Free Breaking Point by Frank Smith

it more than the one at the side of the –’
    He stopped abruptly. ‘I’d forgotten about that until now,’ he said slowly. ‘Funny how that happens, isn’t it? I suppose that was why I paid so little attention to the two men. The road is quite narrow there, and with the car parked at the side of the road, there wasn’t much room to pass. I remember Fred was looking anxious about his new car as he went by; not that there was any real danger of a collision, but then Fred is the nervous type.’
    â€˜Fred?’ Molly repeated. She had been about to take a drink of tea, but now she set her cup aside and flipped to another page in the notebook in her lap. ‘Are you saying you know the man in the other car?’
    â€˜Oh, yes. Sorry, I should have said, shouldn’t I? Fred Dawlish is a patient of mine. He lives in Whitcott. Lived there all his life; retired a few months ago. Come to think of it, he may have seen those two men. I’ll give you his address if you like.’
    Beyond the market square at the top end of the high street in Lyddingham was the green. It was a long, narrow stretch of grass, at the far end of which was the cenotaph surrounded by flower beds filled with the jutting spears of daffodil leaves. In three, perhaps four weeks from now, they would be up and in full flower, but for now, at least, having tested the cold March air, they were on hold.
    Molly found a parking space between two cars and pulled in.
    She’d made notes while talking to Dr Chandler, but she wanted to think about them and jot down any thoughts she’d had at the time. The two men the doctor had described
could
be the same two men who had spirited Mickey Doyle away earlier that morning, but the descriptions of the men and the car were so vague as to be almost useless. Neither Mrs Turnbull nor Dr Chandler could remember the colour of the car – Chandler thought it might have been grey, but he wasn’t sure – and Mrs Turnbull wouldn’t even venture a guess according to Tregalles.
    â€˜You said it was a big car, Doctor,’ she’d pressed in an attempt to come away with something in the way of a description.
    â€˜Not
big
, exactly,’ Chandler said. ‘I mean, it wasn’t like some of these American cars you see on the road, but it did seem bigger than my Rover, for example. Mind you, it may have just
seemed
bigger because it stuck out in the road, and my only interest in it was to avoid it as I went by.’
    Molly had spent the next twenty minutes or so showing him pictures of cars, but he’d finally pushed the book away and sat back in his chair. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her, ‘but I would only be guessing at this point. It all happened so fast.’
    Molly leaned her head against the headrest and sighed. She was no further ahead than she had been before talking to the doctor. And she had done no better at the Red Lion, where she’d stopped for lunch before her appointment with Dr Chandler. Several people said they knew who Newman was, but they knew nothing about him, but almost all of them knew Mickey Doyle. ‘Does good work when he’s sober,’ the barman told her, and the others agreed. ‘But he’s just as likely to take off in the middle of a job as not,’ another man said, ‘so you can’t rely on him.’
    â€˜Best come back tonight,’ the barman advised. ‘Talk to Jack – he runs this place – or Emma. They might know.’
    Molly closed her notebook and started the car. She felt as if she had been going round in circles and getting nowhere. Perhaps Dawlish, the man the doctor had mentioned, would remember something. On the other hand, she thought glumly, if Dawlish had been as worried about scraping his new car as the doctor seemed to think, she’d be very surprised if he’d paid any attention at all to what was happening on the side of the road.
    Tregalles was