provide her with reassurance and comfort between the sessions.
I wasn’t at all sure whether it was a good idea to leave Luca and Betsy to go to Leicester together without me, and without the services of one of the freelance bookmaker’s assistants. It was an evening meeting with the first race at twenty to seven. I supposed I might have been able to get there after spending the day at the hospital. Hemel Hempstead to Leicester was just a quick trip up the M1 highway.
“Betsy and I will be fine,” Luca said, clearly reading the dilemma in my face. “I promised, didn’t I?”
I must have still looked doubtful.
“Look,” he said. “We will be doing the best for the business in every respect. No point in fouling it all up if you’re thinking of offering me a partnership, is there?” He smiled at me.
“OK,” I said. “But…”
“Do you trust me or not?” he said, interrupting me.
“Yes, of course,” I said, hoping it was true.
“Then leave it,” he said seriously. “I’ll do tomorrow evening with Betsy, on our own. Like you said, we’ll talk at the weekend.”
He then climbed into the car next to Betsy and drove away, with me standing there watching them and wondering if life could ever be the same again.
The rain had thankfully eased a little as we had packed up the stuff, but now it began again in earnest, drumming noisily on the roofs of the cars around me.
I threw my umbrella in the back of my car, jumped in the front and started the engine. I was about to drive away when the passenger door suddenly opened and a man in a blue gabardine mackintosh climbed in beside me.
“Can you give me a lift?” he asked.
I looked at him in amazement, but he just stared forwards through the windshield, ignoring me.
“Where to?” I said finally. “The local police station?”
“I’d really rather not, if you don’t mind,” said the man.“Couldn’t you just drive for a bit?”
“And what makes you think I’d want to do that?” I asked him icily.
He turned towards me. “I thought you might want to talk.”
My audacious hitchhiker was the fourth stranger from the inquest, my unwanted nocturnal visitor of the previous night, complete with fresh plaster cast on his right arm.
“OK,” I said. “You talk and I’ll listen.”
I put the car into gear.
12
Well?” I said. “Talk to me.” I drove along the Stratford-to-Warwick road.
“Why didn’t you call the police?” he said.
“How do you know I didn’t?” I glanced across at him.
“I stayed to watch. No one came.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t call them.”
“I watched you through the window,” he said. “You vacuumed up the mess I left, and no one does that if he’s called the police.”
I felt uneasy at the thought of him being outside my home, watching me. “How long did you wait?” I asked him.
“Not long,” he said. “My arm hurt too much.”
“Serves you right.”
“You broke my wrist.”
“Good.”
We sat in silence for a while.
“Who the hell are you anyway?” I asked him.
“Just call me John,” he said.
“John who?”
“Just John.”
“And what do you want?” I asked him again.
“The microcoder,” he said. “Like I told you last night.”
“What makes you think that I’ve got it?”
“Where else would it be?”
“It could be anywhere,” I said.
“You have it,” he said with finality.
“Even if I did have it-and I don’t-what right do you think you have breaking into my house to look for it?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said. “And I didn’t break in. You left a window open. You were just asking to be burgled.”
“So that’s what you are, is it?” I said. “A burglar.”
“Don’t be stupid,” he said.
I looked across at him. “I’m not the one with a broken wrist.”
“OK,” he said, “I agree. That wasn’t so clever.”
Again I drove in silence.
“Where to, then?” I asked.
“To wherever the microcoder is.”
“I told you, I don’t have it.”
“And I told you, I don’t believe you.” He turned in his seat and looked at me. “For a start, if you didn’t know what I was talking about, then you would surely have telephoned the police last night. And second, we know it was you that retrieved your father’s rucksack from the hotel in Paddington.”
“What rucksack?” I said, trying to keep my voice as level and calm as possible and wondering, once more, if this John fellow and Shifty-eyes were working together. He had said “we.” Was I, after all, on my way to meet again the man with the twelve-centimeter knife?
“Oh, come on,” he said. “We’d been looking for his luggage too, you know. And I’d been looking for your father as well, for weeks. Ever since he stole the microcoder.”
“Who are ‘we’?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. He just turned back and looked out at the road.
“Why did you murder my father?” I said slowly.
“I didn’t,” he said, still looking ahead.
“But you had it done,” I said.
“No.” He turned again to face me. “That was not me.”
“Then who was it?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“And you expect me to believe you?” I said. “Perhaps we should go to the police station and you can then explain to them exactly who you are and why you were in my house last night.”
“I’ll deny it,” he said. “You vacuumed up the evidence, remember?”
I pulled the Volvo into a rest area and stopped the engine. I turned to him.
“And what is it you really want?” I asked.
“The microcoder,” he said flatly. “That’s all.”
“And what exactly is this bloody microcoder anyway?” I said.
“An electronic device.”
“Yes, but what does it do?” I asked.
He sat silently for a moment or two clearly debating with himself as to how much he should tell me.
“It writes coded information onto animal-identification tags,” he said.
