Dick Francis - The Danger

'Anyway, we had the kid.' He made another sharply frustrated gesture. 'And now… this.'

Miranda's mother arrived conveniently at that point, and shortly afterwards I put Alessia in my car and talked to Tony quietly in the garden.

'Thursday, tomorrow,' I said. 'Wittering's a seaside place. Good chance the same people will be on the beach tomorrow as today, wouldn't you think?'

'The Super in Chichester, would he buy that?' Tony asked.

'Yes, I'm sure.'

'I wouldn't mind a day myself of sitting on the effing pebbles.'

'The tide's going out in the mornings,' I said. 'How about if you take the stuff down to Eagler on the train, and I'll join you for a paddle when I've buzzed up the City?'

He nodded. "See you at the Breakwater Hotel, then?'

'Yeah. Tell them at Reception that we're taking over Miranda's room. She's booked in until Saturday. Tell them the boy's ill, she's had to take him home, we're her brothers, we've come down to collect her clothes and her car… and pay her bill.'

'I don't know that sitting around in the Breakwater too long will do much good.'

I grinned in the darkness. 'Make a change from the switchboard, though.'

'You're an effing rogue, I always knew it.'

He vanished into the shadows without noise, departing on foot to his distantly parked car, and I climbed in beside Alessia and pointed our nose towards Lambourn.

I asked if she were hungry and would like to stop somewhere for a late dinner, but she shook her head. 'Miranda and I ate cornflakes and toast until our eyes crossed. And you were right, she seemed a bit calmer by the time we left. But oh… when I think of that little boy… so alone, without his mother… I can't bear it.'

I spent the next morning in Fleet Street swearing various business-page editors to secrecy and enlisting their aid, and then drove back to West Wittering, reflecting that I'd spent at least twelve of the past thirty hours with my feet on the pedals.

Arriving at the Breakwater in jeans and sports shirt, I found Tony had checked in and left a message that he was out on the beach. I went down there and came across him sitting on a gaudy towel, wearing swimming trunks and displaying a lot of impressive keep-fit muscle. I dropped down beside him on a towel of my own and watched the Life of the beach ebb and flow.

'Your Eagler already had the same idea,' Tony said. 'Half the holidaymakers on this patch of sand are effing plain clothes men quizzing the other half. They've been out here since breakfast.'

It appeared that Tony had got on very well with Eagler. Tony considered he had 'constructive effing ideas', which was Tony's highest mark of approval. 'Eagler's already sorted out what arson device was used to fire the dinghy. The dinghy was stolen, what a surprise.'

Some small children were digging a new sandcastle where Dominic's had been wiped out by the tide.

'A little girl of about eight gave Miranda the kidnapper's note,' I said. 'What do you bet she's still here?'

Without directly answering Tony rose to his feet and loped down onto the sand, where he was soon passing the time of day with two agile people kicking a football.

They'll look for her,' he said, returning. 'They've found plenty who saw the boat. Some who saw who left it. The one with the green shorts has a stat of Giuseppe in his pocket, but no luck with that, so far.'

The two boys who had helped me carry the boat up from the grasp of the tide came by and said hello, recognising me.

'Hi,' I said. 'I see the boat's gone, what was left of it.'

One of them nodded. 'We came back along here after supper and there were two fishermen types winching it onto a pickup truck. They didn't know whose it was. They said the coastguards had sent them to fetch it into a yard in Itchenor.'

'Do you live here?' I asked.

They shook their heads. 'We rent a house along there for August.' One of them pointed eastwards, along the beach. 'We come every year. Mum and Dad like it.'

'You're brothers?' I asked.

'Twins, actually. But fraternal, as you see.'

They picked up some pebbles and threw them at an empty Coke can for target practice, and presently moved off.

'Gives you a thought or two, doesn't it?' Tony said.

'Yes.'

'Eagler wanted to see us anyway at about five,' he said. 'In the Silver Sail cafe in that place the boy mentioned. Itchenor. Sounds like some disgusting effing disease.'

The football-kicker in green shorts was presently talking to a little girl whose mother bustled up in alarm and protectively shepherded her nestling away.

'Never mind,' Tony said. 'That smashing bit of goods in the pink bikini over there is a policewoman. What'll you bet green-shorts will be talking to her in two effing ticks?'

'Not a pebble,' I said.

We watched while green-shorts got into conversation with pink-bikini. 'Nicely done,' Tony said approvingly. 'Very natural.'

The pink-bikini girl stopped looking for shells exclusively and started looking for small girls as well, and I took my shirt off and began turning a delicate shade of lobster.

No dramas occurred on the beach. The hot afternoon warmed to tea-time. The football-kickers went off across the breakwaters and the pink-bikini went in for a swim. Tony and I stood up, stretched, shook and folded our towels, and in good holidaymaker fashion got into my car and drove westwards to Itchenor.

Eagler, inconspicuous in an open-necked shirt, baggy grey flannels and grubby tennis shoes, was drinking tea in the Silver Sail and writing a picture postcard.

'May we join you?' I asked politely.

'Sit down, laddie, sit down.'

It was an ordinary sort of cafe: sauce bottles on the tables, murals of sailing boats round the walls, brown tiled floor, plastic stacking chairs in blue. A notice by a cash desk stated 'The best chips on the coast' and a certain warm oiliness in the atmosphere tended to prove their popularity.

'My WPC found your girl child,' Eagler said, sticking a stamp on his postcard. 'Name of Sharon Wellor, seven years old, staying in a guest house until Saturday. She couldn't describe the man who asked her to deliver the note. She says he gave her some fruit pastilles, and she's scared now because her mother's always told her never to take sweets from strangers.'

'Did she know whether he was old or young?' I asked.

'Everyone over twenty is old to a seven-year-old,' Eagler said. 'She told my WPC where she's staying, though, so perhaps we'll ask again.' He glanced at us. 'Come up with any more ideas, have you?'

'Yeah,' Tony said. 'Kidnappers often don't transport their victims very far from their snatching point. Lowers the risk.'

'In holiday resorts,' I said mildly, 'half the houses are for rent.'

Eagler fiddled aimlessly with his teaspoon. 'Thousands of them,' he said dryly.

'But one of them might have been rented sometime last week.'

We waited, and after a while he nodded. 'We'll do the legwork. Ask the travel agents, estate agents, local papers.' He paused, then said without emphasis, The kid may have been taken off in a boat.'

Tony and I paid fast attention.

'There was a motor-boat there,' Eagler said. 'One of those putt-putt things for hire by the hour. My detective constables were told that when the dinghy went on fire the other boat was bobbing round in the shallows with no one in it, but a man in swimming trunks was standing knee-deep in the water holding on to it by the bows. Then, our informants said, the dinghy suddenly went up in flames, very fast, with a whoosh, and everyone ran towards it, naturally. Our informants said that afterwards the motor-boat had gone, which they thought perfectly normal as its time was probably up.' He stopped, looking at us neutrally but with a smile of satisfaction plainly hovering.

'Who were your informants?' I asked.