon, followed almost immediately by an oblong of fawn.
Watched them down into the valley and on to the beginning of the hill.
I pressed the transmit button.
‘Charlie?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Seven minutes. Owen’s in front.’
‘Right.’
I pushed down the aerial of the walkie-talkie and took it and myself along to the passenger door of Pete’s box. He looked across and down at me enquiringly, wondering why on earth I was still delaying.
‘Just a moment,’ I said, giving no explanation, and he waited patiently, as if humouring a lunatic.
Owen came up the hill, changed gears abreast of the lay-by, and slowly accelerated away. Jody’s horsebox followed, doing exactly the same. The scrunched nearside front had been hammered out, I saw, but respraying lay in the future. I had a quick glimpse into the cab: two men, neither of them Jody, both unknown to me; a box driver who had replaced Andy-Fred and the lad with the horse. Couldn’t be better.
I hopped briskly up into Pete’s box.
‘Off we go, then.’
My sudden haste looked just as crazy as the former dawdling, but again he made no comment and merely did what I wanted. When he had found a gap in the traffic and pulled out on to the road there were four or five vehicles between Jody’s box and ourselves, and this seemed to me a reasonable number.
I spent the next four miles trying to look as if nothing in particular was happening while listening to my heart beat like a discotheque. Owen’s van went over the traffic lights at the big crossroads a half second before they changed to amber and Jody’s box came to a halt as they showed red. The back of Owen’s van disappeared round a bend in the road.
Between Jody’s box and Pete’s there were three private cars and one small van belonging to an electrical firm. When the lights turned green one of the cars peeled off to the left and I began to worry that we were getting too close.
‘Slow down just a fraction,’ I suggested.
‘If you like... but there’s not a squeak from the horse.’ He glanced over his shoulder to where the black head looked patiently forward through a small observation hatch, as nervous as a suet pudding.
A couple of private cars passed us. We motored sedately onwards and came to the bottom of the next hill. Pete changed his gears smoothly and we lumbered noisily up. Near the top, his eye took in a notice board on a tripod at the side of the road.
‘Damn,’ he said.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Did you see that?’ he said. ‘Census point ahead.’
‘Never mind, we’re not in a hurry.’
‘I suppose not.’
We breasted the hill. The fruit stall lay ahead on our left, with the sweep of car park beside it. Down the centre of the road stood a row of the red and white cones used for marking road obstructions and in the northbound lane, directing the traffic, stood a large man in navy blue police uniform with a black and white checked band round his cap.
As we approached he waved the private cars past and then directed Pete into the fruitstall car park, walking in beside the horsebox and talking to him through the window.
‘We’ll keep you only a few minutes, sir. Now, will you pull right round in a circle and park facing me just here, sir?’
‘All right,’ Pete said resignedly and followed the instructions. When he pulled the brake on we were facing the road. On our left, about ten feet away, stood Jody’s box, but facing in the opposite direction. On the far side of Jody’s box was Owen’s van. And beyond Owen’s van, across about twenty yards of cindery park, lay the caravan, its long flat windowless side towards us.
The Land-Rover and trailer which Allie had brought stood near the front of Jody’s box. There was also the car hitched to the caravan and the car Bert had hired, and all in all the whole area looked populated, official, and busy.
A second large notice on a tripod faced the car park from just outside the caravan.
Department of the Environment
Census point
and near a door at one end of the caravan a further notice on a stand said ‘Way In’.
Jody’s horsebox driver and Jody’s lad were following its directions, climbing the two steps up to the caravan and disappearing within.
‘Over there, please sir,’ A finger pointed authoritatively. ‘And take your driving licence and log book, please.’
Pete shrugged, picked up his papers, and went. I jumped out and watched him go.
The second he was inside Bert slapped me on the back in a most unpolicemanlike way and said ‘Easy as Blackpool tarts.’
We zipped into action. Four minutes maximum, and a dozen things to do.
I unclipped the ramp of Jody’s horsebox and let it down quietly. The one thing which would bring any horsebox driver running, census or no census, was the sound of someone tampering with his cargo; and noise, all along, had been one of the biggest problems.
Opened Pete Duveen’s ramp. Also the one on Allie’s trailer.
While I did that, Bert brought several huge rolls of three-inch thick latex from Owen’s van and unrolled them down all the ramps, and across the bare patches of car park in between the boxes. I fetched the head collar bought for the purpose from my bag and stepped into Jody’s box. The black horse looked at me incuriously, standing there quietly in his travelling rug and four leg-guards. I checked his ear for the tiny nick and his shoulder for the bald pennyworth, and wasted a moment in patting him.