BLINDFOLD (30 page)

`Yeah, I know. I was thinking about that on the way home. But Joey's actual words were "copper-coloured" and that's not so common. I guess, too, it was because Joey mentioned an Italian in the same breath. I instantly thought of Rosetti and went from there.'

`You told me Joey said there was a Spaniard,' Pippa protested. `One way and another, it seems to me that you're stretching the facts to fit an idea you've had. And it's not much of an idea, come to that. You can't even say why they might have "borrowed" him - if that's what they did.'

Gideon sighed. `Okay, I admit I got a bit carried away but there just seemed to be a lot of coincidences, and I reckon several coincidences add up to a probability.'

Pippa snorted. `And that's accepted mathematical reasoning, is it?'

`Well, if it isn't, it should be,' he asserted, enjoying the exchange.

`If I were you, I'd speak to Tom about it,' she told him. `After all, if Rosetti is up to something that involves his horse, he's got a right to know about it, hasn't he? One way or another, it would be better to get it out into the open.'

`Unless Tom already knows about it,' Gideon pointed out, thinking of the stud owner's sharp reaction that afternoon. `What if he's involved?'

`Well, that wouldn't make sense,' Pippa protested. `If it was his horse he wouldn't need to sneak around at the dead of night, would he?'

`I suppose not. But on the other hand, how could he not know? None of it makes sense. But maybe you're right. I'll talk to him.' To that end, he fished his mobile out of his pocket and found the Collinses' number in its memory.

Mary answered. `Tom's not here at the moment, I'm afraid, Gideon. Can I take a message?'

,I really wanted to speak to him. Would he be in later, if I were to come over?'

`No, I'm afraid not. He'll come in for his meal but he said he was going to do some work on the cottage this evening. You know, Roly French's old place. You could always pop in to see him there, if you wanted. I'm sure he wouldn't mind.'

`Okay, perhaps I will,' Gideon said. `Sevenish be okay?'

Mary thought it would. `I'll let him know you're coming. There's nothing wrong, is there?'

`No. Just something I wanted to clear up with him. Don't worry.'

Gideon disconnected, wishing it was indeed likely to be that

simple. He didn't know how the hell he was going to broach the subject.

`I need to be there about seven this evening, so could Rachel possibly come over here for an hour or two?' he asked Pippa. `She's welcome to, if she doesn't mind putting up with Giles. I shall be out myself for a bit. So if your next question is can you borrow the car, the answer is no!'

`The thought never crossed my mind.' Gideon was all innocence. `So where are you off to? Got a hot date?'

`That's for me to know and you to wonder.'

`It's all the same to me, Pips,' he said, shrugging. `Well, if you're sure Giles won't mind. . .'

`I'm positive,' she assured him. `He's never yet complained about having to entertain a pretty female and I'm sure he won't start now.'

As Gideon rode the Norton towards Winterbourne Shires later that evening, he found himself going over their conversation again in his mind.

He recognised Pippa's argument, that there were probably dozens of chestnut stallions around, as a sound one, but he still couldn't shake his conviction that there were too many coincidences. The problem still remained as to just what anyone had to gain from kidnapping a well-known stallion that they couldn't name as a sire. He'd flirted with the idea that if Rosetti was involved, then maybe AI could have been used, but the same objections applied. There was only value in it if Sox's name could be revealed, and even had that been the case, it was a hell of a risk for what could only be a small return.

Turning off the main road in due course, he was wondering variously if Giles fostered any serious feelings for Rachel, and who, if anyone, Pippa was going out with, when he became suddenly and somewhat forcibly aware of a vehicle looming large in his mirror, its lights blindingly bright. Now it had been brought to his attention, he recalled that it had been on his tail for a while, certainly since the outskirts of Dorchester, and possibly longer.

He wasn't normally a nervous bike rider but something about the way the van was holding the centre of what was not a terribly wide road made it seem more than a little menacing. It couldn't have been much more than ten feet off the rear wheel of the Norton, and at the best part of fifty miles an hour in the dark, that was a great deal too close for comfort.

Gideon was certainly not out to prove anything. Playing games with other road users when you're on a motorbike seemed to him to be little short of suicidal, even if they are getting up your nose. He slowed down slightly and pulled in to his side of the highway. Although the road wasn't wide, there was room aplenty to overtake, and that's what the van did.

Unfortunately, what it also did was cut sharply across the front wheel of the Norton in a screeching, sliding swerve.

Gideon hadn't a prayer.

One moment the road ahead was clear, the next his vision was filled with a wall of white metal. His instinctive attempt at avoidance was a physical impossibility and he and the bike hit the side of the van together with a deafening bang.

Hardly losing any speed, the van swerved back on to the tarmac, and after weaving from side to side a time or two, straightened up and powered away.

This much, Gideon sensed rather than saw, for as he and the Norton rebounded off the van they parted company and Gideon was flung headlong into the hedge, ending up in the ditch below it.

When his world stopped doing somersaults, he found himself more or less face down in the muddy stream that flowed in the bottom of the ditch, with icy water soaking freely into all parts not immediately protected by his leather jacket.

His first thought, as he lifted his head and spat gritty water, was: That's it. No more bikes. I'll get a car.

His second, and very unwelcome, thought was that whoever had been at the wheel of the van hadn't run him off the road by accident, and given his recent history, he couldn't even rely on its having been a case of road rage. If the van had indeed been following him with this intent, then it was entirely possible that whoever it was would return to see the results of his handiwork.

With this in mind, Gideon lost no further time in pushing himself to his knees and climbing over the lip of the ditch. As he stood painfully upright, his sodden jeans stiffened almost immediately in the biting wind and the excess water made its way unerringly into his boots.

Gideon swore. It was a clear night but the moon was waning and gave little light. He could just make out the shape of the Norton, wrapped around a roadside oak in a very final manner, and didn't need any more than the available light to convince him that he wouldn't be going any further on that.

Removing his helmet, and the thick leather gauntlets that had very probably saved his hands from being badly cut, he reached to his belt for his mobile phone. He turned it on with little optimism, for the road he'd been following was in something of a river valley and the reception would never have been great, even had the crash not reduced the antenna to no more than a jagged stump. It beeped comfortingly but could locate no signal whatsoever.

The mini camera in its zipped leather case seemed to have fared better, and Gideon took a couple of shots of the wrecked motorbike for the record before deciding on his best course of action.

He could hear the roar of the traffic on the busy main road, half a mile or so away, but Gutter Lane, in which Roly French's old cottage was situated, was only two or three hundred yards ahead, and the most sensible option appeared to be to head for that as planned. With any luck, Tom would have a phone he could use to call for a salvage truck, a taxi, and the police. Shivering with cold, he set off.

The walk to the cottage took no more than five minutes but, chilled to the bone and in constant dread of the van returning, it

felt much longer. Consequently it was with some relief that Gideon rounded the last corner and saw Tom Collins' Range Rover parked on the cinder track outside.

The ground floor was in darkness but there was a light at one of the upstairs windows, and as he approached over the twenty feet or so of frosty grass in front, Gideon heard the sound of the front door opening and by the faint light of the moon, could just make out a bulky figure in the porch.

`Tom,' he called, and the figure turned in the open doorway, one hand raised to the light switch.

There was a blinding orange flash, an instantaneous, earshattering boom, and a massive whoosh of air lifted Gideon off his feet and threw him back against the Range Rover, which in turn rocked on its wheels. For the second time that evening he rebounded off metal and hit the ground. The noise of the blast seemed to roll on and on, and after a moment a shower of fragments rained down on him, accompanied by thick choking dust.

Desperately winded, Gideon lay where he had fallen, face down, his ears ringing and the taste of blood in his mouth. Behind his closed eyelids was imprinted the last image he had seen, the black silhouette of a man against a billowing wall of flame.

Gradually the sound of falling debris died away, and the searing heat retreated. Gideon opened his eyes almost reluctantly, rolled on to his side and propped himself up on one elbow, still finding breathing difficult.

What was left of Roly French's cottage stood starkly against the starlit sky, lit here and there by small flickering flames in its depths, but Gideon hardly gave it a glance.

On the path in front of the devastated building, some six or eight feet away, lay a body. Gideon struggled on to his hands and knees and moved closer.

Within moments he could see that it was Tom Collins, and he didn't need a doctor to tell him that the stud owner was very dead.

TWELVE

The day of Tom Collins' funeral was wet and cold. Sleety rain blew lazily but relentlessly down from a slate-grey sky, obscuring the horizons behind a misty curtain. A few early daffodils bobbed and curtsied in the churchyard, determinedly cheerful but almost out of place, as if someone had had the bad taste to turn up in a party dress.

Gideon stood respectfully among the mourners, rain dripping off his hair and the end of his nose, and best shoes sodden in the rough, hastily cut grass.

The service had been fairly long; the church was packed and several people had wished to say their piece. Tom Collins had been generally liked and respected, it seemed. A rough diamond but a reliable friend in need. As an epitaph it was all one could ask really, Gideon reflected, and he wouldn't have hesitated to agree with it a few short days before. But now he had the uneasy feeling that there might have been a little more to Tom Collins than met the eye.

The body was committed to the earth and the necessary words spoken in what just stopped short of being unseemly haste, but none of the mourners, red-nosed and shivering in the misery of the drizzle, looked as though they were about to complain. Indeed, Mary, leaning on the arm of her son, looked as though she wished it was all over. Her eyes dark-ringed and swollen in her pale face, she kept her head bowed and held a handkerchief almost constantly to her nose and mouth. Beside her, Anthony held himself rigid and expressionless as he had throughout the proceedings.

Gideon felt for them both.

On the other side of Mary, and holding a large black umbrella over the three of them, was a plumply pretty blonde girl whom Gideon remembered as being Annabel, the daughter currently studying at university. She wore Doc Marten's and an assortment of black garments that none but a student would even contemplate wearing together, topped off by a multitude of earrings and a nose stud.

. Gideon followed the assorted friends and family as they filed thankfully through the lych-gate and away to their cars, each stopping briefly under the tiled roof to offer their sympathy to Mary and the children. In his turn, Gideon shook hands with Anthony and Annabel and hugged their mother warmly, intending nevertheless to make his excuses and slip away without going back to the wake at the farm.

`You will come back with us, won't you?' Mary said, keeping hold of his hands.

`Well . . .' Gideon hesitated, his heart sinking.

`Please.' She drew him closer, adding in a low voice, `I need to talk to you. It's important.'

'Of course I will,' Gideon heard himself say, resigned to the prospect of at least an hour, if not two, of polite small talk with people he'd never seen before and would probably never see again.

`Thank you.' Mary squeezed his hands tightly before letting go and Gideon felt slightly ashamed. After all, what was an hour or two in the grand scheme of things?

It was in fact over three hours before the company at the farm had thinned out enough to allow Mary to devote much time to Gideon. Grief had not dimmed her hospitality and she'd prepared a huge spread. Few of the assembled mourners allowed their distress to stand noticeably in the way of their appetite.

Gideon watched Mary bustling about carrying plates of nibbles, replenishing wine glasses and mopping up the occasional spillage with seemingly indomitable energy. His first thought was that it was wrong that she should have to work so hard on such an occasion but he quickly realised the non-stop activity was her way of coping. It left her less time to talk; less time to have to endure the well-meant but emotionally torturing sympathy of others.

Gideon had counted Tom amongst his friends but he'd always been closer to Mary, and in that sense the tragedy was in a way at second-hand to him. After the initial shock of Tom's violent death, his first thoughts had been for her. For as long as he'd known her, her family had been her world. How would she cope?

Most of the rest of that tragic evening had faded into a blur. He recalled his relief at finding the stud owner's mobile phone in the Range Rover; the irritation of having to keep at bay the halfdozen or so voyeurs drawn by the noise and glow of the explosion; and the eventual arrival of the emergency services, including the blessedly capable Logan.