His jeep had apparently been left where the police had picked him up, which was, he was informed, current policy. The custody officer had offered to ring Oakley Manor and arrange for him to be collected but Ross declined. He decided a taxi would be infinitely preferable to Bill Scott’s company, just at the moment.
His mobile phone hadn’t been among his belongings and while he wavered between finding the payphone, and the altogether more tempting option of collapsing on to the nearest seat, an immaculately suited figure unfolded itself from behind a newspaper and stood up.
‘Well, I must say it’s about time,’ Roland said peevishly, coming forward. ‘I’ve been sitting here for absolutely ages and the coffee is diabolical.’ He indicated a vending machine on the wall. ‘Bloody instant stuff! I say, do you feel quite well? You don’t look at all the thing.’
Ross found Roland’s idiotic chatter more than usually irritating.
‘Oh, I feel just tickety-boo,’ he replied waspishly.
‘That’s all right then,’ Roland said, happily. ‘The car’s outside, if you’re ready to go.’
He put a supporting hand under the American’s elbow, much as one would to assist an elderly relative, and steered him towards the door.
Ross would dearly have liked to have pulled his arm free and made his own way out but felt that falling flat on his face would rather rob the gesture of its effect.
Outside the door and squinting uncomfortably in the unsympathetic sunlight, Ross was assailed by four or five aggressive reporters bristling with microphones, tape-recorders and cameras. For a moment, he didn’t associate their presence with his own but then the flashbulbs went off and the questions started.
Beside him, Roland tensed and swore.
‘Someone’s been busy,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t say anything. Not a word!’
Taking him firmly by the arm, he guided Ross purposefully across the road to his parked car, jostled all the way by the predatory news-gatheres. Opening the passenger door, he propelled the American inside and then slid across the black bonnet with surprising agility and opened his own door.
Still standing, he held up a hand to silence the persistent voices.
‘I don’t know what you’ve heard, but there’s obviously been a mistake,’ he announced, clearly and with authority. ‘There is no story. Go and report a church fête or something.’
He slid smoothly into the car, started the engine and drove away while the reporters were still looking at one another in disgust.
Glancing in his mirror, Roland laughed. ‘It wouldn’t have worked on Fleet Street,’ he said. ‘But with the local press . . .’
‘You’ve done that before,’ Ross said thoughtfully. He was watching the Colonel’s son closely and almost saw the upper-class-twit mask slip back into place.
‘Oh, all the time,’ he agreed airily. ‘I used to manage a rock band, you know.’
Ross’ eyes narrowed.
‘I don’t believe you,’ he said after a moment.
‘Quite right. I’m an inveterate liar,’ Roland said cheerfully. ‘I shouldn’t believe half of what I say, if I were you.’
Ross subsided into silence. He was in no fit state for verbal sparring. Besides, he remembered abruptly, he was sitting in the very same car he had worked so hard to lose the evening before.
‘Why were you following me last night?’ he asked, with bluntness that a clearer head might have tempered.
Roland was not noticeably disconcerted. ‘I wanted to see where you were going,’ he said reasonably, throwing the car into a right-angled bend with no perceptible slackening of speed.
‘I should have thought you already knew that,’ Ross said, instinctively leaning into the bend.
‘That office door is thicker than you might think,’ Roland observed unashamedly as the hatchback settled comfortingly back on to all four wheels.
Ross was speechless. He thought Roland might at least have had the decency to look a little embarrassed.
He glanced sideways and smiled disarmingly. ‘Ah, I see I’ve shocked you. Call it incurable nosiness, if you will. I’ve always suffered from it. Lamentable, I know, but we all have our faults. Don’t we?’ he added, almost as an afterthought.
Ross let that pass. A mile or two slid by and he closed his eyes, feeling lousy.
‘Just where did you abandon your jeep, exactly?’ Roland asked after a few blissfully silent minutes.
Ross stirred and gave approximate directions. ‘The police said it was called Sandy Lane.’
‘Uncommonly helpful fellows, the police,’ Roland said approvingly.
‘How did you know where I was? And how the hell did the press know?’
‘I don’t know how the local press knew, unless some public-spirited individual saw you being brought in and told them,’ Roland said, skilfully passing two cars and a crawling tractor in the teeth of an oncoming juggernaut.
Ross winced.
‘As for me,’ Roland continued, ‘I’m here on Father’s orders. He was woken at half-past seven this morning by an enthusiastic correspondent from the Sportsman, demanding to know if he was aware that his star employee was at that moment languishing in the local nick, faced with a drink-driving charge.’
Ross’ heart sank. No chance then to break the news gently and plead his own, edited side of the story. Though quite what he could have said was debatable. There was no need to ask how the Colonel had received the news. His anger and disgust were all too easy to imagine.
‘You’re very quiet,’ Roland observed, seemingly unaware of the bombshell he had just dropped. ‘Probably just not a morning person, I expect.’
Ross couldn’t be bothered to summon another withering look.
The jeep, when they came up with it, was exactly where it had been left the night before. It had no wheels, headlights or windscreen, and what was left was completely burnt out, but it was still there.
Ross stared at the blackened wreck and made the discovery that he was beyond feeling. With the news about the Colonel, he had touched rock bottom and there was nowhere lower to go.
‘Drunks, I expect,’ Roland said judiciously. ‘There are a lot of them about.’
Ross had had enough. ‘Why don’t you just shut the hell up?’ he demanded, rounding on him savagely.
Roland put his hands up in surrender. ‘Okay, okay. But really, you can’t deny it’s an odd place to choose for a booze-up.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s a nice quiet spot,’ Ross retorted. ‘Or used to be,’ he added with a glance over his shoulder as two cars drew up behind them and disgorged a bevy of determined reporters.
Roland wasted no time in getting underway once more, and in the door mirror Ross could see the press cameramen busily snapping the burnt-out jeep.
‘So, which particular sorrows were you trying to drown?’ the Colonel’s son asked casually as they turned homewards.
Ross groaned from a combination of physical discomfort and mental frustration.
‘For Chrissakes, I wasn’t trying to drown anything! I didn’t drink by choice. Why the hell would I? And if, for argument’s sake, I had intended to, I would hardly have driven ten miles out into the country and run the risk of being picked up by the police, when I could have stayed in my room and done it, would I?’
‘So what are you saying? That somebody forced you? That you were set up?’ Roland sounded curious, but not incredulous. ‘By whom exactly?’
One of the few things Ross clearly remembered was Leo’s gloating face but he couldn’t expect anyone to believe that the ex-groom had done it on his own, and until he knew more he felt it would be wisest to pretend ignorance.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘They kept their faces covered.’
‘Well, did you tell the police?’
‘I tried,’ Ross said tiredly. ‘You can imagine what they said. I tried to get them to fingerprint the bottle too but they weren’t interested. They’ve heard it all before.’
Ro
land looked sharply at him. ‘Fingerprints, you say? Because you didn’t touch the bottle. That’s an idea.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘But why should anybody want to set you up?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me,’ Ross replied guardedly. ‘Someone with a grudge, perhaps, trying to ruin my reputation. There seem to be plenty of people who’d like to see me go down big time. I’m not exactly Mr Popularity, in case you haven’t noticed.’
‘You’ve put one or two backs up, I know. But there’s a big difference between spreading rumours and doing something like this. I mean, it can’t be easy to subdue someone and force a bottle of whisky down their throat,’ he said. ‘Not that I’ve ever tried it, of course. But I would’ve thought one man would’ve had his hands full.’
Unless he had a six-inch blade and no compunction about using it, Ross thought, another chunk of memory slotting into place.
With no warning, Roland suddenly swung the car into a lay-by and stopped. Leaving the engine running, he opened his door and got out.
‘Won’t be a moment,’ he said airily. ‘Got a call to make. Personal.’
He brandished a mobile phone, which he had produced from somewhere about his person, shut the door and walked away from the car.
Ross couldn’t imagine what could be so urgent that it couldn’t wait the two or three miles back to the yard but he supposed it was no business of his. He wondered what had happened to his own mobile phone. Presumably it had either suffered the same fate as the jeep or Leo had pocketed it. The latter seemed likely.
He leaned back, closed his eyes and found himself wondering, uncharitably, if Roland owned a knife. For no particular reason he remembered the ease with which Roland had handled Leo that day at the yard and it occurred to him that for a man who appeared to spend most of his life masquerading behind a false personality, an Irish accent would hardly be a problem. He hadn’t ever seemed over-keen to involve the police, either.
But then, last night the time-scale hadn’t been right. Surely Roland couldn’t have reached Sandy Lane before him when Ross had left him in that muddle at the traffic lights.
Or could he?
Ross had wasted more time after leaving him behind, trying to cover his tracks, and he knew that Roland drove everywhere like a rally driver. That would of course presuppose that he had known where the American was going in the first place, in which case – why bother to follow him?
Of course, if he had known Ross was intending to meet Franklin he could make an educated guess at the meeting place, having driven Ross there the evening he was knocked out. But it was difficult to imagine Roland and Leo as partners in crime, unless all that had gone before had been a smokescreen. And if that was the case, then who had driven the Land-Rover?
Nothing seemed to make much sense, but all the same Ross decided to tread carefully.
Grimacing, he circled his shoulders while he waited, trying to ease a growing stiffness. The muscles almost creaked in protest.
Roland reappeared, sliding back into his seat.
‘So, how many were there?’ he asked, as if the conversation hadn’t lapsed. ‘How many ruffians does it take to subdue our All American Action-boy and persuade him to take a drink?’
‘Only one, if the knife is big enough,’ Ross said dryly. ‘But there were two. As to who they were, though, your guess is as good as mine. I’m afraid most of it is still a blank.’
‘Post-traumatic amnesia,’ Roland said matter-of-factly.
Ross slid him a sideways look. ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning,’ Roland said, calmly negotiating another bend on two wheels, ‘that the mind recalls what it wants to recall and tends to blank out events too recently painful to remember. A kind of safety-net for your sanity.’
‘And the antiques trade teaches you all this, does it?’
‘No, but active service in the army and a tour in Northern Ireland does,’ Roland replied placidly.
Of course. Ross subsided once more, feeling stupid. So easy to forget Roland’s original career. He made it so easy to forget.
Roland swung between the limes into the long drive to the stableyard, giving the nearside gatepost a fright.
‘My revered papa said he wished to see you the instant you got back, but I convinced him he would do better to wait until this evening.’
He drew to a smooth halt in the yard and held out a packet of Alka-Seltzers to Ross. ‘Take a couple of these, stay off the coffee – the caffeine won’t help – and try and get some sleep.’
‘Yes, Doc.’ Ross climbed stiffly out of the car. There didn’t seem to be a soul about. ‘And, uh, thanks.’
‘Don’t thank me. Father’s orders, old boy. Just doing my filial duty.’
Ross waved a hand and turned away.
By the time Ross presented himself at the door of the main house, ten long and miserable hours had crawled by.
He’d followed Roland’s advice with difficulty and found himself recalling the old joke about not liking Alka-Seltzers because they were too noisy. It hadn’t seemed so funny this morning. Swallowing wasn’t a bundle of laughs either; it was almost as though the whisky had burned his throat, but at least after a while the nausea began to subside a little. Sleep, however, had never been further from him.
From the yard below, the noise of business as usual floated up to taunt him. He wondered how they would exercise Telamon. Nobody came up to see him and he wasn’t sure whether to be sorry or relieved at that. On the whole he thought it was probably a good thing. With a shadow of stubble, a waxy complexion, swollen, cut lip and bloodshot eyes, he looked almost as bad as he felt.
He wondered if Lindsay was helping in the yard but couldn’t hear her voice. He remembered her declaring vehemently, on that bright sunny ride to the river, that drink-drivers should be publicly flogged. It did nothing to improve his state of mind.
Apart from the nausea and the shivers, he supposed he was in no worse shape than when he’d last spent the day on his bed, after the New Forest Show. The difference was that then he’d been wounded in action, so to speak. Now, from everybody else’s point of view at least, he had only himself to blame.
During those ten sleepless hours, Ross had plenty of time to think. Too much time. But his thoughts were largely unprofitable.
If, as seemed probable, he had been waylaid to prevent him from passing on information to Franklin, then the strategy had succeeded. They’d made sure he never reached the Dovecote, and not only was the larger part of the evening an incomprehensible blur but whatever thoughts had prompted him to approach Franklin in the first place were also staying stubbornly in the darkest recesses of his mind.
He remembered his careful call to the businessman and Franklin’s query: ‘Is it important?’ He’d replied that it might be, and with those few words, quite possibly sealed his own fate.
What had been so important that he had rung the man at home?
Frustration at his own inability to remember added to his general malaise.
On the other hand, whoever had waylaid him could not have banked on Ross’ memory loss, so he assumed their aim had been either to scare him into minding his own business or to discredit him to such an extent that no one would be inclined to take him seriously anyway.
Maybe they figured that in the circumstances the charge would be enough to lose him his job; and maybe, he thought mordantly, they were right.
Masters bowed him into the hall and through to the study in tight-lipped silence. He was the first person Ross had seen since returning in disgrace that morning and if his demeanour was anything to go by, he was in for a rough ride.
The Colonel didn’t rise when Ross was shown in and his usual welcoming smile was noticeably absent. He was sitting not in an armchair but at his desk and waved the American into the leather-seated carver’s chair opposite. Ross felt like a disgraced pupil called before the principal and the comparison was no comfort.
Colonel Preston regarded him solemnly for a moment and then his gaze dropped to th
e desktop.
The silence was brooding. The Colonel was apparently undecided as to how to begin and Ross wanted to see how the land lay before he said anything at all. The ticking of the mantelpiece clock was deafening.
In his present fragile state, the tension made Ross feel slightly dizzy. He began to count the seconds in his head, to concentrate his wandering senses. When he reached thirty-five the Colonel spoke, quietly.
‘Some weeks ago I asked you if I should be worried about the rumours of your drinking and you said no. Like a fool I believed you.’
It wasn’t the best possible opener.
Ross looked his employer straight in the eyes.
‘It was the truth,’ he asserted earnestly. ‘It still is.’
‘Then how do you explain this?’ The Colonel reached into a desk drawer and produced a bottle of Scotch, two-thirds empty.
Ross didn’t have to ask where it had come from. It was the one from his room. He felt a momentary flash of anger at the intrusion but stifled it. After all, it was quite possible Maggie might have found it when she was cleaning and mentioned it to Bill. Roland, too, had known he had it. He found himself hoping Danny hadn’t betrayed him, though he couldn’t really blame the boy if he had.
‘Well?’
Ross realised he was staring at the bottle. Reluctantly, he raised his eyes to the Colonel’s face once more.
‘I can’t sleep sometimes. My knee gives me a bit of trouble. The whisky helps. Just a mouthful or two, never more.’
The Colonel raised his eyebrows.
Ross tried again. ‘I’ve had that one bottle for weeks. I bought it at the airport. I might even have the receipt somewhere . . .’
The Colonel shrugged. ‘That proves nothing. You could have bought any number since you’ve been here. Probably have,’ he added, as if to provoke Ross.
‘I can’t prove I haven’t. You can’t prove I have,’ he countered bitterly. ‘Did you find any more while you were looking?’
The Colonel didn’t reply. He seemed lost in thought, his face set in hard, uncompromising lines. His very silence was damning.
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