'So that could explain Chris's interest. Son of an old employee, give him a hand-up.'

'Your belief in the philanthropic impulses of the ruling cla.s.ses is touching, Sixsmith. In my experience, the nearest they get to giving anyone a hand-up is their hands up their maids' skirts. Good Lord, I wonder could this lad Steve be Porphyry's child?'

'Shoot, Butcher, you do get carried away on them socialist principles of yours,' said Joe angrily. 'Chris would only have been a kid himself when this Waring boy was born.'

'Very precocious, the upper cla.s.ses,' said Butcher. 'OK, how about his father? Steve could be his half brother.'

'Talking through your wig, Butcher,' said Joe. 'Anyway, don't matter whose brother this guy Waring is, can't see how him taking off has any connection with my case.'

Butcher might at this point have justly pointed out that it was Joe who'd started the speculation flowing in the first place. Instead she said, 'All right, Joe. But relationship apart, there is one very obvious reason why Porphyry might not want anyone to show too much interest in looking for Waring.'

Joe said, 'What reason?'

Butcher shook her head sorrowfully and said, 'I don't know how it is with detectives, Joe, but a good lawyer never discounts any possibility. It's the only way you can be prepared for whatever the opposition may throw at you.'

'Meaning?'

'Meaning it could be that Waring, going about his business near the sixteenth fairway, observed Mr Porphyry take a ball out of his pocket and set it down in a good lie at the edge of the wood. When Porphyry realized he'd been observed, he suggested to Waring that he might care to take a long, well-paid holiday far, far away. Of course, at that moment he would not realize that even as he spoke his Nemesis, Jimmy Postgate, was fishing his ball out of the pool.'

It took Joe a few seconds to pick the meaning out of this verbiage.

'You mean, Chris really did cheat? No way! No way!'

'Your belief is touching,' said Butcher. 'Reminds me of all the times I've heard devoted mothers stand up in court and a.s.sure the jury that there is no way their beloved sons would commit a.s.sault or burglary or murder.'

'I'm not his mother,' said Joe. 'Anyway, if he's guilty, why would he hire me? And why would King Rat try to get me out of the way?'

'I'm working on that,' said Butcher. 'I've been trying to find out more about the set-up at the Royal Hoo. If they'd gone public, it would be easy, but as it's a private company, there's a problem with getting hold of the details.'

'Why don't I ask Chris Porphyry?' said Joe.

Butcher looked at him for a moment then said in wonderment, 'There you go again. Just when I'm starting to feel that perhaps I've got it all wrong and that looking at you as an investigator, what we see is in fact what we get, out pops an idea so obvious that a fine-tuned legal intellect like mine has overlooked it. Yes, why don't you ask him. Now, I've got work to do, Sixsmith. Enjoy Spain.'

Joe had put Spain to the back of his mind, which was an area of the Sixsmith intellect so crowded that a Health and Safety inspector would have condemned it out of hand. All kinds of stuff got dumped there and much of it was never reclaimed. But some decision times were not permanently postponable.

'You think I should go, Butcher?' he said through the open door.

'Didn't you tell King you'd take the job?'

'I suppose. But if it's just a trick to get shot of me ...'

'You got any evidence of that, Sixsmith?'

'No. Was hoping you'd come up with something,' he said sadly.

'You were? I'm touched. But I haven't. And as your legal adviser I have to say that a verbal contract in the presence of a witness is binding. And in Ratcliffe King's case, the binding's done with piano wire. So my advice is, go. Don't pay me now, I'll send you a bill.'

She began to walk away.

'I bet you will, too. Thanks a bunch,' yelled Joe after her.

He started up the Morris. He had a lot to think about, but as he left the car park he didn't forget to check in the mirror to see if there was any sign of the Cruiser and its twitchy owner. There wasn't.

One less thing to worry about, thought Joe.

But it still left plenty.

What's Become of Waring?.

Back in his flat he shouted h.e.l.lo to Whitey but got no response. It didn't surprise him. During this hot weather the cat spent most of the day sleeping, only rousing himself during the cool of the evening to sally forth and check on his empire. As the flat was on the seventh floor, sentimental visitors sometimes opined it was a long way for a little cat to have to make his way down all those stairs and back up again. Long and dangerous, some of them said.

But if the visitors visited often enough, almost certainly a day would come when, as they got into the lift downstairs, they would find themselves joined by Whitey, who would then ride up to the seventh with them.

'But we never see him going down with us,' a visitor might occasionally say.

'Going down he don't use the lift,' Joe would reply.

He took it in his stride now, but the first time he'd seen Whitey squeeze through the railings of the tiny balcony and vanish from sight, he'd almost died of shock. He'd rushed to the rail and peered over, expecting to see a splatter of fur and flesh on the pavement below. Instead he'd glimpsed a little white rump moving rapidly down the wall from balcony to balcony till it reached the ground. At a pinch, Whitey could make it back up by the same route, but when it came to energy conservation, he was way ahead of the Greens.

Joe checked the time. Eight forty, still early enough to wander round to Beryl's flat and suggest they share a cooling takeaway. Early enough, that is, if you weren't being picked up to go to the airport at five o'clock tomorrow morning.

What should he do? Ring Porphyry and tell him he'd done all he could for him and would be refunding his money? Or ring Mimi and tell her to tell her boss something had come up and he wouldn't be able to take the job after all.

But that would make him sound really unreliable and he guessed King Rat's dissatisfaction could blacklist parts of the Sixsmith Agency other complainants couldn't reach.

In any case, hadn't the fact that this Spanish job was only for three days made even Butcher dilute her doubt of King Rat's motives?

So he'd go. It gave him the excuse he needed to ring Beryl.

She said, 'Hi, Joe. Thought you might have rung earlier to suggest going out tonight to make up for last night.'

As if it had been him who stood her up!

He said, 'Sorry. I was busy on a job.'

'Yeah. Down at the Hole in the Wall, was that?'

Shoot! How the heck did she know that? he asked himself. And guessed the answer almost simultaneously. Aunt Mirabelle. Who had an intelligence system in the Luton area that made the CIA look like amateurs. Correction! The South Beds Bird-watching Society made the CIA look like amateurs. Mirabelle's totalitarian network was KGB or MOSSAD in its scope. One of her minions probably worked at the Hole, and news of Joe's appearance among the ravers would have shot along the line like a sighting of Bin Laden at a bar mitzvah.

And once Mirabelle heard, she'd have been straight on to Beryl to find out if she could throw any light on this latest aberration.

'That's right,' he said. 'Working Chris Porphyry's case.'

He guessed right that this would be a diversion.

'The hunk in the Aston? You actually went to the Royal Hoo and got the job?'

'I surely did,' he said. 'No need to sound so surprised either. Look, what I'm ringing for is, I have to be away for a couple of days, wondered if you and Desmond could keep an eye on Whitey for me. Usual: top up the water and food, don't let the tray get too disgusting.'

Desmond was Beryl's young son, who loved the cat.

'Couple of days?'

'Till the weekend maybe.'

'That's four days.'

'Hey, three, four, no need to get hung up on counting.'

'When I'm doling out your pills in the geriatric ward, you'll want me to get hung up on counting, believe me.'

'I surely will as you'll likely be in the next bed,' said Joe ungallantly.

'I certainly won't be in the same bed.'

This wasn't going too well.

He said, 'Will you do it? Please.'

'Course I will. You don't think I'd let a dumb animal suffer. And I worry about Whitey, too.'

This was better.

'Well, thanks. You've got a key, right?'

'Yeah, if I can recall where I put it. When are you leaving?'

'Five tomorrow morning.'

'Jeez, Joe. What's Mr Porphyry offering you to get you up so early?'

'This ain't that job. This one, I'm working for Mr Ratcliffe King.'

There was a moment's shocked silence then she said, 'Oh Joe, Joe, all these high-up people, don't be getting out of your depth.'

'Hard with high-up people,' he joked.

'Then don't be getting above yourself. Gotta go now. Bye, Joe.'

'Bye,' he said reluctantly.

As he ended the call, the phone rang again.

'Sixsmith,' he said.

'Joe, it's Chris. You said you'd let me know how you were getting on.'

There was no reproach in the voice, just hope. No, worse than hope. Confidence.

'Making progress, Chris,' said Joe.

'Yes?'

He cast around for something rea.s.suring to say and all that came to mind was Butcher's obscurely jokey, What's become of Waring?

He said, 'That lad, Waring, the a.s.sistant greenkeeper, still no word of him?'

'No. Why do you ask?'

'Just think there might be a connection,' lied Joe. 'You being so concerned about him and all.'

It sounded so feeble that he antic.i.p.ated the long silence that followed must signal the inevitable onset of doubt about his competence.

Instead ...

'Oh, Joe, Joe,' said Porphyry. 'What Willie said about you is true. You don't say much, but nothing gets past that razor-sharp mind of yours.'

'Eh?' said Joe, thinking there must be a crossed line or something.

'Yes, I take a special interest in Steve, but I don't see how it can be connected with this business. Thing is, Steve's local. Sally, his mother, used to work for my parents. Housemaid. I remember her well, pretty little thing ... I recall telling her I wanted to marry her ...'

He paused as if in reminiscence.

Joe thought, Oh shoot! He's not going to tell me Butcher was right, is he?

Then Porphyry laughed. It was good to hear him laugh. Young Fair G.o.ds aren't made for sorrow.

'She said, "Thank you kindly, Master Chris, but my George has got first refusal." Then she took me to the kitchen and gave me a huge slice of cook's chocolate fudge cake. Best adhesive known for mending an eight-year-old's broken heart. She got married soon after, handed in her notice when she got pregnant with Steve.'

Joe heaved a silent sigh of relief and said, 'This George ...'

'George Waring. Worked on the estate. Sort of general dogsbody. Could turn his hand to anything. Might have made something of himself if he hadn't been such a devil for the drink. Killed him in the end, poor blighter.'

'He died of alcoholic poisoning?'

'Not exactly. He was rolling home one summer evening with a few mates, took a shortcut over the fields that involved crossing a stream by a single plank bridge. He lost his balance and fell off. A fall of hardly a couple of feet, next to no water in the brook, but he banged his head on a stone and when his mates went to pick him up, they found he was dead.'

'How? Why?' asked Joe. It was totally irrelevant, but it was better than trying to explain he had no leads on the cheating case and not much hope of developing any.

'Turned out he had an abnormally thin skull. You and me might have had a b.u.mp, nothing worse. Poor old George cracked his head wide open and that was that. It was an unfortunate accident, no one's fault, but Sally, his wife, got embroiled with some ambulance-chasing lawyer who said it was the estate's responsibility and wanted her to launch a huge compensation claim.'

'That would be Ms Butcher,' said Joe, relishing the ambulance-chasing bit.