Asking For Trouble (14 page)

From that it was only a step to thinking, who’d find
me
?

Abbotsfield was a sprawling place, bigger than I’d imagined. It had a centre of terraced cottages, a church, two pubs, a post office cum general store, a garage and
Lisa Marie, Ladies and Gents Hairdressing
. Beyond this was a sizeable estate of elderly council housing and a primary school. There was a newer estate of brick bungalows on the outskirts of town.

When I’d explored all this I made my way back to the general store which was still open. It looked the kind of place which stayed open as long as anyone was interested in buying anything. Mr Patel operated on the same principle. I went in and bought a carton of milk and asked the woman for directions to the Astara Stud.

She was obviously curious. She must have heard all about Terry’s death. But she told me which way to walk, down the hill out of Abbotsfield, following the signpost for Winchester. Then to look for a turning which indicated Lords Farm.

I asked, puzzled, ‘Is that the stud?’

She told me no, it was just a farm, but the stud wasn’t marked on the main road. They didn’t believe in making it easy for visitors down here.

I thanked her and made my way to the church. I couldn’t get into the building itself, as it was locked. But the doorway was interesting, a rounded Norman arch carved with strange geometric designs, resting on corbel heads which had blunted with time and weather into faceless things. The tombs in the churchyard were also old, mossy, the lettering mostly obliterated, although in the far corner was a patch with newer headstones. The sun was going down and it was warm and pleasant here. I sat on a tombstone and ate the tuna sandwiches, feeling, and perhaps looking, a little like Edna. The sandwiches were threatening to go off by that time, they’d turned warm and squishy. Perhaps I’d get food poisoning. I drank the milk and decided what to do. In fact, I didn’t have a lot of choice. I had to head for Alastair’s place and see what turned up. Although I’d be the one turning up. Or, after the sandwiches, throwing up.

There’s a general assumption these days that everyone has transport. I didn’t, except my feet. By the time I started walking, it was six o’clock. I’d passed a public loo in a carpark on the way out of town and cleaned myself up, but I still felt sticky, dusty and a mess. The boots weren’t made for walking, unlike the ones in the song. I was soon starting to hobble a bit.

I felt conspicuous going along the road, not only because of my increasingly dot-and-carry-one gait, but because no one else was walking. It wasn’t like a London pavement where you’re shoving or being shoved out of the way all the time. There wasn’t any pavement, only a narrow beaten track along the verge. There weren’t any houses so no obvious reason to be wandering along. You just weren’t supposed to be walking here.

Cars passed, one or two slowing as the drivers – men – took a look at me. I realised I looked like a hitch-hiker. I stuck my hands resolutely in my pockets to show I wasn’t thumbing. Grandma Varady used to read the
News of the World
and newspapers of that sort. They were great on tales of rape and murder of young girls. She would read the details out with gusto.

‘You never do this, darr-link!’ She’d peer over her spectacles at me, shaking the paper under my nose, and making hitching motions with her thumb. ‘These men are out there – everywhere! Devils! They are lying in wait for young women!’

Despite this I have, on numerous occasions, hitched. I always applied the rule taught me by a chance acquaintance, a girl I met at a Salvation Army coffee stall near King’s Cross one cold winter evening. She was working the area professionally. I was just passing through. She was a cheerful sort of girl, friendly once she’d established I really had just stopped for a hot drink and wasn’t aiming to work her patch. She wanted to give up the game on account of her varicose veins but her boyfriend wasn’t having it and beat her up when she complained.

‘Standing about down here in the cold in a mini-skirt with your arse freezing is no joke!’ she said. ‘And it does in your legs and ankles.’

Her advice was, ‘Never get in a car with any man under the age of thirty-five.’

I remembered that as I walked along the verge. I also remembered her other advice which was never wear a skirt so tight you can’t run or kick. Also, have steel tips on your high heels so that you could kick out the windscreen if you did get in the wrong car and things got really tough. I never had to take that kind of action though I had a few wrestling matches with sweaty truckers. On the whole they weren’t serious. They nearly all had wives and kids and just wanted company in the cab. The worst thing was being bored to death with tales of the kiddies and their photos taken on Spanish beaches.

I was thinking of all these things as I hobbled along that verge looking for the turning to Lords Farm. I was beginning to think I’d missed it and was about to retrace my steps and check, when one of the cars swooping past screeched to a halt. The driver got out and called to me, ‘Want a lift?’

It was a big smart car, a Volvo. He was a big, smart bloke. He wore a shirt patterned in small green check and one of those sleeveless jackets with pouch pockets, coloured khaki. He looked self-confident and was clearly trying his luck.

I told him no thanks, I wasn’t going far. I really hoped that last bit was true – I couldn’t make it much further in these boots.

He smirked. ‘Come on, girlie, hop in!’

No one, but no one, calls me ‘girlie’.

I said sharply, ‘You deaf or something,
laddie
? I said no!’

He pulled a face, still grinning. ‘Oh, a feisty lady? Where do you want to go?’

‘Shove off!’ I said wearily. I couldn’t be bothered with him.

‘No need to be like that,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you anywhere you want. We can stop off for a drink on the way.’

I couldn’t believe it, that anyone could be that dim, to think I’d fall for a line like that.

‘You must be off your trolley,’ I said. I must have sounded as though I believed it because it annoyed him.

‘Look!’ he said nastily. ‘You’re walking here, hoping to be picked up, right?’

‘Wrong! I’m going to call on someone.’

He glanced round in an exaggerated way, drawing attention to the dearth of dwellings. ‘Where?’

I was wasting time. I started walking again and although my feet really hurt I was determined not to hobble while he was there to see. After all, if Chinese noblewomen could make it on bound feet, I could make it in pixie boots.

He got back in the car and drove alongside me with a practised ease which suggested to me he’d done his share of kerb-crawling. King’s Cross is full of cars like his, doing slow motion manoeuvres, until they see a copper and then they speed off like it was Silverstone.

After we’d gone a little way like this he stopped the car again, just ahead of me and got out, confronting me on the verge.

‘All right!’ he said. ‘You’ve made your point. What’s the name of these people you’re looking for?’

I suppressed the first retort to come to my lips. It occurred to me he was probably local and if I told him I was looking for the Astara Stud, he’d know where it was. So I told him where I was bound and added Alastair’s name for good measure.

The reaction was extraordinary. It wiped the smirk right off his face. ‘Then we’re headed for the same place. I’m James Monkton.’ He scowled and looked nonplussed. He wasn’t sure what to do next.

Oh shit, I thought. It would be!

‘But I don’t know you,’ he said doubtfully. His manner suggested that he was used to a better class of acquaintance.

I told him, ‘I’m Fran Varady. I knew Terry – Theresa.’

For a moment he was reduced to silence. A couple of cars rocketed past. Then an ugly look crossed his face and he said, ‘You’re that girl Alastair talked to in London. You lived in that place where Theresa died! What the hell are you doing down here?’

‘My business, all right?’ The road was empty now and we were alone by the verge. I hoped I didn’t look as nervous as I felt.

‘And I’m making it mine!’ he told me. ‘You can just turn around and go right back where you came from!’

‘Alastair told me to come and see him. He gave me his card!’ I stood my ground and hoped the half-truth would work. James wasn’t to know exactly what had passed between Alastair and me.

He thought about it for a moment, then decided to accept what I’d said. ‘Then I’ll take you to see him. And there’d better be no funny stuff. I’ll be watching!’ He gestured at the car and added sarcastically, ‘Go on, get in. On the level!’

‘Thank you!’ I told him. I slung my holdall on to the back seat and we set off.

‘Alastair didn’t say anything about expecting you.’ He glanced sideways at me.

I felt rather foolish. ‘We hadn’t fixed a date. He said to come when I – wanted. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I meant to phone from Basingstoke. But I hadn’t any tenpence pieces.’

It sounded weak, not to say the height of bad manners. But James wasn’t worried about my lapse of etiquette. He didn’t expect any better from me. His mind was running in a different line.

‘So, you came down here without even tenpence for a phone call? Really up against it financially, are you?’

It was clear what he was thinking and I felt my face burn. ‘I came to talk to Alastair. I told you that.’

‘Not to touch him for a hand-out, by any chance?’

I said, very coldly, ‘You don’t have any right to suggest that. You don’t know me. You don’t know why I’m here and you don’t have any business to know, as far as I can see.’

‘Quite a little Daniel, aren’t you? Running into a den of lions. Or did you think Alastair lived alone?’

As a matter of fact, I had assumed that. It had been stupid of me. Obviously he didn’t. Indirectly he’d mentioned others. But I hadn’t thought they all lived under one roof. What I wanted to know now was whether James here beside me was a permanent member of the household or, like me, a transient visitor.

When I didn’t reply, he treated me to a smirk of satisfaction. I tried to pretend I hadn’t seen it.

We’d reached the turning marked Lords Farm. James spun the wheel and we slewed off left and then right. We were now following a single-track road, very badly surfaced, and slowly climbing through rolling pastureland. Horses grazed peacefully behind the neat fencing. This must be part of the stud.

I sneaked another look at him. I supposed him to be in his late twenties. He was good-looking in a solid, healthy outdoor way. The solidity was muscle, not fat. I was pretty sure he could take care of himself and probably anyone who got in his way.

I could see he was thinking about me, too. I caught him giving me a couple of sidelong glances, just as I was doing to him, and there was a mean set to his mouth. Our glances collided at last and we both looked away. He was wondering what to do about me. For two pins, I think he’d have pushed me out of the car while rounding a corner at speed. But he
was
curious to know what I wanted.

Suddenly a wooden board appeared by the roadside. On it was painted a horse’s head and the words ASTARA STUD. There were a couple of fir trees either side of an entrance. James turned into it with another flourish and roared down a long drive, bordered with overgrown purple-blossomed shrubs which I recognised as buddleia. Buddleia grows anywhere at the drop of a seed and has a liking for the sides of railway tracks in and out of London. James drew up in a shower of grit, before the principal block of a cluster of buildings.

‘Here we are then!’ he said.

I stared through the windscreen. This must be the main house directly before us. It was red-brick, with sash-windows in white-painted frames, and looked Georgian. A newer extension had been built to the left, forming a separate wing. The ground floor of that looked as though it might be kept for offices.

The really intriguing part lay on the other side of the house. What had been a stableyard had been considerably expanded. I could glimpse the stabling, built around a square yard. Between it and the drive a garage block had been added, standing by itself. Behind that I glimpsed a modern bungalow. In addition to the buddleia, rhododendrons had been planted, either to give the bungalow privacy or to shield the main house from the sight of the humbler dwelling.

James was watching me as I studied all this. He still thought I’d come to see if I could shake some money out of Alastair. He was sure he could take care of it, if so. I found myself wondering if they kept any dogs – the sort which could be set on unwelcome visitors.

I just said as sweetly as I could, ‘Thanks for the lift! I didn’t realise it was so far out of town.’

He just gave a dry little smile and got out of the car. I hopped out too, grabbing my holdall off the back seat. The front door of the house was on the latch which shows you how different it was to London. Leave your door on the latch where I came from and when you got back either all your belongings would have disappeared, or someone you’d never set eyes on before would be sitting in front of your fireplace drinking lager out of a can, all his kit stowed round the room.

James walked in, leaving me to lug the holdall in by myself which wasn’t very gentlemanly. But I had the funny feeling James Monkton wasn’t entirely the country gent he took so much trouble to appear.

We were in a wide hall with a polished parquet floor and a staircase running up to a landing. James pushed open a door to a room on the right.

‘Why don’t you go in and make yourself at home? I’ll see if Alastair is anywhere about. He might be out back in the garden or over in the yard.’

The room was a sitting room. The evening sun was shining in the bay window and it looked very comfortable and pleasant. The chairs were old and chintzy and soft. There was a big new TV set in one corner and it gave me quite a surprise to see it there. I was beginning to imagine they’d sit round all evening playing the piano or cards or reading to one another out of leather-bound tomes, like all those characters in Turgenev. I sank down on a sofa and took another look around. If this was where Terry had lived, she must have found sharing the squat with us about as big a change as she could have made.