She retrieved from the case a dress in brilliant orange jersey, hung it back in the wardrobe and selected instead an outfit in autumnal beige. No point in looking conspicuous, even though the game wasn’t going to be allowed to get to a really absurd stage, like a police hunt or something.
Shoes. A pair for looks, a pair for walking. September walks in Norfolk. Very pleasant. She must remember to impress on Mortimer the need to let her know if things threatened to go too far. There was Thornton to be considered. Though her father was sure to have had him in mind when he called in Mortimer Rothermere’s organisation in the first place.
Julia smiled when she remembered the inscrutability maintained by her father while he marshalled the child into his car yesterday and prepared to drive off to Yorkshire. No wonder the boys at his school called him Clam. He’d let all her hints go by, not even rising to the bait when she’d wished the trip “happy ending”.
At a quarter to twelve, she carried the packed case through the door that led from the kitchen into the back of the garage.
She put the case into the boot of her own small car. The garage could not be seen from the road, nor was it overlooked by the window of any other house. She watched the drive carefully just the same until the case had been stowed and the boot lid pressed shut. A sense of elation was beginning to take hold of her. It heightened her consciousness, both of self and of relevant externals. This, she supposed, was what people addicted to dangerous games meant when they claimed to be having “fun”. Well, so it was.
Julia drove into town the long way round, up Partney Drive into Hunting’s Lane, then down past the park and through Fen Street. The late Victorian washhouse-gothic home of Flaxborough’s police force in Fen Street, she seemed to be seeing for the first time. It looked huge and fortress-like. Two men in uniform were emerging ponderously from a side door. Julia looked quickly away and kept her face averted until she reached the East Street junction where she turned right and joined the trail of traffic waiting to squeeze past the booths and rides in the crowded Market Place ahead.
The town bridge, too, was congested, but after the left turn into Burton Place the west-bound traffic became sparse. In another five minutes the little blue car had travelled the length of Burton Lane and was entering the grounds of the motel just beyond the Oxby Moor crossroads.
Julia drove to the back of the reception building where there was a crudely paved parking area. It contained only three cars. One of them, a big yellow saloon, was standing at the far side of the space, half concealed by bushes that had straggled through gaps in the tall boundary fence.
There was no attendant. A notice board warned of the management’s accepting no responsibility for something or other. Julia gave it no more than a glance. She drove across the area and made a reverse turn into position alongside the yellow car.
She got out. The car was Rothermere’s. His Times of two days before still lay on the back seat. It and the missing winder handle on the passenger side gave her a sense of familiarity.
The boot of the Fiat opened easily. Inside was a parcel, a bulky parcel securely but inexpertly tied with thick string. It was heavy and awkward enough to need a two-armed effort to lift.
Less than a minute later, Julia was driving back along Burton Lane. Her slight breathlessness was not the result of switching case and parcel in accordance with Rothermere’s instructions. It arose from sheer excitement, from a mounting persuasion that these curious things she was steeling herself to perform—things she always had supposed peculiar to the fantasy world of the thriller—were not only well within her capacity but were actually going to prove effective.
On her return trip through Fen Street, she stared boldly at the police station. A tall man with corn-coloured hair, hatless, was standing outside in leisurely conversation. An inspector, she thought, remembering having seen him with her father on some school occasion. The tall man, endowed perhaps with a policeman-like sensitivity to stares, glanced at her as she passed. He smiled shyly.
When she reached home again, Julia was surprised to see the time was only 12.20. It was going to be a damned long afternoon. She cleared the breakfast table and washed up. Slowly and methodically, she put away the china and cutlery. She considered lunch. Not yet. A sherry might be a better idea. Appetite did not respond. She had a second sherry, drinking it more slowly. At one o’clock, she switched on the portable radio in the kitchen and listened with half consciousness to the news while she viewed the small reserve of convenience foods from which she occasionally drew a meal when she was on her own.
A four-ounce portion of a compound labelled, incredibly, “Ham’n’Egg-Burger” was the only alternative to the extreme gastronomic polarity of baked beans and truffled oysters. She offered it, albeit with misgivings, to the can opener.
The telephone rang.
“Julia?” It was David, of course. Why the hell did he always sound like this on the phone, as though he expected some other woman to be in charge of the house?
“Naturally.”
“Nothing natural about it. You could be one of a thousand people. Surely a simple announcement of identity wouldn’t cripple you.” (God!—argue, argue, argue...)
“What is it you want?”
“I’d like you to fetch me tonight. The bloody car’s broken down.”
Oh, god, now what. Today of all days. “Broken down?” She tried to think quickly of ways in which her strategy might be threatened.
“Look, I don’t have time to give you a run-down on all failure factors relevant to the internal combustion engine. Just accept that the car won’t go, right? Daddy’s motor broken. Wheels not go round. Mummy come at half-past seven, yes? Half seven.”
He rang off. Slowly Julia replaced the receiver. She returned to the kitchen and did some more thinking while she unlidded the “Ham’n’Egg-Burger” and sliced it into a frying pan. By the time it was emitting its promised sizzle of true country goodness, she realised that, far from upsetting the day’s plan, the car incident might almost be an improvement. Her presence in the factory at the day’s end would not now need to seem fortuitous; it was David who would be seen to have engineered it.
After lunch, Julia brought in from the garage the parcel for which she had exchanged her case of clothing. She cut the string and opened out the single sheet of brown wrapping paper.
She stared dreamily for some seconds at the black zip-fronted tunic, the breeches in the same soft, leather-textured plastic, and the boots, supple and with heightened heels. Then she drew on a pair of pink rubber housework gloves and, carrying one of the boots, crossed the hall into the sitting-room.
A shoe was lying in the fireplace, another on the seat of a chair. She measured it, sole to sole, against the boot. They matched, as she had known they would. David had unnaturally small feet for a man. They and his tiny, yet clumsy, hands seemed as if they had ceased growing when he was about ten.
His head appeared small, too, but she could not be sure about that. He never wore a hat, and because he was sensitive about a tendency to premature greying he kept his hair cut very short. So there was no helmet in the parcel, Mortimer having agreed that a bad guess might spoil the whole thing.