Rubric's Cube

Chapter 9 The police But not as expected.

All through showering, making some toast and having my first coffees that bright and crisp September morning, I felt I was neglecting something.

I checked a mental list. At the top, Hansen's business card, now in my wallet. But all the rest of it was memory. I realised I should have written every happening down. Memory was able to unpredictably muddle events. I made a few notes on a piece of paper which I added to my wallet.

But the notion I had just encountered led me later to write the account you are now reading.

I still felt that there was something undone. The feeling persisted through all the preparations for my journey to Newby Wiske. They were still there as I sat in the Sierra, and put the key into the ignition. The key was unturned, and I got out and walked along the garden path, barely seeing the care lavished on the flower bed by the gardener.

It was then I realised how open this establishment, this machine for living we - now me only, inhabited, was vulnerable to intrusion. The gardener, the cleaner, and Madge. We had given each a set of access keys to the house. But the gardener and the cleaner both worked for companies. We, certainly I, didn't know them as people. The house was completely vulnerable to anyone with minimal knowledge and a determination to penetrate our lives.

I unlocked and re-entered the front door, and sat in the lounge. I thought there were two sources of information in this house that had been penetrated. The filing cabinet, and Ellie's PC. If the intruder returned what would they notice? The cabinet opened, and the PC files restored.   

OK. So what would they do then. Presumably write off the cabinet as a bad job. But they would know from the restored PC that somewhere there was a back up. I went to the window sill hiding place and retrieved the hard drive. I thought where to put it and decided to take it with me.

Now comforted, if that really is the right word to describe my emotional state, by having removed some concern over our - my - vulnerability to invasion, I commenced the three hour journey to Northallerton, the nearest town to the village of Newby Wiske where North Yorks police had established their HQ.

M1, M18, A1M, a string of motorways, requiring concentration and vigilance. Had Ellie dropped her road guard for a critical instant on her journey to the more distant destination of Harrogate?

As my imagination unfurled a vision of Ellie pumping the failing brakes of the powerful Porsche as she slammed into the suddenly stationary traffic queue, and was instantly immolated in roaring flames, and my arms blistered into crisped skin and barbecued flesh, I barely noticed the Eddie Stobart truck I was following had jammed on its brakes, the rear wheels of the trailer smoking as it shuddered to a halt.

I stopped with the nose of the Sierra barely touching the metal angle iron of the retainer to the truck's spare wheel. 

After a minute or so the truck resumed its journey, while I reflected as I started up, that I was less fit to drive than anyone with lots more than 80 mg per100ml alcohol on board.

I arrived at Newby Wiske with no more incident, but now was seething with the need to have Ellie's fate wound up. I needed to restart my life, however bleak, without her, and Detective Hansen was the key to that.

The Sierra was corralled between two raising arm gates, while I was summoned by a beckoning policeman into a glass office commanding views of the whole of the entrance.

I was amused and then irritated by the politically correct 'customer care' displayed by the policeman.

"How can I help you, sir?"

I suppressed my emotions and did not say 'open the fucking gates and let me through.'

I gave him Hansen's card, saying, "I have an appointment to see this man at approximately mid-day today."