I skirted around the house and approached down the outside of the nearest stable rectangle, trying to keep my leg as quiet as possible. Only at the very last instant did I briefly step into the light, and only then when I was sure no one was looking.
I went quickly up the stairs and let myself in to Ian Norland’s unlocked flat above the stables.
I
’d taken a chance that Ian would not have locked the door while he was downstairs with the horses, and I’d been right. Now I had to decide what to tell him. It had to be enough to engage his help, but amongst other things, I thought it best not to inform him that his employer was effectively trading while insolvent, something that was strictly against the law. And I didn’t want to scare him into instantly calling the police. I decided that I wouldn’t tell him the whole truth, but I would try not to tell him any outright lies.
While I waited for him to finish with the horses, I raided his refrigerator. Amongst the cans of beer there were precious few food items, so I helped myself to a two-liter plastic bottle of milk. It had been as much as I could do not to go into The Rice Bowl Chinese takeaway in the village on my way through. But I had every intention of convincing Ian that he needed to go there for me the minute he came up from the stables.
I’d completely finished his two liters of milk by the time I heard him climbing the stairs.
I stood tight behind the door as he came in, but he saw me as soon as he closed it. After the cut-bridle altercation of the previous Saturday, I wasn’t exactly expecting a warm welcome, and I didn’t get it.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he demanded loudly.
“Ian, I need your help,” I said quickly.
He looked at me closely, at my filthy and torn clothes and the stubble on my chin. “Why are you in such a mess?” he asked accusingly. “What have you been up to?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m just a bit dirty and hungry, that’s all.”
“Why?” he said.
“Why what?” I said.
“Why everything?” he said. “Why are you lurking in my flat like a burglar? Why didn’t you go to the house? And why are you hungry and dirty?”
“I’ll explain everything,” I said. “But I need your help, and I don’t really want my mother to know I’m here.”
“Why not?” he demanded. “Are you in trouble with the law?”
“No, of course not,” I said, trying to sound affronted.
“Then why don’t you want your mother to know you’re here?”
What could I say that would convince him?
“My mother and I have had an argument,” I said. I’d clearly failed dismally in my aim of not telling him any lies.
“What over?” he said.
“Does it matter?” I said. “You know my mother. She can argue over the smallest of things.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “But what was this particular argument about?”
I could see that he was going to be persistent. He needed an answer.
“Over the running of the horses,” I said.
Now he was interested.
“Tell me.”
“Can I use your bathroom first?” I asked. “I’m desperate for a shower. I don’t suppose you have any spare clothes my size?”
“Where are yours?”
“In the house.”
“Do you want me to fetch them?” he asked.
“How could you?” I said. “My mother would surely see.”
“She’s out,” he said. “She and Mr. Philips have gone to some big event in London. Saw them go myself round five o’clock.All dressed up to the nines, they were. She told me she’d be back for first lot in the morning.”
“But there are lights on in the house.”
“For the dogs,” he said. “I’ll go over and let them out before I go to bed. I’ll turn off the lights and lock up, then.”
So I could have probably gone into the house all along and never bothered Ian. I remonstrated with myself for insufficient reconnaissance of the place before I’d come up to Ian’s flat. I’d assumed my mother was at home, but I should have checked.
“But my mother’s car is in the driveway,” I said. I remembered having seen it as I rounded the house.
“They were collected by a big flashy car with a driver,” he said. “Seems like Mrs. Kauri was the guest of honor or something.”
“Will they be back tonight?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “All she said was she’d see me at seven-thirty in the morning.”
Maybe I hadn’t needed to involve Ian at all, but now that I had, could he still help me?
“Right, then,” I said decisively, using my voice-of-command. “I’ll go over to the house to have a shower and change while you go to the Chinese takeaway and get us both dinner. I’ll have beef in black bean sauce with fried rice.” I held out some money from my wallet. “And buy some milk as well. I’m afraid I’ve drunk yours.”
He stood silently, looking at me, but he took the money.
I glanced at the clock on his wall. “I’ll be back here in forty-five minutes to eat and talk.”
I
t was nearer to fifty minutes by the time I climbed back up the stairs to Ian’s flat, having enjoyed a long soak in a hot bath to ease my still-aching shoulders. And I’d brought some of my stuff with me.
“What’s in the tube?” Ian asked.
“My sword,” I said. “I thought it might be useful.”
“For what?” he said in alarm. “I’m not doing anything illegal.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “Calm down. I promise I won’t ask you to do anything illegal.”
“How about you?” he asked, still disturbed.
“I won’t do anything illegal either,” I assured him. “I promise.”
Another of those promises that I wondered if I could keep. In this case, I was rather hopeful that I wouldn’t be able to, but I decided not to tell that to Ian.
He relaxed somewhat.
“So can I stay here?” I asked, placing my bag and the tube on the floor.
“What? Sleep here?” he said.
“Yes.”
“But I’ve only got the one bed.” From his tone I gathered that he had no desire to share.
“That’s OK,” I said. “I only want the floor.”
“You can have the sofa.”
“Even better,” I said. “Now, how about that food? I’m starving.”
He served it out onto two fairly clean plates on his tiny kitchen table, and I tucked in to mine with gusto. I suspect a doctor would have told me that a bellyful of Chinese was not really the best medicine for a starved stomach, but I didn’t care. It tasted pretty good to me.
Finally, I sat back and pushed the plate away with a sigh. I was full.
“Blimey,” said Ian, who had only just started his sweet-and-sour pork. “Anyone would think you hadn’t eaten for a week.”
“What day is it?” I asked.
He looked at me strangely. “Wednesday.”
Had it really only been on Monday that I’d gone to Oxford for the inquest? Just two and a half days ago? It seemed like longer. In fact, it felt like half a lifetime.
Did I want to tell Ian why I was so hungry? Did he need to know why I hadn’t eaten since Monday morning? Perhaps not. It would take too much explaining, and he might not be very happy that I hadn’t called the cops.
“Not too many restaurants about when you’re living rough,” I said.
“ ‘ Living rough’?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been up on the Downs for a couple of nights in a shelter I made.”
“But it’s so cold, and it’s done nothing but rain all week.”
“Yeah, and don’t I know it. I couldn’t light my fire,” I said. “But it’s all good training. Nothing like a bit of discomfort to harden you up.”
“You army blokes are barmy,” Ian said. “You wouldn’t catch me outside all night in this weather.” He poured more bright pink sweet-and-sour sauce over his dinner.
So much for not telling him outright lies; I’d hardly uttered a word that was true.
“So tell me,” he said. “What was it about the running of the horses that you argued with your mother about?”
“Oh, nothing really,” I said, backpedaling madly. “And I am sure she wouldn’t want me talking to you about it.”
“You might be right there,” he said, smiling. “But tell me anyway.”
“I told you, it was nothing,” I said. “I just told her that in my opinion
,
and based on his last run at Cheltenham, Pharmacist wasn’t ready for the Gold Cup.”
“And what did she say?” Ian asked, pointing his fork at me.
“She told me to stick my opinion up my you-know-where.”
He laughed. “For once, I agree with her.”
“You do?” I said, sounding surprised. “When I was here, you know, when we watched the race on the television, you said that he couldn’t now run at the Festival.”
“Well,” he said defensively, “I may have done at the time, in the heat of the moment, like, but I didn’t really mean it. One bad performance doesn’t make him a bad horse, now, does it?”
“But I only said it to my mother because I thought that’s what you thought.”
“You should have bloody asked me, then.” He speared a pork ball on his fork and popped it into his mouth.
“Looks like I’ll have to beg forgiveness and ask to be allowed home.”
“Did she throw you out just for saying that?” He spoke with his mouth full, giving me a fine view of his sweet-and-sour pork ball rotating around like the contents of a cement mixer.
“Well, there were a few other things too,” I said. “You know, personal family things.”
He nodded knowingly. “In a good row, one thing just leads to another and then another, don’t it.” He sounded experienced in the matter, and I wondered whether there had once been a Mrs. Norland.
“You are so right.”
“So, do you still want to stay here?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” I said. “I’m not going home to my mother with my tail between my legs, I can tell you. I’d never hear the end of it.”
He laughed again and took another mouthful of his pork. “Fine by me, but I warn you, I get up early.”
“I want to be gone before first light.”
“The sun comes up at seven these days,” he said. “It’s light for a good half an hour or so before then.”
“Then I’ll be well gone by six,” I said.
“To avoid your mother?”
“Perhaps,” I said. “But you can ask her where she thinks I am. I’d love to know what she says, but don’t tell her I’ve been here.”
“OK, I’ll ask her, and I won’t tell her you’re here, or what we talked about,” he said, “but where are you going?”
“Back to where I’ve been for these past few days,” I said. “I’ve some unfinished business there.”
I
took my sword, still safely stowed in its tube, when I slipped out of Ian’s flat at just after five-thirty on Thursday morning. I also took the uneaten remains of the Chinese takeaway, and half the milk that Ian had bought the night before.
In addition, I took my freshly charged cell phone and the card from Mr. Hoogland. I might need something to pass the time.
I retraced my path from Kauri House, through the still sleeping village, and down the Wantage Road to Greystone Stables. One of the major successes of the night was that I had managed to stop my leg from clinking every time I put it down. The problem, I discovered, had been where the leg post met the ankle. The joint was tight enough, but the clink was made by two metal parts coming together when I put my weight on it. I’d eventually silenced it using an adjustable wrench and a square of rubber that Ian had cut from an old leaking Wellington boot. Now I relished being able to move silently once more.
The gates at the bottom of the driveway were still locked together with the chain and padlock, and they didn’t appear to have been touched since I’d left them the previous evening. However, I wasn’t going to assume that no one had been up to the stables in the intervening twelve hours; I would check.
I stepped back through the post-and-rail fence and climbed carefully and clink-free up the hill, keeping off the tarmac surface to reduce noise, listening and watching for anything unusual. Halfway up the drive, I checked the spot where the previous evening I had placed a stick leaning on a small stone. A car’s tire would have had to disturb it to pass by, but the stick was still in place. No one had driven up this hill overnight, not unless they had come by motorbike.
I wasn’t sure whether I should be pleased or disappointed.
Even so, I was still watchful as I approached the house, keeping within the line of vegetation to one side of a small overgrown front lawn. The sky was lightening in the east with a lovely display of blues, purples and reds. In spite of being completely at home in the dark, I had always loved the coming of the dawn, the start of a new day.
The arrival of the sun, bringing light and warmth and driving away the cold and darkness of the night, was like a piece of daily magic, revered and worshipped by man and beast alike. How does it happen? And why? Let us just be thankful that it did. If the sun went out, we would all be in the poop, and no mistake.
The rim of the fiery ball popped up over the horizon and flooded the hillside with an orange glow, banishing the gloom from beneath the bushes.
I silently tried the doors of the house. They were still locked.
I went right around the house, across the gravel turning area and back into the familiar stable yard beyond. In the bright morning light it looked very different from the rain-soaked space of the evening before. The stables had been built as a rectangular quadrangle with stalls along three sides, with the fourth open end facing the house.
First I went down to the far end of the left-hand block, knelt down, and carefully picked up all the shards of glass that still lay on the concrete below the window I’d broken. I placed them all carefully back through the window and out of sight. I had no way of replacing the glass pane, but one had to look closely to see that it was missing.
I walked down the row of stalls to my prison cell and opened both leaves of the stable door, hooking them open so that no one could quickly shut me in again before I could react.