"What car does he drive?"
"A Merc. Metallic blue. Brand-new. Two-door. It's his pride and joy. It's your deal that paid for it," she added.
"Where does he leave it when he goes abroad?"
"At the airport sometimes. Sometimes at the store. Depends."
"He's not with Terry, is he?"
"Who?"
"Sort of half partner of mine and Aitken's. Terry Altman. Amusing chap. Talks a lot. Got a beautiful new girlfriend called Sally. Sally Anderson. But her friends call her Emma for some reason."
"If they're business, forget it."
I stood up. "Look. There's been a muddle. Why don't we abandon this, and I'll go down to the store and see if I can rouse the secretary. If I find anything out, I can give you a ring. Don't worry. I've got the address. I'll just wander down the hill and get a cab."
I took my shoes from the rack and laced them up. I stepped into the sunlight. A knot had formed in my gut, and there was a singing in my ears.
THE HILLS DARKENED as I drove, the roads grew steeper and smaller, the rock peaks of the hilltops were blackened as if burned. Stone walls enclosed me, and I entered a village of slate roofs, crumbling walls, old car tyres, and plastic bags. Piglets and hens wandered in my path, inquisitive sheep eyed me, but I saw no human soul. My ordnance survey map lay open on the passenger seat beside Ockie's list of Aitken May's addresses.
The stone walls gave way, and I was flying over wide valleys patched with sun and crossed with streams. Chestnut horses grazed in perfect rectangular meadows. But in my apprehension everything was too late, and I sensed not pleasure but despair. Why had I never played here as a child, walked here as a boy? Run in that field, lived in that cottage, made love beside that stream? These colours, why had I never painted them? Emma, you were all these hopes.
Pulling up in a lay-by, I consulted the map. From nowhere an old man appeared at my car window, and his gnarled face reminded me of the groundsman at my first boarding school.
"Past yonder reservoir ... turn right at t'gospel hall ... go on till th' sees t'mill in front o' thee ... then keep on going till th' can't go no further...."
I drove over humpbacked hills into a plantation of blue conifers that turned green, then polka dot. I scaled the first hump and saw Larry in his broad hat standing at the roadside with one arm raised to stop me and his other arm round Emma, but they were just two travellers with a dog. I scaled the second and saw them in my driving mirror, giving me the finger. But my fears were worse by far than these anxious fantasies. They were composed of the uncompleted warnings still ringing on the path behind me.
A gospel hall loomed at me. I turned right as the old man had instructed and saw the wrecked mill, a monster with its eyes put out. The road became a track; I crossed a ford and entered a rural slum of rotting cauliflowers, plastic bottles, and the collected filth of tourists and farmers. Hard jawed children watched me from the threshold of a tin shed. I crossed a second stream or the same one, skirted the stone face of a quarry, and saw a glitter-paint orange arrow and the words HARDWEAR WHOLESALE ONLY stencilled below it. I followed the arrow and discovered that I had descended further than I realised, for a second valley now opened before me, its lower slopes heavy with trees, and above the trees squared green fields and brooding moors, their tops cut off by cloud. Another arrow pointed me towards a wooden gate. A yellow sign said private road. I pushed the gate open, drove through, closed it behind me. A sign said: HARDWEAR STRAIGHT ON (TRADE ONLY).
Barbed wire ran either side of the track. Tufts of sheep's wool clung to the barbs, white cattle grazed among the rocks. The track led uphill. I followed it and saw at three hundred yards' distance a chain of stone farm buildings of no merit, some with windows, some without, and together resembling a freight train with the tallest cars at the left, and tailing to a run of chicken houses and pigsties. The track led over a white bridge and an island of brown marshland to reappear before the main entrance. A sign said: INVITED VISITORS. An orange arrow pointed directly at the house.
I crossed the bridge and saw a blue Mercedes parked in the front drive, its bonnet towards me. Metallic, she had said. But I couldn't tell whether the blue was metallic or not. Two-door, she had said. But the car was facing me, and I couldn't count the doors. Nevertheless my heart beat faster in spite of my forebodings. Aitken May's here. He's back. In the house.
With them. Larry's here too. Larry came north despite the warning: when did Larry ever heed a warning? Then he went to Paris to find Emma.
