connected to organising or taking part in these races is open to prosecution as an accessory,” he said.
I held his gaze steady and didn’t reply.
“At the moment,” he went on, tapping the report, “we can’t be certain exactly what happened. There was too much contamination of the scene by the other motorcyclists who arrived there before we did. Grannell and Miss Elliot were certainly hit by another vehicle, but as yet we don’t know if that actually caused the accident. We were hoping,” he added mildly, “that Miss Elliot herself might be able to help us.”
I thought of Clare’s confusion of this morning, compared to her apparent clarity of last night, and shook my head. “I doubt you’ll get much out of her,” I said carefully.
MacMillan was too self-contained to snort, but he let his breath out faster than normal through his nose. “Now there’s a surprise,” he murmured, “considering that, if she was a willing participant, she might also be liable.”
I felt my body stiffen, however much I tried to control it, and knew that MacMillan had seen it too.
“Whatever other game Slick was playing, he was just giving Clare a lift to Devil’s Bridge,” I bit out, ignoring the clamour of doubt at the back of my mind. “Nothing more than that.”
The policeman regarded me with a fraction of a smile. “You see?” he said gently, shaking his head. “You’re much too close to this to be objective, Charlie. I can’t use you.”
I stuck my open hands up in front of me to indicate surrender, stood abruptly and turned on my heel. I was halfway through the doorway when MacMillan’s voice halted me.
“We haven’t always seen eye-to-eye in the past, Charlie, but I hope you have enough respect for me to listen to some advice,” he said quietly. “Stay out of this.”
There was finality in his tone. No second chances. I ducked my head back round the door and gave him a tight little smile.
“That’s always been my trouble, Superintendent,” I said. “I’m really bad at taking advice.”
Five
I rode straight from my abortive interview with MacMillan back to Jacob and Clare’s. All the way I ran my conversation with the policeman over in my head. I didn’t like it any better the fourth or fifth time than I had the first.
Bearing in mind Jamie’s comment about digging in the alarm sensor, I made particular attempts to ride round anything on the driveway that I thought might be a likely candidate. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe I wanted to check the dogs’ reaction, or maybe I wanted to catch Jamie doing something he shouldn’t when he thought he had the place to himself.
In the event, it wasn’t Jamie I had to worry about.
His Honda was parked up at a rakish angle outside the house. No surprise there. But what I wasn’t expecting was a big square Mercedes saloon to be lying alongside it.
The front door was open and as soon as I shut off the Suzuki’s engine I could hear the racket the dogs were making. Just for a moment I hesitated over what I might be walking into, then anger got the better of my judgement.
I left my helmet hooked over one of the Suzuki’s mirrors and went straight into the house with no further hesitation. I ignored the dogs who were going ballistic behind the closed kitchen door and headed straight for the study, where the noise was of a different and more human nature.
I nudged the door open and found a middle-aged woman was just in the middle of sweeping piles of paperwork off Jacob’s desk onto the floor and looking like she was enjoying her work.
Jamie was standing near the fireplace, looking unusually defensive, with his hands rammed in his pockets like he’d been told not to touch anything. I shot him a vicious look. When he saw me his face went into a kind of shameful spasm. He was not, I realised at that moment, an entirely willing participant in this enterprise.
“Charlie!” he said quickly. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
The woman’s head snapped up, her eyes glittering.
“And who in hell’s name are you?” she demanded and, not waiting for an answer, “Get the hell out of my house!”
She had a deep slightly husky voice that might have been attractive without the harsh note now flattening it. Her face was strong, full of character, mapped by fine thread veins under the surface of her skin.
“
For a moment Isobel Nash glared at me. Her gaze had turned calculating now, flicking from me to her son and back again. She might have been weighing up the possibilities of forcibly ejecting me and realising that Jamie probably wasn’t going to be any help in the matter. She looked physically strong enough to consider doing the job herself but, if nothing else, she could see I had the best part of thirty years on her. Common sense prevailed.
After a moment she gave a slight nod, almost to herself, and seemed to relax. She dragged a battered pack of Dorchesters out of her pocket and shook one out before offering it halfheartedly in my direction. I shook my head. She shrugged as though I’d deliberately slighted her and lit up.
“Well now, there’s no reason we can’t be civilised about this,” she said as she exhaled her first deep drag. For someone who was pretending to be civilised she seemed to have been the cause of a lot of wanton destruction. I eyed it without comment as she perched on the corner of the desk, watching me intently through the smoke.
“Civilised about what?”
“Well, we’re both after the same thing,” she said carefully. She had suddenly dropped her voice and seemed to be making an effort to keep impatience at bay, as though I was being unutterably dense. “I expect we can come to some kind of arrangement.”
