‘I shouldn’t.’
‘If you don’t win,’ she said gaily, ‘I promise I won’t blame you.’
I’d blame myself, I thought, and I’d deserve it.
I went to the office at nine the next morning, and Trevor fussed about a great deal too much.
‘You need rest, Ro. You should be in bed.’
‘I need people and life and things to do.’
He sat in the clients’ armchair in my office and looked worried. The sun-tan of his holiday suited him, increasing his air of distinction. His silvery hair was fluffier than usual, and his comfortable stomach looked rounder.
‘Did you have a good time,’ I said, ‘in Spain?’
‘What? Oh yes, splendid. Splendid. Until the car broke down, of course. And all the time, while we were enjoying ourselves, you...’ He stopped and shook his head.
‘I’m afraid,’ I said wryly. ‘That I’m dreadfully behind with the work.’
‘For heaven’s sake...’
‘I’ll try to catch up,’ I said.
‘I wish you’d take it easy for a few days.’ He looked as if he meant it, his eyes full of troubled concern. ‘It won’t do either of us any good if you crack up.’
My lips twitched. That was more like the authentic Trevor.
‘I’m made of Plasticine,’ I said; and despite his protests I stayed where I was and once again tried to sort out the trail of broken appointments.
Mr Wells was in a worse mess than ever, having sent a cheque which had promptly bounced. A prosecution for that was in the offing.
‘But you knew the bank wouldn’t pay it,’ I protested when he telephoned with this latest trouble.
‘Yes... but I thought they might.’
His naivety was frightening: the same stupid hopefulness which had got him enmeshed in the first place. He blanked out reality and believed in fantasies. I’d known others like him, and I’d never known them change.
‘Come on Monday afternoon,’ I said resignedly.
‘Supposing someone kidnaps you again.’
‘They won’t,’ I said. ‘Two-thirty, Monday.’
I went through the week’s letters with Debbie and sorted out the most urgent. Their complexity made me wilt.
‘We’ll answer them on Monday morning,’ I said.
Debbie fetched some coffee and said at her most pious that I wasn’t fit to be at work.
‘Did we get those postponements from the Commissioners for Axwood Stables and Coley Young?’ I said.
‘Yes, they came on Wednesday.’
‘And what about Denby Crest’s certificate?’
‘Mr King said he’d see about that this morning.’
I rubbed a hand over my face. No use kidding myself. However much I disliked it, I did feel pathetically weak. Agreeing to ride Tapestry had been a selfish folly. The only sensible course was to ring Moira Longerman at once, and cry off: but when it came to race-riding, I’d never been sensible.
‘Debbie,’ I said, ‘please would you go down to the store in the basement, and bring up all the old files on Connaught Powys, and on Glitberg and Ownslow.’
‘Who?’
I wrote the names down for her. She glanced at them, nodded, and went away.
Sticks Elroy telephoned, words tumbling out in a rush, incoherent and thick with Oxfordshire accent. A lot more talkative than he’d been at dinner in the pub, when overshadowed by his bull-like dad.
‘Stop,’ I said. ‘I didn’t hear a word. Say it slowly.’
‘I said I was ever so sorry you got shut up in that van.’
‘Well... thanks.’
‘My old man couldn’t have done it, you know.’ He sounded anxious, more seeking to convince than convinced.
‘Don’t you think so?’
‘I know he said... Look, well, he went on cursing all evening, and I know he’s got a van, and all, which is off somewhere getting the gearbox fixed, or something, and I know he was that furious, and he said you should be locked up, but I don’t reckon he could have done it, not for real.’
‘Did you ask him?’ I said curiously.
‘Yeah.’ He hesitated. ‘See... we had a bloody big row, him and me.’ Another pause. ‘He always knocked us about when we were kids. Strap, boots, anything.’ A pause. ‘I asked him about you... he punched me in the face.’
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘What did you decide to do about that cash?’
‘Yeah, well, that’s what the row was about, see. I reckoned you were right and I didn’t want any trouble with the law, and Dad blew his top and said I’d never been grateful for everything he’d done for me. He says if I declare that cash and pay tax on it he’ll be in trouble himself, see, and I reckon he was mad enough to do anything.’
I reflected a bit. ‘What colour is his van?’
‘White, sort of. An old Ford.’
‘Um. When did you decide to go to that pub for dinner?’
‘Dad drove there straight from the races, for a drink, like, and then he phoned and said they could fix us all in for dinner, and we might as well celebrate my win.’
‘Would he be likely,’ I said, ‘to be able to lay his hands on sixty packets of cheese slices?’
‘Whatever are you on about?’
I sighed. ‘They were in the van with me.’
‘Well, I don’t know, do I? I don’t live with him any more. I wouldn’t reckon on him going to a supermarket, though. Women’s work, see?’
‘Yes. If you’ve decided to declare that cash, there are some legitimate expenses to set off against the profit.’
‘Bloody tax,’ he said. ‘Sucks you dry. I’m not going to bother sweating my guts out on any more schemes. Not bloody worth it.’
He made an appointment for the following week and grumbled his way off the phone.
I sat and stared into space, thinking of Sticks Elroy and his violent father. Heavy taxation was always self-defeating, with the country losing progressively more for every tightening of the screw. Overtime and enterprise weren’t worth it. Emigration was. The higher the tax rates, the less there was to tax. It was crazy. If I’d been Chancellor, I’d have made Britain a tax-haven, and welcomed back all the rich who had taken their money and left. A fifty per cent tax on millions would be better for the country than a ninety-eight per cent tax on nothing. As it was, I had to interpret and advise in accordance with what I thought of as bad economics; uphold laws which I thought irrational. If the fury the Elroys felt against the system took the form of abuse of the accountant who forced them to face nasty facts, it wasn’t unduly surprising. I did doubt though that even Elroy senior would make his abuse physical. Calling me a bastard was a long way from imprisonment.
Debbie came in with her arms full of files and her face full of fluster.
‘There’s a lady outside who insists on seeing you. She hasn’t got an appointment and Mr King said you were definitely not to be worried today, but she won’t go away. Oh!’
The lady in question was walking into the office in Debbie’s wake. Tall, thin, assured, and middle-aged.
I stood up, smiling, and shook hands with Hilary Margaret Pinlock.
‘It’s all right, Debbie,’ I said.
‘Oh, very well.’ She shrugged, put down the files, and went out.
‘How are you?’ I said. ‘Sit down.’
Margaret Pinlock sat in the clients’ chair and crossed her thin legs.
‘You,’ she said, ‘look half dead.’
‘A half-empty bottle is also half-full.’
‘And you’re an optimist?’
‘Usually,’ I said.
She was wearing a brownish-grey flecked tweed coat, to which the sunless April day added nothing in the way of life. Behind the spectacles the eyes looked small and bright, and coral-pink lipstick lent warmth to her mouth.
‘I’ve come to tell you something,’ she said. ‘Quite a lot of things, I suppose.’