Dick Francis - The Danger

He looked at me for a while. 'You're a strange young man,' he said. 'You make things so clear.' He paused. 'Don't you ever get muddled by emotion?'

'Yes, sometimes,' I said. 'But when it happens… I try to sort myself out. To see some logic'

'And once you see some logic, you act on it?'

'Try to.' I paused. 'Yes.'

'It sounds… cold.'

I shook my head. 'Logic doesn't stop you feeling. You can behave logically, and it can hurt like hell. Or it can comfort you. Or release you. Or all at the same time.'

After a while, he said, stating a fact, 'Most people don't behave logically.'

'No,' I said.

'You seem to think everyone could, if they wanted to?'

I shook my head. 'No.' He waited, so I went on diffidently, 'There's genetic memory against it, for one thing. And to be logical you have to dig up and face your own hidden motives and emotions, and of course they're hidden principally because you don't want to face them. So… um… it's easier to let your basement feelings run the upper storeys, so to speak, and the result is rage, quarrels, love, jobs, opinions, anorexia, philanthropy… almost anything you can think of. I just like to know what's going on down there, to pick out why I truly want to do things, that's all. Then I can do them or not. Whichever.'

He looked at me consideringly. 'Self-analysis… did you study it?'

'No. Lived it. Like everyone does.'

He smiled faintly. 'At what age?'

'Well… from the beginning. I mean, I can't remember not doing it. Digging into my own true motives. Knowing in one's heart of hearts. Facing the shameful things… the discreditable impulses… Awful, really.'

He picked up his glass and drank some brandy. 'Did it result in sainthood?' he said, smiling.

'Er… no. In sin, of course, from doing what I knew I shouldn't.'

The smile grew on his lips and stayed there. He began to describe to me the house on the Greek island that his wife had loved so, and for the first time since I'd met him I saw the uncertain beginnings of peace.

On the aeroplane Alessia said, 'Where do you live?'

'In Kensington. Near the office.'

'Popsy trains in Lambourn.' She imparted it as if it were a casual piece of information. I waited, though, and after a while she said, 'I want to keep on seeing you.'

I nodded. 'Any time.' I gave her one of my business cards, which had both office and home telephone numbers, scribbling my home address on the back.

'You don't mind?'

'Of course not. Delighted.'

'I need… just for now… I need a crutch.'

'De luxe model at your service.'

Her lips curved. She was pretty, I thought, under all the strain, her face a mingling of small delicate bones and firm positive muscles, smooth on the surface, taut below, finely shaped under all. I had always been attracted by taller, softer, curvier girls, and there was nothing about Alessia to trigger the usual easy urge to the chase. All the same I liked her increasingly, and would have sought her out if she hadn't asked me first.

In bits and pieces over the past two days she had told me many more details of her captivity, gradually unburdening herself of what she'd suffered and felt and worried over; and I'd encouraged her, not only because sometimes in such accounts one got a helpful lead towards catching the kidnappers, but also very much for her own sake. Victim therapy, paragraph one: let her talk it all out and get rid of it.

At Heathrow we went through immigration, baggage claims and customs in close proximity, Alessia keeping near to me nervously and trying to make it look natural.

'I won't leave you,' I assured her, 'until you meet Popsy. Don't worry.'

Popsy was late. We stood and waited, with Alessia apologising twice every five minutes and me telling her not to and, finally, like a gust of wind, a large lady arrived with outstretched arms.

'My darling,' she said, enveloping Alessia, 'a bloody crunch on the motorway. Traffic crawling past like snails. Thought I'd never get here.' She held Alessia away from her for an inspection. 'You look marvellous. What an utterly drear thing to happen. When I heard you were safe I bawled, absolutely bawled.'

Popsy was forty-fiveish and wore trousers, shirt and padded sleeveless waistcoat in navy, white and olive green. She had disconcertingly green eyes, a mass of fluffy greying hair, and a personality as large as her frame.

'Popsy…' Alessia began.

'My darling, what you need is a large steak. Look at your arms… matchsticks. The car's just outside, probably got some traffic cop writing a ticket, I left it on double yellows, so come on, let's go.'

'Popsy, this is Andrew Douglas.'

'Who?' She seemed to see me for the first time. 'How do you do.' She thrust out a hand, which I shook. 'Popsy Teddington. Glad to know you.'

'Andrew travelled with me…"

'Great,' Popsy said. 'Well done.' She had her eyes on the exit, searching for trouble.

'Can we ask him to lunch on Sunday?' Alessia said.

'What?' The eyes swivelled my way, gave me a quick assessment, came up with assent. 'OK darling, anything you like.' To me she said, 'Go to Lambourn, ask anybody, they'll tell you where I live.'

'All right,' I said.

Alessia said 'Thank you,' half under her breath, and allowed herself to be swept away, and I reflected bemusedly about irresistible forces in female form.

From Heathrow I went straight to the office, where Friday afternoon was dawdling along as usual.

The office, a nondescript collection of ground floor rooms along either side of a central corridor, had been designed decades before the era of open-plan, half-acre windows and Kew Gardens rampant. We stuck to the rabbit hutches with their strip lighting because they were comparatively cheap; and as most of us were partners, not employees, we each had a sharp interest in low overheads. Besides, the office was not where we mostly worked. The war went on on distant fronts: headquarters was for discussing strategy and writing up reports.

I dumped my suitcase in the hutch I sometimes called my own and wandered along the row, both to announce my return and to see who was in,

Gerry Clayton was there, making a complicated construction in folded paper.

'Hello,' he said. 'Bad boy, Tut tut.'

Gerry Clayton, tubby, asthmatic, fifty-three and bald, had appointed himself father-figure to many wayward sons. His speciality was insurance, and it was he who had recruited me from a firm at Lloyds, where I'd been a water-treading clerk looking for more purpose in life.

'Where's Twinkfetoes?' I said. 'I may as well get the lecture over.

'Twinkletoes, as you so disrespectfully call him, went to Venezuela this morning. The manager of Luca Oil got sucked.'

'Luca Oil?' My eyebrows rose. 'After all the work we did for them, setting up defences?'

Gerry shrugged, carefully knifing a sharp crease in stiff white paper with his thumbnail. 'That work was more than a year ago. You know what people are. Dead keen on precautions to start with, then perfunctory, then dead sloppy. Human nature. All any self-respecting dedicated kidnapper has to do is wait.

He was unconcerned about the personal fate of the abducted manager. He frequently said that if everyone took fortress-like precautions and never got themselves - in his word - sucked, we'd all be out of a job. One good kidnapping in a corporation encouraged twenty others to call us in to advise them how to avoid a similar embarrassment; and as he regularly pointed out, the how-not-to-get-sucked business was our bread and butter and also some of the jam.

Gerry inverted his apparently wrinkled heap of white paper and it fell miraculously into the shape of a cockatoo. When not advising anti-kidnap insurance policies to Liberty Market clients he sold origami patterns to a magazine, but no one grudged his paper-folding in the office. His mind seemed to coast along while he creased and tucked, and would come up often as if from nowhere with highly productive business ideas.