Given those, nothing else mattered.
In the afternoon Archie Kirk and Norman Picton argued themselves past the NO VISITORS sign on the door and sat in a couple of chairs bringing good news and bad.
‘The Frodsham police found your car,’ Norman said, ‘but I’m afraid it’s been stripped. It’s up on bricks — no wheels.’
‘Contents?’ I asked resignedly.
‘No. Nothing.’
‘Engine?’
‘Most of it’s there. No battery, of course. Everything movable’s missing.’
Poor old car. It had been insured, though, for a fortune.
Archie said, ‘Charles sends his regards.’
‘Tell him thanks.’
‘He said you would be looking as though nothing much had happened. I didn’t believe him. Why aren’t you lying down?’
‘It’s more comfortable sitting up.’
Archie frowned.
I amplified mildly. ‘There’s a bullet burn across somewhere below my shoulder blade.’
Archie said, ‘Oh.’
They both looked at the tall contraption standing beside the bed with a tube leading from a high bag to my elbow. I explained that, too.
‘It’s one of those “painkiller on demand” things,’ I said. ‘If I get a twinge I press a button, and bingo, it goes away.’
Archie picked up the copy of The Pump. ‘All of a sudden,’ he commented, ‘you’re Saint Sid who can do no wrong.’
I said, ‘It’s enough to make Ellis’s lawyers weep.’
‘But you don’t think, do you,’ Archie said doubtfully, ‘that Ellis’s lawyers connived at the hate-Halley campaign?’
‘Because they are ethical people?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
I shrugged and left it.
‘Is there any news of Ellis?’ I asked. ‘Or of Gordon?’
‘Gordon Quint,’ Norman said in a policeman’s voice, ‘was, as of an hour ago, still unconscious in a secure police facility and suffering from a depressed skull fracture. He is to have an operation to relieve the pressure on his brain. No one is predicting when he’ll wake up or what mental state he’ll be in, but as soon as he can understand, he’ll be formally charged with attempted murder. As you know, there’s a whole flock of eyewitnesses.’
‘And Ellis?’ I asked.
Archie said, ‘No one knows where he is.’
‘It’s very difficult,’ I said, ‘for him to go anywhere without being recognized.’
Norman nodded. ‘Someone may be sheltering him. But we’ll find him, don’t worry.’
‘What happened this morning,’ I asked, ‘about the trial?’
‘Adjourned Ellis Quint’s bail is rescinded as he didn’t turn up, and also he’ll be charged with grievous bodily harm to his father. A warrant for his arrest has been issued.’
‘He wanted to prevent his father from murdering,’ I said. ‘He can’t have meant to hurt him seriously.’
Archie nodded. ‘It’s a tangle.’
‘And Jonathan,’ I asked. ‘Did he go to Shropshire?’
Both of them looked depressed.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘didn’t he go?’
‘Oh yes, he went,’ Norman said heavily. ‘And he found the car parkers.’
‘Good boy,’ I said.
‘It’s not so good.’ Archie, like a proper civil servant, had brought with him a briefcase, from which he now produced a paper that he brought over to the bed. I pinned it down with the weight of my still-sluggish left hand and took in its general meaning.
The car parkers had signed a statement saying that Ellis Quint had dined with media colleagues and had brought several of them with him to the dance at about eleven-thirty. The parkers remembered him — of course — not only because of who he was (there had been plenty of other well-known people at the party, starting with members of the Royal Family) but chiefly because he had given them a tip and offered them his autograph. They knew it was before midnight, because their employment as car parkers had ended then. People who arrived later had found only one car parker — a friend of those who’d gone off duty.
Media colleagues! Dammit, I thought. I hadn’t checked those with the duchess.
‘It’s an unbreakably solid alibi,’ Norman observed gloomily. ‘He was in Shropshire when the yearling was attacked.’
‘Mm.’
‘You don’t seem disappointed, Sid,’ Archie said, puzzled.
‘No.’
‘But why not?’
‘I think,’ I said, ‘that you should phone Davis Tatum. Will he be in his office right now?’
‘He might be. What do you want him for?’
‘I want him to make sure the prosecutors don’t give up on the trial.’
‘You told him that on Saturday.’ He was humoring me, I thought.
‘I’m not light-headed from bullets, Archie, if that’s what you think. Since Saturday I’ve worked a few things out, and they are not as they may seem.’
‘What things?’
‘Ellis’s alibi, for one.’
‘But, Sid—’
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘This isn’t all that easy to say, so don’t look at me, look at your hands or something.’ They showed no sign of doing so, so I looked at my own instead. I said, ‘I have to explain that I am not as I seem. When people in general look at me they see a harmless person, youngish, not big, not tall, no threat to anyone. Self-effacing. I’m not complaining about that. In fact, I choose to be like that because people then talk to me, which is necessary in my job. They tend to think I’m cozy, as your sister Betty told me, Archie. Owen Yorkshire considers me a wimp. He said so. Only… I’m not really like that.’
‘A wimp!’ Archie exclaimed.
‘I can look it, that’s the point. But Ellis knows me better. Ellis calls me cunning and ruthless, and I probably am. It was he who years ago gave me the nickname of Tungsten Carbide because I wasn’t easy to… er… intimidate. He thinks I can’t be terrified, either, though he’s wrong about that. But I don’t mind him thinking it. Anyway, unlikely though it may seem, all this past summer, Ellis has been afraid of me. That’s why he made jokes about me on television and got Tilepit to set his paper onto me. He wanted to defeat me by ridicule.’
I paused. Neither of them said a word.
I went on. ‘Ellis is not what he seems, either. Davis Tatum thinks him a playboy. Ellis is tall, good-looking, outgoing, charming and loved. Everyone thinks him a delightful entertainer with a knack for television. But he’s not only that. He’s a strong, purposeful and powerful man with enormous skills of manipulation. People underestimate both of us for various and different reasons — I look weak and he looks frivolous — but we don’t underestimate each other. On the surface, the easy surface, we’ve been friends for years. But in our time we rode dozens of races against each other, and racing, believe me, strips your soul bare. Ellis and I know each other’s minds on a deep level that has nothing to do with afternoon banter or chit-chat. We’ve been friends on that level, too. You and Davis can’t believe that it is Ellis himself who is the heavyweight, not Yorkshire, but Ellis and I both know it. Ellis has manipulated everyone — Yorkshire, Tilepit, The Pump, public opinion, and also those so-smart lawyers of his who think they’re dictating the pace.’
‘And you, Sid?’ Norman asked. ‘Has he pulled your strings, too?’