IV

The motorbicycle had been parked in a dampish yard behind the pub and the tyre-tracks were easy enough to pick up. Alleyn took measurements, made a sketch of the prints and had them covered, pending the arrival of Bailey and Thompson. He thought that when they examined Fox’s find under the hedgerow above Crossdyke they would find an exact correspondence. An outside man at the Star remembered the make of vehicle—Route-Rocket—but nobody could give the number.

Alleyn telephoned Troy at the Percy Arms in Norminster and asked her if by any chance she could recall it.

She sat on the edge of her bed with the receiver at her ear and tried to summon up her draughtsman’s memory of the scene on the quay at Norminster last Monday morning. Miss Rickerby-Carrick squatted on her suitcase, writing. Caley Bard and Dr Natouche were down by The River. Pollock limped off in a sulk. The Bishop’s car was in the lane with Lazenby inside. The two riders lounged against their machine, their oiled heads and black leather gear softly glistening in the sun. She had wanted to draw them, booted legs, easy, insolent pose, gum-chewing faces, gloved hands. And the machine. She screwed her memory to the sticking point, waited and then heard her own voice.

‘I think,’ said her voice, ‘it was XKL-460.’

‘Now, there!’ Alleyn exclaimed. ‘See what a girl I’ve got! Thank you, my love, and goodnight.’ He hung up. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We set up a general call. They’ll be God knows where by now but they’ve got to be somewhere and by God we’ll fetch them in.’

He, Fox and Tillottson were in the superintendent’s office at the Tollardwark police station where, on Monday night, Troy had first encountered Mr Tillottson. The sergeant set up the call. In a matter of minutes all divisions throughout the country and all police personnel were alerted for a Route-Rocket, XKL-460, black, with either one or two riders, mod-types, leather clothes, dark, long hair, calf-boots. Retain for questioning and report in.

‘And by now,’ Fox observed, ‘they’ve repainted their bike, cut their hair and gone into rompers.’

‘Always the little sunbeam,’ Alleyn muttered, absently. He had covered a table in the office with newspaper and now very carefully they laid upon it an old-fashioned hide suitcase, saturated with river water, blotched, disreputable, with one end of its handle detached from its ring. A length of cord had been firmly knotted through both rings.