I held the visiting card a foot from his nose. ‘Is that you?’ He moistened his lips.

  ‘Is that you?’

  He made a movement with his right hand, his weak grey eyes holding mine.

  I’d given no indication of having spotted his assistants. As we’d walked in, one had been lounging against a side wall, the other standing to one side of the desk. But I’d observed them, and noted their placings and their general demeanour. I’d expected older, heavier men. These were the new breed, the young and deprived, earning a crust. They couldn’t have been more than twenty, old enough for the muscles to have developed, but too young to have built up experience. Their toughness was superficial. It was the handing-it-out toughness, not the taking it. The gesture from Lucas awoke the one by the desk. He’d not, until then, dared to move a muscle.

  To him, I was an older man. The sneer on his lips indicated that. Perhaps he didn’t put everything into that first swing, not the speed nor the accuracy. He’d aimed for my belly. I swung sideways, and removed the sneer with a quick right to the mouth. Watch it, Richard, I told myself. The knuckles. He’d decided I was being insolent, and moved in to finish it. I saw him swivel on the left foot and poise his right. It was an obvious move, and there was an effective response. You swing round the rising foot, get both hands beneath it, tread on the static foot, and heave upwards. His mouth opened. It should have dislocated his hip. His cry was a quivering whimper, when it should have been a scream.

  It has always been my aim, in such encounters, simply to incapacitate the opponent quickly, without inflicting too much pain. But now I recalled, not the severe injuries to Donald, but the bruise on the side of Mary’s forehead. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to stay hurt. Bitter rage took over.

  Perhaps this was as well. I’d been too easy with him already, and my efforts had not, after all, dislocated his hip. I threw him away from me against the filing cabinets, and he bounced back, stumbling a little, but with his fists flying. I caught a bright reflection of light. He was wearing brass knuckles. I parried one blow, my left forearm going numb, then I buried my right in his guts, kneed him in the face, and hammered his kidneys. He paused, shaking his head, his face grey, then he advanced again. I backed, appeared to slip, and was on my back on the floor. He did exactly as instinct dictated. He came close enough and drew back his right foot for a kick at my ribs. It was what I wanted. I hooked my right foot behind his left heel, rolling on to my right hip, and kicked him as hard as I could on the left knee. I heard it crack. He howled, and began to fall on to his face. I twisted so that he would miss me, flung myself on his back, and with both hands grabbed his head and banged his face on the floor. Until he was silent, then a little longer.

  I got to my feet. Too old for it, too old. I ached, and my knees were shaking. I looked round to see how Melrose was doing.

  Not for Melrose the dirty in-fighting I’d used. Melrose was a cold, precise machine, chopping his man to pieces, toying with him, dancing and sliding round him, and hurting, hurting, hurting. The blows flew in. The lout was reeling, but Melrose kept him short of unconsciousness, would not allow him to escape by lying down. Now his opponent had no awareness of what was going on. He was flailing uselessly with his arms. Coolly and professionally, Melrose cut him to ribbons.

  ‘That’s enough,’ I said, my breath a little short.

  Melrose heard. He planted himself, then swung in a right beneath the heart. I heard it, heard the air gasp out of the youth, then he fell flat on his face and was still.

  I turned my attention to Mr Lucas, who had thrust himself as far back as possible in his seat, his jowls sagging and his bald head matted with sweat. I picked up the card from his desk.

  ‘Is this you?’ I asked.

  He whispered: ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. We’re getting somewhere.’

  I turned the card round and showed him Donald’s pencilled figures on the back. ‘And these?’

  He looked up at me with appeal.

  ‘I’ll give you a clue,’ I said. ‘Donald Mann. Did you make him a loan?’

  He moistened his lips, his tongue thick and fleshy. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So the opening thirty is the loan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the added figure of six is the interest?’ They’d been Donald’s own calculations.

  He stared at me in desperation. The thug at my feet groaned. Melrose stepped forward. I didn’t see what he did, but there was no further sound.

  ‘Was it?’ I insisted.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Monthly?’ I put out a finger and touched his nose, Amelia’s gesture, but now carrying a vastly different implication. ‘Monthly,’ he croaked.

  ‘That works out at twenty per cent a month,’ I told him, as though he didn’t know. ‘Over two hundred a year. Compound interest, that would be. Say three hundred a year. Am I right?’

  ‘Give,’ he said, ‘or take a little.’

  I looked round at Melrose, who raised his shoulders. It seemed to encourage Lucas.

  ‘Fair!’ he cried in a high voice. ‘Very fair, on an unsecured loan.’

  ‘Unsecured!’ I stirred the unconscious thug with my toe. ‘These two were your security. And I suppose that was thousands?’

  He nodded, gaining confidence. ‘I advanced him thirty thousand.’

  ‘On a promissory note?’

  ‘It has to be in writing,’ he said, trying for dignity.

  ‘Let me see it.’ I leaned closer. ‘Produce it.’

  He reached sideways to a drawer.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not in the drawer. Your safe.’

  There was hatred in his eyes as he turned away and crouched to his safe. I reached over and yanked open his drawer. There was an ancient, but probably lethal, automatic pistol in there. I tossed it to Melrose, who examined it with interest. It was something we hadn’t expected.

  Scrambling back to his chair, Lucas handed me a sheet of paper.

  It was typed. So she could type! I skimmed through it quickly, then turned to Melrose, who was idly sighting the pistol at the centre of Lucas’s forehead.

  ‘The security was Donald’s seventeen shares,’ I told him. ‘The ones he would have got when his father died.’ I turned back to Lucas. ‘But he didn’t get them, did he?’

  He showed his teeth. ‘Unfortunate.’

  ‘You’d have had those shares off him, if he had?’ I demanded.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he realise that?’

  He actually sniggered, a hissing wet sound that nearly earned him my fist in his mouth. He sobered. ‘I don’t think Mr Mann really understood.’

  ‘What did he think? I’m getting tired, Mr Lucas. Tell me.’

  ‘He thought he’d sell them in the family, and pay me off. That was ridiculous, of course.’

  ‘And how much has he paid, out of his thirty thousand?’

  ‘With interest deducted—’

  ‘How much has he paid? You can forget your interest.’

  ‘He’s paid eleven thousand.’

  ‘Then maybe you’ll get the other nineteen. Maybe.’ I turned away, then remembered. ‘One more question. Did Donald suggest to you that his father might not live much longer?’

  He planted his palms on the surface of the table. ‘I was willing to wait as long as it took. The interest satisfied me.’

  At last I made a move to leave. Melrose casually fired the pistol, putting a bullet into the surface of the desk.

  ‘It actually works,’ he said in surprise.

  I folded the promissory note and put it inside my anorak pocket, zipping it in safely. My last sight of Lucas was his grey face staring sightlessly after me. Outside on the landing, Melrose was banging on doors and shouting: ‘You can come out now, love.’

  But she would have been well away by that time.

  We walked back to pick up my car, Melrose to hand in the pistol. They had something at last on Lucas, and I guessed there’d be a squad car round there in minutes.

  On the drive back to Boreton, Melrose was silent. He’d taken off his string-backed gloves and was flexing his fingers.

  ‘Thanks for your help,’ I said. ‘I’d never have managed alone.’

  ‘It’s been a pleasure.’

  ‘Why the shoes?’ I asked. ‘The steel tips. You didn’t use your feet.’

  ‘They notice such things. It bothers them and distracts them.’

  ‘I’ll have to remember that.’

  He was silent for a long while, then at last he suggested: ‘You could forget that nineteen thousand. He’d never dare to sue.’

  ‘You don’t know my wife. She’s got this strange idea about being fair and right.’

  ‘To scum like that?’

  ‘Even to me.’

  He grunted. ‘I’d like to meet her.’

  I glanced sideways at him and grinned. ‘You keep your distance, friend.’ He was too blasted good-looking for my liking. ‘Anyway, she doesn’t go for young and immature men.’

  ‘Stop this car, and I’ll make you take that back.’

  ‘Not while you’re wearing those shoes, mate.’

  We laughed. The interchange had been inane, a reaction from the morning’s work.

  I dropped him at The Dun Cow, and he simply waved and walked away. I drove on, to The Beeches. I felt fit to drop.

  Mary was dozing in her Windsor chair in front of the Aga, but was wide awake at once.

  ‘I told you to go to bed,’ I said severely.

  ‘Not till you got back.’

  ‘Yes. Well, I’m here. Off with you.’

  She made no move. ‘I bet you haven’t eaten.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, I can do myself bacon and eggs. Get some rest, then you can go back to the hospital. Can you drive yourself?’

  ‘Of course I can.’

  ‘Then, when you see Donald, and if he can understand, give him this.’ I handed her the promissory note.

  ‘What is it?’ She blinked at it. ‘I need my specs.’

  ‘It’s a legal document relating to the loan Donald took on, and couldn’t pay back. He’ll know.’

  She eyed me suspiciously. ‘That’s where you’ve been?’

  ‘I took a friend, and we had words with the two gents who were here last night.’

  ‘You’re just a ruffian,’ she told me. ‘I knew it the first moment I saw you.’

  “Fraid so.’ I took my lower lip between my teeth and she punched me on the shoulder.

  She turned at the door. ‘I’ve put clean towels in the bathroom and there’s plenty of hot water.’

  ‘Thank you, Mary. I’ll just phone my wife first.’

  ‘Then tell her from me you’ve been fighting. Men! Like little kids, all of you.’ And, head up, she went.

  Heavily, my muscles stiffening up, I trailed into the living room and sat at the phone table. As I reached for it, it rang. I picked it up.

  ‘You were going to get back to me,’ said Paul plaintively.

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ I burst out, and I slammed it down again.

  17

  I phoned Amelia and apologised for not calling her before. I asked about her arm, and she said there’d been some infection, but a change of antibiotics had been used and it was already improving. I brought her up to date with the news, omitting mention of the visit to Birmingham. I did not tell her that Clare had taken Sheba, because I’d guessed at her reason for this, and Amelia wouldn’t have liked to hear it.

  But we were constrained, and not reaching through to each other. I put it down to my exhaustion, and tried harder.

  ‘You’re sure you’re all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Improving all the time.’

  ‘There’s something wrong,’ I decided.

  Her voice became tiny, but crystal clear. She was hugging the phone close. ‘I’m being watched, Richard.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Officially watched.’

  ‘That nurse—’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘That was the staff nurse. No, there’s a policeman parked on a bench in the corridor. I get glimpses. And it’s not always the same one.’ I was silent. ‘Richard?’

  My brain was fighting to assimilate it. Melrose hadn’t been kidding, he really did suspect me. I didn’t know how to handle it, what to say.

  ‘Are you still here, Richard?’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Oh…that!’ Did it sound so false the other end? ‘I heard some stupid theory—you know—about Nancy Rafton’s death.’

  ‘What theory?’ I’d paused too long. Her voice was sharp.

  ‘That it might have been intended for you. Nonsense, of course. I didn’t pay much attention.’

  ‘But the policeman’s here. I can see him this second.’

  ‘Playing safe.’

  ‘I don’t want to be played safe with, Richard. I want to be safe. Surely this can’t have anything to do with the other…with what you’re doing there.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so, my love.’

  ‘Then finish it quickly, Richard. Please. I can’t lie here…’ Then she controlled her voice. ‘I want you to guard me,’ she said in a tiny voice. ‘Hurry, please, Richard.’

  What could I say? How reassure her? ‘It won’t be long now. I know how Walter was killed. I think I know who did it. Clear it up in no time, now.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise,’ I said.

  The last bit after that was private, and a bit garbled anyway, because I was cursing myself for a fool. I couldn’t see any end to it, and I’d lied. But a promise is a promise.

  I had my bath and my bacon and eggs, decided that the anorak would have to do, though it had lived in the boot of the car for months, and went to see Clare. Unfortunately, I had to ring Paul to ask for the address, which upset him because he reckoned he had the first call on my invaluable company, so I had to promise him I’d call in at the factory later. Another promise! By a bit of luck, Clare’s place was only half a mile beyond the factory.

  They had probably bought the bungalow when they were married. It was one of a sprawling complex, perched on the steep slope on the west side of the river, half each side of the road. They mounted into the wooded slopes, the trees having been preserved and the houses carefully sited. Even though the slope ensured that all, except those at the top, would be overlooked, efforts had been made to ensure privacy. It had been a costly project. The status of the residents reflected this fact. You could tell it from one glance at the cars.

  Clare, perhaps because she’d grown up beside a river, had chosen one of the lowest of the estate. It was nestled down by the water, reached by winding and intersecting roads, secluded, select, and substantial.

  When built, the trend had been towards an absence of garages. Car-ports were the thing. This had the advantage of allowing you to put away your cars and still have them on view. As Clare’s was at the end of the cul-de-sac, there was no one to notice the Audi Quattro and the BMW 320 that occupied the ports as I drove in. The Quattro would have been Tolchard’s, I guessed. He was a four-wheel drive character, who’d involve all four in taking him to his management slot, though he was only half a mile from the factory.

  I got out and had a look round. Immaculate lawn, rose beds, immaculate trees, an artificial pond. The rush of the river was soothing. I stood in the cantilevered porch, large enough to park another car, and pressed the button. Delicate chimes announced my presence.

  Clare had abandoned mourning as being too restrictive. She was dressed in slim, tailored slacks in a blue, silky material, a cream blouse, and with a tiny bolero jacket over it. Her make-up was expert and discreet. She stared at me with wide and startled eyes, and said: ‘Well…hello…’

  ‘I’ve come for my dog,’ I said without preamble, making no effort to sound sociable.

  ‘Oh…hoity-toity! You’d better come in.’

  ‘If you’d just bring her out.’

  ‘Oh come in, and stop being coy.’ She stood back, and I saw that the hand that had been holding the door had a cigarette trapped in the fingers. ‘I’m not going to eat you.’

  I closed the door behind me. She was moving away from me with a feline grace that was almost predatory, though she did not make the mistake of moving her hips too much.

  ‘I was just getting myself a drink,’ she tossed back over her shoulder, her hair moving enticingly. She had it loose that day, had probably only recently shampooed it.

  I followed her into the room she would probably call a lounge. As at The Beeches, this room was at the rear to take full advantage of the view over the river. It had an almost complete wall of sliding, double-glazed metal windows overlooking a terrace patterned in hexagonal, multi-coloured paving slabs. The fitted carpet was plain mid-green, the pattern raised, the Swedish furniture loosely arrayed with a lighter green upholstery. Three walls were plain, the fourth of natural stone, in it set a fireplace now housing an electric fire on legs, thus implementing the impression that it was a live one. There were even fire irons and a scuttle at one side, logs visible but never used. Sheba was spread in front of this on a thick oval rug, apparently unaware that the flickering from the fire was cold, and no more than artificial.

  ‘There she is,’ said Clare, tossing a negligent gesture with her hand in the direction of the fireplace. ‘Quite happy, as you can see. What’ll you have?’

  The drinks cabinet had sliding glass doors, and a tray on its surface with a soda-water syphon and glasses. Two glasses.

  ‘Nothing, thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m not much of a drinker. You knew I’d come, didn’t you?’

  ‘A man like you…’ She turned from the drinks, her eyes bright with mockery. ‘You were probably weaned on scotch. Why else d’you think I brought Sheba here?’

  Now there was amusement in her eyes, and a challenge. It gave her pleasure to reveal her hand, without actually displaying it.

 

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