It seemed a massive overreaction to being told on the telephone that Mrs. Kauri's horses would, henceforth, be running on their merits and not to the order of a blackmailer.
Deliberate cold-blooded murder was a pretty drastic course of action, and there was no doubt that my abduction and imprisonment had been premeditated as well as cold-blooded. No one carries an ether-soaked towel around on the off chance that it might be useful to render someone unconscious, or have some plastic ties, a handy length of galvanized chain and a padlock lying about just in case someone needs to be hung on a wall. My kidnap had been well planned and executed, and I didn't expect there would be much forensic evidence available that would point to the perpetrators, if any.
So would they even bother to come back and check on their handiwork? Returning here would greatly increase their chances of leaving something incriminating, or of being seen. Wouldn't they just assume that I was dead?
But didn't they know? Never assume anything; always check.
The sun went down soon after five o'clock, and the temperature went down with it.
Still I waited, and still no one came.
Was I wasting my time?
Probably, I thought, but what else did I have to do with it? At least being out in the fresh air was better for me than lying on my bed, staring at the molded ceiling of my room.
I stamped around a bit to get some warmth into my left toes. Meanwhile, my phantom right toes were baking hot. It was all very boring.
When my telephone told me it was nine o'clock in the evening, I decided that enough was enough, and it was time to go back to Ian's flat before he went to bed and locked me out. I had never intended to stay at Greystone Stables all night. Twenty-four-hour stag duty was too much for one person. I had already found myself nodding off during the evening, and a sleeping sentry was worse than no sentry at all.
I put my sword back in its scabbard, and then I put that back in the cardboard tube, which I swung over my shoulder.
Halfway down the driveway I checked that the stick was still resting on the stone. It was. I set up another on the other side of the drive a few yards farther down, just in case the strengthening breeze blew one of them over.
Apart from the slight chill of the wind, it was a beautiful evening with a full canopy of bright stars in the jet-black sky. But it was going to be a cold night. The warm blanket of cloud of the previous few days had been blown away, and there was already a frost in the air that caused my breath to form a white mist in front of my face as I walked down towards the gates.
I was climbing through the post-and-rail fence when I saw the headlights of a car coming along the Wantage Road from the direction of Lambourn village. I thought nothing of it. The road could hardly be described as busy, but three or four cars had passed by the gates in the time it had taken for me to walk down the driveway.
I decided, however, that it would not be such a clever idea to be spotted actually climbing through the fence, so I lay down in the long grass and waited for the car to pass by.
But it didn't pass by.
It pulled off the road and stopped close to the gates. The headlights went out, and I heard rather than saw the driver get out of the car and close the door.
I lay silently, facedown in the grass, about ten yards away. I had the tube with my sword in it close to my side, but there would be no chance of extracting it here without giving away my position.
I lifted my head just a fraction, but I couldn't see anything. The glare of the headlights had destroyed my night vision, and in any case, the person would have been out of my sight behind the stone gatepost.
I closed my eyes tight shut and listened.
I could hear the chain jingling as it was pulled through the metal posts of the gates. Whoever had just arrived in the car had brought with them the key to the padlock. This was indeed my enemy.
I heard the gates squeak a little as they were opened wide.
I again lifted my head a fraction and stole a look as the driver returned to the car, but my view was obstructed by the open car door. I was lying in a shallow ditch beneath the post-and-rail fence, and my eye line was consequently below the level of the driveway. From that angle it had been impossible to see who it was.
I heard the engine start, and the headlights came back on.
I was sure the car would go up the driveway, but I was wrong.
It reversed out onto the road and drove away, back towards the village. I rose quickly to my knees. If I'd only had my SA80 at hand I could easily have put a few rounds through the back window and taken out the driver, as I had once done when a Toyota truck had crashed through a vehicle checkpoint in Helmand. As it was, I simply knelt in the grass with my heart thumping loudly in my chest.
I hadn't identified my enemy, but even in the dark, I thought I'd recognized the make of the car, even if I couldn't see the color.
So what did my mother say?" I asked Ian when I returned to his flat at Kauri House Stables.
"About what?" he said.
"About where I was."
"Oh, that. She was rather vague. Just said you'd gone away."
"So what did you say?" I pressed.
"Well, like you told me to, I asked her where you'd gone." He paused.
"And?"
"She told me it was none of my business."
I laughed. "So what did you say to that?"
"I told her, like you said, that you'd left a pen here when you watched the races and I wanted to give it back." He infuriatingly paused once more.
"And?"
"She said to give the pen to her and she'd get it returned to you. She said that you had unexpectedly been called to London by the army and she didn't know when you would be back. Your note hadn't said that."
"My note?" I said in surprise.
"Yeah. Mrs. Kauri said you sent her a note."
"From London?" I asked.
"Oh, I don't know that," Ian said. "She didn't say, but there was no note, right?"
"No," I said truthfully. "I definitely didn't send her any note."
But someone else may have.
I woke at five after another restless night on Ian's couch. My mind was too full of questions to relax, and I lay awake in the dark, thinking.
Why had my enemy not gone up to the stables to make sure I was dead? Was it because they were convinced that by now I would be? Perhaps they didn't want to chance leaving any new evidence, like fresh tire tracks in the stable yard. Maybe it was because it didn't matter anymore. Or was it just because they didn't want to have to see the gruesome results of their handiwork? I didn't blame them on that count. Human bodies-dead ones that is-are mostly the stuff of nightmares, especially those that die from unnatural or violent causes. I knew, because I'd seen too many of them over the years.
If my enemy hadn't bothered to go up to the hill the previous evening after unlocking the gates, I didn't expect them ever to go back there again. So I decided not to spend any more of my time waiting for them in the Greystone Stables passageway. Anyway, I had different plans for today.
"Andover," the lawyer Hoogland had said.
Now, why did that ring a bell?
Old Man Sutton, I thought. He now lived in a care home in Andover. I'd been to see him. And Old Man Sutton's son, Detective Sergeant Fred, had been at Roderick Ward's inquest. And Roderick Ward's sister had moved to live in Andover. Was that just a coincidence?
I heard Ian get up and have a shower at six.
I sat on the sofa and attached my leg. Funny how quickly one's love for something can sway back and forth like a sail in the wind. On Wednesday afternoon I had embraced my prosthesis like a dear long-lost brother. It had given me back my mobility. Now, just thirty-six hours later, I was reverting to viewing it as an alien being, almost a foe rather than a friend, a necessary evil.
Perhaps the major from the MOD had been right. Maybe it really was time to look for a different direction in my life. If I survived my present difficulties, that was.