by Francis: TO THE HILT

'Good of you to come, Keith.'

Ivan drifting a limp hand in my direction, I stood up with parent-inculcated politeness and was identified as 'My stepson'.

Dr Keith Robbiston rose in my regard by giving me a sharp glance and a sharper question, 'What analgesic have you been taking for that eye?'

'Aspirin.' Huston station aspirin, actually.

'Huh.' Scorn. 'Are you allergic to any drugs?'

'I don't think so.'

'Are you taking any other drugs?'

'No.'

'Then try these.' He produced a small packet from an inner suit pocket and held it out to me. I accepted it with gratitude.

Ivan, mystified, asked what was going on.

His doctor briskly answered while at the same time producing from other pockets a stethoscope and blood-pressure monitor. 'Your stepson… name?'

'Alexander Kinloch,' I said.

'… Alexander, your stepson, can't move without pain.'

'What?'

'You haven't noticed? No, I suppose not.' To me he said, 'The reduction and management of pain is my speciality. It can't be disguised. How did you get like this? It can't be organic if you're not taking medicine. Car crash?'

I said with a flicker of amusement, 'Four thugs.'

'Really?' He had bright eyes, very alert. 'Bad luck.'

'What are you talking about?' Ivan said.

I shook my head at Dr Robbiston and he checked around his heart-threatened patient with effective economy of movement but no comment on my own state.

'Well done, Ivan,' he said cheerfully, whisking his aids out of sight. 'The ticker's banging away like a baby's. Don't strain yourself, though. But walk around the house a bit. Use this strong stepson as a crutch. How's your dear wife?'

'In her sitting-room,' I said.

'Great.' He departed as abruptly as he'd arrived. 'Hang in there, Ivan.'

He gave me a brief smile on his quick way out. I sat down again opposite Ivan and swallowed one of the tablets the doctor had given me. His assessment had been piercingly on target. Punch-bags led a rotten life.

'He's a good doctor, really,' Ivan told me defensively.

"The best,' I agreed. 'Why do you doubt him?'

'He's always in a hurry. Patsy wants me to change…' He tapered off indecisively; only a shadow seemed left of his former chief-executive decisiveness.

'Why change?' I asked. 'He wants you to be well, and he makes house calls, a miracle these days.'

Ivan frowned. 'Patsy says he's hasty.'

I said mildly, 'Not everyone thinks or moves at the same speed.'

Ivan took a tissue out of a flat box on the table beside him and blew his nose, then dropped the used tissue carefully into a handy waste-paper basket. Always neat, always precise.

He said, 'Where would you hide something?'

I blinked.

'Well?' Ivan prompted.

'Er… it would depend what it was.'

'Something of value.'

'How big?'

He didn't directly answer, but I found what he said next more unusual than anything he'd said to me since I'd known him.

'You have a quirky mind, Alexander. Tell me a safe hiding place.'

Safe .

'Um,' I said, 'who would be looking?'

'Everyone. After my death.'

'You're not dying.'

'Everyone dies.'

'It's essential to tell someone where you've hidden something, otherwise it may be lost for ever.'

Ivan smiled.

I said, 'Are we talking about your Will?'

'I'm not telling you what we are talking about. Not yet. Your uncle Robert says you know how to hide things.'

That put me into a state of breathlessness. How could they? Those two well-intentioned men must have said something to someone somewhere that had got me beaten to buggery and thrown over the next best thing to a cliff. Nephew of one, stepson of the other… I shifted in undeniable pain in that civilised room and acknowledged that for all their worldliness they had no true conception of the real voracious jungle of greed and cruelty roughly known as mankind.

'Ivan,' I said, 'put whatever it is in a bank vault and send a letter of instruction to your lawyers.'

He shook his head.

Don't give anything to me to hide, I thought. Please don't. Let me off. I'm not hiding anything else. Every battered muscle protested.

'Suppose it's a horse,' he said.

I stared.

He said, 'You can't put a horse in a bank vault.'

'What horse?'

He didn't say. He asked, 'How would you hide a horse?'

'A racehorse?' I asked.

'Certainly.'

'Then…' I paused a moment, 'in a racing stable.'

'Not in an obscure barn miles away from anywhere?'

'Definitely not. Horses have to be fed. Regular visits to an obscure barn would be as good as a sign saying "treasure here".'

'Do you believe in hiding things where everyone can see them but they don't realise what they're looking at?'

I said, 'The snag with that is that in the end someone does understand what they're looking at. Someone spots the rare stamp on the envelope. Someone spots the real pearls when the mistletoe berries wither.'

'But you would still put a racehorse among others?'

'And move it often,' I said.

'And the snag to that?'

'The snag,' I said obligingly, 'is that the horse can't be raced without disclosing its whereabouts. Unless, of course, you're a crook with a ringer, which would be unlike you, Ivan.'

'Thank you for that, Alexander.' His voice was dryly amused.

'And if you didn't race the horse,' I went on, 'you would waste its life and its value, until in the end it wouldn't be worth hiding.'

Ivan sighed. 'Any more snags?'

'Horses are as recognisable as people. They have faces.'

'And legs

After a pause I said, 'Do you want me to hide a horse?' and I thought, What the hell am I saying?

'Would you?'

'If you had a good reason.'

'For money?'

'Expenses.'

'Why?'

'Do you mean, why would I do it?' I asked.

He nodded.

I said feebly, 'For the interest,' but in fact it would be because it might lighten his depression to have something other than his illness to think about. I would do it because of my mother's anxiety.

He said, 'What if I asked you to find a horse?'

He was playing games, I thought.

'I suppose I would look for it,' I said.

The telephone on the table by his elbow rang but he merely stared at it apathetically and made no attempt to pick up the receiver. He simply waited until it stopped ringing and then showed exasperated fatigue when my mother appeared in the doorway to tell him that someone to do with the brewery wanted him.

'I'm ill. I've told them not to bother me.'

'It's Tobias Tollright, dear. He says it's essential he talks to you.'

'No, no.'

'Please, Ivan. He sounds so worried.'

'I don't want to talk to him,' Ivan said tiredly. 'Let Alexander talk to him.'

Both my mother and I thought the suggestion pointless, but once he got the idea in his head Ivan wouldn't be budged. In the end I walked over and picked up the phone and explained who I was.

'But I must speak to Sir Ivan himself,' said an agitated voice. 'You simply don't understand.'

'No,' I agreed, 'but if you'll tell me what's the matter, I'll relay it to him for an answer.'

'It's ridiculous.'

'Yes, but urn… fire away.'

'Do you know who I am?' the voice demanded.

'No, I'm afraid not.'

'I am Tobias Tollright, a partner in a firm of chartered accountants. We audit the King Alfred Brewery accounts.'

'Right,' I said.

'There are discrepancies… Really, Sir Ivan is Chairman and managing director and majority shareholder… it is unethical for me to speak to you instead of him.'

'Mm,' I said, 'I do see that. Perhaps you'd better write to him.'

'The matter is too urgent. Remind him it is illegal for a limited company to go on trading when it is insolvent, and I fear… I really fear that measures must be taken at once, and only he can authorise them.'