BLINDFOLD (8 page)

`Mm. She's not too keen.'

`Well, I've gone off the idea myself, a little,' Giles admitted. `They have this way of looking at you ... I

'They can be very dangerous, I believe.'

Giles looked crestfallen. `The guy I spoke to didn't say that. In fact, he said they were very easy to keep.'

`He wasn't trying to sell you some, by any chance?' Gideon asked, eyebrows raised.

`Okay. Point taken. It was just an idea.'

`If you want to do something, why don't you build Pippa a decent cross-country course to school the horses over,' Gideon suggested. `You could even hold a one-day-event yourselves. You've got room.'

`Does she want one?' Giles asked doubtfully. `She's never said.'

`She'd be tickled pink,' Gideon assured him. For all his lively mind and abundant generosity, Giles often missed what was right under his nose.

`Yeah, maybe. Anyway, what's the news on your front? Confronted any more desperate criminals?'

`Not for a day or two,' Gideon said. `No. No news. I should think that's probably the end of it.'

`Well, I call that downright poor-spirited!' Giles exclaimed. `Where's your sense of adventure, man? Don't you want to know what it was all about?'

`Not enough to get beaten up for it. Or worse,' he added darkly. `Besides, I wouldn't even know where to start looking.' Giles wasn't about to give up. `Well, what about the barn they took you to? Couldn't you look for that?'

`I did.' Gideon told him about his search.

`Ah, so you do have some red blood in your veins, after all.' `Yes,' he agreed dryly. `And I'd like it to stay there, if it's all the same to you.'

`I like your friends,' Rachel told Gideon as they walked back to the Gatehouse.

`So do I,' he responded flippantly.

She ignored him. `Pippa has offered to take me riding if I stay long enough.'

`Well, I should take her up on it,' Gideon advised. `If you want to, that is. The garage may very likely take several days, I should think. Do you ride?'

`I have done, but I'm not very good. I'd love to try again. Would you come too?' She watched his face for his response.

`I might. It depends when you go.' Rachel looked pleased.

Gideon's resolve to spend the best part of the next day working on his much-neglected exhibition pieces, was tested first by the allure of the cold, bright, frosty morning and secondly by a telephone call from Naomi, shortly after breakfast.

Rachel, in spite of his slightly embarrassed protests, had taken him up on his joke about decorating the spare room, which she

temporarily occupied, and had begun to plot its transformation. Gideon gave in, seeing in her a need to justify her presence, if not pay her way. And the room was sorely in need of attention, it had to be said. Giles would be pleased.

Gideon dutifully set out his easel and pastels, sat for a full twenty minutes staring at the paper with its half-completed painting and seeing nothing, and then got up and made a cup of coffee he didn't really want. Tramping upstairs with a cup for Rachel, he found himself telling her he was going out for a couple of hours.

Rachel assured him she'd be all right, and within ten minutes he was on the Norton, bound for the wildlife sanctuary and his sister.

Fleetingly it occurred to him that he might return to find Rachel gone and all his valuables with her, but the idea didn't seriously take root in his mind. Unless she had an accomplice with transport, she wouldn't get far with very much.

What if she'd been planted by Curly and Co.? he wondered in an amused flight of fancy, and dismissed the thought just as easily. Rachel's big, expressive eyes were a mirror for her soul and in their troubled depths Gideon sensed traces of some unspoken fear, but they were the eyes of a frightened child, not a scheming criminal.

Riding along the Dorset lanes in the bright sunlight, he couldn't have said with certainty just what had prompted him to visit Naomi again so soon. It wasn't anything she'd said; more what she hadn't said. Although they had spoken for almost a quarter of an hour, she had rung off without ever really saying why she'd called.

It was possible, he supposed, that the lure of a ride on the bike on such a morning had influenced his decision to check on her but he didn't feel it was entirely that. Whatever the reason, he hadn't been in the mood for painting, and a visit to the Sanctuary was as good a way to spend the morning as any.

He was barely a hundred yards from the place when it happened.

Riding along the narrow lane, the Norton doing forty or so, Gideon was totally unprepared for the small figure that came hurtling out of a gateway to his left, almost under the wheels of the motorbike.

He swore and swerved violently, the Norton skidding on the loose stones at the side of the lane as he tried to brake. Mounting the grassy verge, the bike pitched and bucked like an unbroken horse and finally succumbed to the forces of gravity, throwing Gideon off sideways into the hedge.

He was not best pleased.

He extricated himself from the brambles and broken twiggery, supposing he should be thankful there hadn't been a ditch, to find himself under the scrutiny of a scruffy, tow-headed and apparently entirely unrepentant child.

`My brother says people shouldn't ride big bikes if they can't control them,' the child announced, looking from Gideon to where the Norton had come to rest, its engine still ticking over and back wheel spinning. `He says half of them should never be allowed on the road.'

Gideon nearly choked. `And what does he say about running out into the road without looking?' he asked irritably, taking his helmet off and removing a hawthorn twig from the collar of his leather jacket.

The lad stared up at him through narrowed, insolent eyes. `My brother's bigger than you,' he said with the air of one who thought that answered everything.

`Well,' Gideon said, `if you want to get any bigger, you'd better start looking where you're going. I only missed you by inches!' `You were going too fast.'

`And so were you!' Gideon retorted, unwarily allowing himself to be drawn into the childish argument.

He reached down and switched the motorbike's engine off, pulling it upright with an effort. He was relieved to see that it seemed to have escaped serious damage. One bent mirror and quantities of grassy mud plastered in every conceivable nook and cranny appeared to be the extent of it. He removed the worst of the mud and straightened up to find that the lad was still watching him. `It's not a bad bike,' the kid said judiciously in his curiously sing-song voice. He stood there in denim dungarees and a nonetoo-cleanjumper, his blond, tousled head tilted slightly to one side and bright blue eyes regarding the Norton with reluctant admiration.

Gideon's sense of humour came sidling back.

`But your brother's bike is better,' he suggested, with the ghost of a smile.

`Well, it will be,' the urchin asserted, `when he gets it going. He's gonna take me out on it.'

`So, where's your brother now?' Gideon asked, feeling that it was high time somebody else took responsibility for the brat. He looked back at the driveway from which the child had hurtled. `Is that where you live?'

He was rewarded with a look of deep scorn. `Me! Live there? Get real!f

'Well, where then?' Gideon asked with what he felt was commendable patience. `And what were you doing in there, if you don't live there?F

'None of your business.'

`No, I guess not,' he agreed. `But I expect whoever lives there would be interested to hear what you've got to say.'

The child regarded him sullenly for a long moment. `I was looking for my dog,' he said finally. `He saw a squirrel and ran off. I went after him but this man chased me.'

`What man?'

`The man that came out of the house. He 'ad a stick,' he added for good measure.

`What were you doing?' Gideon asked suspiciously.

`Nothin'. Just trying to catch Tyke. I didn't touch anythin'. Honest!'

If Gideon thought the child's denial was a little too vehement, he kept it to himself.

`Well, we'd better go and see if we can find this dog, then,' he said reluctantly. `But if I find you've been lying to me, I'll hand you over to the man with the stick!'

The blue eyes widened and the curls shook. `I haven'. Honest!' Wondering what he'd let himself in for, Gideon wheeled the Norton back along the lane and into the curving driveway, where he propped it on its stand, screened from the road by the hedge. As they set off towards the house they exchanged names and he learned that the diminutive figure determinedly trying to match strides with him went by the name of Jez and purported to be twelve years old. This last he doubted, but he held his peace.

Jez had been in favour of approaching the building commandostyle, under cover of the shrubbery, calling the dog as they went; a notion that Gideon dismissed in no uncertain manner. His involvement in the whole affair was uncomfortable enough as it was and wouldn't be helped in any way, shape or form by being discovered skulking in the undergrowth. Jez was visibly disappointed.

The house, when reached, proved to be sizeable. Not quite on the scale of Graylings Priory but not far short. An unlovely, grey block of a building, it sat squarely in a sea of mown lawns and dormant rhododendrons, with rows of shuttered windows like closed eyes, repelling unwelcome visitors. Above the double front doors a stone bore the carved inscription Lyddon Grange.

Gideon mounted the steps and rang the doorbell. Nobody came.

`Let's go,' Jez suggested.

`No.' Gideon shook his head firmly. `We came for the dog. We'll get the dog.' A suspicion occurred. `There is a dog?' he said, fixing Jez with a warning eye.

The curls nodded vigorously. `Of course there is!'

Gideon took time to glance around him. On a sweep of gravel to his right a number of vehicles were parked, among them a gleaming Jaguar, a powerful sports saloon and a blue van with Barratt the Boiler Man emblazoned on the side, along with a childish representation of a boiler gushing smoke, and a telephone number. Gideon leaned on the bell again.

On the third ring the door opened. The man behind it was of medium height and heavy build, with short-cropped hair, tattoos and an earring. He looked as though he might well be ex-Forces. `Yes?' His tone was decidedly short on welcome.

`Sorry to bother you. We're looking for a dog that ran in here. It's a-' Gideon looked round helplessly for Jez and found him standing at the foot of the steps almost out of sight behind the wall. `A sheepdog,' Jez supplied. `A puppy.'

`A sheepdog puppy,' he confirmed, turning back to the door. `Well, I haven't got it, have I? What does this look like? Battersea bloody Dogs' Home?'

`I wouldn't know,' Gideon responded mildly. `I've never been there. All we want is your permission to look for the dog.'

The man's eyes narrowed. `If it's a little black and white bugger, I kicked it into them bushes about ten minutes ago,' he said, pointing across the drive to a stand of rhododendron. `It yelped a bit,' he added with satisfaction.

`If you've hurt him . . .' Jez cried from the foot of the steps, anger lending him courage.

`You'll what?' The man enquired, sneering. `You gonna bite my ankles like that dog of yours did?'

`I'm beginning to like this dog,' Gideon murmured. `Jez, go and call Tyke, will you?'

Jez obediently turned away, but couldn't resist muttering, `You wait. My brother will sort you out.'

'Yeah?' The man said, looking belligerently at Gideon. `Well?F 'I'm not his brother,' Gideon said, weary of the whole business. Across the drive, Jez had disappeared into the bushes and presently came out cradling a small black and white bundle. He carried the pup over to Gideon who was just preparing to take their collective leave when he noticed that the child had tears in his eyes.

`Tyke's bleedin',' Jez said on a sob. `He must've kicked him in the mouth and now he's bleedin'.'

Gideon was normally slow to anger but cruelty to animals did the trick every time. He turned back to the man at the door. `There was no need for that,' he said through clenched teeth.

The man merely grinned. `So?'

'Hit him, Gideon!' Jez advised from the bottom of the steps. Gideon could cheerfully have strangled the pair of them but certainly had no intention of starting a brawl over a point of principle with somebody so obviously devoid of them. Keeping a tight rein on his temper, he turned away, telling the bloodthirsty child that it was time to leave.

`My brother would've hit him!' Jez muttered. `Yes, I expect he would,' Gideon agreed dryly.

The tattooed one hadn't finished with him, however. `A big mouth but no guts to back it up!' he shouted scornfully after them. Jez looked up at Gideon hopefully but was disappointed. `Come on, just ignore him.'

A burst of laughter followed them but was cut short as a new voice made itself heard.

`What is the meaning of this confounded racket?' it enquired testily in high-pitched tones. `How in hell's name am I supposed to work with all that bloody noise going on?'

As Gideon turned, an elderly man appeared in the doorway, wiping his hands on a piece of paint-smeared cloth and glowering at each of the offenders in turn. Of less than medium height, he was nevertheless an arresting figure, his spare frame topped by a crown of snowy hair which waved untidily around a bald pate speckled with liver spots. His face was weathered and lined, and he had deep-set brown eyes, a nose that would have been the pride and joy of any storybook wizard, a moustache and Van Dyke beard. A pair of pince-nez perched near the end of the improbable nose and the upper part of his body was covered by a painter's smock. Gideon felt sure he had seen him somewhere before.

The acute, monkey-like eyes finished their survey of the unwanted visitors and returned to the man at his side.

`Who are these people? Why haven't you got rid of them?' he demanded. `What the hell do I pay you for?'

`I told them to get out but they wouldn't go,' Tattoos complained sullenly.

The snowy head tipped forward again, and Gideon and Jez were subjected to a deep frown over the top of the man's pince-nez. Jez slid sideways to shelter from the glare behind Gideon.