Dead Heat Part 17

He spent about twenty minutes examining what was left of my car but the results were inconclusive.

'Could have been the brakes, I suppose,' he said finally. 'Difficult to tell.'

I a.s.sured him that it definitely was the brakes that had failed and caused the accident.

'If you were b.l.o.o.d.y certain it was the brakes, what did you want me to check it for?'

'I want to know if the brakes had been tampered with,' I said.

'What, on purpose?' He stared at me.

'I don't know,' I said. 'That's what I want you to tell me.'

'Blimey,' he said again. He leaned back over the car.

'Look here,' he said. I joined him in leaning over what had been the offside front wing. He pointed at a jumbled ma.s.s of metal pipes and levers. 'The brake system on this old Golf was a simple hydraulic, non power-a.s.sisted system.' I nodded. I knew that. 'What happens when you pushed the brake pedal is you forced a piston along this cylinder.' He pointed at what looked like a metal pipe about an inch in diameter and about an inch and a half long. 'The piston inside pushes brake fluid through the pipes to the wheels and the pressure causes the brake pads to squeeze the brake discs. That's what slows the car down.'

'Like a bicycle brake?' I asked.

'Well, not exactly. On a bike, there is a cable going from the brake lever to the brake pads. In a car, the pressure is transmitted through the fluid-filled pipes.'

'I see,' I said. But I wasn't sure I did completely. 'So what caused the brakes to fail?'

'Brakes will fail if air gets into the pipes instead of the brake fluid. Then, when you push the pedal, all you do is compress the air and the brakes don't work.' He spotted my quizzical look. 'You see, the brake fluid won't compress but air will.' I nodded. I knew that from my school chemistry.

'So all someone needed to do,' I said, 'was to put some air into the pipes and the brakes wouldn't work.'

'Yes,' he said. 'But it's not that easy. For a start, there are two brake systems on this car so if one failed the other should still work.'

'There were no brakes at all when I pushed the pedal,' I said.

'Air must have got into the master cylinder,' he said. 'That's very unusual, but I have come across it once before. That time it was due to the pipe from the reservoir to the master cylinder coming loose.' He had lost me.

'But can you tell if it was done on purpose?' I asked him.

'Difficult to tell,' he said again. 'Might have been. The joins are still tight so someone would have had to split the metal pipe.' He pointed. 'It could have been done by flexing it up and down a few times until it cracked open due to fatigue. You know, like bending a wire coat hanger back and forth until it snaps.

'Would that make the brakes fail immediately?' I asked.

'Not necessarily,' I said. 'It might take a while for the air to seep from the cracked pipe into the master cylinder. A few hefty pumps on the pedal might be needed.'

I thought about the hefty pumps I had given the pedal on the way home from Cambridge station.

'Can you tell by looking if that's what happened here?' I said.

He again inspected the jumble of broken pipes. 'The accident seems to have smashed it all. It would be impossible to tell what had been done beforehand.'

'Would the police accident investigators have any better idea?' I asked him.

He seemed a bit offended that I had questioned his ability. 'No one could tell from that mess what it was like before the accident,' he said with some indignation.

I wasn't sure that I totally agreed with him but I didn't think it was time to say so. Instead, I paid him half an hour's labour cost in cash and used my mobile phone to call a taxi.

'Do you have the keys of the car?' I asked the man.

'No, mate,' he said. 'Never seen them. Thought they were still in it.'

They weren't. I'd looked. 'Never mind,' I said. 'They wouldn't be much use now anyway.' But they had been on a silver key fob. A twenty-first-birthday present from my mother.

'Can I send it off to the sc.r.a.p then?' he asked.

'Not yet,' I said. 'Wait until the insurance man has seen it.'

'Will do,' he said. 'But don't forget, you're the one paying for the storage.'

What a surprise.

'Well, that wasn't very conclusive,' said Caroline as we sat in the taxi taking us back to Newmarket. 'What do you want to do now?'

'Go home,' I said. 'I'm feeling lousy.'

We did go home but via the supermarket in Newmarket. I sat outside in the taxi as Caroline went to buy something to eat for supper, as well as a bottle of red wine. I was pretty sure that the painkillers I was taking didn't mix too well with alcohol, but who cared.

I lay on the sofa and rested my aching head while Caroline fussed around in the kitchen. Once or twice she came and sat down next to me but soon she was up and about again.

'Relax,' I said to her. 'I won't eat you alive.'

She sighed. 'It's not that. I'm restless because I haven't got my viola here to play. I usually practise for at least two hours every day, even if I'm performing in the evening. I haven't played a note since the day before yesterday and I'm suffering from withdrawal symptoms. I need my fix.'

'Like me and my cooking,' I said. 'Sometimes I just get the urge to cook even if there is no one to eat it. The freezers at the restaurant are full of stuff I intend getting round to eating one day.'

'Shame there's none of it here,' she said.

'I could call and ask one of my staff to bring some over.'

'No,' she said, smiling. 'I'll take my chances and cook for the cook. It also might be better not to mention anything about this to your staff.'

'Why not?' I said.

'They might get the wrong idea.'

'And what, exactly, is the wrong idea they might get?' I asked.

'Oh, I don't know,' she said. 'If they knew I was staying here, they might jump to the wrong conclusions.'

I wasn't sure I liked the way the conversation was going. Too much a.n.a.lysis of any situation was apt to make it appear somewhat stupid, whereas uninhibited and thought-free actions were more often an accurate reflection of true feelings. The raw and honest emotion of last night in the hospital was in danger of being consumed by too much good sense and the weighing-up of consequences.

'What do you play when you practise?' I asked changing the subject. 'And don't say the viola.'

'Finger exercises mostly,' she said. 'Very boring.'

'Like scales?' I had been forced to do hours of scales on the piano when I was a child. I had hated it.

'Exactly,' she said. 'But I play pieces as well. Scales alone would drive anyone crazy, even a pro musician.'

'What is your favourite piece to play?' I asked.

'Bach's Violin Concerto in E major Violin Concerto in E major,' she said. 'But, of course, I play it on the viola.'

'Doesn't it sound all wrong?'

She laughed. 'No, of course not. It sounds fine. Take the song "Yesterday", you know the one, by the Beatles. It can be played on the piano, the guitar, the violin or anything else. It still sounds like "Yesterday", doesn't it?'

'I suppose so,' I said, humming it.

I looked at my watch. It was six o'clock. The sun, if not exactly over the yardarm, was well into its descent from the zenith so I opened the wine and we sat and drank it, contented in each other's company.

Caroline cooked fresh salmon with a parsley sauce, new potatoes and salad, and it was delicious. We sat together on the sofa and ate it on our laps while watching a satirical news programme on the television. Real domesticity.

As she had planned, Caroline didn't sleep in my bedroom.

But, there again, neither did I.

CHAPTER 11.

Caroline got up early and called herself a taxi.

'Was it something I said?' I asked.

'Oh no,' she said, laughing. 'It's just that I have to get back to London. I've got a meeting at the RPO offices in Clerkenwell Green. I want to convince them to let me fly out for the rest of the tour.'

She sat on the end of the bed in my spare room putting on some black socks. I sat up and pulled her back until she was again lying next to me, in my arms.

'I didn't mean for this to happen,' she said. 'But I'm glad it did.'

I did mean for it to happen, and I was also glad it did. I kissed her.

'Are you coming back here after your meeting?' I asked.

'I can't,' she said. 'The orchestra finishes the run in New York tonight and then moves on to Chicago for the second part of the US tour. I am desperate to regain my seat for that. If all goes well today, I will be flying out to Chicago on Sunday.'

It was now Friday. Sunday seemed much too soon for her to disappear from me across the wide Atlantic.

'But you haven't even seen my restaurant,' I said. 'How about tomorrow? For dinner?'

'Don't be so eager, Mr Moreton. I have a life, you know. And I have things to do if I'm going to be away next week.' She sat up and finished dressing.

'When will you be back from the States?' I asked.

'I don't know that I'll be going yet. The orchestra is due to return next weekend to spend time preparing for our Festival Hall season. It's during that time I'm playing my solo at the Cadogan Hall. Are you still coming?'

'If you'll still have dinner with me afterwards,' I said.

'Deal.' We sealed it with a kiss.

We went downstairs and Caroline made us some breakfast.

'Watch that toaster,' I said to her. 'It's broken and doesn't pop up like it should and I'm forever forgetting and setting off the smoke alarm.'

She watched it carefully and without incident and we sat at the kitchen table and munched our way through two slices of toast and marmalade each.

The taxi hooted from outside. Too soon, I thought, much too soon.

After Caroline left, I mooched around the house all morning wishing she was still there. I tidied the kitchen at least three times and I even vacuumed the floor in the sitting room until the noise began to make my head ache. I had a bowl of cereal, with painkillers, for my lunch.

It was with mixed emotions that I took Caroline's telephone call around one o'clock. She was so excited at having been welcomed back into the orchestral fold, and she was busy making plans for the trip to Chicago. I was pleased for her, but I would have been kidding myself if I didn't admit I was rather disappointed that she was going.

'You didn't?' said Bernard Sims incredulously. 'I've heard of clients sleeping with their lawyers, and jury members sleeping with each other, and even the odd judge or two sleeping with a barrister, but I've never before heard of the defendant sleeping with the plaintiff, not even if they were married to each other.' He laughed loudly. I wished I hadn't told him.

He had called during the early afternoon to say that he had received another letter from Miss Aston's lawyers giving the grounds for her complaint and inviting our side to make a reasonable offer to Miss Aston for the distress and loss of earnings she had suffered.

I had foolishly told him that I had taken his advice to ask her out to dinner, and now a relationship had developed between us.

'But did you sleep with her?' he had asked persistently.

'Well,' I'd said finally, 'what if I did?'

Now he was enjoying the situation hugely.

'Did she drop the lawsuit at the same time as she dropped her knickers?' he asked, barely able to contain his mirth.

'Bernard,' I said sharply. 'That's enough. And no, she hasn't dropped the suit. Her agent is insisting that she perseveres with it. He wants his percentage.'

'Perhaps he's sleeping with her too.' He was out of control.

'Bernard, I said stop it, that's enough.' I had raised my voice.

'You're serious about her, aren't you?' he said.

'Yes.'

'Well, blow me,' he said. 'What shall I tell her lawyers?'