“Carl? Don’t you trust your number two?”
“I don’t know who I can trust,” I said. I sat there, thinking, as I watched a boat chug upstream through the bridge with two pasty-white sunbathers lying on its roof. “Yes, I think I probably do trust Carl.”
“Right,” she said. “Then we go back to Newmarket and save your restaurant. But we don’t tell anyone we’re coming before we get there, not even Carl.”
CAROLINE TOOK Viola for a walk down the riverbank into the meadow below the pub while I sat and made the rest of my calls. I could hear the mellow tones of her playing as I rang first my mother, to ensure she was all right, and then the police-the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, to be precise.
“Can I speak to D.I. Turner, please?” I asked.
“Can you hold?” said a female voice. It wasn’t so much a question as an order. Eventually, she came back on the line. “D.I. Turner is off duty until two p.m.”
I left him a message, asking him to call me. I told him it was urgent. I was promised that he would get the message. I wondered if I should have spoken to someone else. But D.I. Turner knew who I was, and he was less likely to dismiss my information with a laugh.
Caroline continued walking the riverbank towpath and playing sweet music for about forty minutes before she returned, flushed, smiling and happy.
“Oh that’s great,” she sighed, sitting down. I looked enviously at Viola. I wished I could make Caroline feel like that in the middle of the day, and with jet lag.
“Don’t you need to read the music?” I asked her.
“No,” she said. “Not for this piece. I know it so well. I was just making sure my fingers knew it as well as my head does.”
“I thought orchestras always have music,” I said. “They have music stands. I’ve seen them.”
“Well, we do. But soloists usually don’t, and often the music is there just as an aide-mémoire rather than being absolutely necessary.” She slipped Viola lovingly back into her case. “Are we staying here for lunch?”
“No,” I said. “I’d rather go. It’s been over an hour since I first used my phone here and it’s time to move on.” And, I thought, the food wasn’t very inviting.
“Can someone really find out where you are from your cell?” she asked.
“I know the police can,” I said, “from your phone records. I’ve heard about it in trials. I’m just not taking any chances that Komarov has someone at the phone company on his payroll.”
“Do you want to go back to Newmarket?” Caroline asked.
“Yes and no,” I said. “Of course I want to go to the Hay Net and sort out the mess, but I have to admit that I’m wary.”
“We don’t have to go, you know,” she said.
“I can’t go on running forever,” I said. “I’ll have to go back there sometime. I’ve left a message for the policeman I spoke to at the Special Branch, and I’ll tell him what I think has been going on and ask him for some police protection. It’ll be fine.”
WE STOPPED just north of Oxford and enjoyed a leisurely lunch in a pub garden, sitting under a bright red sun umbrella that made our delicious stilton and broccoli soup appear pink when it should have been green. The closer we came to Newmarket, the more nervous I became, and, when we arrived in the town at about six o’clock, I felt lost, like a fish out of water. I had no home to go to, nothing but a pile of blackened stones and ash, which I drove slowly past, in each direction, as Caroline sat silently staring at the devastation.
“Oh, Max,” she said after our second pass. “I am so sorry.”
“I can always rebuild,” I said. But that little cottage was the only home I had ever owned, and I could remember clearly the excitement on that July day nearly six years ago when I had first moved in, the joy of discovery of unknown cupboards, and the sounds made by the structure as the hot summer day had cooled towards evening. It had been built from local stone in the last decade of the eighteenth century, and although I currently owned the freehold I had always considered myself a temporary tenant in its long and endless existence. But now its life had been burned away. Murder had been done here, not on a human being but on a member of my family nevertheless. What remained was dead, and silent. Would rebuilding ever bring it back its soul? Perhaps the time was right, after all, for me to grieve for my loss, and to move on.
“Where exactly are we going to sleep tonight?” Caroline asked after I had finally driven away from the disaster.
“Do you remember when I first talked you into coming to Newmarket, I promised you a night at the Bedford Lodge Hotel?” I said. “And the best-laid plans were somewhat disrupted by a certain car crash. Well, tonight, my dear, you shall finally have your night in Newmarket’s finest hotel.”
“I am honored,” she said.
“Don’t get too used to it,” I said. “They have a room only for tonight. They’re full tomorrow.”
“I have to be in London tomorrow night,” she said.
I hadn’t forgotten.
TO SAY Carl was pleased to see me would be rather an under-statement. He almost cried when I walked into the Hay Net kitchen at seven o’clock.
“Thank God,” he said.
“I won’t be much use,” I said, tapping the hard shell on my right arm.
“What did you do?” he asked. His shoulders sagged. His joy was rapidly turning to disappointment.
“Fell and broke my wrist,” I said. “Stupid. But I can still help a bit.”
“Good.” A little of his joy returned.
I didn’t bother to change. I just slipped one of my chef’s tunics over my shirt and set to work, assisted by Caroline, who did the two-handed jobs.
I wouldn’t exactly claim that the kitchen service was back to normal, but we coped with the seventy-two covers. I decided not to go out to the dining room at any time as I really didn’t want to be seen by any of the customers. The staff saw me, of course, but I asked them to keep it to themselves. I held up the cast and told them my doctor had forbidden me to work, and I didn’t want him finding out that I had. They smiled at me knowingly and promised to keep the secret. But did I trust all of them to do so?
Finally, the rush was over, and we had a chance to sit down. It had now been nearly two weeks since I had worked and I was out of shape. I slumped, exhausted, into my chair in the office.
“I never realized it was so hot in a kitchen,” said Caroline. Throughout the evening, she had gradually removed articles of clothing until removing any more would have been indecent. Marguerite, my mother’s distant widowed cousin’s fiery cook, who had first nurtured my love for cooking, had regularly worn nothing but a pair of knickers under a white, lightweight cotton doctor’s coat.
“You should try it on a blazing June day,” I said.
Carl came into the office from the bar with beers for us all. “OK?” he said to Caroline, handing her one.
“Lovely,” she said, taking it.
“Do you want a job?” he asked her, smiling. He had the look of a prisoner reprieved from the gallows. Seventy-two dinners was more than he would have been able to do alone, at least to any decent standard.
“I’ve already got one,” she said. “Although I might lose it if I don’t do some practice soon.”
“Practice?” Carl asked. “What do you do?”
In answer, Caroline reached down for the ever-present Viola and took her out of her case.
“I know who you are,” said Carl suddenly. He looked at me. “She’s the bitch that’s suing us.” We laughed. Even Caroline, the bitch, laughed.
“I’ll try and see about that,” she said. “Perhaps I’ve just been paid off.” She held up the beer and drank deeply, leaving a white mustache on her upper lip that she wiped away with her forearm. We laughed again.
I tried calling D.I. Turner. This was the fourth time, and once again I was told he was not available. I again asked if I could leave a message, but I was beginning to think that he wasn’t receiving them. I told the person at the other end of the line that it was really urgent. “Can I help?” this person asked. I started to tell him that it was about the bombing at Newmarket races. He told me that I should contact the Suffolk police, not the Special Branch. I told him that I feared my life was in danger, but I don’t think he believed me. He repeated that I should contact my local police station. So I did, and I asked for the senior officer on duty, only to be told that the inspector was out at the moment and would I like to leave a message. I sighed and said I would try again later.