‘What accident?’
‘The butcher used to pay the manager by cheque, made out in the manager’s name. One day he happened to meet one of the directors of the firm which owned the chicken farm, and to save postage he got out his chequebook, wrote a cheque in the manager’s name, and asked the director to give it to him, to pay for that month’s delivery of chickens.’
‘And the lid blew off.’
‘With a bang. They sacked the manager.’
‘No prosecution?’
‘No. The last I heard, he was selling rose bushes by mail order.’
‘And you wondered for whose nursery he was working?’
I grinned and nodded. She was quick and funny, and it seemed incredible that I’d met her only the day before.
We drank coffee and talked about horses. She said she had been trying her hand at three-day-eventing, but would be giving it up soon.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Lack of talent.’
‘What will you do instead?’
‘Marry.’
‘Oh.’ I felt obscurely disappointed. ‘Who?’
‘I’ve no idea. Someone will turn up.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Of course just like that. One finds husbands in the oddest places.’
‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ I said.
Her eyes gleamed with light and life. ‘Visiting a girl friend. What will you do instead?’
‘Sums, I expect.’
‘But tomorrow’s Sunday.’
‘And I can have the office to myself all day, without any interruptions. I often work on Sundays. Nearly always.’
‘Good grief.’
We went out to where the Midget and the Dolomite stood side by side in the car park.
‘Thanks for the grub,’ Jossie said.
‘And for your company.’
‘Do you feel all right?’
‘Yes,’ I said, surprised. ‘Why?’
‘Just checking,’ she said. ‘Dad’ll ask. It looked such a crunching fall.’
I shook my head. ‘A bruise or two.’
‘Good. Well, goodnight.’
‘Goodnight.’ I kissed her cheek.
Her eyes glinted in the dim light from the pub’s windows. I kissed her mouth, rather briefly, with closed lips. She gave me the same sort of kiss in return.
‘Hm,’ she said, standing back. ‘That wasn’t bad. I do hate wet slobbers.’
She slid expertly into the Midget and started the engine.
‘See you in the hay,’ she said. ‘Counting it.’
She was smiling as she drove away, probably with a mirror expression of my own. I unlocked my car door, and, feeling slightly silly, I looked into the dark area behind the front seats.
No one there.
I sat in the car and started it, debating whether or not to risk going home to the cottage. Friday and Saturday had passed safely enough; but maybe the cats were still watching the mousehole. I decided that another night away would be prudent, and from the pub drove northwards around Oxford again, to the anonymity of the large motel and service station built beside a busy route-connecting roundabout.
The place as usual was bright with lights and bustle: flags flying on tall poles and petrol pumps rattling. I booked in at the reception office, took the key, and drove round to the slightly quieter wing of bedrooms at the rear.
Sleep would be no problem, I thought. The constant rumble of traffic would be soporific. A lullaby.
I yawned, took out my suitcase, locked the car, and fitted the key into the bedroom door.
Something hit me very hard between the shoulders. I fell against the still closed door, and something immediately hit me very hard on the head.
This time, it was brutal. This time, no ether.
I slid in a daze down the door and saw only dark unrecognisable figures bending over to punch and kick. The thuds shuddered through my bones, and another bang on the head slid me deep into peaceful release.
11
I awoke in the dark. Black, total darkness.
I couldn’t make out why I should be lying on a hard surface in total darkness, aching all over.
A fall, I thought. I had a fall at Towcester. Why couldn’t I remember?
I felt cold. Chilled through and through. When I moved, the aches were worse.
I suddenly remembered having dinner with Jossie. Remembered it all clearly, down to kissing her goodnight in the car park.
So then what?
I tried to sit up, but raising my head was as far as I got. The result was whirling nausea and a pile-driving headache. I inched my fingers tentatively through my hair and found a wince-making area of swelling. I let my head down again, gingerly.
There was no sound except the rustle of my clothes. No engine. No creakings or rushings or water noises. I was not lying on a bunk, but on a larger surface, hard and flat.
I might not be in a sail locker, but I was certainly still in the dark. In the dark in every sense. Weak frustrated anger mocked me that in four days of freedom I hadn’t found out enough to save me from the gloomy present.
Every movement told me what I still couldn’t remember. I knew only that the fall off Notebook could not be the source of the soreness all over my body. There would have been a few bruises which would have stiffened up overnight, but nothing like the overall feeling of having been kneaded like dough. I rolled with a grunt on to my stomach and put my head on my folded arms. The only good thing that I could think of was that they hadn’t tied my hands.
They. Who were they?
When my head stopped hammering, I thought, I would have enough energy to find out where I was and try to get out. Meanwhile it was enough just to lie still and wait for things to get better.
Another thing to be grateful for, I thought. The hard flat surface I was lying on was not swaying about. With luck, I was not on a boat. I wasn’t going to be sick. A bruised body was absolutely nothing compared with the agonies of seasickness.
I had no shoes on, just socks. When I squinted at my wrist there was no luminous dial there: no watch. I couldn’t be bothered to check all my pockets. I was certain they’d be empty.
After a while I remembered deciding to go to the motel, and after that, bit by bit, I remembered booking in, and the affray on the doorstep.
They must have followed me all the way from Towcester, I thought. Waited through dinner with Jossie. Followed me to the motel. I hadn’t spotted them once. I hadn’t even heard their footsteps behind me, against the constant noise of traffic.
My instinctive feeling of being safe with Jossie had been dead right.
Ages passed.
The racket inside my skull gradually subsided. Nothing else happened.
I had a feeling that it was nearly dawn, and time to wake up. It had been ten-thirty when I’d been knocked out. There was no telling how long I’d been unconscious, or lain feebly in my present state, but the body had its own clock, and mine was saying six in the morning.
The dawn feeling stirred me to some sort of action, though if there was dawn outside it was not making its way through to me. Perhaps, I thought uneasily, I was wrong about the time. It was still night outside. I prayed for it to be still night outside.
I had another go at sitting up. One couldn’t say that I felt superbly healthy. Concussion took a while to go away, and cold was notoriously bad for bruised muscles. The combination made every movement a nuisance. A familiar sort of pain, because of racing falls in the past. Just worse.
The surface beneath me was dirty: I could feel the gritty dust. It smelled faintly of oil. It was flat and smooth and not wood.
I felt around me in all directions, and on my left connected with a wall. Slithering on one hip, I inched that way and cautiously explored with my fingers.