Dick Francis - Silks

She pulled up outside the red-brick station building as I struggled through the narrow doorway with my suitcase and the crutches. I tossed the suitcase onto the back seat of her car and climbed into the passenger seat. Eleanor leaned over and gave me a kiss.

‘Where to?’ she said, driving away.

‘Oxford,’ I said.

One of the good things about having a room in an ex-prison was that it was just as difficult to break into as it had once been to break out of. My room at the hotel was as safe a place as I could think of to spend the weekend, especially as the cell-door locks were now controlled by the person on the inside.

I made Eleanor drive twice round the roundabout where the A34 crosses the M4 but, if there was someone tailing us, I couldn’t see them.

‘Do you really think that someone would have come to Lambourn looking for me?’ asked Eleanor.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do. I think these people will stop at nothing. It’s no longer about Steve Mitchell any more, it’s to do with them not getting convicted for the murder of Scot Barlow. Once you’ve killed one person, it’s much easier to kill again.’

I’d once been assured by one cold-bloodied client, following his well-deserved conviction for a string of murders, that, after the first couple, it had been as easy as stepping on a spider.

For the rest of the journey Eleanor spent almost as much time looking in the rear-view mirror as she did watching the road in front, but we made it to the hotel safely without hitting anything, and also without seeing anyone tailing us.

As we pulled up at the hotel entrance, Eleanor’s phone rang.

‘Hello,’ she said, pushing the button. She listened for a few moments. ‘Suzie, hold on a minute.’ She put her hand over the microphone and turned to me. ‘It’s Suzie, one of the other vets at the hospital. Seems a young man has turned up there asking for me, says he’s my younger brother.’

‘And is he?’ I asked her.

‘I’m an only child,’ she said.

‘Does the young man know that Suzie is making this call?’ I asked.

Eleanor spoke into the phone, asked the question and listened for a moment.

‘No,’ she said. ‘The young man has talked his way up into my room and is waiting there. Suzie is downstairs.’

‘Let me talk to her,’ I said.

Eleanor spoke again into the phone and then handed it to me. I tossed my own phone at Eleanor. ‘Call the police,’ I said to her. ‘Tell them there’s an intruder in the house there with a girl on her own.’ That should bring them coming with the sirens blazing.

‘Suzie,’ I said into Eleanor’s phone. ‘This is Geoffrey Mason, I’m a friend of Eleanor’s.’

‘I know,’ she said, laughing. ‘She’s talked of nothing else for weeks.’

‘Are you there on your own?’ I asked her, cutting off her laughter.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Except for him upstairs. The others have gone down the pub, but I didn’t feel up to it.’

‘Suzie, this is a serious situation,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to alarm you too much, but the young man is not Eleanor’s younger brother. She doesn’t have any brothers. And I fear he could be dangerous.’

There was silence from the other end of the line.

I went on. ‘Eleanor is talking to the police now.’

‘Oh God!’ she said shakily.

‘Suzie,’ I said urgently, not wanting her to go into a complete panic. ‘As he’s asked for Eleanor, go and tell him that she’s gone to stay with her boyfriend in London. He might then go away.’

‘I’m not going up there again,’ she said with real fear in her voice.

‘All right,’ I said calmly. ‘If you can leave the house without him seeing you, then go straight away. Go round to the pub, and stay there with the others.’

‘OK,’ she said rapidly. ‘I’m going now.’

‘Good. But go quickly and quietly,’ I said. ‘Are you talking on a mobile phone?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Then keep talking to me as you leave the house. Do it now.’

I could hear her breathing and also the squeak of a door being opened, and then it slammed shut.

‘Bugger,’ she said to the world in general.

‘Quietly,’ I hissed into the phone, but I don’t think she heard me.

There was the sound of her feet crunching on the gravel as she ran down the path.

‘Oh my God,’ she screamed. ‘He’s coming after me.’

‘Run,’ I said.

I didn’t need to say it. I could hear Suzie running. Then the running stopped and I heard a car door slam.

‘I’m in my car,’ she said breathlessly. ‘But I haven’t got the damn keys.’ She was crying. ‘Help me,’ she shouted down the phone. ‘Oh my God,’ she said, her voice again in rising panic. ‘He’s walking down the path.’

‘Can you lock the doors?’ I said to her.

‘Yes,’ she said. I heard the central locking go click.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Does the horn work?’

I could hear her bashing at the button but there was no noise.

‘It won’t work,’ she cried, still bashing. It obviously needed the key in the ignition.

‘Where’s Eleanor Clarke?’ I could hear Julian Trent shouting, his voice muffled by the car doors and windows.

‘Go away,’ screamed Suzie. ‘Leave me alone.’

It was like listening to a radio drama – all sound and no pictures. The noise of Trent banging on the windows of the car was plainly audible and I could clearly visualize the scene in my mind’s eye.

‘Go away,’ Suzie screamed at him again. ‘I’ve called the police.’

‘Where’s Eleanor?’ Trent shouted again.

‘With her boyfriend,’ shouted Suzie back at him. ‘In London.’

Well done her, I thought. It went quiet, save for the sound of Suzie’s rapid shallow breathing.

‘Suzie?’ I asked. ‘What’s happening?’

‘He’s run off,’ she said. ‘He’s disappeared round the corner of the hospital. Do you really think he’s gone?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But stay in the car. We’ve called the police. They are on their way. Stay in the car until they come.’ I hoped that Trent hadn’t disappeared round the corner of the hospital simply to get his trusty baseball bat, so he could smash his way into Suzie’s car.

‘Who the hell was it?’ she asked me.

‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘But he definitely wasn’t Eleanor’s brother. I think he may have been someone on the lookout for women.’

‘Oh my God,’ she said again, but without the urgency of before. ‘He might have raped me.’

‘Suzie,’ I said as calmly as possible. ‘Be happy he didn’t. You’re fine. Describe him to the police and they will look after you. Ask them to get the others back from the pub to stay with you.’

‘But I don’t think I want to stay here,’ she said.

‘OK, OK,’ I said. ‘You can do whatever you please.’

By now she had calmed down a lot. Vets were obviously made of stern stuff.

‘The police are here.’ She sounded so relieved.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Give Eleanor a call later, after you’ve spoken to them.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I will.’ She sounded quite normal, almost as if she was now rather enjoying the situation. It must be due to the release of tension, I thought.

I hung up and passed the phone back to Eleanor.

‘Why didn’t you tell her that it was Julian Trent?’ she said, almost accusingly.

‘We don’t absolutely know for certain that it was him, even if we are pretty sure that it was. The police are bound to be in touch with us soon because it was my phone you used to call them, so they’ll have the number, and you must have had to give them your name.’

She nodded.

‘If we want, we can give them Trent’s name then as a possible suspect,’ I said. ‘But I certainly will not be telling them that I think he went there intending to threaten you so that I would purposely lose the Mitchell case.’