Dick Francis - The Danger

Eagler stroked thumb and forefinger down his nose. 'All right,' he said. 'We'll do it your way.' He glanced at me sideways. 'But to be honest, I don't think you'll succeed.'

Tony, back at the hotel, wasn't particularly hopeful either. He looked judiciously at the first eleven addresses and said he would first locate them by land and then approach by rowing boat, and those eleven alone would take him all night. He said he would take my car, which still had his gear stowed in it, and he'd be back in the morning.

'Sleep tomorrow, try again tomorrow night,' he said. "That brings us to Sunday. Hope those effing kidnappers meant it about giving Nerrity a week to collect the dough. They might be twitchy after the newspapers. Might advance the time of the drop. Hope effing not.'

He ate little for dinner and drove away when it was getting dark. I telephoned Alessia for news of Miranda, but except for her having come out of the house to call Alessia, nothing much had happened. Miranda continued to be distraught. The kidnappers had not been in touch again. John Nerrity still appeared to have faith in the ambush plan and had said he thought Miranda's near-collapse excessive.

'I wonder how he would have reacted if it had been Ordinand who'd been kidnapped?' I said.

Alessia nearly laughed. 'Don't talk of it. And it's been done.'

'Without success,' I agreed. 'Enough to put the horse-nappers off for life.

'Would your firm work to free a horse?' she asked curiously.

'Sure. Extortion is extortion, however many legs the victim has. Ransoms can be negotiated for anything.'

'Paintings?'

'Anything anyone cares about.'

'Like "I'll give you your ball back if you pay me a penny"?'

'Exactly like that.'

'Where are you?' she said. 'Not at home… I tried there.'

'An evening off,' I said. 'I'll tell you when I see you.'

'Do come on Sunday.'

'Yes, I'll try.'

We spent more time than necessary saying goodbye. I thought that I could easily have talked to her all evening, and wished vaguely that she felt secure enough to travel and drive alone.

Tony came back soon after dawn, waking me from a shallow sleep.

'There are two possibles out of those eleven places,' he said, stripping off for a shower. 'Nine of them are occupied by bona-fide effing holidaymakers. I went into four to make absolutely sure, but there they were, tucked up nice and unsuspecting, dads, mums, grannies and kids, all regular law-abiding citizens.'

Tony's skill, as he immodestly said, would make any professional night burglar look like a herd of elephants. 'A creeper as good as me,' I'd heard him say, 'can touch a person in bed and get them to turn over to stop them snoring. I could take the varnish off their nails, let alone the wallets from under the pillows. Good thing I'm effing honest.'

I waited while he stepped into the shower and sluiced lavishly about. 'There's two of those places,' he said, reappearing eventually and towelling his sandy-brown hair, 'that gave me bad vibes. One of them's got some sort of electronic gadget guarding the door: it sent my detection gear into a tizzy. I'd guess it's one of those do-it-yourself alarms you can buy anywhere to stop hotel creepers fitting you up while you're sleeping off the mickey the barman slipped you.' He dried his neck. 'So I left a couple of bugs on that one, and we'll go back soon and listen in.'

He wrapped the towel round his body like a sarong and sat on Miranda's bed. 'The other one's got no electronic gadgets that I could see, but it's three storeys high. Boatshed on the ground floor. Empty. Just water and effing fish. Above that, rooms overlooking the creek. Above that, more rooms. There's a sort of scrubby paved garden on two sides. Not much cover. I didn't fancy going in. Anyway I stuck two bugs on it, one on each of the upper floors. So we'll listen to them as well.'

'Cars?' I said.

'Can't tell.' He shook his head. 'Neither place has a garage. There were cars along the streets.' He stood up and began to dress, 'Come on then,' he said. 'Get out of the effing pit, and let's go fishing.'

He meant it literally, it seemed. By eight-thirty we were out on Itchenor Creek in the chilly morning in his rented rowing boat, throwing lines with maggots oh hooks over the side.

'Are you sure this is the right bait?' I said.

'Who cares? Bass swallow bare hooks sometimes, silly buggers.'

He paddled the boat along like a born waterman with one oar in a loop of rope over the stem. No creaking rowlocks, he explained. Ultra-silent travel: high on the S.A.S. curriculum.

'The tide was low at five this morning,' he said. 'You can't get a boat ashore at low tide in a lot of places, so if they landed the kid from that motor-boat it was probably somewhere where there's water at half-tide. Both our possibles qualify, just.

Our rowing boat drifted along on slowly flooding water. The fish disdained the maggots and there was a salty smell of seaweed.

'We're just coming to the place with the electronic bulldog, Tony said. 'Hold this aerial so it looks like a fishing rod.' He untelescoped about six feet of thin silvery rod and handed it over, and I found there was a line tied to the end of it with a small weight. 'Chuck the weight in the water,' he said, bending down to fiddle with the radio receiver in what looked like a fishing-gear box. 'Keep your eyes on the briny and pin back the lugs.'

I did all of those things but nothing much happened. Tony grunted and did some fine tuning, but in the end he said. 'The lazy so-and-so's aren't awake. The bugs are working. We'll come back when we've checked the other house.'

I nodded and he paddled a good way northwards before stopping again to deploy the lines. Again we drifted on the tide, apparently intent on catching our breakfast, and Tony bent to his knobs.

The voice when it came nearly tipped me out of the boat.

'Give the little bleeder his breakfast and tape off his noise if he starts whining.'

The voice - unmistakably the voice - which we had heard on the tape in John Nerrity's house. Not over loud, but crystal clear.

'My God,' I said numbly, not believing it.

'Bingo,' Tony said with awe. 'Holy effing hell.'

A different voice on the tape said, 'He won't eat it. What's the point of taking it up there?'

'Son,' said the first voice with exaggerated patience, 'do we want our little goldmine to starve to death? No we don't. Take him his bread and jam, and shut up.'

'I don't like this job,' the second voice complained. 'Straight up, I don't.'

'You were keen enough when I put you up for it. Good work, you said; those were your words.'

'I didn't reckon on the kid being so…'

'So what?'

'So stubborn.'

'He's not that bad. Pining, most like. You concentrate on the payola and get up the bleeding stairs.'

Tony flipped a couple of switches and for a while we sat in silence listening to the faint slap of the water against our own drifting boat; and then the second voice, sounding much more distant, said, 'Here you are, kid, eat this.'

There was no audible reply.

'Eat it,' the voice said with irritation, and then, after a pause, 'I'd stuff it down your throat if you were mine, you snotty little sod.'

Tony said 'Charming' under his breath and began to pull in the lines. 'Heard enough, haven't we? That second bug is on the top floor, facing the street.'

I nodded. Tony reversed his switches and the second voice, downstairs again, said 'He's just lying there staring, same as usual. Gives me the willies. Sooner we're shot of him, the better.'

'Patience,' the first voice said, as if humouring an idiot. 'You got to let the man sell his horse. Stands to reason. One week we gave him. One week is what he'll get.'

'We're not collecting the five million, though, are we?' He sounded aggrieved. 'Not a chance.'