The Stars’ Tennis Balls by Stephen Fry

targets. Maybe your friend Leclare believed that you would open the letter out of curiosity, get suspicious and show it to your father. Maybe the whole idea is to make us run around wasting a lot of time, effort and manpower laying on extra protection while their real targets lie elsewhere. Or maybe the envelope has been impregnated with some deadly bug and the plan was for you to pass the infection on to your father who in turn would pass it on to the entire cabinet. Maybe that’s why Leclare fell ill and died – maybe he’d been a bit careless with the old microbes.’
    ‘Oh my God! But…’
    ‘Or there’s another maybe. Maybe they planted that cannabis on you and then tipped off the police just in order to winkle me out and follow us here. Maybe they’re in a van outside now with a mortar trained on this very room. Maybe a thousand things. We don’t know. There are as many maybes as there are seconds in a century. But this one thing I can tell you for certain,’ Oliver said, drawing up a chair opposite Ned. ‘We won’t know anything until you’ve told me the whole story from start to finish. I hope you can agree with that?’
    ‘Of course. Absolutely.’
    ‘Good. I have been very frank with you and now you can repay the compliment. You give me everything you’ve got, and before you know it, Mr Gaine will be driving us back to London. You’ll be home and in the bosom of your family before the
News at Ten,
that’s a promise. You don’t mind a tape-recorder, I suppose?’
    ‘No,’ said Ned. ‘Not at all.’
    ‘Excellent. Sit you there and drink your milk. Be back in a tick.’
    Hoo-bloody-rah. Oliver’s mind raced ahead as he went through into the sitting room. If he got back to town, sketched out a preliminary report and left Stapleton to make the security calls, he could be heading out to the country by midnight. Maybe his weekend could be salvaged after all.
    ‘As you were, Gaine. Where’s the Revox?’
    ‘Cupboard under the bookshelf, sir. I’ll fetch it.’
    Oliver picked up the
Evening Standard
Quick Crossword against which Mr Gaine had been pitting his mighty wits.
    ‘There’s your problem. Eft.’
    ‘Sir?’
    ‘Four across, “Newt”. You’ve put Rat, should be Eft.’
    ‘Why Rat, incidentally?’
    ‘Well, Mr Delft, sir,’ said Mr Gaine, handing Oliver the tape-recorder. ‘Pissed as a rat, pissed as a newt.’
    ‘How silly of me,’ said Oliver, marvelling once more at Gaine’ s unusual thought processes. ‘Well, we shouldn’t be much more than an hour. Oh, be a hero and fill the Rover up with petrol, will you? There should be some jerrycans in the garage.
    ‘Have done, sir.’
    ‘Good man. Oh and Gaine?’
    ‘Sir?’
    ‘You’re sure we weren’t tailed on the way up?’
    ‘Sir!’ Mr Gaine was deeply reproachful. ‘Thought not. Just checking.’
     
    ‘So. To begin at the beginning. When did you first meet this Paddy Leclare?’
    On and on came the questions, one after another. Ned had been talking for over an hour now, and still they hadn’t come to the last night on board the
Orphana.
Oliver had wanted to know not just every detail of every previous trip abroad, but of every term-time meeting of the Sailing Club too.
    ‘You’re doing well, Ned, very well. Not too far to go now. Where were we? Ah, yes. Ireland. The Giant’s Causeway. Two hours he was away while you boys played on the beach and gasped with pleasure at the rock formations. Two hours exactly?’
    ‘One and half hours perhaps, two at the most.’
    ‘And when he came back, he was on his own?’
    ‘I definitely didn’t see anyone with him.’
    ‘And then you set off for Oban again, sailing through the night? What time was that?’
    ‘Eight thirty-five. I helped with the log. I told you.’
    ‘Just making sure, just making sure. Now, describe the conditions to me. There’s a new moon rising just now isn’t there? You can see it through the window. So two nights ago it must have been pretty dark.