The Stars’ Tennis Balls

‘But…’

‘So perhaps now you can see why Detective Sergeant Floyd, whom God preserve, got a little excited when he found this piece of paper in your jacket. And perhaps now you can see why he gave my department a call and why I am asking you now to tell me how you got hold of it. The man who gave you that envelope was an IRA terrorist, Ned. The worst and darkest kind of man. The kind of man whose idea of political protest is to blow the arms and legs off young children. Whatever oath of secrecy he may have sworn you to is meaningless. So let’s have his name.’

‘Paddy Leclare,’ said Ned. ‘His name was Paddy Leclare. He was a sailing instructor. We were at sea and he suddenly became terribly ill. He gave it to me just before he died.’

‘Well now you see. There we have it,’ Oliver said, patting Ned on the back. ‘That wasn’t so difficult, was it?’

‘I had … I had absolutely no idea. I mean he was employed by the school and everything. If I’d thought for a minute…'

‘Of course not, you daft young kipper.’

‘Do you think it was because of my father?’

‘Your father? Why should…, oh, you’re that kind of a Maddstone, are you? As in Sir Charles? What, he’s your granddad is he?’

‘He’s my father,’ said Ned defensively. ‘I was a…a late arrival.’

‘I had rooms in Maddstone Quad during my second year at St Mark’s,’ said Oliver. ‘I had a perfect view from my window of a great big stone statue of John Maddstone, the founder of the college. You don’t look a bit like him. We used to paint it dark blue during Eights Week, you know. Well, well. I expect it gave your friend Paddy Leclare quite a kick entrusting his letter to you. Sort of thing that appeals to his kind.’

‘He wasn’t my friend!’ said Ned indignantly. ‘He was just the school’s sailing instructor.’

‘Forgive me.

Ned looked down at the piece of paper. ‘So these are all people that the IRA wants to kill?’

‘That’s how things look on the face of it, certainly,’ Oliver conceded. ‘But how things are and how things look aren’t always the same.

Ned examined the list of names. ‘I don’t see what else it could mean,’ he said. ‘These are all politicians and generals and things, aren’t they?’

‘Well, maybe we are supposed to think that they’re targets. Maybe your friend Leclare believed that you would open the letter out of curiosity, get suspicious and show it to your father. Maybe the whole idea is to make us run around wasting a lot of time, effort and manpower laying on extra protection while their real targets lie elsewhere. Or maybe the envelope has been impregnated with some deadly bug and the plan was for you to pass the infection on to your father who in turn would pass it on to the entire cabinet. Maybe that’s why Leclare fell ill and died – maybe he’d been a bit careless with the old microbes.’

‘Oh my God! But…’

‘Or there’s another maybe. Maybe they planted that cannabis on you and then tipped off the police just in order to winkle me out and follow us here. Maybe they’re in a van outside now with a mortar trained on this very room. Maybe a thousand things. We don’t know. There are as many maybes as there are seconds in a century. But this one thing I can tell you for certain,’ Oliver said, drawing up a chair opposite Ned. ‘We won’t know anything until you’ve told me the whole story from start to finish. I hope you can agree with that?’

‘Of course. Absolutely.’

‘Good. I have been very frank with you and now you can repay the compliment. You give me everything you’ve got, and before you know it, Mr Gaine will be driving us back to London. You’ll be home and in the bosom of your family before the News at Ten, that’s a promise. You don’t mind a tape- recorder, I suppose?’

‘No,’ said Ned. ‘Not at all.’

‘Excellent. Sit you there and drink your milk. Be back in a tick.’

Hoo-bloody-rah. Oliver’s mind raced ahead as he went through into the sitting room. If he got back to town, sketched out a preliminary report and left Stapleton to make the security calls, he could be heading out to the country by midnight. Maybe his weekend could be salvaged after all.

‘As you were, Gaine. Where’s the Revox?’

‘Cupboard under the bookshelf, sir. I’ll fetch it.’

Oliver picked up the Evening Standard Quick Crossword against which Mr Gaine had been pitting his mighty wits.

‘There’s your problem. Eft.’

‘Sir?’

‘Four across, “Newt”. You’ve put Rat, should be Eft.’

‘Why Rat, incidentally?’

‘Well, Mr Delft, sir,’ said Mr Gaine, handing Oliver the tape-recorder. ‘Pissed as a rat, pissed as a newt.’

‘How silly of me,’ said Oliver, marvelling once more at Gaine’ s unusual thought processes. ‘Well, we shouldn’t be much more than an hour. Oh, be a hero and fill the Rover up with petrol, will you? There should be some jerrycans in the garage.

‘Have done, sir.’

‘Good man. Oh and Gaine?’

‘Sir?’

‘You’re sure we weren’t tailed on the way up?’

‘Sir!’ Mr Gaine was deeply reproachful. ‘Thought not. Just checking.’

‘So. To begin at the beginning. When did you first meet this Paddy Leclare?’

On and on came the questions, one after another. Ned had been talking for over an hour now, and still they hadn’t come to the last night on board the Orphana. Oliver had wanted to know not just every detail of every previous trip abroad, but of every term-time meeting of the Sailing Club too.

‘You’re doing well, Ned, very well. Not too far to go now. Where were we? Ah, yes. Ireland. The Giant’s Causeway. Two hours he was away while you boys played on the beach and gasped with pleasure at the rock formations. Two hours exactly?’

‘One and half hours perhaps, two at the most.’

‘And when he came back, he was on his own?’

‘I definitely didn’t see anyone with him.’

‘And then you set off for Oban again, sailing through the night? What time was that?’

‘Eight thirty-five. I helped with the log. I told you.’

‘Just making sure, just making sure. Now, describe the conditions to me. There’s a new moon rising just now isn’t there? You can see it through the window. So two nights ago it must have been pretty dark. There you were, out to sea, hugging a barren coast. Pitch black, I should think, but only for an hour or so at the most, this time of year. Am I right?’

And on and on came the questions. Oliver was naturally thorough because he was trained to be, but he was covering the ground with especial care now because he had no wish to have to haul Ned back at some later date to go over any questions that he might have missed. There would be enough work in the coming weeks, interviewing the boy’s headmaster, other members of the school bloody sailing club as well as witnesses in Oban and Tobermorey and Holland and a dozen other places besides.

'… I could tell at once he was very seriously ill…, sent Cade off to find a bottle of whisky … no, Jameson’s … seemed to find it funny ‘… made me swear … whatever was most holy to me…

Oliver drained his wine glass.

‘Excellent, excellent. And the envelope came from where?’

‘Well, a shop I suppose. A stationer’s. He never said.’

‘No, no. He produced it from where? His pocket? A safe? What?’

‘Oh I see. From a small bag. It was on the chart table.’

‘Colour?’

‘Red. It was red nylon.’

‘Any maker’s name? Adidas, Fila, that sort of thing?’

‘N-no… pretty sure not.’

‘Good, good. Your chum Rufus Cade still out of earshot, was he?’

‘Oh yes, definitely.’

‘You’re sure of that? You could see the hatchway from where you were?’

‘No, but Paddy could and he would have seen if Rufus had come back.’

‘Fair point. On we go.

‘Well, that’s when he told me to deliver the letter.’

‘There’s nothing on the envelope. Not written in invisible ink is it?’

‘No.’ Ned grinned at the idea. ‘He made me memorise the name and address.’

‘Which were …

‘I was to deliver it to Philip R. Blackrow, 13 Heron Square, London SW1.’

It was as if a bolt of electricity had shot through Oliver Delft’s body. Every nerve end tingled, his heart gave a great leap and for a second blackness crowded in on his vision.

Ned looked at him with concern. ‘Are you all right?’

‘It’s cramp. Cramp that’s all. Nothing to worry about.’

Oliver stood up, turned off the tape-recorder and walked away from the table, pushing hard down on the toes of his right foot, as if trying to stretch out a muscle