Deadfall (43 page)

Sandy looked uncomfortable. ‘The stuff 's all insured. They just replace it. The only people who lose out are the insurance companies, and they can afford it.'

‘Oh, yeah, the old excuse,' Linc said, nodding. ‘And who has to fork out for the higher premiums, huh? You can't justify it, mate, so don't even try. Besides, it's not just the money. It really messes up people's lives, being burgled. Makes them feel they're not safe in their own homes.'

Sandy offered no response to this, merely sat staring into his coffee, and after a moment Linc went on. ‘I guess you did a nice trade, replacing their lost tack. Playing the Good Samaritan, generously delaying payment until the insurance money came through. Didn't you ever feel just the slightest bit hypocritical?'

Sandy still had nothing to offer.

‘So when did you start helping Marty at the sharp end? Was it all getting a bit tame? Did you fancy a bit of an adrenalin rush?'

‘No, it wasn't like that! That night at the Vicarage – that was the first time. There was another bloke used to help Marty, but that night he couldn't make it and Al said I should go.' Sandy met Linc's contemptuous gaze at last. ‘I didn't want to, but you don't know Al Judge. He's a real bastard – you don't cross him! I've seen him break a man's kneecaps with a cricket bat. I can still hear his screams. Nobody crosses old Barnaby and gets away with it.'

Having had recent experience of the man, Linc
could well believe that, but knowledge of Sandy's subsequent deception of the Hathaways effectively suppressed any sympathy he might have felt.

‘What happened to the tack that was stolen? The police didn't find anything here last time, but you must have kept some of it because you had my snaffle.'

‘Judge took care of that. Most of the saddles went to Ireland, hidden in his lorries, and then he'd bring stuff back, too. Some of it would end up here, some in other areas. But the smaller stuff, I got to keep. It was my cut. I'm always buying old tack from people, and from auctions. Quite often it's just a box of stuff, so it's easy to keep my books straight. I dismantle the bridles and sell the bits separately. Nobody recognises the smaller stuff – or at least they didn't until you turned up with that bit.'

‘Did you know that was mine when you sold it to me?' Linc was curious.

‘Yeah. I guessed it was 'cos it's a fairly unusual one. I wouldn't normally sell back to the same person but I didn't have another one, and how was I to know you'd recognise it? Sod's law, that was!'

‘A chance in a million,' Linc agreed. ‘And like a fool, I didn't believe you could have had any knowledge of it. I trusted you, like everyone else did. You know, you had such a good thing going here . . . loyal customers, a terrific reputation. You're a bloody fool to throw that away.'

‘It was hard slog, and I was making peanuts,' Sandy complained. ‘It's all right for people like you. You've never had to go without.'

‘Oh, yeah. I'm rolling in it. That's why I'm looking for a sponsor. And, of course, while I was
away my father sent me a big fat cheque every week – I don't think! Get real, Sandy! You can't make those kinds of generalisations. Sure, some people have money to burn, but did it ever occur to you that they might have worked bloody hard to get it? The world doesn't owe you a living, you know.'

Sandy went back to staring at his mug.

‘So what now? Are you going to tell the coppers?'

‘They already know,' Linc told him, and felt no compunction at seeing the look of despair that settled on the saddler's face. ‘They've already picked up Judge and Marty Lucas. I talked Rockley into giving you a chance to do the right thing and turn yourself in, but that was before I realised what a gutless sod you are.'

He got wearily to his feet. ‘Oh, and by the way, don't bother trying to change your story now. There's a guy up a ladder out there who's had an extremely sensitive microphone and recording equipment pointed this way for the last twenty minutes. Thanks for the coffee.'

He left the office and at the outer door of the unit, passed Rockley and one of his men coming the other way.

‘Did you get that?'

‘Yes. That should wrap that little business up nicely,' the detective observed with satisfaction. ‘Thanks for your help.'

Linc was sitting in the Morgan a couple of minutes later when Rockley brought Sandy out, trailed by the other officer with, on the end of a rope lead, the jaunty figure of Tiger. The little procession halted level with the car and Linc looked up at them enquiringly.

It was, surprisingly, Sandy who spoke.

‘Linc, I'm sorry, I know what you think of me, but I need a really big favour. It's Tiger. I can't leave him here and I don't know who else to ask . . .'

Linc groaned. ‘Oh, God! I don't want him. What normally happens to dogs when you take their owners in?' he asked Rockley.

‘It depends. If there are no relatives, we get them signed over to the dogs' home.'

Linc looked reluctantly at the dog who wagged his stumpy tail and grinned back trustingly. He liked dogs, but between his father's two wolfhounds and Geoff Sykes's labradors he didn't go short of canine company and, just at the moment, having one of his own wasn't high on his wish-list. Even if it had been, he reflected, eyeing Tiger's ugly-attractive brindle face with some distaste, this definitely wouldn't be the dog he would choose.

‘Please, Linc . . .' Sandy pleaded. ‘Whatever else I've done, I did save your life that night, remember?'

Linc looked away, then back at Tiger, who looked a little uncertain, as if sensing the enormity of the moment.

‘Oh, give the bugger here!' he said suddenly, opening the car door. With very little encouragement, Tiger climbed in and Linc looped the end of the rope round the handbrake, which caused Rockley to frown.

‘I shall pretend I didn't see that,' he decided.

‘Well, it was that or the gear lever,' Linc joked. Then as Sandy was about to be led away, ‘Tell me. That night – do you know who doctored my drink?'

Sandy shook his head. ‘No. I honestly knew nothing about it.'

‘So it wasn't Judge's doing?'

‘No, he said not. But when he found out that I'd helped you, he went ballistic! You should thank your lucky stars it wasn't Marty or Scott who found you!'

‘Oh, I do,' Linc assured him.

It was well into the evening before Linc finally made it home, and Farthingscourt was quiet. Nobody appeared, demanding to know where he'd been, for which he was grateful – he'd had quite enough of answering questions for one day. It was strange to think, though, that his life-or-death drama had been played out in such a relatively short time that no one who wasn't directly involved had any inkling that anything out of the ordinary had happened.

Still unsure as to what he was going to do with Tiger, and unwilling to imbue him with any delusions of permanency, Linc installed him in the office for the night. He was a dog who stubbornly resisted any form of reasoning and Linc had a feeling that once admitted to his flat, Tiger would quickly make himself at home and be extremely difficult to evict. With this in mind, he piled a couple of old horse blankets in the corner of the office, put down a bowl of water, and left him crunching happily on a double handful of the wolfhounds' dry mix.

Mentally and physically exhausted, Linc slept long and deeply, waking to find his room flooded with daylight, and wishing, as he did every morning, that Josie were beside him. This time, however, as he recalled the events of the previous day, he could
allow himself to hope that the longing would soon be reality.

A more complete recall of the previous day brought another, more immediately pressing matter to mind.

Tiger.

Glancing at his watch, Linc discovered that it was past nine, and realised that the poor dog had been shut in the office for the best part of eleven hours. Hoping that the mongrel was blessed with adequate bladder control, he leaped out of bed, dressed and ran down the back stairs, through the old kitchen and out into the yard, unsure whether the probability that Mary had got there first was a good thing or a bad.

The office door was unlocked and Linc opened it cautiously, half-expecting a brindle torpedo to hurtle out, but the room was empty; the pile of blankets dented but abandoned. Had Mary been taken unawares and allowed Tiger to escape? Surely if that had been so she would have woken him up to tell him. Muttering curses under his breath, Linc left the office and went across to rap on the door of her cottage.

After a brief pause, Mary answered his knock.

‘Good morning, Linc. Have you lost someone, by any chance?'

He sighed. ‘Ah, you've found him.'

‘He's been having breakfast with me.' She stood back to afford Linc a view of her kitchen, where Tiger lay curled up next to her Rayburn stove. The dog raised an eyebrow and twitched his apology for a tail but made no move to get up. ‘He's very agreeable company, aren't you, lad?'

The pairing of neat, orderly Mary Poe with Sandy's in-your-face, streetwise dog was not one that would have suggested itself to Linc in a thousand years, but such was the odd nature of friendships. And Tiger was the sort of dog who would always be quick to recognise a good thing when he saw it.

‘His name's Tiger,' Linc told her. ‘He belongs to a friend of mine who's had to go away for a while.'

Even as he heard himself terming Sandy a friend, he knew it was no longer true. He could have forgiven the saddler for being weak, and even for his lack of morals, but didn't think he would ever be able to forgive the way he'd left Abby unconscious on the night of the raid and then unashamedly accepted the friendship and warmth extended by the Hathaway family, and Ruth in particular.

‘Well, you can't leave him in the office, poor little mite,' Mary said.

‘I didn't know where else to put him. It was rather a last-minute thing.'

‘Well, he's welcome to come in with me when I'm here, but I draw the line at taking him for walks,' she warned.

Linc thanked her, relieved to find such an easy solution to the problem, and returned to the office to see to the first business of the morning, ahead of a succession of planned meetings with Reagan, Geoff Sykes, and Saul the millwright. It looked like being another busy day.

The day progressed much in the manner of many Thursdays. Having taken the dressing off what was no more than a superficial cut on his hairline, there
was nothing about Linc to show that the previous day's adventure had ever happened. As a result, no one showed any curiosity and, even though his head was full of it, appropriate opportunities to introduce the subject into the conversation seemed few and far between. He had intended telling Crispin, but when he met him briefly at lunchtime his brother was in a hurry and full of the news that Nikki's mother had returned unexpectedly that morning.

‘Just when we'd got used to having the house to ourselves again,' he complained. ‘I wouldn't mind but the fair's not for days yet.'

Linc commiserated.

‘By the way,' Crispin went on, ‘hope you didn't mind me ringing you yesterday. It's just – you told me you just had to nip out for an hour or so and you'd written “Mike, three-thirty” on your jotter and underlined it. By half-past six I was starting to wonder.'

‘That was Mike Farquharson, the wine merchant,' Linc told him. ‘He's offered to sponsor my riding.' Incredibly, he'd almost forgotten that, with what came after, and now the memory of it gave him a frisson of pleasure.

‘That's brilliant!' Crispin exclaimed. ‘So you were out celebrating.'

‘Well, something like that,' Linc hedged. Somehow it didn't seem to be the moment to say, ‘No, actually, after that I went on to meet someone else and narrowly escaped being killed and buried in concrete'.

‘So what did Rockley want?' Crispin was on his way to the door.

‘It was about the attack on Abby. They think they've caught the man who did it.'

‘Oh, good, so that's over. That's a relief. Having a private detective in the family's a bit of a worry.' He glanced at his watch. ‘Look, I must go, I've got to pick Nikki up from the gym because her car's at the garage. Tell me about it later.'

As he disappeared, Linc sighed. Next stop the mill for the meeting with Saul. He collected the keys to the Discovery from the office and made his way out to the yard where Tiger greeted him joyfully and accompanied him to the vehicle. Linc looked round in vain for Mary, then gave in and opened the tailgate to let him jump up.

Halfway to the mill his phone rang.

‘Linc, it's Rebecca.'

‘Oh. Hi, Rebecca. Is everything okay?'

‘Yes, fine. At last I can say that! We saw Inspector Rockley this morning and he told us the good news – but then, I gather you know all about it?'

‘I spoke to him yesterday,' Linc agreed, wondering just how much he'd told them.

‘Yes,
and
the rest!' she said wryly. ‘According to him, it was you who tracked them down.'

‘More by luck than judgement.' It appeared that Rockley had spared Rebecca the details, for which Linc was extremely grateful.

‘Well, thank you anyway. It's such a relief. Maybe now Abby can begin to move on.' She paused. ‘I wouldn't blame you if you said no, but we'd very much like you to come over for a meal tonight . . .?' The rising note of uncertainty in her voice turned the invitation into a question.

Linc hesitated. ‘What about Abby? Is she okay with it?'

‘It was her idea. I mean, we all want you to come – of course we do – but we wouldn't have pushed her. Then, this morning, after the Inspector had left, she was a bit tearful and said she supposed you'd never want to speak to her again. I said I was sure you would . . .'