To the hilt [en]

'It's possible.'

'But surely… Patsy will want that money, won't she, to put the brewery back on its feet?'

'The problem is,' I sighed, 'that the brewery will survive without that money, partly as a result of my own efforts. The coffers will slowly fill up again, the pensioners will eventually get back to their old levels, the poor little widows will be able to stop recycling their teabags, the brewery may re-employ the workers they are having to sack and the firm will be as prosperous as it was before. There's no guarantee, really, that Patsy, or anyone else who finds the money, will use it to pay off the brewery's debts.'

Himself looked horrified.

'Theoretically,' I said, 'after a year or two of prosperity, the brewery could be plundered again.'

'Al…!'

'That would be the end of the brewery, because the creditors would not stand for it twice.'

'But you surely don't think Patsy is as dishonest as that?'

'Perhaps not Patsy, but Surtees…? People do often kill the golden goose.'

'Is Surtees bright enough?'

'He's dumb enough to think a double whammy a good idea.'

'But Patsy. I simply can't believe it.'

My uncle's goodness interfered with his perception of sin.

I said, 'Patsy has henchmen. She has people she talks to, who are entranced by her and lead her on. There are people like Desmond Finch and Oliver Grantchester and others, who scramble to please her. There's Lois who cleans at Park Crescent. Patsy gave her that job, and Lois has been faithful to her, even though yesterday I think Lois began to see the stiletto behind the smile. But she has the habit of reporting to Patsy, and I would expect that to go on, at least for a while, so I don't think I'll go back to Ivan's house just now.'

Himself said, as if baffled, 'But Patsy must know you have the good of the brewery at heart!'

I shook my head. 'She's resented me for twelve years and feared I would cut her out with Ivan, and although she now knows I didn't, I'm sure she's wide open to the suggestion that I'm trying to find the brewery's millions in order to hide them away for myself.'

'Oh no, Al.'

'Why not? She tells everyone I stole the King Alfred Gold Cup. I don't know if she really believes that. But I'm certain she can be persuaded I'm after the money.'

'But who would persuade her?'

'Anyone who's looking for it, who wants her attention and ill will fixed on me. A bit of distraction, as in conjuring tricks - watch my right hand while I vanish your wallet with my left.'

Himself said, frowning, 'Why don't you try telling her all that?'

I smiled. 'I paid her a compliment yesterday on how well she'd organised the funeral. She automatically thought I was being sarcastic. In her eyes, I'm a villain, so anything I do is suspect.' I shrugged. 'Don't worry, I'm used to it. But just now it's one big complication.'

'She's an idiot.'

'Not in her own estimation.'

He poured more whisky.

'You'll get me drunk,' I said.

'James says it's the only way he can beat you at golf.'

It wasn't golf that I was presently engaged in. I had better stay sober, I thought.

I declined my uncle's offer of a bed for the night and stayed instead in one of the hundreds of small hotels catering for London tourists. I ate a hamburger for dinner and wandered around under the bright lights among the back-packing youth of Europe. No demons. I felt old.

I took with me the portable phone and spoke to Chris while I sat beside the fountains and bronze lions in Trafalgar Square.

'I'm back home,' he said. 'My passengers have nice sea-view rooms in a hotel in Paignton, in Devon.'

'Which hotel?'

'The Redcliffe. Your mother wouldn't stay at the Imperial in Torquay because she'd been there with Sir Ivan. The Redcliffe is about three miles from there, round Tor Bay. They all seemed quite happy. They talked about shopping.'

'My mother had no suitcase.'

'So I gathered. So, anyway, what do you want done next? More Surtees-watching? That's the most unproductive job on earth, bar looking for your four thugs.'

He had had no luck with the boxing gyms. Had I any idea how many of them there were in south-east England? Sorry, I'd said.

'You can charge me double-time,' I promised, 'if you watch Surtees all weekend.'

'Right,' he said, 'you're on.'

He had assured me, laughing, that if Surtees spent all his time looking out of his front gate, which he didn't, he would seldom see the same person there. There were cyclists with baseball caps on backwards, there were council employees measuring the road, there were housewives waiting for a bus, there were aged gentlemen walking dogs; there were beer drinkers sitting on the wall outside the pub up the road, and there were people tinkering with the innards of a variety of rented cars. Surtees never saw the skinhead or the secretary-bird.

Patsy and Surtees's stud farm lay on the outskirts of a village south of Hungerford. I had never been there myself, but I felt I knew it well from Chris's reports.

I tried to phone Margaret Morden at her home, but there was no reply. I tried again in the morning, and reached her.

'It's Saturday,' she objected.

'It's always Saturday.'

'It had better be worth it.'

'How about some numbers and names that Norman Quorn gave to his sister?'

After a silent moment she said, 'Are you talking about routes and destinations?'

'I think so.'

'We can't do anything until Monday.'

Bugger weekends, I thought.

'I can't change my Monday meetings. It'll have to be Tuesday.'

'Tobias said he was going to Paris and wouldn't be back in his office until Tuesday.'

'On Monday morning,' Margaret said, 'I will liaise with Tobias's office for an appointment and I will rope in the big bank cheese. Say ten o'clock, Tuesday, at the bank? Will you bring the numbers?'

I agreed resignedly to what seemed to me an endless and endlessly dangerous delay. The weekend stretched ahead like a boring monochrome desert, so it was quite a relief when, early in the afternoon, Himself decided to give me a buzz.

'Where are you?' he said.

'Little Venice, looking at the narrow boats, and thinking about paddling.' Thinking about the mountains, thinking about paint. Ah well.

'I have been talking to Patsy,' my uncle said.

'Who phoned who?' I asked.

'She phoned me. What does it matter? She wanted to know if I knew where you were.'

'What did you say?'

'I said you could be anywhere. She sounded quite different, Al. She sounded as if she had suddenly woken up. I told her that you had been working for her all along, at the brewery, and that she had misjudged you, and you had never tried to cause trouble between her and her father, very much the opposite, and that she had been grossly unfair to you all these years.'

'What did she say?'

'She said she wanted to talk to you. Al, do talk to her, at least it's a beginning.'

'Do you mean,' I said, 'talk to her on the phone?'

'It would be a start. She said she would be at home all afternoon. Do you have her number?' He read it out to me.

'I can't believe this,' I said.

'Give her a chance,' my uncle pleaded. 'It can't do any harm just to talk to her.'

I said, 'Any olive branch is worth the grasping.' And, ten minutes later, I was talking to her.

She sounded, as Himself had said, quite different. She apologised. She said that my uncle had given her a proper ticking-off for never seeing that I was no threat to her, and she was willing, if I were, to try and sort things out between us. She asked if I would let bygones be bygones, and perhaps we could come to an understanding for the future.