The Avatari Read Free

sounded steady. Don’t think about Saigon! He turned away and stared at the fireplace, knowing that the inspector was watching him.
    The ensuing silence was broken by the lady constable who walked in with an update.
    ‘The lab people have finished at the site and they say it’s all right for us to come by, sir,’ she informed the inspector.
    ‘Thank you,’ he said, then turned to Ashton. ‘I shall have to request you to accompany us, sir, just to check if you can identify anything. Not that there is much to go by; it’s quite grisly, really.’ He paused. ‘Once you’ve finished your tea, of course.’
    ‘That all right,’ Ashton said, pushing his cup away.
    The group trooped out to where the cars were parked. Ashton saw that Duggy had taken their car out of the garage and was at the wheel, parked behind the Bentley.
    ‘We don’t really need to take another car,’ the inspector said authoritatively, waving at Duggy and gesturing for him to step out. He then turned to Ashton. ‘You can both come with us, Sir Henry,’ he offered by way of explanation. ‘It won’t be any trouble dropping you back home.’
    ‘I would rather take my car, if that’s all right with you?’ Ashton said quietly, but crisply.
    Peter Orwell picked up the tone and saw that Ashton’s affable face was set in a firm line, his grey eyes staring back expressionlessly at him. ‘As you wish, sir,’ the inspector replied, quickly backing off.
    They set off in the three cars, Ashton’s following the Bentley and the Panda. The moment they were on their own, Duggy and Ashton lapsed into Gorkhali, the language of their regiment.
    ‘Yo keko barema ho? What’s all this about, Sergeant?’
    ‘ Thaha chaina. Haven’t a clue.’ After they had been driving for a while, Duggy added, ‘Liu Than, the man who rang, said I should tell you that the Teacher has asked you to redeem a promise you had made.’
    It was the second time that evening that Ashton experienced a prickle of unease and even though Duggy was looking straight ahead and couldn’t see his expression, he could tell something was wrong.
    ‘Are you all right?’ the sergeant asked.
    ‘Fine, just fine,’ Ashton replied. ‘You didn’t tell the police about Liu Than’s message, did you?’
    ‘They didn’t ask.’
    They had travelled four miles from the house when they came to a small clearing, where the dense growth of trees on either side of the road thinned out. Police cars and an ambulance were parked off the road. On one side, the ground fell away to a rocky stream about nine or ten yards below the level of the road; on the opposite side, the ground sloped upwards. The police had fenced off the area with yellow tape and Ashton could see what looked like a media crew huddled behind it. He recognized one of the reporters, who began approaching him, but a constable quickly intercepted the man and sent him back. The inspector came forward, took Ashton by the arm and, lifting the tape, guided him through to a clump of bushes on the high ground at the top of the slope. He turned and pointed to the clearing behind them.
    ‘This is where the first car overtook the cab,’ he explained.
    They could see the tyre marks, deeply embedded in the moist earth, giving the road a wide berth before getting back onto it thirty yards or so ahead. Since the car to which those tyres belonged seemed to have climbed back onto the road almost at a right angle to it, it could be inferred that its driver had been attempting to block the road and intercept an approaching vehicle.
    ‘Since it was uphill the bigger vehicle could generate more power then the cab,’ the inspector went on.
    There were other tyre marks too, criss-crossing each other and indicating that the vehicles which had left those telltale tracks had reversed and got back on the road.
    ‘The cabbie says the men in the first vehicle were getting off, when his passenger, who was in the back seat, jumped out, stumbled and made a dash