by Francis - TO THE HILT

I phoned Chris who said he'd been trying without success to reach my mobile number.

'The phone's in the car,' I said. 'I expect the battery's flat.'

'For hell's sake, charge it.'

'Yes.'

'Are you all right, Al? And where are you?'

'Lambourn. Could you drive to Paignton and then come here?'

'Today? Bring all three ladies?'

'If you can. I'll phone the hotel.'

'Chauffeur's togs coming up. Zipped bag nine.'

We disconnected on a smile. I phoned the Redcliffe and left messages for Emily and my mother. Then I retrieved the Quorn list from the back of the golf picture and drove to Reading.

By lunchtime the experts had got nowhere nearer the end of the rainbow.

They sent out for sandwiches, and we drank more coffee.

'The trouble is,' the bank man explained to me, 'that we have here three lots of variables. We have to match the account numbers on the list with a name on the list and with a bank identification number that we already have, and then we have to send that combination to the bank in question and hope to get a response from them to acknowledge that that account exists. We haven't so far been able to do that. The nearest we have come is matching one of the account numbers to one of the banks, but we supplied the wrong name for the account, and the bank told us by return fax, just now, that as our enquiry is incomplete, they cannot answer it. No one is being helpful. On top of that, the account numbers are the wrong way round.'

I said, 'How do you mean, the wrong way round?'

'All the numbers on the list end with two zeros. As a rule account numbers begin with two zeros. We have tried reversing the numbers, so far without success. I am still sure that all of the numbers have been reversed, but if Quorn jumbled them up further, or multiplied by two, for instance, we are in real trouble.'

Tobias and Margaret nodded in depression.

Tobias said, 'Quorn may have sent the money on a circular route involving all of these numbers - like the beach towels on the poolside chairs - or he may have sent it direct from Panama to any one place, but so far we haven't found a single trace of it. I have been working on the belief that one of these numbers or names must mean something to the Global Bank in Panama, but they will not admit it.'

'All banks are secretive,' the big bank man said. 'And so are we.'

'Don't despair,' Margaret said, 'we'll find the money. It's just taking longer than we hoped.'

By the end of the afternoon, however, they themselves were looking cast down; they said they would think of a new strategy for the next day. The time change alone was making things difficult. It was already mid-afternoon in Reading when the bank in Panama opened for business.

They carefully shredded every scrap of used fax and working paper and locked Norman Quorn's list into the manager's private safe. I drove a shade dispiritedly back to Lambourn and found that Emily, my mother and Audrey Newton had arrived a bare five minutes before me.

C. Y. Uttley was busy unloading suitcases from the boot.

I gave my mother a minimum hug, kissed Emily and planted an air kiss beside Audrey Newton's buxom cheek.

'We've had a lovely weekend,' she said, beaming. 'Thank you ever so much. You've bruised your face, dear, did you know?'

'Walked into a door.'

Emily took Audrey and my mother into the house and Chris gave me an assessing inspection.

'You look lousy,' he said. 'Worse than Sunday.'

'Thanks.'

'Your bus-stealing Grantchester-immobilising friend no longer exists,' he assured me. 'I dumped her today, bit by bit, in a succession of wheelybins on my way to Devon.'

'So wise.'

'How do blonde bubble curls and D-cup knockers grab you?'

'I wouldn't be seen dead with her.'

'At least the lawyer didn't cauterise your sense of humour.'

'A close-run thing.'

'Do you want anything else done?'

'Just take Audrey Newton home to Bloxham.'

'After that?'

We stared at each other.

'A friend for life,' I suggested.

'I'll send my bill.'

Emily proposed that my mother and I stay the night in Lambourn and met with little resistance.

The telephone rang in the kitchen while we were sitting round the big table watching Emily search for supper in the freezer. Emily picked up the receiver and in a moment said with surprise, 'Yes, he's here. So is Vivienne.' She held out the receiver in my direction. 'It's Himself. He's been looking for you.' I took the instrument and said, 'My lord.' 'Al, where have you been? I've had Patsy on the line all day. She sounds practically hysterical. She wants to talk to you. She says you signed yourself out of some hospital she put you in. She won't tell me why she put you in hospital. What the hell's happened?'

'Er… I ran out of wall.'

'Al, talk sense.'

My mother and Emily could both hear what I said. I thought through five seconds of silence and said, 'Can I come for a drink with you at about six tomorrow evening?'

'Of course.'

'Well… please don't tell Patsy where I am. Ask her if she'll meet me at two o'clock tomorrow afternoon in the car park of the brewery's bank's head office in Reading. And tell her…' I paused. 'Tell her thanks for the help.'

Emily said, astounded, as I put the phone down, 'Patsy helped you?'

'Mm.'

They would have to know, so I told them as unemotionally as possible that Oliver Grantchester had been trying to lay his hands on the brewery's missing millions. 'He had either conspired with Norman Quorn to steal the money in the first place, or tried to wrest it from him afterwards,' I said. 'I'm not yet sure which.'

'Not Oliver !' my mother protested in total disbelief. 'We've known him for years. He's always been Ivan's solicitor, and the brewery's too…' her voice faded. 'Ivan trusted him.'

I said, 'Ivan trusted Norman Quorn. Quorn and Grantchester… they were two normal men, good at their jobs, but fatally attracted by what looked like an easy path to a bucket of gold - and I'm not talking about the literal bucket of gold, the King Alfred Gold Cup, which Grantchester thought he could lay his hands on as a consolation when the serious prize slipped through his fingers. Grantchester may have been a good lawyer but he's an inefficient crook. He hasn't got the Gold Cup and he hasn't got the brewery's money, and Patsy has woken up to the fact that her dear darling avuncular Oliver had been trying his damnedest to rob her , as she now owns the brewery complete with its losses.'

My mother had her own concern, 'You didn't really walk into a door, did you, Alexander?'

I smiled. 'I walked into Grantchester's fist man. You'd think I'd know better.'

'And no one took hostages,' Emily said thoughtfully, with much understanding.

We went to bed. Emily expected and invited me between her sheets, but I simply had no stamina left for the oldest of games.

She asked what was under the bandages that was making me sweat.

'The wages of pride,' I said. 'Go to sleep.'

I drove my mother to Reading in the morning and saw her onto the London train, promising to spend the evening and night in Park Crescent after my six o'clock date with Himself.

Frail from grief, my calm and exquisite parent showed me in a single trembling hug on the railway platform how close we both were to being stretched too far. I understood suddenly that it was from her I had learned the way to hide fear and pain and humiliation, and that if I'd extended that ability into material things like hilts and chalices and dynamite lists, it had been because of her ultra-controlled outer face that I had all my life taken to be an absence - or at least a deficiency - of emotion.

'Ma,' I said on Reading station, 'I adore you.'

The train came, quiet and rapid, slowing to whisk her away.