Come to Grief (12 page)

Jonathan lay curled in the space for luggage. He had one shoe off, with which he was assaulting my milk-coffee bodywork. When I lifted the lid he stopped banging and looked at me challengingly.

“What the hell are you doing there?” I demanded.

Silly question. He looked at his shoe. I rephrased it. “Get out.”

He maneuvered himself out onto the road and calmly replaced his shoe with no attempt at apology. I slammed the trunk lid shut at the second try and returned to the driver’s seat. He walked to the passenger side, found the door there locked and tapped on the window to draw my attention to it. I started the engine, lowered the electrically controlled window a little and shouted to him, “It’s only three miles to Lamboum.”

“No. Hey! You can’t leave me here!”

Want to bet, I thought, and set off along the deserted downland road. I saw him, in the rear-view mirror, running after me determinedly. I drove slowly, but faster than he could run. He went on running, nevertheless.

After nearly a mile a curve in the road took me out of his sight. I braked and stopped. He came around the bend, saw my car and put on a spurt, racing this time up to the driver’s side. I’d locked the door but lowered the window three or four inches.

“What’s all that for?” he demanded.

“What’s all what for?”

“Making me run.”

“You’ve broken the lock on my trunk.”

“What?” He looked baffled. “I only gave it a clout. I didn’t have a key.” No key; a clout. Obvious, his manner said.

“Who’s going to pay to get it mended?” I asked.

He said impatiently, as if he couldn’t understand such small-mindedness, “What’s that got to do with it?”

“With what?”

“With the colt.”

Resignedly I leaned across and pulled up the locking knob on the front passenger door. He went around there and climbed in beside me. I noted with interest that he was hardly out of breath.

Jonathan’s haircut, I thought as he settled into his seat and neglected to buckle the seat belt, shouted an indication of his adolescent insecurity, of his desire to shock or at least to be
noticed.
He had, I thought, bleached inexpert haphazard streaks into his hair with a comb dipped in something like hydrogen peroxide. Straight and thick, the mop was parted in the center with a wing on each side curving down to his cheek, making a curtain beside his eye. From one ear backwards, and around to the other ear, the hair had been sliced off in a straight line. Below the line, his scalp was shaved. To my eyes it looked ugly, but then I wasn’t fifteen.

Making a statement through hairstyle was universal, after all. Men with bald crowns above pigtails, men with plaited beards, women with severely scraped-back pin nings, all were saying “This is
me,
and I’m
different.”
In the days of Charles I, when long male hair was normal, rebellious sons had cut off their curls to have roundheads. Archie Kirk’s gray hair had been short, neat and controlled. My own dark hair would have curled girlishly if allowed to grow. A haircut was still the most unmistakable give-away of the person inside.

Conversely, a wig could change all that.

I asked Jonathan, “Have you remembered something else?”

“No, not really.”

“Then why did you stow away?”

“Come on, man, give me a break. What am I supposed to do all day in that graveyard of a house? The aunt’s whining drives me insane and even Karl Marx would have throttled Esther.”

He did, I supposed, have a point.

I thoughtfully coasted down the last hill towards Lambourn.

“Tell me about your uncle, Archie Kirk,” I said.

“What about him?”

“You tell me. For starters, what does he do?”

“He works for the government.”

“What as?”

“Some sort of civil servant. Dead boring.”

Boring, I reflected, was the last adjective I would have applied to what I’d seen in Archie Kirk’s eyes.

“Where does he live?” I asked.

“Back in Shelley Green, a couple of miles from Aunt Betty. She can’t climb a ladder unless he’s holding it.”

Reaching Lambourn itself, I took the turn that led to the equine hospital. Slowly though I had made the journey, the horse ambulance had been slower. They were still unloading the colt.

From Jonathan’s agog expression, I guessed it was in fact the first view he’d had of a shorn-off leg, even if all he could now see was a surgical dressing.

I said to him, “If you want to wait half an hour for me, fine. Otherwise, you’re on your own. But if you try stealing a car, I’ll personally see you lose your probation.”

“Hey. Give us a break.”

“You’ve had your share of good breaks. Half an hour. OK?”

He glowered at me without words. I went across to where Bill Ruskin, in a white coat, was watching his patient’s arrival. He said, “Hello, Sid,” absentmindedly, then collected the bucket containing the foot and, with me following, led the way into a small laboratory full of weighing and measuring equipment and microscopes.

Unwrapping the foot, he stood it on the bench and looked at it assessingly.

“A good, clean job,” he said.

“There’s nothing good about it.”

“Probably the colt hardly felt it.”

“How was it done?” I asked.

“Hm.” He considered. “There’s no other point on the leg that you could amputate a foot without using a saw to cut through the bone. I doubt if a single swipe with a heavy knife would achieve this precision. And achieve it several times, on different animals, right?”

I nodded.

“Yes, well, I think we might be looking at game shears.”

“Game shears?”
I exclaimed. “Do you mean those sort of heavy scissors that will cut up duck and pheasant?”

“Something along those lines, yes.”

“But those shears aren’t anywhere near big enough for this.”

He pursed his mouth. “How about a gralloching knife, then? The sort used for disemboweling deer out on the mountains?”

“Jeez.”

“There are signs of
compression,
though. On balance, I’d hazard heavy game shears. How did he get the colt to stand still?”

“There were horse nuts on the ground.”

He nodded morosely. “Slimeball.”

“There aren’t any words for it.”

He peered closely at the raw red and white end of the pastern. “Even if I can reattach the foot, the colt will never race.”

“His owner knows that. She wants to save his life.”

“Better to collect the insurance.”

“No insurance. A quarter of a million down the drain. But it’s not the money she’s grieving over. What she’s feeling is guilt.”

He understood. He saw it often.

Eventually he said, “I’ll give it a try. I don’t hold out much hope.”

“You’ll photograph this as it is?”

He looked at the foot. “Oh, sure. Photos, X rays, blood tests on the colt, micro-stitching, every luxury. I’ll get on with anesthetizing the colt as soon as possible. The foot’s been off too long ...” He shook his head. “I’ll try.”

“Phone my mobile.” I gave him the number. “Anytime.”

“See you, Sid. And catch the bugger.”

He bustled away, taking the foot with him, and I returned to my car to find Jonathan not only still there but jogging around with excitement.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“That Land-Rover that pulled the trailer that brought the colt ...”

“What about it?”

“It’s got a red dragon on the windshield!”

“What? But you said a
blue—”

“Yeah, yeah, it wasn’t the vet’s Land-Rover I saw in the lane, but it’s got a red dragon transfer on it. Not exactly the same, I don’t think, but definitely a red dragon.”

I looked around, but the horse ambulance was no longer in sight.

“They drove it off,” Jonathan said, “but I saw the transfer close to, and it has
letters
in it.” His voice held triumph, which I allowed was justified.

“Go on, then,” I said. “What letters?”

“Aren’t you going to say ‘well done’?”

“Well done. What letters?”

“E.S.M. They were cut out of the red circle. Gaps, not printed letters.” He wasn’t sure I understood.

“I do see,” I assured him.

I returned to the hospital to find Bill and asked him when he’d bought his Land-Rover.

“Our local garage got it for us from a firm in Oxford.”

“What does E.S.M. stand for?”

“God knows.”

“I can’t ask God. What’s the name of the Land-Rover firm in Oxford?”

He laughed and thought briefly. “English Sporting Motors. E.S.M. Good Lord.”

“Can you give me the name of someone there? Who did you actually deal with?”

With impatience he said, “Look, Sid, I’m trying to scrub up to see what I can do about sticking the colt’s foot back on.”

“And I’m trying to catch the bugger that took it off. And it’s possible he traveled in a Land-Rover sold by English Sporting Motors.”

He said “Christ” wide-eyed and headed for what proved to be the hospital’s record office, populated by filing cabinets. Without much waste of time he flourished a copy of a receipted account, but shook his head.

“Ted James in the village might help you. I paid
him.
He dealt direct with Oxford. You’d have to ask Ted James.”

I thanked him, collected Jonathan, drove into the small town of Lambourn and located Ted James, who would do a lot for a good customer like Bill Ruskin, it seemed.

“No problem,” he assured me. “Ask for Roger Brook in Oxford. Do you want me to phone him?”

“Yes, please.”

“Right on.” He spoke briefly on the phone and reported back. “He’s busy. Satuiday’s always a busy sales day. He’ll help you if it doesn’t take long.”

The morning seemed to have been going on forever, but it was still before eleven o‘clock when I talked to Roger Brook, tubby, smooth and self-important in the carpeted sales office of English Sporting Motors.

Roger Brook pursed his lips and shook his head; not the firm’s policy to give out information about its customers.

I said ruefully, “I don’t want to bother the police....”

“Well...”

“And, of course, there would be a fee for your trouble.”

A fee was respectable where a bribe wasn’t. In the course of life I disbursed a lot of fees.

It helpfully appeared that the red-dragon transparent transfers were slightly differently designed each year:
improved
as time went on, did I see?

I fetched Jonathan in from outside for Roger Brook to show him the past and present dragon logos, and Jonathan with certainty picked the one that had been, Brook said, that of the year before last.

“Great,” I said with satisfaction. “How many blue Land-Rovers did you sell in that year? I mean, what are the names of the actual buyers, not the middlemen like Ted James?”

An open-mouthed silence proved amenable to a larger fee. “Our Miss Denver” helped with a computer print-out. Our Miss Denver got a kiss from me. Roger Brook with dignity took his reward in readies, and Jonathan and I returned to the Mercedes with the names and addresses of 211 purchasers of blue Land-Rovers a little back in time.

Jonathan wanted to read the list when I’d finished. I handed it over, reckoning he’d deserved it. He looked disappointed when he reached the end, and I didn’t point out to him the name that had made my gut contract.

One of the Land-Rovers had been delivered to Twyford Lower Farms Ltd.

I had been to Twyford Lower Farms to lunch. It was owned by Gordon Quint.

Noon, Saturday. I sat in my parked car outside English Sporting Motors, while Jonathan fidgeted beside me, demanding, “What next?”

I said, “Go and eat a hamburger for your lunch and be back here in twenty minutes.”

He had no money. I gave him some. “Twenty minutes.”

He promised nothing, but returned with three minutes to spare. I spent his absence thinking highly unwelcome thoughts and deciding what to do, and when he slid in beside me smelling of raw onions and french fries I set off southwards again, on the roads back to Combe Bassett.

“Where are we going?”

“To see your Aunt Betty.”

“But hey! She’s not at home. She’s at Archie’s.”

“Then we’ll go to Archie’s. You can show me the way.”

He didn’t like it, but he made no attempt to jump ship when we were stopped by traffic lights three times on the way out of Oxford. We arrived together in due course outside a house an eighth the size of Combe Bassett Manor; a house, moreover, that was frankly modem and not at all what I’d expected.

I said doubtfully, “Are you sure this is the place?”

“The lair of the wolf. No mistake. He won’t want to see me.”

I got out of the car and pressed the thoroughly modem doorbell beside a glassed-in front porch. The woman who came to answer the summons was small and wrinkled like a drying apple, and wore a sleeveless sundress in blue and mauve.

“Er . . . ,” I said to her inquiring face, “Archie Kirk?”

Her gaze lengthened beyond me to include Jonathan in my car, a sight that pinched her mouth and jumped her to an instant wrong conclusion. She whirled away and returned with Archie, who said repressively, “What is
he
doing here?”

“Can you spare me half an hour?” I asked.

“What’s Jonathan done?”

“He’s been extraordinarily helpful. I’d like to ask your advice.”

“Helpful!
”

“Yes. Could you hold your disapproval in abeyance for half an hour while I explain?”

He gave me an intense inspection, the brown eyes sharp and knowing, as before. Decision arrived there plainly.

“Come in,” he said, holding his front door wide.

“Jonathan’s afraid of you,” I told him. “He wouldn’t admit it, but he is. Could I ask you not to give him the normal tongue-lashing? Will you invite him in and leave him alone?”