‘You haven’t the right to question me like this. All I’ve got to say I’ve said to the police.’
‘Very well. By the way, are you preparing to ask for compensation?’
‘Compensation?’
‘I have no authority to make promises on behalf of County Motors, of course, but it seems, from your story (and I do hope you will be good enough to continue it), that you have suffered physical injury and, I assume, unlawful captivity while employed upon the Company’s business.’
‘Oh, I see. Well, Mr Honfleur is a decent chap, so he’ll see I get my rights. As for unlawful captivity, well, you can say that again. They sat there in the room, me trussed up like a chicken ready for the oven excepting that I’d still got my guts inside me, although my heart, I don’t mind telling you, was just about in my boots, and then, when it was dark, which comes latish, as you may have noticed, as far north as that, they forced me, at knife-point, to get down the stairs and out into the open.’
‘So they had not tied your legs?’
‘They did, until they were ready for us to leave. Then this darkie pulled out a dirty great flick-knife and stood behind me and reached round and put it at my throat while the other chap untied my legs and told me to get moving. I had a shot at grabbing the darkie’s wrist and got his nasty snick on my neck.’
‘Your bedroom was in the three-storey wing, then.’
‘Yes, right at the top. I don’t think any of my passengers were near me. I believe they were all on the ground floor in the bungalow part of the building. Still, even if any of them had been handy, I wouldn’t have cared to risk a shout.’
‘And, in any case, you were gagged, you say. So you emerged into the front yard of the hotel. What happened then?’
‘They forced me into a car and drove me a few hundred yards down the road in the direction of Fort William. They took me into a big, empty house which looked about ready to fall down and kept me there.’
‘And, later, released you.’
‘That’s right, in a sense, I suppose.’
‘Did they feed you?’
‘Yes, with sandwiches from the lorry-drivers’ caff down the road and tea out of a thermos.’
‘What demands did they make?’
‘Demands? Nothing, except to tell them the exact route the coaches take to get back home from Perth. Well, there was no secret about that, so I told them. When I’d done and had answered several questions about the hotels we were accustomed to stop at, the nig hit me over the head and the next thing I knew I was walking into Mr Honfleur’s office here.’
‘With no idea of how you got back from Saighdearan?’
‘I suppose I must have thumbed lifts, but I’ve no recollection of it.’
‘But your memory has returned to you?’
‘Except for what happened between the knock on the head and me walking in on Mr Honfleur yesterday afternoon.’
‘What an interesting story! And you have no idea why you were abducted in this strange fashion?’
‘None at all.’
‘But you were able to leave this tumbledown house of your own volition.’
‘I must have, mustn’t I? But I can’t remember a thing about it.’
‘And there was no sign of these men?’
‘Neither hair nor hide.’
‘They had untied you, I assume.’
‘Must have done, mustn’t they?’
‘While you were at Saighdearan did you make contact with a man named Vittorio?’
‘Make contact? Me? No. Why should I?’ (But the question had rattled him.)
‘Only because I have some reason to believe that he was in the neighbourhood at the same time as you were. You know him, of course?’
‘Not to say know him. He came on my coach a year or two back to buy up some antiques or something of that sort, and I believe he used to go along with other drivers from time to time on the same sort of job, but I haven’t seen him around for a year or more.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Laura. ‘I was not going to read out my shorthand notes in front of Knight. He might have started thinking about his dressing-gown, which we happen to know was neatly packed and stowed away in his suitcase.’
‘His kidnappers may have tidy minds.’
‘The man is a liar of liars. His whole story is a fabrication and not a very clever one at that. All that boloney about a black man!’
‘The boy at the hotel mentioned a black man.’
‘Yes, but he meant Vittorio.’
