I sighed. ‘Calm down, Trevor. All I need is a razor.’
‘But you’re so thin.’ His eyes were appalled. I reflected that I was probably a good deal thinner than when he’d seen me last, some time in the dim, distant, and safe past.
‘Mr King has been bombarding us all day,’ said the Detective Inspector with a touch of impatience.
‘My dear Ro, you must come back with me. We’ll look after you. My God, Ro...’
I shook my head. ‘I’m fine, Trevor. I’m grateful to you, but I’d really rather go home.’
‘Alone?’ he said anxiously. ‘Suppose... I mean... do you think it’s safe?’
‘Oh yes,’ I nodded. ‘Whoever put me in, let me out. It’s all over, I think.’
‘What’s all over?’
‘That,’ I said soberly, ‘is a whole new ball game.’
The cottage embraced me like a balm.
I had a bath, and shaved, and a grey face of gaunt shadows looked at me out of the mirror. No wonder Trevor had been shocked. Just as well, I thought, that he hadn’t seen the black and yellow blotches of fading bruises which covered me from head to foot.
I shrugged, and thought the same as before: nothing that a few days’ freedom wouldn’t fix. I put on jeans and a jersey and went downstairs in search of a large Scotch, and that was the last peaceful moment of the evening.
The telephone rang non-stop. Reporters, to my amazement, arrived at the doorstep. A television camera appeared. When they saw I was astounded, they said hadn’t I read the papers.
‘What papers?’
They produced them, and spread them out.
The Sporting Life: headline on Tuesday: ‘Where is Roland Britten?’ followed by an article about my sea trip, as told by me to friends. I had not been seen since Towcester. Friends were worried.
On Wednesday, paragraphs in all the dailies: ‘Tapestry’s rider again missing’ in one of the staider, and ‘Fun Jock Twice Removed?’ from a tits-and-bums.
Thursday — that day — many front pages carried a broadly smiling picture of me, taken five minutes after the Gold Cup. ‘Find Roland Britten’ ordered one, and ‘Fears for Jockey’s Life’ gloomed another. I glanced over them in amazement, remembering ironically that I’d been afraid no one would really look for me at all.
The telephone rang beside my hand. I picked up the receiver and said hello.
‘Ro? Is that you?’ The voice was fresh and unmistakable.
‘Jossie!’
‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘Have dinner with me tomorrow, and I’ll tell you.’
‘Pick me up at eight,’ she said. ‘What’s all that noise?’
‘I’m pressed by Press,’ I said. ‘Journalists.’
‘Good grief.’ She laughed. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, fine.’
‘It was on the news, that you’d been found.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Big stuff, buddy boy.’ The mockery was loud and clear.
‘Did you start it... all this publicity?’ I said.
‘Not me, no. Moira Longerman. Mrs Tapestry. She tried to get you Sunday, and she tried your office on Monday, and they told her you were missing, and they thought you might have been kidnapped again, so she rang up the editor of The Sporting Life, who’s a friend of hers, to ask him to help.’
‘A determined lady,’ I said gratefully.
‘She didn’t run Tapestry yesterday, you know. There’s a sobstuff bit in The Sporting Life. “How can I run my horse while Roland is missing” and all that guff. Fair turns your stomach.’
‘Fair turned Binny Tomkins’s, I’ll bet.’
She laughed. ‘I can hear the wolves howling for you. See you tomorrow. Don’t vanish before eight.’
I put the telephone down, but the wolves had to wait a little longer, as the bell immediately rang again.
Moira Longerman, excited and twittering, coming down the wire like an electric current.
‘Thank heavens you’re free. Isn’t it marvellous? Are you all right? Can you ride Tapestry on Saturday? Do tell me all about the horrible place where they found you... and Roland, dear, I don’t want you listening to a word Binny Tomkins says about you not being fit to ride after all you’ve been through.’
‘Moira,’ I said, vainly trying to stop the flow. ‘Thank you very much.’
‘My dear,’ she said, ‘it was rather fun, getting everyone mobilised. Of course I was truly dreadfully worried that something awful had happened to you, and it was quite clear that somebody had to do something, otherwise you might stay kidnapped for weeks, and it seemed to me that a jolly good fuss was what was wanted. I thought that if the whole country was looking for you, whoever had taken you might get cold feet and turn you loose, and that’s precisely what happened, so I was right and the silly police were all wrong.’
‘What silly police?’ I said.
‘Telling me I might have put you in danger by getting The Sporting Life to say you’d vanished again. I ask you! They said if kidnappers get panicky they could kill their victim. Anyway, they were wrong, weren’t they?’
‘Fortunately,’ I agreed.
‘So do tell me all about it,’ she said. ‘Is it true you were shut up in a van? What was it like?’
‘Boring,’ I said.
‘Roland, really. Is that all you’ve got to say?’
‘I thought about you all day on Wednesday, imagining you’d be furious when I didn’t turn up at Ascot.’
‘That’s better.’ She laughed her tinkly laugh. ‘You can make up for it on Saturday. Tapestry’s in the Oasthouse Cup at Kempton, though of course he’s got top weight there, which was why we wanted to run at Ascot instead. But now we’re going to Kempton.’
‘I’m afraid...’ I said, ‘that Binny’s right. This time, I’m really not fit enough. I’d love to ride him, but... well... at the moment I couldn’t go two rounds with a kitten.’
There was a short silence at the other end.
‘Do you mean it?’ she demanded doubtfully.
‘I hate to say so, but I do.’
The doubt in her voice subsided. ‘I’m sure you’ll be a hundred per cent after a good night’s sleep. After all, you’ll have nearly two days to recover, and even Binny admits you’re pretty tough as amateurs go... so please, Roland, please ride on Saturday, because the horse is jumping out of his skin, and the opposition is not so strong as it will be in the Whitbread Gold Cup in two weeks’ time, and I feel in my bones that he’ll win this race but not the other. And I don’t want Binny putting up any other jockey, as to be frank I only trust you, which you know. So please say you will. I was so thrilled when I heard you were free, so that you could ride on Saturday.’
I rubbed my hand across my eyes. I knew I shouldn’t agree, and that I was highly unlikely to be fit enough even to walk the course on my feet, let alone control half a ton of thoroughbred muscle on the rampage. Yet to her, if I refused, it would seem like gross ingratitude after her lively campaign to free me, and I too suspected that if Tapestry started favourite with a different jockey of Binny’s choice, he wouldn’t win. There was also the insidious old desire to race which raised its head in defiance of common sense. Reason told me I’d fall off from weakness at the first fence, and the irresistible temptation of a go at another of the season’s top ’chases kidded me not to believe it.
‘Well...’ I said, hesitating.
‘Oh, you will,’ she said delightedly. ‘Oh Roland, I’m so glad.’