The Chinese Takeout (24 page)

And got outside to find I’d only hired a silver one. Yes, a silver Focus, just the same as Andy’s. After all that trouble I’d gone to the other day to get something quite different from either of our cars!

I was back in the office like a shot. And came out again, frustrated. It seemed all the alternatives were either underpowered or rented out or being serviced, and no amount of crisp fivers could change the situation, not till tomorrow. OK. Needs must, but it wouldn’t be the Devil but Josie driving.

Coming back down the lane where I’d been bashed by the white van, I slowed to a walking pace at the site of the encounter. Yes, there was one big sliver of mirror-glass. Just for the say-so, I retrieved it, wrapped it in a tissue, and stowed it in the boot. If nothing more, it would prevent some innocent animal’s feet being cut.

By the time I got back to the White Hart, my energy levels were so low I’d have to do something. I must have either a huge wodge of chocolate, which might contain enough anticoagulants to prevent DVT on a long-haul flight but certainly had enough calories to fly the damned plane, or a zizz. A zizz was certainly less fattening. The lads could stow the food,
and then give me a call: no matter how little sleep I had, I never allowed myself more then half an hour during the day. Then, and only then, would I check the post and the answerphone. It was one thing to think there might be bad news, another to know.

I didn’t specify, even to myself, what that bad news might be.

Or I would have been, had I not developed this paranoia about white vans. Every time I saw one I wanted to check the number-plate or the side mirror. Fortunately for the safety of all concerned
most seemed to have been wiped from the road, and I arrived in Exeter with time to spare. With its main street a clone of every other main street, Exeter’s not the best place in the world for shopping. But there are individual shops tucked away, for those in the know. Within half an hour of my parking, I’d acquired a trouser suit, a top to die for and two pairs of shoes. While my hair colour took, I had a pedicure – vital in a job like mine – and a manicure.

There: I was ready to face the world again. Even a world – I had to confront the possibility – with no Andy.

Once when I wasn’t at my best – I’d actually been tempted to end it all, to be honest, only deterred by the thought I wouldn’t know the rest of the story – someone passed on a tip they’d learnt to keep their mind off their problems. It was a rubber band around the wrist. No, not the fashionable wristbands all the kids were wearing these days, declaring their support for some charity or another. Just the sort of simple rubber band the postie uses to hold a bundle of mail. You could twang when your thoughts strayed in negative directions. Despite my retail therapy – possibly because of it – I slipped a band on before I even tried my new outfit. I couldn’t imagine Andy ever approving of spending a small fortune on such non-essentials. Twang. The clothes looked as good at home as in the shop. The shoes were bliss. It probably meant they’d stretch, in which case the nearest charity shop would end up with designer shoes, but at least they gave me pleasure at a time when – twang!

As for the rest of the evening, I did something
guaranteed to make you concentrate, the VAT figures. Until I got restless. I peered out of the window: the mist had cleared to give a perfect moonlit night. Even I admitted it was too late to go for a walk, and I’d much rather not have put on my oldest clothes, but I had to have another look at the yard at which I’d patently been so unwelcome yesterday. It might be that they maintained a night patrol: more likely they’d simply let the dogs run loose inside the – preferably stout – fence.

I longed for a phone like Andy’s that would have enabled me to take discreet photos. Why hadn’t I used the sense I was born with and bought one this afternoon? What a fool, to waste time and money on fripperies – twang! Come on: my old warhorse was familiar in my hands, and I could use film fast enough to accommodate poor light. Assuming there was light.

There was.

It hadn’t taken me long to drive to the suspect yard, even in the still relatively unfamiliar Focus. I parked well away from a casual observer’s eyes.

Curiously they’d not installed security lights; there was just a pallid and inadequate affair over the office door. But the moonlight was bright enough for me to pick out piles of wheels and bumpers and other genuine-looking spare parts. I took photos galore. So why the secrecy? And why weren’t the dogs loose? And why was there such a stench?

The gates were fastened with both a serious padlock and a motorbike-quality chain, and my gate-scaling days were in the past. And I was on my own.

It would be hard simply to drive away, but at least I’d have something to report to Burford or even to Nick, when he was well enough to return. A cold? I still feared it might be something more serious. I’d give him a call when I got back home.

Where I didn’t especially want to be. So, twanging the band sharply, I checked the OS map and set the car in motion, heading in a generally uphill direction. I’d never seen the view from the Quantocks in moonlight and tonight seemed as good as any.

I was bowling merrily along when I ran into mist. Good, thick stuff. And of course, unlike my Saab, the bottom of the range Focus wasn’t equipped with fog-lights. I was trying to work out whether I was better on main beam or dipped when I realised I wasn’t alone. Someone was following me, their speed not dropping even though they could surely see that there was nowhere to overtake and that I was going as fast as I could.

Using a short, sharp expletive banned in my kitchen, I accelerated as hard as I dared, which wasn’t much. My tail kept up. Was there a turning? I forced myself to visualise the OS map. My ex-Met instructor had been more concerned with cul-de-sacs and rat-runs. I needed a farm gate or – yes, a
left here. I plunged on to Forestry Commission land, with the sort of tracks beloved of rally drivers, not mature ladies in hire cars with inadequate lights. But at least I had skills, and the Focus was manoeuvrable in a way that a white van probably wasn’t. Yes! He’d dropped back a bit.

If only Andy had been here, he could have offered up a prayer.

No time to twang now.

For an instant, the mist cleared. The track forked at the bottom of the hill. Left took me back into mist, the right into moonlight. My mist-vision or his? The clear track it must be, the car drifting faster into corners than a van would dare. Tony patted me on my shoulder. The longer I kept going, the more opportunities for the other guy to make a mistake.

We weren’t so far from the main road when I lost him. Just like that. Had he turned off a track I didn’t register, ready to ambush me on the main road? It’s what I’d do in his situation. Which rather limited the left or right options. So I plunged across what looked as good as a B road into a definite lane. Soon a scattering of cottages appeared either side. I slowed for a man walking his elderly spaniel. Heavens above: streetlights! Something Kings Duncombe didn’t run to. A thirty sign – rather superfluous, since I’d had my heart in my mouth doing twenty-five. A church large and solid enough to be spotlit: St Mark’s, the clean bright notice
board said. A pub! Oh, a cheery, welcoming pub, the Queen’s Head, maybe run by someone I knew! And, nestling between the two, the vicarage, a silver Focus with a familiar number-plate on the drive.

Without trying, I’d only fetched up in Langworthy, Andy’s home village.

I do stubborn very well. I always have. So though I had an ideal opportunity to knock on his front door and beg – quite legitimately – for succour and a loo, not necessarily in that order, I pulled into the pub car park instead, right round the back, where no one could see me.

However, I had something other people might want. Bother the car. Insurance would cover it. What had provoked my tailgaters was presumably the contents of the camera. So, just in case we had a second encounter, and for no other reason, I slipped the film through Andy’s letterbox. And scuttled, like a naughty child who’d rung an old lady’s bell. He’d have the nous to know who was responsible, and his loyalty to Tim’s memory would probably make him get the film developed and copied. He could return the prints to me, as anonymously as I’d dropped off the film, if he wanted to. Or did I mean impersonally? Maybe a stiff diet tonic water would sort me out.

It was sparkling on the table in front of me, ready to be lifted to my deserving lips, when, in the middle of all my self-congratulation, ideas popped into my head – just like the bubbles in the glass. I
had been driving a silver Focus. The white van driver wanted me enough to give chase over dangerous terrain. It was all very well my
out-driving
him and having time to conceal my vehicle. He’d see a car like the one he was looking for just waiting for him on Andy’s drive. It wouldn’t be hard for him to assume that I might be in the vicarage.

Greyhounds out of slips had nothing on me. It took seconds to reach Andy’s front door. Someone had taped over the bell-push! I used fists as well as the knocker.

In black from head to toe, dog-collar apart, he flung open the door in clear outrage.

‘Just get your car into the garage. Now. Talk later,’ I yelled. ‘Do it, Andy!’

I’ve always liked a man who can think under pressure. Andy flipped me his car keys and sped to push the garage doors from inside. They opened sweetly. I almost brushed the second one as I nosed the car inside.

The garage had been built for a narrower car. I couldn’t open the driver’s door far enough to get out. Either door, actually. I could waste valuable seconds by reversing out and coming in off-centre, or I could relive my childhood, pulling myself out of the driver’s window.

Unfortunately, though I’d judged the driving to an inch, I hadn’t remembered how difficult this manoeuvre was.

Stuck. I got well and truly stuck. Even when I slipped the camera off my neck, abandoning it in the car.

Andy thought on his feet. He was in the garage too, closing the doors from the inside and locking them.

Merciful darkness shrouded my predicament. Or didn’t.

‘There’s a light switch by the back door,’ he managed, between gusts of laughter.

‘No. Don’t want anyone from the outside to see. OK, I’m nearly free.’

‘Allow me.’

I could hear him shuffling down my side of the car. A mutter under his breath as he trod on something. At last, he took some of my weight and I could kick one leg free. There was no other way: I sagged sideways into his arms.

OK. Choices, Josie.

Either turn – much easier said than done in this limited space – and kiss him. Or, while never aspiring to anything like dignity, simply let him put me down and usher me as a guest into his house.

OK. No choice.

As my feet reached terra firma, he asked, very coldly, ‘And now, would you be kind enough to explain what’s going on?’

I matched cold with cold. ‘As soon as you’ve locked your front door, of course.’

Which is how we came to be facing each other in
the hall, lit only by the streetlight outside. ‘Or maybe a better idea, from your point of view,’ I said, ‘would be for us to make our separate ways to the Queen’s Head, where I’ve got a drink waiting for me. Then I can explain quietly, and then go home without any of your parishioners thinking you’re entertaining a strange woman at the witching hours of the night.’ What had I said? I could feel the tension deepening, even if I couldn’t see his face.

‘Very well. Let me just find my shoes.’

‘You mean you’ve done all that in bare feet? I thought it was only Hindus who walked on nails.’

‘Carpet slippers.’

We didn’t even mutter an
au revoir
.

When I got back the landlord’s hand was ready to add my glass to his washing up collection.

‘Sorry. Call of nature,’ I said, retrieving it. ‘Josie Welford, the White Hart. What a nice place this is,’ I added, as we shook hands. ‘I don’t suppose you do food on a Monday?’

‘None that
you
’d eat.’

‘Try me.’

‘I saw you in the wife’s WeightWatchers’ bumf: someone losing all that weight eating crisps? You’ll be asking me for pork scratchings next.’

‘Lead me to them. Good heavens, Mr Braithwaite! Care to join me in a tonic water?’

‘Half of bitter, please, Bob. Hello, Josie – what brings you here?’

‘I just fancied a quiet drive on a lovely moonlit night.’

‘Lot of mist about,’ Bob said, approaching with a glass in one hand and a packet of plain crisps suspended between the very tips of his fingers. He dropped it before me and made little finicking gestures as if to dissociate himself from it.

‘Tell me about it. I got totally lost. Then I tried a short cut through the woods back there and found myself on some track they could use for the RAC Rally. Scared myself silly, when I realised I could take out the sump any second. Only a Focus – not designed for that sort of terrain. And then I thought someone was following me. You know, a lone woman driver … I thought I’d be safe here,’ I concluded, worried about all the garbled explanation, and smiling innocently up at my host.

‘As houses. Until chucking out time. I make a point of shutting up shop at eleven,’ he said, eyeing the bar clock, which stood at ten-thirty five.

Andy and I toasted each other and him, Andy’s cuff slipping back to allow me to see one of those plastic charity bracelets. At his age! I made sure no one would see my postie’s version.

Bob was inclined to hover. ‘Who might have been following you?’ he asked.

‘Someone in a white van. Maybe I’d carved him up or something. You know, caused a bit of road rage. Funny registration,’ I lied. I wouldn’t have had
a moment to check, even if I’d thought of it. ‘Looks like fowl.’ I flapped my arms and clucked. ‘You know, one of those personalised ones.’

Bob frowned. ‘Rings a bell, somewhere. Anyway, best leave you good people to it.’

Neither of us argued.

‘It happened exactly like that?’ Andy asked, unamused.

‘Almost. But I do know what annoyed white van man. I was taking photos of a scrapyard. I just happened to walk past it yesterday and they set the dogs on me. OK. Dog in the singular. Living daylights time, I can tell you. So I had to take a long diversion to get to church. Hence my dishevelment.’

As if on automatic pilot, Andy said, ‘Dishevelled. Funny we don’t use the word, “shevelled”. Like “couth” and “uncouth”.’

‘Indeed. So tonight I had to have another look, only they must have clocked me. Hence the chase. Then, when I’d parked my car up in the least visible part of the car park, I thought of yours, just sitting there waiting to be torched, or whatever, and the rest you know.’

‘Not quite. Why did you come to Langworthy in the first place?’

‘Not to harass you. I told the simple truth. I was afraid the driver knew a different way out of the forest and might be lying in wait for me on the main road. Fifty per cent chance either way, of course. But not if I came straight across the crossroads.’

He nodded, as if weighing it as an excuse and not yet faulting it.

I said nothing. It was his turn, after all.

‘Why should they confuse your Saab with my Focus?’

‘My car is still lying low. I swapped the Fiesta for a Focus – the colour’s a coincidence.’ Slow down, Josie: too much data.

‘I see.’

‘I’ll ask Bob to get me a taxi home. Safest.’

He nodded.

I suited the deed to the word.

Bob stared. ‘Won’t Mr Braithwaite be running you back?’

‘Not if there’s someone on the look-out for a Focus. Silver, you see. That’s what he drives, remember.’

‘Hm,’ he said, as if he thought the less of Andy, as I was tempted to do, and stomped off, presumably to phone for a taxi.

I returned to the table. Andy was regarding his half as if it were poison.

If he wouldn’t talk, neither would I.

Within three minutes, Bob came toddling back. ‘Sorry, Josie. Bill’s on a call. Won’t be back till after midnight.’

And the pub closed at eleven sharp. ‘No problem. I’ll just have to pay extra attention to my rear-view mirror.’

‘Keep your mobile on,’ he urged, eyeing Andy again.

‘Indeed.’

He nodded at us both, and went back to the bar, eventually disappearing with what looked like a full bin of bottles.