Straight. Part 26

The Koningin Beatrix sailed every night . .

If one looked at it the other way round, the Koningin Beatrix must sail from Holland to Harwich every day. If he hadn't taken the pa.s.sport with him, perhaps he'd been going to meet the Koningin Beatrix, not leave on her.

Meet who?

I looked at his photograph which, like all pa.s.sport photographs, wasn't very good but good enough to bring him vividly into the office; his office, where I sat in his chair.

June looked over my shoulder and said, 'Oh,' in a small voice. 'I do miss him, you know.'

'Yes.'

I put the pa.s.sport with regret back into the drawer and took out a flat square object hardly larger than the Wizard, that had a narrow curl of paper coming out of it.

'That's the priNTer,' dune said.

'A printer? So small?'

'It'll print everything stored in the Wizard.'

She plugged the printer's short cord into a slot in the side of the Wizard and dexterously pressed a few keys.

With a whirr the tiny machine went into action and began printing out a strip of half the telephone directory, or so it seemed.

'Lovely, isn't it?' June said, pressing another b.u.t.ton to stop it. 'When he was away on trips, Mr Franklin would enter all his expenses on here and we would print them out when he got home, or sometimes transfer them from the Wizard to our main computer through an interface... oh, dear.' She smothered the uprush of emotion and with an attempt at controlling her voice said, 'He would note down in there a lot of things he wanted to remember when he got home. Things like who had offered him unusual stones. Then he'd tell Prospero Jenks, and quite often I'd be writing to the addresses to have the stones sent.'

I looked at the small black electronic marvel. So much information quiescent in its circuits.

'Is there an instruction manual?' I asked.

'Of course. All the instruction manuals for everything are in this drawer.' She opened one on the outer right-hand stack. 'So are the warranty cards, and everything.'

She sorted through a rank of booklets. 'Here you are. One for the Wizard, one for the printer, one for the expenses organizer.'

'I'll borrow them,' I said.

'They're yours now,' she replied blankly. 'Aren't they?'

'I can't get used to it any more than you can.'

I laid the manuals on top of the desk next to the Wizard and the printer and took a third black object out of the secret drawer.

This one needed no explanation. This was the microca.s.sette recorder that went with the tiny tapes I'd found in the hollowed-out books.

'That's voice activated,' June said, looking at it. 'It will sit quietly around doing nothing for hours, then when anyone speaks it will record what's said. Mr Franklin used it sometimes for dictating-letters or notes because it let him say a bit, think a bit, and say a bit more, without using up ma.s.ses of tape. I used to listen to the tapes and type straight onto the word processor.'

Worth her weight in pearls, Greville had judged. I wouldn't quarrel with that.

I put the microca.s.sette player beside the other things and brought out the last two gadgets. One was a tiny Minolta camera which June said Greville used quite often for pictures of unusual stones for Prospero Jenks, and the last was a grey thing one could hold in one's hand that had an on/off switch but no obvious purpose.

'That's to frighten dogs away,' june said with a smile.

'Mr Franklin didn't like dogs, but I think he was ashamed of not liking them, because at first he didn't want to tell me what that was, when I asked him.'

I hadn't known Greville didn't like dogs. I fiercely wanted him back, if only to tease him about it. The real trouble with death was what it left unsaid: and knowing that that thought was a more or less universal regret made it no less sharp.

I put the dog frightener back beside the pa.s.sport and also the baby camera, which had no film in it. Then I closed and locked the shallow drawer and fitted the piece of veneer back in place, pus.h.i.+ng it home with a click. The vast top again looked wholly solid, and I wondered if Greville had bought that desk simply because of the drawer's existence, or whether he'd had the whole piece especially made.

'You'd never know that drawer was there,' June said.

'I wonder how many fortunes have been lost by people getting rid of hiding places they didn't suspect?'

'I read a story about that once. Something about money stuffed in an old armchair that was left to someone.'

I couldn't remember the details: but Greville had left me more than an old armchair, and more than one place to look, and I too could get rid of the treasure from not suspecting the right hiding place, if there were one at all to find.

Meanwhile there was the problem of staying healthy while I searched. There was the worse problem of sorting out ways of taking the war to the enemy, if I could identify the enemy in the first place.

I asked June if she could find something I could carry the Wizard and the other things in and she was back in a flash with a soft plastic bag with handles. It reminded me fleetingly of the bag I'd had s.n.a.t.c.hed at Ipswich but this time, I thought, when I carried the booty to the car, I would take with me an invincible bodyguard, a longlegged flat-chested twenty-one-year-old blonde half in love with my brother.

The telephone rang. I picked up the receiver and said, 'Saxony Franklin' out of newly acquired habit.

'Derek? Is that you?'

'Yes, Milo, it is.'

'I'm not satisfied with this horse.' He sounded aggressive, which wasn't unusual, and also apologetic, which was.

'Which horse?' I asked.

'Dozen Roses, of course. What else?'

'Oh.' ,, 'What do you mean, oh? You knew d.a.m.n well I was fetching it today. The d.a.m.n thing's half asleep. I'm getting the vet round at once and I'll want urine and blood tests. The d.a.m.n thing looks doped.'

'Maybe they gave him a tranquillizer for the journey.'

'They've no right to, you know that. If they have, I'll have Nicholas Loder's head on a platter, like you should, if you had any sense. The man does what he d.a.m.n well likes. Anyway, if the horse doesn't pa.s.s my vet he's going straight back, Ostermeyers or no Ostermeyers.

It's not fair on them if I accept shoddy goods.'

'Um,' I said calmingly, 'perhaps Nicholas Loder wants you to do just that.'

'What? What do you mean?'

'Wants you to send him straight back.'

'Oh.'

'And,' I said, 'Dozen Roses was the property of Saxony Franklin Ltd, not Nicholas Loder, and if you think it's fair to the Ostermeyers to void the sale, so be it, but my brother's executor will direct you to send the horse anywhere else but back to Loder.' , There was a silence. Then he said with a smothered laugh, 'You always were a bright tricky b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

'Thanks.'

'But get down here, will you? Take a look at him.

Talk to the vet. How soon can you get here?'

'Couple of hours. Maybe more.'

'No, come on, Derek.'

'It's a long way to lipperary,' I said. 'It never gets any nearer.'

'You're delirious.'

'I shouldn't wonder.'

'Soon as you can, then,' he said. 'See you.'

I put down the receiver with an inward groan. I did not want to go belting down to Lambourn to a crisis, however easily resolved. I wanted to let my aches unwind.

I telephoned the car and heard the ringing tone, but Brad, wherever he was, didn't answer. Then, as the first step towards leaving, I went along and locked the vault.

Alfie in the packing room was stretching his back, his day's load finished. Lily, standing idle, gave me a repressed look from under her lashes. Jason goosed Tma in the doorway to the stock-rooms, which she didn't seem to mind. There was a feeling of afternoon ending, of abeyance in the offing, of corporate activity drifting to suspense. Like the last race on an October card.

Saying goodnights and collecting the plastic bag I went down to the yard and found Brad there waiting.

'Did you find those papers OK?' I asked him, climbing in beside him after storing the crutches on the back seat.

'Yerss,' he said.

'And delivered them?'

'Yerss.'

'Thanks Great. How long have you been back?'

He shrugged. I left it. It wasn't important.

'Lambourn,' I said, as we turned out of the yard.

'But on the way, back to my brother's house to collect something else. OK?'

He nodded and drove to Greville's house skilfully, but slowed just before we reached it and pointed to Greville's car, still standing by the kerb.

'See?' he said. 'It's been broken into.'

He found a parking place and we went back to look.

The heavily locked boot had been jemmied open and now wouldn't close again.

'Good job we took the things out,' I said. 'I suppose they are still in my car.'

He shook his head. 'In our house, under the stairs.

Our Mum said to do it, with your car outside our door all night. Dodgy neighbourhood, round our part.'

'Very thoughtful,' I said.

He nodded. 'Smart, our Mum.'

He came with me into Greville's garden, holding the gate open.

'They done this place over proper,' he said, producing the three keys from his pocket. 'Want me to?'

He didn't wait for particular a.s.sent but went up the steps and undid the locks. Daylight: no floods, no dog.

He waited in the hall while I went along to the little sitting room to collect the tapes. It all looked forlorn in there, a terrible mess made no better by time. I put the featherweight ca.s.settes in my pocket and left again, thinking that tidying up was a long way down my urgency list. When the ankle had altogether stopped hurting; maybe then. When the insurance people had seen it, if they wanted to.

I had brought with me a note which I left prominently on the lowest step of the staircase, where anyone coming into the house would see it.

'Dear Mrs P. I'm afraid there is bad news for you.

Don't clean the house. Telephone Saxony Franklin Ltd instead.'

I'd added the number in case she didn't know it by heart, and I'd warned Annette to go gently with anyone ringing. Nothing else I could do to cus.h.i.+on the shock.

Brad locked the front door and we set off again to Lambourn. He had done enough talking for the whole journey and we travelled in customary silence, easy if not comrades.

Milo was striding about in the yard, expending energy to no purpose. He yanked the pa.s.senger side door of my car open and scowled in at Brad, more as a reflection of his general state of mind, I gathered, than from any particular animosity.

I retrieved the crutches and stood up, and he told me it was high time I threw them away.

'Calm down,' I said.

'Don't patronize me.'

'Is Phil here?'

Phil was Phil Urquhart, veterinary surgeon, pill pusher to the stable.

'No, he isn't,' Milo said crossly, 'but he's coming back.

The d.a.m.ned horse won't give a sample. And for a start, you can tell me whether it is or isn't Dozen Roses. His pa.s.sport matches, but I'd like to be sure.'

He strode away towards a box in one corner of the yard and I followed and looked where he looked, over the bottom half of the door.

Inside the box were an obstinate-looking horse and a furious red-faced lad. The lad held a pole which had on one end of it an open plastic bag on a ring, like a shrimping net. The plastic bag was clean and empty.

I chuckled.