I woke up each morning and went to work in my office at BHA headquarters, or at a racecourse somewhere, or I visited some training stables or an equine swimming pool, or one of a myriad of other racing venues, yet, wherever I had spent the day, I would return to the solitude and loneliness of my flat.
I sat in an armchair to eat my dinner and wondered what Henri Shawcross was doing. I may not have been a regular gambler but I’d bet an arm and a leg that she wasn’t eating a microwaved curry off her lap while watching Saturday-night drivel on the television.
I’d just finished my food when my landline telephone rang.
My heart leaped. Could it be her? Asking me out?
No, it couldn’t. I hadn’t given her my phone number.
‘Hello?’ I said, answering the call.
No one at the other end spoke, even though I could hear some noises in the background.
‘Hello?’ I said again. ‘Is anyone there?’
After two or three seconds, the line went dead.
How odd, I thought. I dialled 1471 to get the last number that had called and wrote it down on the back of an envelope that contained my gas bill. It wasn’t a number I recognized. I tried calling back but all I heard was a disembodied voice stating that the number did not receive incoming calls.
No sooner had I put the phone down than it rang again.
I picked it up. ‘Hello?’ I said slowly.
‘Jeff, is that you?’ said a voice.
‘Hello, Sis,’ I said. ‘Did you call me just now?’
‘No,’ Faye said, sounding concerned. ‘Should I have done?’
‘No. It’s all right. I had a call but no one was there. That’s all.’
‘Happens to me all the time,’ said Faye. ‘I blame the phone companies. They seem to spend so much of their time trying to sell us cheaper and cheaper broadband that they neglect the phone service.’
But the phone service had been working fine — I had been able to hear the background noise. It was the fact that the caller said nothing that had been strange.
‘Are you feeling any better than last Sunday?’ I asked her.
‘Much better, thank you,’ she said. ‘Brandy for breakfast has helped a lot.’ She laughed and I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not.
‘Are you doing anything tomorrow lunchtime?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said.
Nothing other than moping around my flat feeling sorry for myself.
‘Good,’ Faye said. ‘Come to lunch. We have some guests and, to be honest, I could do with the help.’
‘What time?’
‘As early as you can. We’ve got twelve people coming.’
‘Who are they?’ I asked. I didn’t altogether trust Faye not to set me up to meet a dozen prospective girlfriends.
‘For some reason Q has decided that it is his turn to host the annual Christmas lunch for the QCs in his chambers, together with their wives. Someone does it every year. It would have been nice if he’d given me a bit more warning. It seems he asked them all ages ago but only sprung it on me last Tuesday.’
Suddenly being alone in my flat with my TV and a microwaved ready meal seemed quite attractive compared with spending the day with Quentin’s legal cronies. But I didn’t want to upset Faye.
‘That would be lovely,’ I lied. ‘Do you want me to bring anything?’
‘Just yourself. We’re having a buffet and I’ve got everything I need. I could just do with some help setting it all out and with the drinks when everyone arrives. Q is so hopeless when it comes to anything practical.’
I wondered if I was only being asked because Faye understood how lonely I had become, especially at weekends, and rather than actually needing any real help, she was simply trying to include me in something that involved other people, even if they were Quentin’s work colleagues.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Is eleven o’clock early enough?’
‘Eleven would be great. Thanks so much. I’ll see you in the morning.’
She hung up.
Was the highlight of my day to be acting as a servant to my brother-in-law and a bunch of his barrister friends? I suppose it might make a pleasant change from having someone try to kill me, as had happened the previous Sunday.
I wish.
14
Twice more my home phone rang and no one spoke from the other end. And twice more I dialled 1471 to get the number. Each time it was different. My gas-bill envelope now had all three numbers written on it and each of them, when called back, produced the no incoming calls message.
The second call was made as I was getting into bed on Saturday evening and the third woke me at seven o’clock on Sunday morning. Each time I was convinced someone was there listening because the line didn’t sound completely dead and, at one point, I was sure I could hear some traffic in the background.
The calls made me feel a little uneasy, as if someone was stalking me.
And it wouldn’t be the first time. Over the years I had investigated a number of less than agreeable characters, some of whom had taken against me personally for exposing their own wrongdoing. I had been threatened, beaten up and, on one occasion, knocked down by a speeding car.
Most had been attempts to prevent me from carrying out an investigation, but a couple had been out of revenge for getting someone banned from racing.
I couldn’t think of anyone in particular that I had recently upset by getting them disqualified or excluded from the sport. There might be, however, somebody who’d ended up in prison as a result of their fraud, and was now released and bent on settling an old score.
I would have to just get on with my life as usual, and watch my back, as I always did, avoiding dark alleyways and dimly lit multi-storey car parks.
My phone rang once again just after ten o’clock as I was putting on my overcoat to leave for Richmond and my waiting duties at Faye and Quentin’s house.
‘Hello?’ I said.
No reply.
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
No reply.
‘What do you want?’
No reply.
The line went dead. I again dialled 1471 and, this time, the number was the same as for the previous call. Again, I tried to call it back but, as before, there was nothing but the disembodied message: this number does not receive incoming calls.
Annoying, I thought.
If I’d had more time, and it hadn’t been a Sunday, I might have contacted the phone company to have my number changed. But it was so irritating to have to go through the whole rigmarole of informing everyone of the change in number. Although, come to think of it, not many people knew my number in the first place.
I’d had the number transferred from the flat I’d shared with Lydia but, nowadays, the only person who called me on that line was Faye. I tended to use my mobile for all work calls, incoming and outgoing, and the only friends who had used the landline phone had departed from my life at the same time Lydia had.
Could it be Lydia? Pining after the sound of my voice?
I thought it most unlikely. The last I’d heard, she and her new man were blissfully happy together. But that had been from a friend of hers who had seemingly wanted to rub my nose in the fact that she had left me, so it might not have been very accurate.
I had a careful check outside as I locked my front door. There was no one hiding in the bushes waiting to attack me.
I was intending to take the train from Willesden Junction to Richmond but I set off in a direction directly away from the railway station, doubling back along two side streets and retracing my path twice, just to check that there was nobody intent on following me.
There wasn’t.
I smiled at myself. I must be getting paranoid.