He was about forty, a wiry man with evil intentions stamped clearly all over him. 'I knew your car, too,' Mark said proudly. 'Dad says I'm clever.'
'Kids are observant,' his father said, with nasty relish.
'We waited for you to come out of a big house,' Mark said. 'And then we followed you all the way here.' He beamed, inviting me to enjoy the game. 'This is our car, next to yours.' He patted the maroon Daimler alongside.
The telephone call, I thought fleetingly. Not Chico. Peter Rammileese, checking around.
'Dad says,' Mark chatted on happily, 'that he'll take me to see those roundabouts while our friends take you for a ride in our car.'
His father looked down at him sharply, not having expected so much repeated truth, but Mark, oblivious, was looking at a point behind my back.
I glanced round. Between the Scimitar and the Daimler stood two more people. Large unsmiling men from a muscular brotherhood. Brass knuckles and toecaps.
'Get into the car,' Rammileese said, nodding to his, not to mine. 'Rear door.'
Oh sure, I thought. Did he think I was mad? I stooped slightly as if to obey and then instead of opening the door scooped Mark up bodily, with my right arm, and ran.
Rammileese turned with a shout. Mark's face, next to mine, was astonished but laughing. I ran about twenty paces with him, and set him down in the path of his furiously advancing father, and then kept on going, away from the cars and towards the crowds in the centre part of the showground.
Bloody hell, I thought. Chico was right. These days we only had to twitch an eyelid for them to wheel out the heavies. It was getting too much. It had been the sort of ambush that might have worked if Mark hadn't been there: one kidney punch and into the car before I'd got my breath. But they'd needed Mark, I supposed, to identify me, because although they knew me by name, they hadn't by sight. They weren't going to catch me on the open showground, that was for sure, and when I went back to my car it would be with a load of protectors. Maybe, I thought hopefully, they would see it was useless, and just go away.
I reached the outskirts of the show-jumping arena, and looked back from over the head of a small girl sucking an ice-cream cornet. No one had called off the heavies. They were still doggedly in pursuit. I decided not to see what would happen if I simply stood my ground and requested the assorted families round about to save me from being frog-marched to oblivion and waking up with my head kicked in in the streets of Tunbridge Wells. The assorted families, with dogs and Grannies and prams and picnics, were more likely to dither with their mouths open and wonder what it had all been about, once it was over.
I went on, deeper into the show, circling the ring, bumping into children as I looked over my shoulder, and seeing the two men always behind me.
The arena itself was on my left, with show-jumping in progress inside, and ring-side cars encircling it outside. Behind the cars there was the broad grass walk-way along which I was going, and, on my right, the outer ring of the stalls one always gets at horse-shows. Tented shops selling saddlery, riding clothes, pictures, toys, hot dogs, fruit, more saddles, hard-wear, tweeds, sheepskin slippers… an endless circle of small traders.
Among the tents, the vans: ice-cream vans, riding associations' caravans, a display of crafts, a fortune teller, a charity jumble shop, mobile cinema showing films of sheep dogs, a drop-sided juggernaut spilling out kitchen equipment in orange and yellow and green. Crowds along the fronts of all of them and no depth of shelter inside.
'Do you know where the balloons are?' I asked someone, and he pointed, and it was to a stall selling small gas balloons of brilliant colours: children buying them and tying them to their wrists. Not those, I thought. Surely not those. I didn't stop to explain, but asked again, further on.
'The balloon race? In the next field, I think, but it isn't time yet.'
'Thanks,' I said. The posters had announced a three o'clock start, but I'd have to talk to John Viking well before that, while he was willing to listen.
What was a balloon race, I wondered? Surely all balloons went at the same speed, the speed of the wind.
My trackers wouldn't give up. They weren't running, and nor was I. They just followed me steadily, as if locked on to a target by a radio beam; minds taking literally an order to stick to my heels. I'd have to get lost, I thought, and stay lost until after I'd found John Viking, and maybe then I'd go in search of helpful defences like show secretaries and first aid ladies, and the single policeman out on the road directing traffic.
I was on the far side of the arena by that time, crossing the collecting ring area with children on ponies buzzing around like bees, looking strained as they went in to jump, and tearful or triumphant as they came out.
Past them, past the commentating box… 'Jane Smith had a clear round, the next to jump is Robin Daly on Traddles'… past the little private grandstand for the organisers and big-wigs – rows of empty folding seats – past an open-sided refreshment tent, full, and so back to the stalls.
I did a bit of dodging in and out of those, and round the backs, ducking under guy ropes and round dumps of cardboard boxes. From the inside depths of a stall hung thickly outside with riding jackets I watched the two of them go past, hurrying, looking about them, distinctly anxious.
They weren't like the two Trevor Deansgate had sent, I thought. His had been clumsier, smaller, and less professional. These two looked as if this sort of work was their daily bread; and for all the comparative safety of the show ground, where as a last resort I could get into the arena itself and scream for help, there was something daunting about them. Rent-a-thugs usually came at so much per hour. These two looked salaried, if not actually on the Board.
I left the riding jackets and dodged into the film about sheep dogs, which I dare say would have been riveting but for the shepherding going on outside, with me as the sheep.
I looked at my watch. After two o'clock. Too much time was passing. I had to try another sortie outside and find my way to the balloons.
I couldn't see them. I slithered among the crowd, asking for directions.
'Up at the end, mate,' a decisive man told me, pointing. 'Past the hot dogs, turn right, there's a gate in the fence. You can't miss it.'
I nodded my thanks and turned to go that way, and saw one of my trackers coming towards me, searching the stalls with his eyes and looking worried.
In a second he would see me… I looked around in a hurry and found I was outside the caravan of the fortune-teller. There was a curtain of plastic streamers, black and white, over the open doorway, and behind that a shadowy figure. I took four quick strides, brushed through the plastic strips, and stepped up into the van.
It was quieter inside and darker, with daylight filtering dimly through lace-hung windows. A Victorian sort of decor; mock oil lamps and chenille tablecloths. Outside, the tracker went past, giving the fortune-teller no more than a flickering glance. His attention lay ahead. He hadn't seen me come in.
The fortune-teller, however, had, and to her I represented business. 'Do you want your whole life, dear, the past and everything, or just the future?' 129
'Er…'I said. 'I don't really know. How long does it take?'
'A quarter of an hour, dear, for the whole thing.'
'Let's just have the future.' I looked out of the window. A part of my future was searching among the ring-side cars, asking questions and getting a lot of shaken heads.
'Sit on the sofa beside me here, dear, and give me your left hand.'
'It'll have to be the right,' I said absently.
'No, dear.' Her voice was quite sharp. 'Always the left.'
Amused, I sat down and gave her the left. She felt it, and looked at it, and raised her eyes to mine. She was short and plump, dark-haired, middle-aged, and in no way remarkable.