“Very,” I said. “I always like Towcester, especially the evening meetings.”
“Hiya,” said Alice, coming out of the kitchen with a glass of white wine in each hand. She gave one of them to Sophie with a smile. I wasn’t sure that drinking alcohol was necessarily a good idea on top of her medication, but I wasn’t going to say so. For now, it was far more important that the truce between the sisters was still holding firm.
They had been out in Alice’s car when I had left for the races, and I thought they might have been to see their parents in spite of telling me that they were off to Leamington Spa for the shopping. However, there was no sign of the agitation that Sophie normally displayed after such a visit, so I wasn’t certain. And I wasn’t going to ask. We went into the kitchen.
“Have you had a good day?” I asked them.
“Lovely,” Sophie said without elaborating.
“So what time did you get back?”
“About seven.”
“Have you eaten?” I looked at my watch, it was now past ten.
“We have,” said Sophie. “But I’ve kept some for you. I know you’re always hungry when you get home after an evening meeting.”
I suppose it was true, but it didn’t mean I always had something to eat. During the past five months, I had more often than not had a stiff shot of Scotch and gone straight to bed.
“And we’ve been at the crisps and dip,” said Alice with a giggle.
And the white wine, I thought, though, to be fair, Sophie seemed pretty sober even if Alice was obviously quite tipsy.
“Do you know anything about a rucksack?” Sophie asked casually as she stood at the cooker reheating my supper.
“What?” I said sharply,
“A rucksack,” she said again. “A man came here. Said he wanted to collect a rucksack. He said you knew about it.”
“What sort of rucksack?” I said, rather flustered.
“A black-and-red rucksack,” she said. “The man told us you were looking after it for him. He was quite persistent, I can tell you. I don’t think he liked it much when I told him I knew nothing about it.”
Oh God, I thought.
“So you didn’t give it to him?” I asked her.
“No, of course not,” she said. “I didn’t even know we had a black-and-red rucksack. Where is it?”
“In the cupboard under the stairs,” I said. “Did the man try and get into the house?”
“No,” she said, slightly perturbed by the question. “Why would he?”
“I just wondered, that’s all,” I said. “So tell me, what happened?”
“I told him to go away and come back when you were at home.”
“We then locked the house up tight, opened a bottle and waited for you to get back,” said Alice with a smile. They were both remarkably calm about the man’s visit. Probably because they didn’t realize the seriousness of the situation. But why would they?
“When was this?” I asked.
“Round eight o’clock,” Sophie said.
“Can you describe the man?” I said to both of them.
“He was rather creepy,” said Alice.
“In what way was he creepy?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “He just was. And he was wearing his hood up, and a scarf. Now, I reckon you’ve got to be up to no good to be doing that on a night as hot as this.”
“Could you see his eyes?” I asked. “Were they set rather close together?”
“Yes,” said Alice, throwing a hand up in the air almost excitedly. “That’s it. That’s exactly why I thought he was creepy.”
So it had definitely been Shifty-eyes, the man that Paddy Murphy had called Kipper. He had found me at last.
“What are we going to do?” Sophie asked loudly, suddenly becoming scared. “I don’t want him coming back here.” In spite of the warm evening, she shivered.
“It’s all right, my love,” I said, putting a reassuring arm around her shoulders. “I’m sure he won’t come back tonight.”
The doorbell rang, and we all jumped.
“How sure?” Sophie said, looking worried.
“Ignore it,” said Alice. “Then he’ll have to go away.”
We stood silently in the kitchen, listening.
The doorbell rang again, and there were also some heavy thumps on the door.
“I know you’re in there,” shouted a voice from outside. “Open up.”
I went out of the kitchen into the hallway.
“Who is it?” I shouted through the wood of the front door.
“Mr. Talbot,” said the voice. “I think you may have something of mine, and I want it back.”
“What?” I asked.
“A rucksack,” he said. “A black-and-red rucksack.”
“But the rucksack belonged to Alan Grady, not you,” I said quickly without stopping to think first. Dammit, I thought. Why hadn’t I just denied any knowledge of any rucksack? He might then have gone away, but he wouldn’t do so now.
“I’m calling the police,” said Sophie, coming into the hallway. “Do you hear me?” she shouted loudly with a tremor in her voice. “I’m calling the police.”
“There’ll be no need for the police,” said the man calmly through the door. “Just give me the rucksack and I’ll go away.”
“Give him the rucksack,” Sophie said to me imploringly, her panicky eyes as big as saucers. “Please, Ned, just give him the damn rucksack.”
“OK, OK,” I said.
I went to the cupboard under the stairs and fetched it. It was still full of my father’s things.
“Give it to him,” Sophie urged me again, her voice quivering with fear.
I lifted the rucksack and turned to go upstairs with it.
“Where the hell are you going?” Sophie almost screamed at me.
“If you think I’m opening the front door with him there, you must be…” I didn’t finish the sentence. “I’m going to throw it to him out the window.”
I went up to our bedroom and opened the same window through which I had witnessed the departure of Mr. John Smith from my house only one week previously.
The man was close to the door, and I couldn’t see him as he was standing under the overhanging porch.
“Here,” I shouted.
He moved back into my sight. He appeared just as I had seen him the first time in the parking lot at Ascot racetrack: blue jeans, charcoal-gray hoodie, with a black scarf over the lower part of his face. I couldn’t tell if he was wearing the same black army boots he had used to split my eyebrow and I wasn’t about to go down there to find out. As before, all I could see were his eyes, set rather too close together for the width of his face.
I held the rucksack out through the open window at arm’s length.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Drop the rucksack,” he said, ignoring my question. He didn’t have a strong regional accent, at least not one I could notice.
“What’s your name?” I repeated.
“Never you mind,” he said. “Just give me the rucksack.”
“How did you find my house?” I asked him.
“A little birdie told me,” he said.
“Which little birdie?”
“Never you mind,” he said again. “Just drop the rucksack.” He held up his arms ready to catch it.
“It’s only full of Mr. Grady’s clothes,” I said. “I’ve searched it. There’s nothing else there.”
“Give it to me anyway,” he said.
“Who are you working for?” I asked.
“What?” he said.
“Who are you working for?” I repeated.
“No one,” he said. “Now, give me the bloody rucksack.”
“Who’s John Smith?” I asked.
In spite of only being able to see his eyes, I could still tell that there was no recognition of the name. He didn’t know a Mr. John Smith, but, then, that wasn’t his real name, now was it?
“Give me the bag,” he hissed at me in the same way as he’d hissed at my father at Ascot. “And give it to me now or I’ll break your bloody door down.”
I opened my hand and dropped the rucksack. In spite of having his hands up, he failed to catch it before it hit the concrete path, but he quickly snatched it up and was off, jogging down Station Road in just the same manner as I had previously seen him do in Paddington near the Lancaster Gate tube station.