Free More Than You Can Say by Paul Torday Page A

the place as soon as I saw it: a comfortable-sized, double-fronted Victorian house. As we arrived, men in tweed plus twos and shooting coats were being decanted from various vehicles. There were nine of us including me. We all straggled into the house, depositing boots and guns, or in my case mud-caked shoes, in the entrance hall. Then we assembled in a long room that was used as a library and drawing room, where a substantial collection of bottles and glasses was arranged on a side table.
    ‘Help yourself,’ shouted Freddy. ‘Take no prisoners.’ After a few moments someone handed me a glass of white wine that I hadn’t asked for. Freddy was busy making sure his other guests had what they wanted to drink, so I found myself talking to the man called Eck.
    ‘Forgive my asking,’ said Eck. ‘But do you normally dress like that when you go shooting?’
    ‘My day started out rather differently to yours,’ I replied. ‘I had to assist at a wedding, but afterwards I somehow found myself mixed up with the beating line and then I bumped into Freddy.’ Even as I spoke I could see how profoundly unsatisfactory this explanation was. I tried to change the subject: ‘Freddy and I play cards together sometimes.’
    ‘Everybody knows Freddy,’ said Eck.
    ‘What’s that?’ said Freddy, appearing at my elbow clutching a pint glass tankard full of gin and tonic and lumps of ice. ‘Everyone knows Freddy? Not at all. I’m terribly shy and don’t get out much.’ He roared with laughter at his own joke, then said, ‘Leader, I need a satisfactory explanation of your presence here. Not that I’m not delighted to see you, but do admit it, you were a very odd sight in the middle of a hedgerow.’
    ‘I’ve been staying with your neighbour,’ I explained. I realised that I needed to be careful about what I said. I couldn’t possibly let this crowd know that I’d agreed to marry a girl from Afghanistan for money. My reputation was already dubious. Yet there was really no way to account for my behaviour over the last forty-eight hours; even if some of the events that had occurred had been outside my control.
    ‘My neighbour? Which neighbour? What’s the name of the house?’ asked Freddy.
    ‘A man who calls himself Mr Khan. Although I think he might also be known as Aseeb. Do you know him, Freddy?’
    Eck gave me a very sharp glance as I spoke, but before he could say anything Freddy said, ‘Khan? He’s the new tenant at Harington House. An odd story: the house used to belong to a well-known local family. Things hadn’t been going right for them for a long time; then one of the children inherited and burned through most of the remaining cash, so they hadto sell up. It’s a few years since they left now. About five years ago some City boy bought it with his bonus. Did the place up. No expense spared, our window cleaner tells me.’
    Freddy lifted the tankard of gin and tonic to his lips and gargled for a moment. When he had lowered the level of the liquid by an inch or two, he went on:
    ‘Then this one went tits up, along with a lot of others last year. Sorry, Eck, I know you used to work in the City too: tactless of me to bring the subject up. Anyway, the bank repossessed the house. I bought the land, apart from about five acres of gardens and woodland next to the house itself, but they couldn’t sell the house, not at the price they were asking. I wasn’t interested. I mean to say, I’ve got a house already, haven’t I?’ Freddy laughed again. ‘But you can always use a few more acres for your farming. Anyway, since then Harington House has been let. Your chum Mr Khan has been a tenant for about six months, as far as I am aware. I’ve never met him. He’s obviously well off, travels a lot; I don’t think he is often there. How on earth do you know him, anyway? I wouldn’t have thought he was your speed at all.’
    ‘We just bumped into each other somewhere,’ I said. I could see that Freddy would have liked