he said that too. Five million, no police, or the boy would die. He said he'd be getting in touch. I began to shout at him… he just rang off.
Rightsworth took the cassette out of the recorder and put it in its box, putting that in its turn in the cardboard carton, all with exaggerated care in the plastic gloves. He would be taking the tape, he said. They would maintain the tap on Mr Nerrity's telephone, he said. They would be working on the case, he said.
Nerrity, highly alarmed, begged him to be careful; and begging didn't come easy, I thought, to one accustomed to bully. Rightsworth said with superiority that every care would be taken, and I could see Tony thinking, as I was, that Rights-worth was treating the threats too pompously and was not, in consequence, a brilliant detective.
When he had gone, Nerrity, his first fears subsiding, poured himself another stiff gin and tonic, again with ice and lemon. He picked the ice out of a bucket with a pair of tongs. Tony watched with incredulity.
'Drink?' he said to us as an afterthought.
We shook our heads.
'I'm not paying that ransom,' he said defensively. 'For one thing, I can't. The horse is due to be sold in any case. It's four years old, and going to stud. I don't need to get a bloodstock agent, it's being handled already. Some of the shares have already been sold, but I'll hardly see a penny. Like I said, I've got business debts.' He took a deep drink. 'You may as well know, that horse is the difference to me between being solvent and bankrupt. Biggest stroke of luck ever, the day I bought it as a yearling. He swelled slightly, giving himself a mental pat on the back, and we could both see an echo of the expansiveness with which he must have waved many a gin and tonic while he recounted his good fortune.
'Isn't your business,' I said, 'a limited company? If you'll excuse my asking?'
'No, it isn't.'
'What is your business?' Tony asked him casually.
'Importer. Wholesale. One or two wrong decisions…' He shrugged. 'Bad debts. Firms going bankrupt, owing me money. On my scale of operations it doesn't take much of a recession to do a damned lot of damage. Ordinand will clear everything. Set me to rights. Fund me for future trading.
Ordinand is a bloody miracle.' He made a furious chopping gesture with his free hand. 'I'm damned if I'm going to throw away my entire life for those bloody kidnappers.'
He'd said it, I thought. He'd said aloud what had been festering in his mind ever since Miranda's 'phone call. He didn't love his son enough for the sacrifice.
'How much is Ordinand worth?' Tony said unemotionally.
'They got it right. Six millions with luck. Forty shares at a hundred and fifty thousand each.' He drank, the ice clinking.
'And how much do you need to straighten your business?'
'That's a bloody personal question!'
Tony said patiently, 'If we're going to negotiate for you, we have to know just what is or isn't possible.'
Nerrity frowned at his lemon slice, but then said, 'Four and a half, thereabouts, will keep me solvent. Five would clear all debts. Six will see me soundly based for the future.'
Tony glanced about him and the over-plush room. 'What about this house?'
. Nerrity looked at him as if lie were a financial baby. 'Every brick mortgaged,' he said shortly.
'Any other assets?'
'If I had any other bloody assets I'd have cashed them by now.'
Tony and I exchanged glances, then Tony said, 'I reckon we might get your kid back for less than half a million. We'll aim lower of course. First offer, a hundred thousand. Then take it from there.'
'But they won't… they said…' Nerrity stopped, floundering,
'The best thing,' I said, 'would be to get yourself onto the City pages of the newspapers. Go into print telling the world there's nothing like a Derby winner for keeping the bailiffs out.'
'But…'
'Yes,' I interrupted, 'Maybe not in the normal way good for business But your creditors will be sure they'll be paid, and the kidnappers will be sure they won't. Next time they get in touch, they'll demand less. Once they acknowledge to themselves that the proceeds will be relatively small compared with their first demand, that's what they'll settle for. Better than nothing, sort of thing.'
'But they'll harm Dominic…'
I shook my head. 'It's pretty doubtful, not if they're sure they'll make a profit in the end. Dominic's their only guarantee of that profit. Dominic, alive and whole. They won't destroy or damage their asset in any way if they're convinced you'll pay what you can. So when you talk to the press, make sure they understand - and print - that there'll be a margin over, when Ordinand is sold. Say that the horse will wipe out all your debts and then some.'
'But…' he said again.
'If you have any difficulty approaching the City editors, we can do that for you,' I said.
He looked from Tony to me with the uncertainty of a commander no longer in charge.
'Would you?' he said.
We nodded. 'Straight away.'
'Andrew will do it,' Tony said. 'He knows the City. Cut his teeth at Lloyds, our lad here.' Neither he nor I explained how lowly my job there had been. 'Very smooth, our Andrew, in his city suit,' Tony said.
Nerrity looked me up and down. I hadn't replaced my tie, although I'd long unrolled my trousers. 'He's young,' he said disparagingly.
Tony silently laughed. 'As old as the pyramids,' he said. 'We'll get your nipper back, don't you fret.'
Nerrity said uncomfortably, 'It's not that I don't like the boy. Of course I do.' He paused. 'I don't see much of him. Five minutes in the morning. He's in bed when I get home. Weekends… I work, go to the races, go out with business friends. Don't have much time for lolling about.'
Not much inclinations either, I diagnosed.
'Miranda dotes on him,' Nerrity said, as if that were no virtue. 'You'd have thought she could keep her eyes on him for five minutes, wouldn't you? I don't see how she could have been so bloody stupid.'
I tried explaining about the determination of kidnappers, but it seemed to have no effect.
'It was her idea to have the kid in the first place,' Nerrity grumbled. 'I told her it would spoil her figure. She went on and on about being lonely. She knew what my life was like before she married me, didn't she?'
From the other side, I thought. From the office side, where his life was most intense, where hers was busy and fulfilled.
'Anyway, we had the kid.' He made another sharply frustrated gesture. 'And now… this.'
Miranda's mother arrived conveniently at that point, and shortly afterwards I put Alessia in my car and talked to Tony quietly in the garden.
'Thursday, tomorrow,' I said. 'Wittering's a seaside place. Good chance the same people will be on the beach tomorrow as today, wouldn't you think?'
'The Super in Chichester, would he buy that?' Tony asked.
'Yes, I'm sure.'
'I wouldn't mind a day myself of sitting on the effing pebbles.'
'The tide's going out in the mornings,' I said. 'How about if you take the stuff down to Eagler on the train, and I'll join you for a paddle when I've buzzed up the City?'
He nodded. 'See you at the Breakwater Hotel, then?'
'Yeah. Tell them at Reception that we're taking over Miranda's room. She's booked in until Saturday. Tell them the boy's ill, she's had to take him home, we're her brothers, we've come down to collect her clothes and her car… and pay her bill.'
'I don't know that sitting around in the Breakwater too long will do much good.'
I grinned in the darkness. 'Make a change from the switchboard, though.'
'You're an effing rogue, I always knew it.'
He vanished into the shadows without noise, departing on foot to his distantly parked car, and I climbed in beside Alessia and pointed our nose towards Lambourn.
I asked if she were hungry and would like to stop somewhere for a late dinner, but she shook her head. 'Miranda and I ate cornflakes and toast until our eyes crossed. And you were right, she seemed a bit calmer by the time we left. But oh… when I think of that little boy… so alone, without his mother… I can't bear it.'
I spent the next morning in Fleet Street swearing various business-page editors to secrecy and enlisting their aid, and then drove back to West Wittering, reflecting that I'd spent at least twelve of the past thirty hours with my feet on the pedals.
Arriving at the Breakwater in jeans and sports shirt, I found Tony had checked in and left a message that he was out on the beach. I went down there and came across him sitting on a gaudy towel, wearing swimming trunks and displaying a lot of impressive keep-fit muscle. I dropped down beside him on a towel of my own and watched the Life of the beach ebb and flow.
'Your Eagler already had the same idea,' Tony said. 'Half the holidaymakers on this patch of sand are effing plain clothes men quizzing the other half. They've been out here since breakfast.'
It appeared that Tony had got on very well with Eagler. Tony considered he had 'constructive effing ideas', which was Tony's highest mark of approval. 'Eagler's already sorted out what arson device was used to fire the dinghy. The dinghy was stolen, what a surprise.'
Some small children were digging a new sandcastle where Dominic's had been wiped out by the tide.
'A little girl of about eight gave Miranda the kidnapper's note,' I said. 'What do you bet she's still here?'
Without directly answering Tony rose to his feet and loped down onto the sand, where he was soon passing the time of day with two agile people kicking a football.
They'll look for her,' he said, returning. 'They've found plenty who saw the boat. Some who saw who left it. The one with the green shorts has a stat of Giuseppe in his pocket, but no luck with that, so far.'
The two boys who had helped me carry the boat up from the grasp of the tide came by and said hello, recognising me.
'Hi,' I said. 'I see the boat's gone, what was left of it.'
One of them nodded. 'We came back along here after supper and there were two fishermen types winching it onto a pickup truck. They didn't know whose it was. They said the coastguards had sent them to fetch it into a yard in Itchenor.'
'Do you live here?' I asked.
They shook their heads. 'We rent a house along there for August.' One of them pointed eastwards, along the beach. 'We come every year. Mum and Dad like it.'
'You're brothers?' I asked.
'Twins, actually. But fraternal, as you see.'
They picked up some pebbles and threw them at an empty Coke can for target practice, and presently moved off.
'Gives you a thought or two, doesn't it?' Tony said.
'Yes.'
