Victory Disc by Andrew Cartmel

Author:Andrew Cartmel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

* * *

Apparently Charles Gresford-Jones had suffered a serious fall. The woman told us she’d found him lying unconscious on the floor of his front room. She had let herself in with a set of keys he’d given her, because Abner had been outside the front door, scratching to get in. Gresford-Jones didn’t believe in cat flaps and had left the keys with his neighbour for just such an eventuality.

Luckily.

An ambulance had arrived promptly after her call and Gresford-Jones was now in hospital in a stable but critical condition and profoundly unconscious. “The big problem,” said the woman, “is the cat.”

“Abner?”

“Yes. You see, the thing is, my husband and son are allergic. I’ve been feeding him, but I can’t take him in and give him a proper home, because of my husband and son, you see. And he does need a proper home. Deserves one. Poor old Abner.”

“But what about his owner?”

She shook her head grimly. “He won’t be coming out again. When you reach that age and start falling, that’s it.”

I said, “But he might recover.”

She gave me a sceptical look. “Even if he does, we need someone to look after Abner in the meantime.”

I looked at Nevada. We hadn’t explained that we weren’t family. Maybe we should now. Maybe it was too late. Maybe we looked too damned respectable and reliable. The woman watched us, almost visibly willing us to say we’d take the cat off her hands.

“It would be different,” she said, “if there was anyone else to ask. If I could ask the people with that van.”

“Van?” I said.

“Yes, they’ve been visiting Mr Gresford-Jones. But they haven’t been around lately.”

“What kind of a van?”

“Well it’s got sort of a painting of the sun on one side.”

“And the moon on the other.”

“Yes, that’s right,” she said. “The hippie van. I’ve seen it parked outside his house often enough, but it hasn’t been around lately. Otherwise I’d ask them.”

“Them?”

“The people with the van.”

“You’ve seen them?” I said. “Could you describe them?”

“Oh no, I’ve never actually seen them. Just the van. Parked outside his house.” She looked at us. “It’s such a shame they’ve gone away. It seemed they were always around, but now he’s had his fall they’ve disappeared.”

I glanced at Nevada.

The woman said, “I was thinking they could have taken Abner with them. It’s a pity. The cat would have enjoyed that. Riding about the country in a van.”

Actually, I thought, it was probably a cat’s idea of hell. But I didn’t say so.

The woman seemed to feel that the matter was decided now, because she found the keys and let us into the house. I wanted to search the place, but I couldn’t very well do that with the woman watching. Gresford-Jones hadn’t said he had any other records, but he’d insisted he had something that would be of considerable interest to us.

I’d assumed at first that it was some titbit of recollection, but you never knew. It could be a letter, a document, a photo…

Or even another record.

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