Hilditch's office. There was an unholy row going on inside, and your name was being mentioned. Well, shouted, actually.'
'Maybe they were making the short list for the next super's job,' I suggested.
'No way, Charlie. Hilditch was telling him that he wants you off the Force. Pronto and sine die. Mr. Partridge tried to reason with him, but he wouldn't listen. He ordered him to have you suspended, as from tomorrow, or else. What have you been up to, Charlie?'
I thought about it for a few moments before I answered. Two possible courses of action occurred to me. The first one was very tempting, almost irresistible: invite Kim for a trip to a moorland pub in my new sports car to discuss the predicament.
'Kim, it's best if you don't know what it's about just yet. What you don't know can't make a pig's ear, or something. You just show 'em you're the best sergeant they've got, and forget what you heard. And I promise I'll tell you all about it as soon as I can. Okay?'
'I suppose so, you're the boss.'
'And I'm grateful. Any time you want a transfer to CID, just let me know.'
'We've had this conversation before, Charlie. I'd be no good: my profile's too high. Good detectives are grey and anonymous, they merge with the woodwork.'
'Ah, but we have all the fun. Good luck with the job, Kim, and thanks.'
I was smiling as I put the phone down, but I had a feeling that I ought not to be. I gave myself a mental ticking off for having misplaced priorities, and trudged upstairs to pack a suitcase. Kim's call had helped me make a decision. I had a lot to do, and not much time to do it in.
Jimmy Hoyle told me, when I rang him, that the car was hunky-dory. He'd done a hundred and thirty, he claimed, on the M62 and she was as steady as a three-legged card table. But keep an eye on the oil level. I was about to ring Tony Willis, but I changed my mind and wrote him a note.
Notes can't ask questions back. There were a few other things for him to attend to, but the main priority was the safety of Makinson and Rose. I instructed him to debrief them and act on whatever information they had gathered. I'd drop it through his letter box in the morning, on my way to Spain.
A good night's sleep seemed more important than an early start, so I rose at my normal time. It was a brilliant sunny morning, as if to give me a foretaste of what to expect. I put the Jag out on the road and left the other car standing in its normal place, up against the garage door. I prat ted about for longer than I ought, checking this and that and wondering what I'd forgotten. I couldn't find any sunglasses, although I did have some, once, but I did find a baseball cap with NYPD on the front. Sparky's kids had brought it back from the States for me a few years ago. I pulled it on to my head and looked in the mirror. Not bad.
'Okay, Frank,' I said to myself out of the corner of my mouth, 'let's go!'
The big engine rumbled into life immediately. I sat there for a few moments, feeling the car rocking gently beneath me, like the panting of a big cat pant hera onca readying itself for the chase. It was inevitable that I thought of Dad, and wondered how much of his shadow I was still living under. I selected first gear and eased out the clutch. Going towards the high street an extremely glossy black Rover passed in the opposite direction. The two occupants were uniformed, and the one in the passenger seat had silver braid on the peak of his cap. I pulled the NYPD down over my eyes and shot past them.
After stuffing the note through the Willis letter box I filled up the fourteen-gallon tank. That should take me to the outskirts of Dover.
There's a pay-phone at the garage, so I used it to ring the station. I told the desk sergeant that I wasn't very well and was having a day or two off sick, and to let Mr. Wood know. He was very sympathetic because it was unheard-of for me to be off, and asked me what the problem was.
'Haemorrhoids,' I told him. Make it something unglamorous and they're bound to believe you.
'Ooh, nasty,' he confided. 'Have you tried Anusol? It's the only thing that works for me.'
Then I remembered what I'd forgotten. We'd defied the purists on two counts: Jimmy had fitted a pair of tasteful wing mirrors that the manufacturers had not deemed necessary, and I'd installed a radio cassette player. Unfortunately I'd forgotten to throw in any cassettes. A quick detour took me to the record shop. I picked up a Dylan I hadn't heard, then made for the classical section. I was looking for S for Sibelius, but on the way saw Rimsky-Korsakov, and decided that perhaps Capriccio Espanol was more appropriate.
Eventually, much later than I had wanted, I found-myself heading cross-country to pick up the M1 southbound.
The E-type was a revelation. By modern standards it was heavy on the controls, and the performance was probably no better than lots of other cars, apart from the hundred and fifty miles per hour top speed. But what it did do, par excellence, was turn heads. Drivers pulled over to let me through, and then turned to wave a friendly hand. Kids in back seats gave me the thumbs-up. When I stopped at a motorway cafe there was a constant procession of admirers gawping through the windows and standing well back to appreciate the graceful lines. I felt like a celebrity, and was surprised to discover that I enjoyed the feeling.
Dover was reached by late afternoon. After filling up and buying a European road atlas I investigated the queue for the hovercraft. It wasn't as bad as I had expected, and eventually they squeezed me on. I think they quickly regretted their consideration when they realised how long the car was, and how difficult it was to manoeuvre, but we did it.
Forty-five minutes later we were in France. I followed another vehicle for a few hesitant miles, until I recovered from the shock of driving on the right. The Jag's poor rearward visibility, combined with the fact that the steering wheel was now on the wrong side, meant that I had difficulty watching what was happening behind me. The obvious solution was to drive faster, then I'd be going away from it all.
Immediate priorities were meal, bed, breakfast; preferably in that order. I drove steadily for about an hour, then, just as it was growing dark, pulled into the car park of one of the legendary Les Routiers. It was a disappointment, but bright and early next morning, stuffed full of croissants and twitchy on thick black coffee, I set about some serious motoring. Before going to bed I'd spent half an hour studying the maps and decided to travel south on the routes nation ales rather than the auto routes My intended course would take me to the west of Paris, through Orleans and Limoges, and touch the edge of the Massif Central in Limousin country. It looked an interesting way to see some of France, and this was supposed to be a holiday.
France is a big place, I discovered, and my progress to the bottom of the map was tardy. But the E-type weaved its magic, and the sun was shining, and soon the familiar shadows of the avenues of poplar trees were flickering over the windscreen. I thought of all the impressionist paintings of these roads that I had admired, and wondered how many of them would be improved by the addition of a speeding Jaguar. The next time I visited a gallery I'd take a few fibre-tipped pens with me and see. Orleans was easily bypassed. It brought back memories of the only time I acted in a school play. We were doing Shaw's Saint Joan, and I landed the part of the Bastard of Orleans, purely on the grounds of being the only kid in the class who could pronounce it properly.
It was going to take me a lot longer to reach the Costa del Sol than I had anticipated. Impetuosity is not normally one of my traits, and now I was paying the price for my foray into that territory. Lack of planning; that was the cause of the problem. What the hell, who cares?
Problem? What problem?
I stopped in an unnamed village and dared to check out the local supermarket. Stocked up with bottled water, crusty bread, fresh grapes and other local goodies, I was soon on my way again. I also bought some aspirin, because the driving seat was giving me backache; and some sunglasses. Walking back to the car I put on the shades and gave the baseball cap to a little boy on a bike.
I reckoned on stopping for fuel at about two-hundred-mile intervals. I filled up four times that day.
There's a line in a song about the old men playing chequers 'neath the trees. The shadows were long and the light had turned a warm golden-yellow when I pulled triumphantly into the small town of Foix, at the foot of the Pyrenees. And there they were: old men in woollen cardigans and black berets, playing chess in the shade along the roadside, against a backdrop of a sun-washed hilltop chateau. I extricated myself from the Jag, gingerly straightening my back and stretching my protesting limbs. I was worn out and sweating. Beautiful cars, like beautiful people, have their deficiencies.
I'd parked outside a church, underneath a colossal cedar tree. I had a quick swig of bottled water and went for an exploratory walk. My schoolboy French was an embarrassment, but after a lot of gesticulation and even more laughter I found a small, deep-shadowed hotel that could feed and accommodate me for the night. When I took the
