“Why, Maggie!” said Fell. “You’re upset.”
He put an arm around Maggie’s shoulders. She moved quickly away. “I’m all right, really,” she said. “Delayed shock, I think. Let’s take a drink into the sitting room and have a nightcap before we go to bed.”
¦
Jerry Grange and Wayne Baxter were sloping along the road which led past Fell’s house. They were two of the most unsavoury examples of Buss youth.
“You told me the old boy lived alone,” complained Jerry again. Wayne had told him that Fred Flint was an easy target, old and crippled. So they had broken their way in by smashing a glass panel in the garden door, only to be met by the sight of Dottie Flint coming down the stairs with a shotgun in her hand. They had fled in terror and had hidden out under the Mayor Bridge, hearing the sound of police cars racing over their heads.
They had waited until the coast was clear and then had begun to make their way into town.
Wayne moodily tried the handles of parked cars as they walked along. A car radio might get them enough for some drugs. Outside Fell’s house, he tried the handle of Maggie’s car.
To his surprise it opened. He turned to Jerry with a grin on his face. “They’ve even left the keys in the ignition. Let’s go for a spin.”
They both climbed in, Wayne in the driver’s seat and Jerry next to him in the passenger seat. Wayne glanced in the driving-mirror. Down the long road behind them, he saw the flashing blue light of a police car.
“Christ! The filth!” he said, and turned the ignition key.
There was a great roar as the whole car exploded in flames, shattering the night silence, blowing in the windows of Fell’s house and Mrs. Moule’s house next door.
Then all was still again, apart from the occasional sound of tinkling glass as another shard of Fell’s broken windows dropped out.
The police car stopped. A policeman ran up with a fire extinguisher while his partner called for help.
One by one, shocked people began to emerge from the houses. Fell and Maggie in their dressing gowns stood white-faced on the front step.
“That was my car,” said Maggie, turning her face into Fell’s shoulder. “My car. I left the keys in my car. That was meant for us, Fell.”
The street was filling up with fire engines and more police cars.
And then, appearing among the flashing blue lights, the bulk of Dunwiddy emerged.
He walked up to Fell and Maggie and then turned and surveyed the burnt-out shell of the car. He turned back. “Yours?” he asked them.
“Yes, mine,” said Maggie through white lips. “That must have been meant for us.”
“Could be,” he said. “We’ll see. Let’s go inside.” He signalled to another detective. “This is Detective Sergeant Mc-Indoe. Can we go inside?”
“Careful, Maggie,” cautioned Fell, supporting her inside. “There’s broken glass everywhere.”
They went into the sitting room. The thick curtains had been drawn and had stopped most of the window glass from flying into the room.
Dunwiddy began the questioning. Where had they been that evening? Fell and Maggie exchanged a look. “We were just driving around,” said Fell. “We drove over in the direction of Moreton and then around the villages.”
“Why?”
“The heat,” said Maggie. “We had the windows of the car rolled down trying to get a breeze.”
“And when did you get back here?”
“It must have been around eleven o’clock,” said Fell. “We had a drink and then we went to bed.”
“I left the keys in the ignition,” said Maggie. “I’ve never done that before.”
“We think we know who might have been in the car,” said Dunwiddy. “We were looking for a couple of youths who broke into Fred Flint’s. Know Fred Flint?”
“Yes,” said Fell. “We visited him, about the train robbery.”
“So we come back to the train robbery again. Nothing major happens in this town for years and then you pair start poking around in an old crime and all hell breaks loose. What did you get out of Fred Flint?”
“Nothing but a lot of boring railway reminiscences.”
“You sure?” Sharply.
“Look,” said Fell, putting his arm around Maggie, “we’ve both had a bad shock. We need to get someone to board up the windows until we find a glazier. Can’t this wait until the morning?”
“Just a few more questions.”
Dunwiddy plodded on, taking them back through everything again. At last he said, “It seems as if someone thinks you pair are a lot brighter than you really are. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
Fell said suddenly, “Do we have to be here?”
“What do you mean? You can’t leave the country.”
“I meant, as long as we give you our address, can we go off to a hotel nearby, not too far away?”
“Don’t see anything wrong with that. Come round to the station in the morning and we’ll take your statements.”
“Right,” said Fell. “I’ll see you out.”
As he opened the door, he was met by the glare of television lights and camera flashes. He quickly retreated and shut the door. Maggie was going through the business phone directory. “What are you doing?” asked Fell.
“There’s emergency repair services in here, glaziers, things like that. I’ll get the windows fixed right away. And I’ll phone the security in the morning to make sure the burglar alarm is still working.”
“That’s the press,” said Fell, listening to the hammering at the door.
Maggie picked up the phone. “Were you serious about going away?”
“Yes, just for a few days, until the fuss dies down.”
Maggie spoke into the phone urgently. Then she replaced the receiver and said with a shaky smile, “One very sleepy glazier on his road round. He has a mobile phone. I told him to call us from outside the house, so we can let him in and not the press.”
¦
It was a sleepless night. The glazier and two assistants put new glass in the windows, and then Fell told him to repair Mrs. Moule’s windows next door and that he would pay for it. “Poor old thing probably doesn’t have insurance,” he said. Fell and Maggie both worked busily, cleaning up glass from the floors. Then they both got washed and dressed and packed suitcases.
“Where are we going?” asked Maggie.
“We’ll find a hotel in Moreton,” said Fell. “We’ll try the White Hart Royal and then we’ll find out more about Johnny Tremp. I’m sure he’s the villain. We check up on him and the next thing you know, someone tries to kill us.”
¦
After the alarm system had been checked in the morning, Fell called a taxi to take them to the police station. They fought their way to the taxi through a barrage of reporters’ questions. “Was it the IRA?” called some. “Come on, Maggie,” yelled Peter. “Give me a break.”
But they finally got into the cab and were driven off.
At the police station, Dunwiddy took them through everything again. “Do you know why the car blew up?” asked Fell.
“They’re still working on it, but they think it might be Sem-tex.”
“But that’s a terrorists’ weapon!”
“Exactly. And I have been answering questions from Scotland Yard as to whether you pair have any connection with Northern Ireland.”
“That’s ridiculous,” exclaimed Fell. “I’ve only been out of Buss once and that was recently when we went to London for the day.”
“So where will you be staying?”
“Only as far as Moreton-in-Marsh. I was hoping the White Hart Royal might have a couple of rooms.”
Dunwiddy pushed a phone forward. “Phone now.”
Fell phoned. He was told he was lucky that they had just received two cancellations.
Separate rooms, thought Dunwiddy. What an old-fashioned couple.
