“Yeah, I reckon I might,” he said. “Or if I couldn’t, one of the little hooligans from the electronics club would probably be able to do it in no time. They are like bloody magic when it comes to electronics. One of them even made a device that fooled the authorities into thinking he was at home wearing his court-ordered ankle tag when he was really out all night breaking into people’s cars. He said it gave him the best alibi anyone could ever want. Even the coppers were impressed.”
“How did they find out?” I asked.
“Oh, these lads may be damn clever when it comes to electronics,” he said. “But they can be pretty dense otherwise. The bloody idiot broke into an unmarked police car that was parked right outside the police station, and everything he did was recorded on an in-car video camera.”
I laughed.“Almost as bad as that bank robber recently who wrote his demand note on the back of a check from his own checkbook. It had his name printed on it.”
“It’s a good thing villains are stupid or we’d all be victims,” Luca said with a laugh.
“But they are not all stupid,” I said, becoming serious. “Remember, we never hear about the clever ones because they don’t get caught.”
“Good point,” he said.
Talking about not getting caught reminded me of the stash of banknotes still hidden in the cupboard under my stairs. Who did they belong to? Were they meant to be payment for Shifty-eyes for killing horses? Or maybe they were his cut for approving the insurance claims after the horses were dead. Either way, I was pretty sure they weren’t actually mine, even if I did have a sort of claim to inherit them after my father’s death, for they had been in his luggage.
“So do you want a copy of this microcoder?” Luca said, bringing me back from my daydreams.
“No, not really,” I said. “I just wondered why it was so important to get this particular one back if any half-witted juvenile delinquent could simply make another.”
“But they would have to have something to copy,” he said. “And they would have to know the right frequency to set it at.”
“Is that difficult?” I asked.
“Not if you have the original,” he said.“But much more difficult, maybe impossible, without it.”
“So if our Mr. John Smith-or whatever his name is-is so keen to get his hands on the original, is it because he doesn’t have access to another one?” I said. “But you would have thought that the Australian Racing Board had access to whatever resources they needed. I think that’s why I don’t trust him. It doesn’t ring quite true.”
“So does that mean you won’t give it to him?” Luca asked.
“No,” I said slowly. “But I might just ensure it doesn’t work properly before I hand it over.”
“That might be dangerous,” said Luca, grinning.
“You think so?” I asked.
“Yeah, but why not? Live dangerously.”
Or not at all, I thought.
Sophie came home on Sunday, and her younger sister, Alice, came to stay at our house in Station Road to help out.
“I don’t need any help,” Sophie said.
But we both knew she did. The change from institutional life to being at home was a huge step. Not least because there would be no one there to call on for help, for a chat or for a word of encouragement, especially when I was away at the races.
Alice was just the person we needed. She was busy, efficient, loving and free. And I was very fond of her, but in small doses. One week of busy domestic efficiency was enough for any man.
On Sunday morning, Alice arrived-very early, of course-from her home in Surrey and tut-tutted about the state of the house, especially the cobwebs in the bathroom and the unmentionable leftovers in the deeper recesses of the refrigerator. In no time, she had donned a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves and was transforming the place.
She wasn’t in any way angry about my domestic shortcomings, and she made no snide remarks about how men couldn’t keep themselves tidy, let alone the house, but Alice sometimes had a way of making me feel totally inadequate, and this was one of those times.
When we left together in my Volvo for the hospital at noon, the house was sparkling and fresh, and I was grateful. It wasn’t just that Alice wanted everything to be clean and neat for her sister’s homecoming, which of course she did, it was that she, and I, knew that Sophie would otherwise feel pressured into doing the house-work and that, in turn, would make her feel guilty about having been in the hospital. That guilt could be enough to restart the whole sorry manic-depressive sequence all over again. Sophie’s mania had always begun with obsessive cleaning of the house.
However, I was more confident that this time the drugs were doing their thing. But it was vitally important to make sure Sophie kept taking them. All too often in the past, she would eventually begin to crave the manic highs, flushing her medication down the lavatory, seemingly unconcerned and indifferent about the dire consequences and the prospect of another extended period of hospitalization.
She was packed and ready when we arrived. Her room, which had become so familiar to me, was now bare of her possessions and back to its “hospital ward” status. Jason, her favorite nurse, was there to wish her good-bye and to help take her bags down to my car outside the front door.
“Thank you,” she said to him, putting her arms around his neck and kissing him on the cheek. “Thank you to all the staff.”
Jason looked embarrassed by this show of affection, but he took it in good grace.
“I won’t say it’s been a pleasure,” he said to me. “But Mrs. Talbot has been a model patient.”
He stood by the door and waved as we drove down the driveway, through the high gates and out into the real world.
Mr. John Smith, or whoever, was waiting outside our house when we arrived home about an hour later. As I parked the Volvo, he climbed out of the dark blue Ford that I had last seen disappearing ahead of me from the rest area near Stratford. He had not been sitting in the driver’s seat, so I assumed there must be another man with him, but again I couldn’t see properly against the reflection from the windshield.
Dammit, I thought. I really didn’t want to have to start explaining to Sophie about microcoders, bundles of banknotes and murder in the Ascot racetrack parking lot.
The last thing we needed was for him to force his way through my front door and disrupt Sophie’s longed-for return home, so I marched straight across the road to talk to him. He came forward to meet me.
“Is that your friend?” he asked, nodding towards the house.
I turned and saw Alice lifting Sophie’s suitcase from the car. It must have appeared to Mr. Smith that someone was arriving back from holiday.
“Yes,” I said, turning back to him.
“Where’s the microcoder?” he demanded.
“In her baggage, I expect,” I said. “You wait here, and I’ll go and get it for you.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No,” I said quickly. “If you want me to hand it over, you will have to wait here.”
I turned to walk back across the road, and he began to follow. “No,” I said again, this time more forcefully. “Either you wait here for me to get it or I will have to explain to my friend what you are doing here and about how I broke your wrist in my house. And she works for the police.”
He stopped. “You told me she was an electronics specialist,” he said.
Had I? I thought. I couldn’t recall.
“She maintains police radios,” I said. The trouble with telling lies is that they get more complicated as time goes on and more difficult to remember.
“OK,” he said. “I’ll wait here, but you have just two minutes. Understand?”
“Five,” I said. “I’ll bring it out in five.”
It wasn’t just threats I didn’t like. I didn’t respond particularly well to orders either.