‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, ‘I wondered what happened with Zipalong Couriers.’
The stuttering reply included stable-yard language at its roughest, but meant in essence that when Oliver Quigley was reported to be receiving and signing for couriered envelopes in Newmarket at noon yesterday, Friday, he had been at Cheltenham races saddling his runner in the three-year-old hurdle. A pointless exercise, as the horse in question had one speed only — slow — and wouldn’t have won even if Perry Stuart had been where he ought to be — in front of the cameras with details of the weather — instead of fussing over a couple of bruises in hospital.
At my third try of ‘Mr Quigley?’ he slowed down and said ‘What... what?’ If he had been at Cheltenham, I asked, who had signed for Glenda’s package?
Oliver was inclined in bad temper to think it was none of my business. I would be happy to help him with last-minute underfoot forecasts, I murmured. In that case... Oliver Quigley believed that when the courier found no one at home yet again, he was so pissed off (Oliver said), he just signed as if he were Quigley, and took the package away with him and chucked it in a ditch.
‘Do you really think so?’ I asked.
‘Mark my words,’ Oliver said, the receiver clattering with shakes against his teeth, ‘they never delivered that parcel and I’ll sue the pants off them until I get it back.’
‘Good luck,’ I said.
‘I could kill that bitch Glenda,’ he said. ‘If she weren’t already dead I’d kill her. If Zipalong don’t find my package soon it won’t be worth suing them... but I’d do it anyway. I’ll get that thief of a motorcyclist run off the road.’
I was glad, while listening to him moaning on and on, that Cheltenham racecourse was a hundred or more miles west of where I sat.
After Oliver I spent a silent hour or two by myself while smooth cogwheels like quiet fruit machines clicked gently into place, and I made at the end of that time two telephone calls, one to the Bedford Lodge Hotel in Newmarket and the other to the Met Office at Bracknell.
John Rupert and Ghost had got things right. The murder of one of the Traders was splitting the others apart.
As John Rupert had given me his own mobile number (‘in case’ he explained) I phoned him in the middle of a golf game which he put on hold with good grace.
‘You’re not worse, I hope,’ he said.
‘No, the opposite. Can I ask you a question?’
‘Always ask.’
‘Then how serious are you about the book on Storms?’
‘Oh!’ I’d really surprised him. He said guardedly, ‘Why?’
I said frankly, ‘Because I need a contract... actually I don’t need a contract, I need an advance.’
‘An advance... for anything special? I mean, is this urgent? It’s Saturday afternoon.’
‘I think I can get you another Trader, but I need a ticket to Miami.’
He took barely ten seconds to make up his mind.
‘Tomorrow do?’ he said.
By lunchtime on Sunday (‘tomorrow’) Ravi Chand was peering at my fading rash with a magnifying glass, a bright light and a disappointed expression.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked anxiously.
‘From your point of view, nothing. From mine, my laboratory animal is walking out with only half of my investigations complete.’ He sighed. ‘Jett promises she will week by week bring you back for continuing treatment. I will publish as soon as I can.’
I asked diffidently, ‘What about the owners of the herd that gave me this disease? Doesn’t my rash belong to them?’
‘The owners, whoever they are, are using that herd as a living laboratory totally isolated from outside factors. Ideal. They might stand to make millions from new pasteurisation methods.’
‘How so?’ I asked.
‘The present law states that raw milk has to be raised to 71.7 degrees centigrade, that’s 161 degrees Fahrenheit, for a minimum of fifteen seconds to be pasteurised. If anyone could patent a new procedure which reduced the temperature or the time then they would make a fortune due to the fuel saving. That’s what they’re after. They are not interested in, or experimenting on, a new disease infecting humans. If they were, there would be immense interest in any affliction resembling your illness. Instead, there has been no reaction at all to your progress. The incubation time was short, the onset sudden, and now the speed of your recovery is conclusive. This illness is new. It’s different. You are unique. I have incidentally named your illness in our joint honour, Mycobacterium paratuberculosis Chand-Stuart X.’
He shook my hand warmly. ‘I cannot lock you in a safe with my notes, but please, please, dear Dr Stuart, dear Perry, keep yourself alive until I publish.’
Jett came in her car to collect me, and Ravi Chand in his white coat stood on his doorstep waving us a sorrowful if temporary goodbye. I’d been in his care so far only from Wednesday to Sunday, but the swift Chand-Stuart disease (curable, thank the fates) struggled in many a Petri dish in his laboratory towards universal recognition.
Jett drove to my grandmother’s flat, where she was due to start work again the next day. She seemed pleased at the prospect, but to me it meant an end to the nearness I’d valued all week. Jett had definitely burrowed far under my unattractive skin.
My grandmother exclaimed in alarm at my thinness but was enjoying the company of John Rupert, who had postponed another game of golf on my behalf and was covering every surface in sight with contracts for a gathering of Storm.
With everything signed he shook hands with my grandmother and left me with a vast cheque made out to a credit card company to cover every expense.
‘Instant money and more to come,’ he promised, ‘when Ghost starts page one.’
When he’d gone my grandmother asked the resident ‘dear girl’ to give me the little parcel the postman had delivered for me the morning before. According to its postmark it had been sent from Miami, and only to one person there had I given my grandmother’s address.
Unwin of the yellow-toothed grin had amazingly sent me the best gift he could, because when I’d threaded a way through yards of bubble packing I found a note wrapped round a plastic sandwich bag, and, inside that, my small old familiar mud-filled camera. With surprise and jubilation I opened and read the note.
‘Perry,
flew a load of people to Trox. There was a woman in charge. She says the island is hers. She was the pits. I found your camera where you said. All the pax were bloody rude all day, so I didn’t tell them I’d found it. Best of luck.
Explaining to the others where it came from, I put the camera contentedly in my pocket and on a different tack set about making phone calls to find Kris and Bell. Result, Bell had gone home to Newmarket where she and her father were now presently in unofficial charge of the Loricroft stable.
‘It’s all dreadful,’ Bell said, tears in the offing. ‘Oliver Quigley and Dad are single minded about this wretched folder, which still hasn’t turned up anywhere. They’ve both gone to Cheltenham again today and left me looking after things. Dad’s berserk with worry and he won’t tell me why.’
‘Where’s Kris?’ I asked with sympathy, and she said he would be at the Weather Centre doing radio forecasts until midnight; and he would be sleeping in his own flat, as far as she knew.
‘Are you better?’ she remembered to ask, and I thanked her and said I’d been let out of the cage.
‘What does pax mean?’ Jett asked, reading Unwin’s notes.
‘Passenger,’ said my grandmother, who’d been one most of her life. ‘And Perry, after supper from the take-away, and when you’ve said goodnight later to our dear Jett van Els, you can lie down here on the sofa and have a good restful sleep. Don’t think of going home. You look far too frail for climbing all those very steep stairs.’