'I mean you do not drive well. Do you know you've been all over the road for the last seventeen miles?'
'Seventeen miles!' exclaimed Kate. 'Have you been following me?'
'Only up to a point,' said Dirk. 'I've tried to stay on this side of the road.'
'I see. Well, thank you in turn for being so frank with me. This, I need hardly tell you, is an outrage. You'd better get yourself a damn good lawyer, because mine's going to stick red-hot skewers in him.'
'Perhaps I should get myself a kebab instead.'
'You look as if you've had quite enough kebabs. May I ask you why you were following me?'
'You looked as if you knew where you were going. To begin with at least. For the first hundred yards or so.'.
'What the hell's it got to do with you where I was going?'
'Navigational technique of mine.'
Kate narrowed her eyes.
She was about to demand a full and instant explanation of this preposterous remark when a passing white Ford Sierra slowed down beside them.
The driver wound down the window and leant out. 'Had a crash then?' he shouted at them.
'Yes.'
'Ha!' he said and drove on.
A second or two later a Peugeot stopped by them.
'Who was that just now?' the driver asked them, in reference to the previous driver who had just stopped.
'I don't know,' said Dirk.
'Oh,' said the driver. 'You look as if you've bad a crash of some sort.'
'Yes,' said Dirk.
'Thought so,' said the driver and drove on.
'You don't get the same quality of passers-by these days, do you?' said Dirk to Kate.
'You get hit by some real dogs, too,' said Kate. 'I still want to know why you were following me. You realise that it's hard for me not to see you in the role of an extremely sinister sort of a person.'
'That's easily explained,' said Dirk. 'Usually I am. On this occasion, however, I simply got lost. I was forced to take evasive action by a large grey oncoming van which took a proprietorial view of the road. I only avoided it by nipping down a side lane in which I was then unable to reverse. A few turnings later nnd I was thoroughly lost. There is a school of thought which says that you should consult a map on these occasions, but to such people I merely say, `Ha! What if you have no map to consult? What if you have a map but it's of the Dordogne?' My own strategy is to find a car, or the nearest equivalent, which looks as if it knows where it's going and follow it. I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere that I needed to be. So what do you say to that?'
'Piffle.'
'A robust response. I salute you.'
'l was going to say that I do the same thing myself sometimes, but I've decided not to admit that yet.'
'Very wise,' said Dirk. 'You don't want to give away too much at this point. Play it enigmatic is my advice.'
'I don't want your advice. Where were you trying to get before suddenly deciding that driving seventeen miles in the opposite direction would help you get there?'
'A place called the Woodshead.'
'Ah, the mental hospital.'
'You know it?'
'I've been driving away from it for the last seventeen miles and I wish it was further. Which ward will you be in? I need to know where to send the repair bill.'
'They don't have wards,' said Dirk. 'And I think they would be distressed to hear you call it a mental hospital.'
'Anything that distresses 'em is fine by me.'
Dirk looked about him.
'A fine evening,' he said.
'No it isn't.'
'I see,' said Dirk. 'You have, if I may say so, the air of one to whom her day has not been a source of joy or spiritual enrichment.'
'Too damn right, it hasn't,' said Kate. 'I've had the sort of day that would make St Francis of Assisi kick babies. Particularly if you include Tuesday in with today, which is the last time I was actually conscious. And now look. My beautiful car. The only thing I can say in favour of the whole shebang is that at least I'm not in Oslo.'
