Dead Heat Part 32

'Nothing,' he said, and set about trying to read the article for the fourth time.

'Yes, there is.' I reached across the table and dragged the paper away from him. 'What is it?'

He looked up at me. 'Sally and I had a row.'

'I can tell,' I said. It had been obvious the whole time Sally was getting breakfast. 'What about?'

'It doesn't matter,' he stated firmly, standing up.

'It clearly does,' I said. 'Is it about me?'

'I told you, it doesn't matter.'

'So, it was about me,' I said. 'Tell me.'

He didn't answer. He turned to go out of the door, back to the stables.

'Toby,' I almost shouted, 'for G.o.d's sake, what is it?'

He stopped but he didn't turn around. 'Sally wants you to leave here this morning,' he said. He now turned and looked at me. 'She's worried and frightened. You know, for the children.'

'Oh, is that all?' I said with a smile. 'We'll go as soon as we're ready.'

'You don't have to,' he said. 'I put my foot down. You're my brother and if I can't help you when you're in trouble, then who will? What good am I as a brother if I throw you out of my home?'

I could hear in his voice that this was an argument well rehea.r.s.ed during his row with Sally.

'It's OK,' I said. 'She's right. Perhaps I shouldn't have come here in the first place.' But I was glad I had. Toby's knowledge of horses had been the key to everything.

'But where will you go?' he asked.

'Somewhere else,' I said. Perhaps it would be better if he didn't know. 'We'll be gone when you get back from second lot. I'll call you later. And thank Sally for me, for having us.'

Surprisingly, he walked across the kitchen and gave me a huge hug.

'Be careful,' he said into my ear. 'Be a shame to lose you now.' He suddenly let me go, looked away as if in embarra.s.sment, and went straight outside without saying another word. Maybe he was too emotional to speak. I was.

Caroline and I were packed up and away by nine thirty. She hadn't been too happy when I had woken her from a deep sleep, but she hadn't protested much either.

'Where are we going?' she asked as we drove out of the gate.

'Where do you suggest?' I said.

'Somewhere with a nice soft bed.' She yawned, leaned back in the pa.s.senger seat, and closed her eyes.

I thought about my mother's cottage down the road. I didn't have a key but I knew, as I expect everyone else in East Hendred knew, that she always kept a spare key under the third geranium-filled flowerpot to the left of the back door. I decided against it. If, before I went to Chicago, I had believed that it was too risky for my mother to stay there, then surely it was too dangerous for me and Caroline now.

I drove aimlessly for a while along roads I knew so well from my childhood. Maybe my conscious mind thought my driving was aimless, but subconsciously my brain took the Mondeo unerringly the twelve miles from East Hendred to the establishment overlooking the river Thames that had once been owned by my mother's distant widowed cousin, and where my pa.s.sion for cooking had been first awakened.

The place had changed during the six years since I had left. It was no longer the elegant sixteenth-century inn with a restaurant that I remembered. There was a new, twenty-first-century gla.s.s extension reaching down towards the river, over what had been a well-tended lawn when I last saw it. A long bra.s.s-fronted bar had been built down one side of the old dining room, and the only food now offered was what my mother's distant widowed cousin had always referred to with distaste as 'bar snacks'.

Caroline, Viola and I sat down at an outside table with benches set up on what had once also been part of the lawn but was now a concrete patio. Viola could not be left in the car, Caroline explained, as she was too valuable. Quite apart from the fact, Caroline added, that she felt lost without her close by, to pat. At least Viola was out of sight in her case.

It was too early for what my father had always called a proper drink, so Caroline and I had cups of coffee, while Viola just sat there. I didn't recognize either the barman who took the order, or the waitress who delivered it. I suspected that none of the happy team from six years ago would remain. But what hadn't changed was the restful view of the six-arched ancient stone bridge that spanned the river, the endless sounds of gurgling water, and the seeming calmness of a mother duck gliding along in the suns.h.i.+ne followed by a line of six tiny fluffy chicks.

'What a beautiful place,' said Caroline. 'Have you been here before?'

'This is where I learnt to cook,' I said.

'Really.' She was surprised. She had looked at the menu while I ordered the coffee.

'It's changed a lot,' I said. 'Where the bar is now is what used to be the restaurant. I'm rather sad to see that it's all gone a bit downmarket. The place was taken over by a chain obviously more interested in selling beer than in fine dining.'

'So why did we come here now?' she asked.

'I don't know,' I said. 'I suppose I wanted somewhere peaceful to think, and to plan.'

'So what is the plan?' she asked eagerly.

'I don't know that either,' I replied. 'But first I'm going to make a few calls.'

I turned on my mobile and used it to telephone the car hire company in Newmarket. No problem, they said, keep the Mondeo as long as you like. They took my credit card details and told me that I would be charged weekly. Fine, I said, and hung up.

The phone immediately rang in my hand. It was my voice message service.

'You have six new messages,' it told me, and then played them. One was from Clare Harding, the news editor, belatedly thanking me for dinner, and the other five were all from Carl. He needed to speak with me, his disembodied voice repeatedly told me. Over the five successive messages he became more and more agitated that I hadn't been in touch.

I rang him. He was relieved and delighted that I called, but I was hardly delighted with what he told me. 'I need you back here,' he said urgently. 'And now.' Things had clearly gone downhill quickly since we spoke on Sat.u.r.day.

'What's the matter?' I asked, concerned. It was not like Carl to be in a panic.

'I've had to fire Oscar,' he said. 'Gary caught him in the office going through the papers on your desk, and some of the petty cash was missing too. Oscar denied it. But, then, he would, wouldn't he? But that's only the half of it. He was disruptive in the kitchen with Gary all last week. Then the two of them had a stand-up row on Sat.u.r.day. I thought Oscar was going to stick Gary with a fish filleter at one point.' A fish filleter is a very sharp, very thin, eight-inch-bladed kitchen knife. Sticking anyone with a fish filleter was very likely to prove very terminal, very quickly. I was very glad that Oscar had gone.

'But surely you and Gary can cope without him for a few days?' I said.

'We could if Gary was here,' he exclaimed. 'He's got b.l.o.o.d.y chicken pox and the doctor's told him to stay at home for the next ten b.l.o.o.d.y days.'

'Can't you get another chef from the agency?' I asked him.

'I've tried that,' he said. 'They've got the hump over Oscar. They say we didn't treat him right. I ask you. He was nothing but a b.l.o.o.d.y menace.'

'Apart from all that,' I said to him, 'is everything else all right?'

'No, not really,' he replied. I wished I hadn't asked. 'Jean wants to know when we are going to replace Louisa. She claims she is being worked too hard in the dining room. I told her to shut up or get out, and now she has the hump too.'

I wasn't surprised. Staff management had never been Carl's strong point.

'OK,' I said. 'Is everything else fine?'

'No, it's not,' he said. 'Jacek says he wants more money. He says that the other kitchen porter gets more money than him and it's not fair.' Jacek's English must be getting better, I thought. 'I also told him to shut up or get out,' Carl continued. 'He's still here today so I presume he's shut up. But when are you coming back?' Soon. I feared that, if I didn't get back there quickly, the whole business would be destroyed.

'I'll call you again later to let you know,' I said.

'Please come back,' he pleaded. 'I don't know how much longer I can go on like this.' He sounded almost manic.

'I said I'll call you,' I replied, and hung up.

'Problems?' asked Caroline, who had only been able to hear my end of the conversation.

'The s.h.i.+p is foundering on the rocks without the captain,' 1 said. 'One of the chefs has been fired for threatening another with a knife, and now the threatened one has caught chicken pox. Carl, my number two, is basically on his own.' Julie, who prepared the cold dishes, wouldn't be much use in the heat of the kitchen.

'Can he cope on his own?' she asked.

'Not really,' I said. 'Not if the restaurant is more than half full.'

'And is it?' said Caroline.

'I didn't ask,' I said. 'But I hope so. And if it's not tonight, it certainly will be towards the end of the week. But that's not all. Carl has upset some of the other staff and I can imagine the undercurrents running through the place. They will all be waiting for me to get back before the volcano explodes, and the longer I'm away the worse will be the eruption when it finally happens.'

'Then you must go back there now,' said Caroline.

'I couldn't be much help one-handed,' I said, holding up the cast.

'Even a one-handed Max Moreton would be better than most,' she said.

I smiled at her. 'But is it safe?' I said. 'Or is it precisely what someone wants?'

'Who?' she asked. 'Komarov?'

'Maybe,' I said. 'Or Carl.'

'Carl? Don't you trust your number two?'

'I don't know who I can trust,' I said. I sat there thinking as I watched a boat chug upstream through the bridge with two pasty-white sunbathers lying on its roof. 'Yes, I think I probably do trust Carl.'

'Right,' she said. 'Then we go back to Newmarket and save your restaurant. But we don't tell anyone we're coming before we get there, not even Carl.'

Caroline took Viola for a walk down the riverbank into the meadow below the pub while I sat and made the rest of my calls. I could hear the mellow tones of her playing as I rang first my mother, to ensure she was all right, and then the police, the Metropolitan Police Special Branch to be precise.

'Can I speak to DI Turner, please?' I asked.

'Can you hold,' said a female voice. It wasn't so much a question as an order. Eventually she came back on the line. 'DI Turner is off duty until 2 p.m.'

I left him a message asking him to call me. I told him it was urgent. I was promised that he would get the message. I wondered if I should have spoken to someone else. But DI Turner knew who I was and he was less likely to dismiss my information with a laugh.

Caroline continued walking the riverbank tow-path and playing sweet music for about forty minutes before she returned, flushed, smiling and happy.

'Oh that's great,' she sighed, sitting down. I looked envicusly at Viola. I wished I could make Caroline feel like that in the middle of the day, and with jet lag.

'Don't you need to read the music?' I asked her.

'No,' she said. 'Not for this piece. I know it so well. I was just making sure my fingers knew it as well as my head does.'

'I thought orchestras always have music,' I said. 'They have music stands, I've seen them.'

'Well, we do. But soloists usually don't, and often the music is there just as an aidememoire rather than being absolutely necessary.' She slipped Viola lovingly back into her case. 'Are we staying here for lunch?'

'No,' I said. 'I'd rather go. It's been over an hour since I first used my phone here and it's time to move on.' And, I thought, the food wasn't very inviting.

'Can someone really find out where you are from your mobile?' she asked.

'I know the police can,' I said, 'from your phone records. I've heard about it in trials. I'm just not taking any chances that Komarov has someone at the phone company on his payroll.'

'Do you want to go back to Newmarket?' Caroline asked.

'Yes and no,' I said. 'Of course I want to go to the Hay Net and sort out the mess, but I have to admit that I'm wary.'

'We don't have to go, you know,' she said.

'I can't go on running for ever,' I said. 'I'll have to go back there sometime. I've left a message for the policeman I spoke to at Special Branch, and I'll tell him what I think has been going on and ask him for some police protection. It'll be fine.'

We stopped just north of Oxford and enjoyed a leisurely lunch in a pub garden, sitting under a bright red sun umbrella that made our delicious Stilton and broccoli soup appear pink when it should have been green. The closer we came to Newmarket the more nervous I became, and, when we arrived in the town at about six o'clock, I felt lost, like a fish out of water. I had no home to go to, nothing but a pile of blackened stones and ash, which I drove slowly past in each direction, as Caroline sat silently staring at the devastation.

'Oh, Max,' she said after our second pa.s.s. 'I am so sorry.'

'I can always rebuild,' I said. But that little cottage was the only home I had ever owned and I could remember clearly the excitement on that July day nearly six years ago when 1 had first moved in, the joy of discovery of unknown cupboards, and the sounds made by the structure as the hot summer day had cooled towards evening. It had been built from local stone in the last decade of the eighteenth century and, although I currently owned the freehold, I had always considered myself as a temporary tenant in its long and endless existence. But now its life had been burnt away. Murder had been done here, not on a human being, but on a member of my family nevertheless. What remained was dead, and silent. Would rebuilding ever bring it back its soul? Perhaps the time was right, after all, for me to grieve for my loss, and to move on.

'Where exactly are we going to sleep tonight?' Caroline asked, after I had finally driven away from the disaster.

'Do you remember when I first talked you into coming to Newmarket, I promised you a night at the Bedford Lodge Hotel,' I said. 'And the best-laid plans were somewhat disrupted by a certain car crash. Well, tonight, my dear, you shall finally have your night in Newmarket's finest hotel.'

'I am honoured,' she said.

'Don't get too used to it,' I said. 'They only have a room for tonight. They're full tomorrow.'

'I have to be in London tomorrow night,' she said.

I hadn't forgotten.

To say Carl was pleased to see me would be rather an understatement. He almost cried when I walked into the Hay Net kitchen at seven o'clock.

'Thank G.o.d,' he said.

'I won't be much use,' I said, tapping the hard sh.e.l.l on my right arm.