‘How bad exactly is the office?’ I asked.
‘They’re surveying it still. The outside walls look all right, it’s just a case of making sure. The inside was pretty well gutted.’
‘We could have a better lay-out,’ I said. ‘And a lift.’
‘So we could,’ he said happily. ‘And I’ll tell you something else which might interest you.’
‘What?’
‘The house next door is up for sale.’
I was asleep when Charles came in the afternoon, and he watched me wake up, which was a pity. The first few seconds of consciousness were always the worst: I had the usual hellish time, and when I opened my eyes, there he was.
‘Good God, Sid,’ he said in alarm. ‘Don’t they give you anything?’
I nodded, getting a firmer grip on things.
‘But with modern drugs, surely… I’m going to complain.’
‘No.’
‘But Sid…’
‘They do what they can, I promise you. Don’t look so upset. It’ll get better in a few days. Just now it’s a bore, that’s all… Tell me about Fred.’
Fred had already been at the house when the police guard arrived at Aynsford. Four policemen had gone there, and it took all four to hold him, with Charles going back and helping as well.
‘Did he do much damage?’ I asked. ‘Before the police got there?’
‘He was very methodical, and very quick. He had been right through my desk, and all the wardroom. Every envelope, folder and notebook had been ripped apart, and the debris was all in a heap, ready to be destroyed. He’d started on the dining-room when the police arrived. He was very violent. And they found a box of plastic explosive lying on the hall table, and some more out in the van.’ He paused. ‘What made you think he would come?’
‘They knew I took the photographs at Aynsford, but how would they know I got them developed in London? I was afraid they might think I’d had them done locally, and that they’d think you’d know where the negatives were, as it was you who inveigled Kraye down there in the first place.’
He smiled mischievously. ‘Will you come to Aynsford for a few days when you get out of here?’
‘I’ve heard that somewhere before,’ I said. ‘No thanks.’
‘No more Krayes,’ he promised. ‘Just a rest.’
‘I’d like to, but there won’t be time. The agency is in a dicky state. And I’ve just been doing to my boss what you did to me at Aynsford.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Kicking him out of depression into action.’
His smile twisted in amusement.
‘Do you know how old he is?’ I said.
‘About seventy, why?’
I was surprised. ‘I’d no idea he was that age, until he told me yesterday.’
Charles squinted at the tip of his cigar. He said, ‘You always thought I asked him to give you a job, didn’t you? And guaranteed your wages.’
I made a face at him, embarrassed.
‘You may care to know it wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t know him personally, only by name. He sought me out one day in the club and asked me if I thought you’d be any good at working with him. I said yes, I thought you would. Given time.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
He smiled. ‘I told him you played a fair game of chess. Also that you had become a jockey simply through circumstances, because you were small and your mother died, and that you could probably succeed at something else just as easily. He said that from what he’d seen of you racing you were the sort of chap he needed. He told me then how old he was. That’s all. Nothing else. Just how old he was. But we both understood what he was saying.’
‘I nearly threw it away,’ I said. ‘If it hadn’t been for you…’
‘Oh yes,’ he said wryly. ‘You have a lot to thank me for. A lot.’
Before he went I asked him to look at the photographs, but he studied them one by one and handed them back shaking his head.
Chief-Inspector Cornish rang up to tell me Fred was not only in the bag but sewn up.
‘The bullets match all right. He drew the same gun on the men who arrested him, but one of them fortunately threw a vase at him and knocked it out of his hand before he could shoot.’
‘He was a fool to keep that gun after he had shot Andrews.’
‘Stupid. Crooks often are, or we’d never catch them. And he didn’t mention his little murder to Kraye and the others, so they can’t be pinched as accessories to that. Pity. But it’s quite clear he kept it quiet. The Sussex force said that Kraye went berserk when he found out. Apparently he mostly regretted not having known about your stomach while he had you in his clutches.’
‘Thank God he didn’t!’ I exclaimed with feeling.
Cornish’s chuckle came down the wire. ‘Fred was supposed to look for Brinton’s letter at your agency himself, but he wanted to go to a football match up North or something, and sent Andrews instead. He said he didn’t think there’d be a trap, or anything subtle like that. Just an errand, about on Andrews’ level. He said he only lent him the gun for a lark, he didn’t mean Andrews to use it, didn’t think he’d be so silly. But then Andrews went back to him scared stiff and said he’d shot you, so Fred says he suggested a country ramble in Epping Forest and the gun went off by accident! I ask you, try that on a jury! Fred says he didn’t tell Kraye because he was afraid of him.’
‘What! Fred afraid?’
‘Kraye seems to have made an adverse impression on him.’
‘Yes, he’s apt to do that,’ I said.
I read Chico’s booklet from cover to cover. One had to thank the thalidomide children, it appeared, for the speed-up of modern techniques. As soon as my arm had properly healed I could have a versatile gas-powered tool- hand with a swivelling wrist, activated by small pistons and controlled by valves, and operated by my shoulder muscles. The main snag to that, as far as I could gather, was that one always had to carry the small gas cylinders about, strapped on, like a permanent skin diver.
Much more promising, almost fantastic, was the latest invention of British and Russian scientists, the myo- electric arm. This worked entirely by harnessing the tiny electric currents generated in ones own remaining muscles, and the booklet cheerfully said it was easiest to fit on someone whose amputation was recent. The less one had lost of a limb, the better were ones chances of success. That put me straight in the guinea seats.
Finally, said the booklet with a justifiable flourish of trumpets, at St Thomas’ Hospital they had invented a miraculous new myo-electric hand which could do practically everything a real one could except grow nails.
I missed my real hand, there was no denying it. Even in its deformed state it had had its uses, and I suppose that any loss of so integral a part of oneself must prove a radical disturbance. My unconscious mind did its best to reject the facts: I dreamed each night that I was whole, riding races, tying knots, clapping… anything which required two hands. I awoke to the frustrating stump.
The doctors agreed to enquire from St Thomas’s how soon I could go there.
On Wednesday morning I rang up my accountant and asked when he had a free day. Owing to an unexpected cancellation of plans, he said, he would be free on Friday. I explained where I was and roughly what had happened. He said that he would come to see me, he didn’t mind the journey, a breath of sea air would do him good.
As I put the telephone down my door opened and Lord Hagbourne and Mr Fotherton came tentatively through it. I was sitting on the edge of the bed in a dark blue dressing-gown, my feet in slippers, my arm in a cradle inside a sling, chin freshly shaved, hair brushed, and the marks of Kraye’s fists fading from my face. My visitors were clearly relieved at these encouraging signs of revival, and relaxed comfortably into the arm-chairs.
