‘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?’
‘You don’t know what you’re asking.’
‘I do,’ I said.
‘No one speaks to me like this.’ He was, however, only mildly affronted.
I smiled at his eyes. ‘That’s because they know you. But I met you only this morning.’
‘And,’ he said, ‘I’ve heard about your lightning judgments.’
I felt, as on other occasions with people of his sort, a deep thrust of mental satisfaction. Also, more immediately, I knew I had come to the right place.
Archie Kirk stepped out from his door, took the three paces to my car, and said through the window, ‘Jonathan, please come into the house.’
Jonathan looked past him to me. I jerked my head, as before, to suggest that he complied, and he left the safe shelter and walked to the house, even if reluctantly and frozen faced.
Archie Kirk led the way across a modest hallway into a middle-sized sitting room where Betty Bracken, her husband and the small woman who’d answered my ring were sitting in armchairs drinking cups of coffee.
The room’s overall impression was of old oak and books, a room for dark winter evenings and lamps and log fires, not fitted to the dazzle of June. None of the three faces turned towards us could have looked welcoming to the difficult boy.
The small woman, introducing herself as Archie’s wife, stood up slowly and offered me coffee. ‘And… er… Jonathan… Coca-Cola?’
Jonathan, as if reprieved, followed her out to the next-door kitchen, and I told Betty Bracken that her colt was at that moment being operated on, and that there should be news of him soon. She was pathetically pleased: too pleased, I was afraid.
I said casually to Archie, ‘Can I talk to you in private?’ and without question he said, ‘This way,’ and transferred us to a small adjacent room, again all dark oak and books, that he called his study.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘I need a policeman,’ I said.
He gave me a long, level glance and waved me to one of the two hard oak chairs, himself sitting in the other, beside a paper-strewn desk.
I told him about Jonathan’s night walk (harmless version) and about our tracing the Land-Rover to the suppliers at Oxford. I said that I knew where the Land-Rover might now be, but that I couldn’t get a search warrant to examine it. For a successful prosecution, I mentioned, there had to be integrity of evidence; no chance of tampering or substitution. So I needed a policeman, but one that would listen and cooperate, not one that would either brush me off altogether or one that would do the police work sloppily.
‘I thought you might know someone,’ I finished. ‘I don’t know who else to ask, as at the moment this whole thing depends on crawling up to the machine-gun nest on one’s belly, so to speak.’