Odds against

wrong.

‘Sid…’ he said. ‘Sid… look, pal, I don’t know how to tell you. You’ll have to have it straight. We’ve been trying to reach you all the evening.’

‘What…?’ I swallowed.

‘Someone bombed your flat.’

‘Bombed,’ I said stupidly.

‘A plastic bomb. It blew the street wall right out. All the flats round yours were badly damaged, but yours… well, there’s nothing there. Just a big hole with disgusting black sort of cobwebs. That’s how they knew it was a plastic bomb. The sort the French terrorists used… Sid, are you there?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry, pal. I’m sorry. But that’s not all. They’ve done it to the office, too.’ His voice was anguished. ‘It went off in the Racing Section. But the whole place is cracked open. It’s… it’s bloody ghastly.’

‘Chico.’

‘I know. I know. The old man’s round there now, just staring at it. He made me stay here because you said you’d ring, and in case the racecourse patrols want anything. No one was badly hurt, that’s the only good thing. Half a dozen people were bruised and cut, at your flats. And the office was empty, of course.’

‘What time…?’

‘The bomb in the office went off about an hour and a half ago, and the one in your flat was just after seven. The old man and I were round there with the police when they got the radio message about the office. The police seem to think that whoever did it was looking for something. The people who live underneath you heard someone moving about upstairs for about two hours shortly before the bomb went off, but they just thought it was you making more noise than usual. And it seems everything in your flat was moved into one pile in the sitting-room and the bomb put in the middle. The police said it meant that they hadn’t found what they were looking for and were destroying everything in case they had missed it.’

‘Everything…’ I said.

‘Not a thing was left. God, Sid, I wish I didn’t have to… but there it is. Nothing that was there exists any more.’

The letters from Jenny when she loved me. The only photograph of my mother and father. The trophies I won racing. The lot. I leant numbly against the wall.

‘Sid, are you still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘It was the same thing at the office. People across the road saw lights on and someone moving about inside, and just thought we were working late. The old man said we must assume they still haven’t found what they were looking for. He wants to know what it is.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘You must.’

‘No. I don’t.’

‘You can think on the way back.’

‘I’m not coming back. Not tonight. It can’t do any good. I think I’ll go out to the racecourse again, just to make sure nothing happens there too.’

‘All right. I’ll tell him when he calls. He said he’d be over in Cromwell Road all night, very likely.’

We rang off and I went out of the kiosk into the cold night air. I thought that Radnor was right. It was important to know what it was that the bomb merchants had been looking for. I leaned against the outside of the box, thinking about it. Deliberately not thinking about the flat, the place that had begun to be home, and all that was lost. That had happened before, in one way or another. The night my mother died, for instance. And I’d ridden my first winner the next day.

To look for something, you had to know it existed. If you used bombs, destroying it was more important than finding it. What did I have, which I hadn’t had long (or they would have searched before) which Kraye wanted obliterated.

There was the bullet which Fred had accidentally fired into the mirror. They wouldn’t find that, because it was somewhere in a police ballistics laboratory. And if they had thought I had it, they would have looked for it the night before.

There was the leaflet Bolt had sent out, but there were hundreds of those, and he wouldn’t want the one I had, even if he knew I had it.

There was the letter Mervyn Brinton had re-written for me, but if it were that it meant…

I went back into the telephone box, obtained Mervyn Brinton’s number from directory enquiries, and rang him up.

To my relief, he answered.

‘You are all right, Mr Brinton?’

‘Yes, yes. What’s the matter?’

‘You haven’t had a call from the big man? You haven’t told anyone about my visit to you, or that you know your brother’s letter by heart?’

He sounded scared. ‘No. Nothing’s happened. I wouldn’t tell anyone. I never would.’

‘Fine,’ I reassured him. ‘That’s just fine. I was only checking.’

So it was not Brinton’s letter.

The photographs, I thought. They had been in the office all the time until Radnor gave them to Lord Hagbourne yesterday afternoon. No one outside the agency, except Lord Hagbourne and Charles, had known they existed. Not until this morning, when Lord Hagbourne took them to Seabury executive meeting, and lost them.

Suppose they weren’t lost, but stolen. By someone who knew Kraye, and thought he ought to have them. From the dates on all those documents Kraye would know exactly when the photographs had been taken. And where.

My scalp contracted. I must assume, I thought, that they had now connected all the Halleys and Sids.

Suddenly fearful, I rang up Aynsford. Charles himself answered, calm and sensible.

‘Charles, please will you do as I ask, at once, and no questions? Grab Mrs Cross, go out and get in the car and drive well away from the house, and ring me back at Seabury 79411. Got that? Seabury 79411.’

‘Yes.’ He said, and put down the telephone. Thank God, I thought, for a naval training. There might not be much time. The office bomb had exploded an hour and a half ago; London to Aynsford took the same.

Ten minutes later the bell began to ring. I picked up the receiver.

‘They say you’re in a call box,’ Charles said.

‘That’s right. Are you?’

‘No, the pub down in the village. Now, what’s it all about?’

I told him about the bombs, which horrified him, and about the missing photographs.

‘I can’t think what else it can be that they are looking for.’

‘But you said that they’ve got them.’

‘The negatives,’ I said.

‘Oh. Yes. And they weren’t in your flat or the office?’

‘No. Quite by chance, they weren’t.’

‘And you think if they’re still looking, that they’ll come to Aynsford?’

‘If they are desperate enough, they might. They might think you would know where I keep things… And even have a go at making you tell them. I asked you to come out quick because I didn’t want to risk it. If they are going to Aynsford, they could be there at any minute now. It’s horribly likely they’ll think of you. They’ll know I took the photos in your house.’

‘From the dates. Yes. Right. I’ll get on to the local police and ask for a guard on the house at once.’

‘Charles, one of them… well, if he’s the one with the bombs, you’ll need a squad.’ I described Fred and his van, together with its number.

‘Right.’ He was still calm. ‘Why would the photographs be so important to them? Enough to use bombs, I mean?’

‘I wish I knew.’

‘Take care.’