Whip Hand Part 31

I looked into drawers and filing cabinets, being extremely careful to leave everything squared up after me, but there was nothing there except the outward show of honesty. Not a single drawer or cupboard was locked. It was almost, I thought with cynicism, as if the whole thing were stage dressing, orchestrated to confound any invasion of tax snoopers. The real records, if he kept any, were probably somewhere outside, in a biscuit tin, in a hole in the ground.

I went upstairs. Mark's room was unmistakable, but all the toys were in boxes, and all the clothes in drawers. There were three unoccupied bedrooms with the outlines of folded blankets showing under covers, and a suite of bedroom, dressing room and bathroom furnished with the same expense and tidiness as downstairs.

An oval dark red bath with taps like gilt dolphins. A huge bed with a bright brocade cover clashing with wall-to-wall jazz on the floor. No clutter on the curvaceous cream and gold dressing table, no brushes on any surface in the dressing room.

Mark's mum's clothes were fur and glitter and breeches and jackets. Mark's dad's clothes, thorn-proof tweeds, vicuna overcoat, a dozen or more suits, none of them hand made, all seemingly bought because they were expensive. Handfuls of illicit cash, I thought, and nothing much to do with it. Peter Rammileese, it seemed, was crooked by nature and not by necessity.

The same incredible tidiness extended through every drawer and every shelf, and even into the soiled linen basket, where a pair of pyjamas were neatly folded.

I went through the pockets of his suits, but he had left nothing at all in them. There were no pieces of paper of any sort anywhere in the dressing room. Frustrated, I went up to the third floor, where there were six rooms, one containing a variety of empty suitcases, and the others, nothing at all.

No one, I thought on the way down again, lived so excessively carefully if they had nothing to hide; which was scarcely evidence to offer in court. The present life of the Rammileese family was an expensive vacuum, and of the past there was no sign at all. No souvenirs, no old books, not even any photographs except a recent one of Mark on his pony, taken outside in the yard.

I was looking round the outbuildings when Chico came back. There were no animals except seven horses in the stable and the two in the covered school. No sign of farming in progress. No rosettes in the tack room, just a lot more tidiness and the smell of saddle-soap. I went out to meet Chico and ask what he had done with Mark.

'The nurses are stuffing him with jam b.u.t.ties and trying to ring his Dad. Mum is awake and talking. How did you get on? Do you want to drive?'

'No, you drive.' I sat in beside him. 'That house is the most suspicious case of no history I've ever seen.'

'Like that, eh?'

'Mm. And not a chance of finding any link with Eddy Keith.'

'Wasted journey, then,' he said.

'Lucky for Mark.'

'Yeah. Good little bleeder, that. Told me he's going to be a furniture moving man when he grows up.' Chico looked across at me and grinned. 'Seems he's moved house three times that he can remember.'

CHAPTER TEN.

Chico and I spent most of Sat.u.r.day separately traipsing around all the London addresses on the M list of wax names, and met at six o'clock, footsore and thirsty, at a pub we both knew in Fulham.

'We never ought to have done it on a Sat.u.r.day, and a holiday weekend at that,' Chico said.

'No.' I agreed. Chico watched the beer sliding mouth-wateringly into the gla.s.s. 'More than half of them were out.'

'Mine too. Nearly all.'

'And the ones that were in were watching the racing or the wrestling or groping their girl-friends, and didn't want to know.'

We carried his beer and my whisky over to a small table, drank deeply, and compared notes. Chico had finally pinned down four people, and I only two, but the results were there, all the same.

All six, whatever other mailing lists they had confessed to, had been in regular happy receipt of Antiques for All. 'That's it, then,' Chico said. 'Conclusive.' He leaned back against the wall, luxuriously relaxing. 'We can't do any more until Tuesday. Everything's shut.'

'Are you busy tomorrow?'

'Have a heart. The girl in Wembley.' He looked at his watch and swallowed the rest of the beer. 'And so long, Sid boy, or I'll be late. She doesn't like me sweaty.'

He grinned and departed, and I more slowly finished my drink and went home.

Wandered about. Changed the batteries. Ate some cornflakes. Got out the form books and looked up the syndicated horses. Highly variable form: races lost at short odds and won at long. All the signs of steady and expert fixing. I yawned. It went on all the time.

I pottered some more, restlessly, sorely missing the peace that usually filled me in that place, when I was alone. Undressed, put on a bathrobe, pulled off the arm. Tried to watch the television: couldn't concentrate. Switched it off.

I usually pulled the arm off after I'd put the bathrobe on because that way I didn't have to look at the bit of me that remained below the left elbow. I could come to terms with the fact of it but still not really the sight, though it was neat enough and not horrific, as the messed up hand had been. I dare say it was senseless to be faintly repelled, but I was. I hated anyone except the limb man to see it; even Chico. I was ashamed of it, and that too was illogical. People without handicaps never understood that ashamed feeling, and nor had I, until the day soon after the original injury when I'd blushed crimson because I'd had to ask someone to cut up my food. There had been many times after that when I'd gone hungry rather than ask. Not having to ask, ever, since I'd had the electronic hand, had been a psychological release of soul-saving proportions.

The new hand had meant, too, a return to full normal human status. No one treated me as an idiot, or with the pity which in the past had made me cringe. No one made allowances any more, or got themselves tongue-tied with trying not to say the wrong thing. The days of the useless deformity seemed in retrospect an unbearable nightmare. I was often quite grateful to the villain who had set me free.

With one hand, I was a self-sufficient man.

Without any....

Oh G.o.d, I thought. Don't think about it. There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Hamlet, however, didn't have the same problems.

I got through the night, and the next morning, and the afternoon, but at around six I gave up and got in the car, and drove to Aynsford.

If Jenny was there, I thought, easing up the back drive and stopping quietly in the yard outside the kitchen, I would just turn right round and go back to London, and at least the driving would have occupied the time. But no one seemed to be about, and I walked into the house from the side door which had a long pa.s.sage into the house.

Charles was in the small sitting room that he called the wardroom, sitting alone, sorting out his much-loved collection of fishing flies.

He looked up. No surprise. No effusive welcome. No fuss. Yet I'd never gone there before without invitation.

'Hallo,' he said.

'Hallo.'

I stood there, and he looked at me, and waited.

'I wanted some company,' I said.

He squinted at a dry fly; 'Did you bring an overnight bag?'

I nodded.

He pointed to the drinks tray. 'Help yourself. And pour me a pink gin, will you? Ice in the kitchen.'

I fetched him his drink, and my own, and sat in an armchair.

'Come to tell me?' he said.

'No.'

He smiled. 'Supper then? And chess.'

We ate, and played two games. He won the first easily, and told me to pay attention. The second, after an hour and a half, was a draw. 'That's better,' he said.