The Horse Dancer (45 page)

‘It’s not
your
bedroom.’

‘What was our bedroom.’

‘Better and better,’ said John, dragging on his cigarette.

‘He didn’t stay
once
while you were living there. So don’t you—’

‘Only because you had somewhere else to go.’

‘Oh.’ She sat back in her seat, arms folded. ‘I wondered how long it would be before you brought that up.’

‘Brought what up?’

‘My second home. I was warned about this.’ She shook her head. ‘I should have listened.’

He glanced at her. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

‘That you’d use it against me when it came to negotiating a settlement.’

‘Oh, for Chrissake, you’re being ridiculous. You think I give a stuff about your rented bloody cottage? I couldn’t care if you had the bloody
QE2
to spend your weekends on.’

‘I hate to interrupt here.’ John leant forward again, letting out a long plume of smoke. ‘And, believe me, I could listen to you two for
hours
. But ain’t we kind of losin’ the thread?’

Mac’s heart thumped uncomfortably against his ribs.

She sat as far away from him as she could reasonably get in the front of the small, slightly overloaded car – as if he was contaminated, as if she would rather be anywhere else in the world.

‘Can you lovely people call a truce?’ John asked. ‘Just till we find her? That would be . . . nice.’

They sat in silence as Mac drove east across the city. He had clamped his jaw shut.

‘Fine by me.’ Her voice was small. She reached for the battered
A–Z.
‘Where are we headed, anyway?’

‘She’s going to love this.’ John chuckled.

Mac kept his gaze firmly to the front. ‘France,’ he said, chucking her passport into her lap. ‘She’s headed for France.’

It took the entire clogged length of the Blackwall Tunnel to explain what had happened at the hospital. She had questioned them several times as to whether they had heard him correctly, whether the old man was even in his right mind, until Cowboy John had become irritable. ‘He’s sick, but he’s just as sharp as you, lady,’ he grumbled. He did not like Natasha, Mac could tell. He eyed her, as he did the hissing geese in his yard, with beady suspicion.

‘Even if you heard right, I find it very hard to believe that even Sarah thinks she has a realistic chance of riding all the way to . . . Where is it?’

‘Look at the map.’ Mac gestured with a finger, eyes fixed on the road. ‘Halfway down France.’

Natasha squinted. ‘But she won’t get there, will she?’

‘She ain’t goin’ to make it past the coast. ’Less that horse can swim the Channel.’

‘John and I think she won’t even get to Dover.’

They emerged into the darkening evening sky, and Mac’s heart sank when he saw that the traffic was just as dense and slow on the other side. He indicated right, pulling on to the dual-carriageway. ‘He says the horse will need resting long before then.’

Natasha coughed pointedly, then rolled down her window. She sniffed, then swivelled in her seat. There was an ominous silence. ‘Is that what I think it is?’ she said.

‘How do I know?’ said John. ‘I can’t see in yo’ head.’

‘Is it . . . weed?’

He took the roll-up from between his lips and examined it carefully. ‘I sure hope so, price I paid for it.’

‘You can’t smoke that in this car. Mac, tell him.’

‘Well, I sure can’t step outside, lady, can I?’

Natasha’s head sank briefly into her hands. Mac caught John’s eye in the mirror, the briefest glint of amused recognition.

Natasha raised her head. She took a deep breath. ‘You know, Mr Cowboy, or whatever your name is, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t smoke drugs in the car. At least while we’re stuck in traffic.’ She was edging down in her seat, an eye on the cars to each side of them.

‘It stops me gettin’ car sick. And, ’sides, you guys fightin’ makes me stressed. And that ain’t good for us old folk. You see what it did to the Captain back there.’

Natasha swallowed. She looked like someone heading fast towards the end of a short touchpaper. ‘Let me get this straight. If we don’t let you smoke illegal substances in Mac’s car, you’re likely to throw up or die of stress.’

‘That’s about it.’

Mac watched her struggle to control her breathing. It appeared to take a while. For the first time in days he wanted to smile.

There had been a time, according to Cowboy John, when London’s rush-hour lasted just that: one hour. Now the traffic began to slow, the queues lengthening, just after school pick-up and rarely eased for four hours. They could not, he remarked, with the detachment of a casual observer – or perhaps of someone who had just smoked the best part of a quarter-ounce of dope – have picked a worse time to set off. Oh, and if it was all the same to them, he needed to pee. Again.

Just to add to the tension, it had begun to rain heavily. Mac’s car now sat in a long queue on the A2, the stream of red brake lights like the tail of some great red dragon intermittently visible between the squeaking trajectory of his windscreen wipers.

Natasha had been silent for the last half an hour, sending messages on her phone, flicking through paperwork and making notes. She had a hushed and heated exchange with someone about her court case, and a whispered conversation with someone he suspected was Conor. When she slammed the phone shut he felt slyly gratified. He fiddled with the radio for the fifteenth time, trying to find the latest traffic report.

‘I don’t know why you keep doing that,’ she snapped. ‘It’s obvious we’re stuck in traffic.’

Mac let it slide. He could see that her communications had wound her up. To explain that he was listening for news of horse-related accidents would not improve matters.

‘My feeling is she’s got to be out of London by now,’ he said, tapping his fingers on the steering-wheel. ‘I say we come off the A2 at the next junction, maybe follow a B road. She would probably have cut off a long time before this. If we’re lucky, we might even overtake her.’

He stuck a hand out of the window at someone who allowed him into the adjoining queue of traffic. ‘I suggest we go as far as we think she could go and if we haven’t found her by eight o’clock we ring the police.’

In the back seat, all that was visible of John was his hat. It nodded. ‘Sounds like a plan,’ the hat said. ‘Though I still ain’t too happy about the police.’

‘Because you’d have to throw your stash out of the window?’

‘Sweetheart, you goin’ to be prisin’ that stash from my cold dead hands.’

‘We can arrange that too,’ she said sweetly.

Mac glanced at her. ‘I’ve been thinking about something else. If we cancel your credit card, she won’t have any money. She’ll have to turn round and come back.’

Natasha considered this. ‘But if we leave her with no money, she’ll be at greater risk.’

Cowboy John’s voice cut in: ‘I don’t think havin’ no money’s goin’ to stop her. She’s pretty determined.’

‘It depends how much she’s taken out already,’ said Mac, ‘but if she’s allowed to keep on using it, there’s no telling where she could go. We’re almost facilitating her running away.’

‘You absolutely sure she’s taken your card?’ John said. ‘I tell you, I’ve known that girl a long time and she ain’t the type to steal.’

Mac waited for Natasha to speak up, perhaps to mention fish-fingers in a supermarket, money missing from their home. But she sat across from him, apparently deep in thought. ‘Tash?’

‘If she keeps using it,’ she said, thinking aloud, ‘it’ll tell us where she’s been. It has a facility you can ring up to find out the details of your last transaction.’ She turned to him, and for once she didn’t look as if she was accusing him of something. ‘Often within a couple of hours of it taking place. It’s our best chance of tailing her without the police getting involved. And if she’s booked into a hotel, well, great. We could go straight there.’ She allowed herself a small smile. ‘It’s possible we might even find her tonight.’

Cowboy John let out a long puff of smoke. ‘She ain’t as silly as she looks, your missus.’

‘I’m not his missus,’ Natasha said briskly, and dialled again. ‘Open your window, Cowboy. This car stinks.’

‘Dartford,’ she said triumphantly, fifteen minutes later. ‘She withdrew a hundred pounds at Dartford some time before midday. We’re on the right track.’

It had looked so simple on the road map, Natasha thought, running her finger along the little red line. The A2 followed in a fairly straight route through Sittingbourne, Gillingham, and on to Canterbury. But as the car moved along it in the dark, the queues moving and stalling, rain and the steam of three people’s breath steadily obscuring the windows, there was no sign that a girl and her horse had ever existed, let alone come this way.

Natasha sat in silence. The further they travelled from London, the greater the weight of the solid mass that settled in her stomach. Every mile they passed she found herself understanding a little better the magnitude of the task before them. Sarah could be anywhere within a fifty-mile radius. She could have gone east from Dartford. She might have anticipated that any search party would head for Dover and decided to travel to one of the minor ports. Worse, they might have got it wrong, and she might not be making for France at all.

By the time they reached Canterbury, Natasha became convinced that they had gone too far. She would never have reached this point, she told the men. Look at the weather. Her eyes strained, making out imaginary figures in the dim light, distracted by people, odd cars, under the streetlamps. ‘I think we should turn back,’ she said.

But Mac insisted Sarah would have come on this route, and if she wasn’t there, it meant they should keep going. ‘She left town at seven o’clock this morning,’ he pointed out. ‘She could have got a hell of a way by now.’ He was hunched over the wheel, his eyes scanning the dark horizons.

John seemed uncertain. The horse was strong and would do whatever the girl asked of him . . .

‘What?’ Natasha turned to him. ‘What were you going to say?’

It was dark inside the car now, and John’s face was hidden. ‘I was going to say, provided they haven’t had an accident.’

By seven o’clock the traffic had thinned a little, the signs for Dover more frequent. They stopped four times, when John announced, yet again, that he needed to relieve himself, or when hotels and B-and-B’s were signposted close by. But when Natasha asked inside if a girl and a horse had checked in, the receptionists without exception, looked at her, as if she was insane. She couldn’t blame them: it sounded mad even to her.

Each time she returned to the car she asked the two men again whether they were sure the grandfather had said she would go to France, until Mac told her to stop treating them like imbeciles. And, all the while, Ben’s text messages loyally informed her of the partner meeting that was taking place without her.

 

he finished, a sure sign, Natasha thought, that she should.

Some time in that last half an hour they had lost confidence. Mac kept up a running mathematical equation, trying to calculate how far a girl and a horse travelling at a nominal fifteen miles an hour might get, given that they were in adverse weather conditions and without food. ‘I think she’ll stay somewhere outside Canterbury,’ he concluded. ‘Or maybe we should head back to Sittingbourne.’

‘They gonna be awful wet,’ John said mournfully, wiping his window with his sleeve.

‘I think we should stop somewhere, ring all the hotels and ask if they’ve seen her,’ Natasha said. ‘But I’m going to need someone else’s phone. Mine’s running low.’

Mac reached into his pocket and handed his to her. Taking it, she found herself thinking about the last year of their marriage, during which his phone, as hers, had been concealed, its flirtatious messages incriminatory, or a symptom of what was falling apart. ‘Thanks,’ she said. She didn’t want to use it, after all. She didn’t want to risk seeing messages from that woman, missed calls that spoke of things he might rather be doing.

‘I have to pee,’ said John, again.

‘Well, we’re going to need fuel,’ Mac said. ‘I vote we head to Dover. If that’s where she’s headed, it doesn’t matter if we’ve passed her.’

‘But if she’s stopped at Canterbury, she won’t make Dover till tomorrow.’

‘Well, I don’t know what else to suggest,’ Mac said. ‘We can’t see a thing. We could drive around in the dark all night achieving nothing. Let’s head to Dover and then do as you suggested, Tash, set up somewhere with a landline. We can ring around and get ourselves something to eat while we’re at it. We’re all exhausted.’

‘And then what?’ Natasha placed Mac’s phone carefully on the dashboard.

‘Well . . . pray we can find out where she’s staying from your credit card, I guess. After that I have no bloody idea.’

The hotel was one of an anonymous mid-range multi-national chain, two squat maroon-brick blocks linked by a glass walkway. Natasha stood in the oversized reception area, crumpled and sweaty in her suit, suddenly desperate to sit still, to eat and drink something. Mac, in front of her, was chatting to the receptionist, who smiled at him, a distinctly non-corporate sort of a smile. Natasha noted it grimly and turned away. Cowboy John was in an easy chair by the wall, legs splayed, head hanging low between his bony shoulders. Natasha registered the slight distance guests enforced around him as they passed and felt briefly awkward for him. Then, as he lifted his head and winked lasciviously at a young woman, she realised her sympathy was probably wasted.

‘Okay,’ said Mac, shoving his wallet back in his pocket. ‘We’ve got one double and one twin.’

‘But surely we need three rooms.’

‘That’s all they’ve got left. If you want to try somewhere down the road then go for it, but I’m shattered. This’ll do me fine.’