my work in Adimurcham and I was glad that I could get away from the hostile faces. I drove to Edinburgh, handed over the car, and flew back to London.
I reported to Jeremy and told him about the competition. “I think you’d better tell Michelmore what’s happened so far,” he said. So I telephoned him and went along to the office off Jermyn Street.
As usual, Michelmore was all business. No small talk about where I had been. He didn’t ask what the weather was like in Switzerland or whether the sun was shining in Nice. I gave him a stripped-down account of my events. He listened thoughtfully and looked concerned at my account of the conversation in Paris and my run-in with Molloy and his friend. “So somebody else wants to know,” he mused.
“And they’re ready to go to some lengths to find out and to see that we don’t. Like pushing me off a mountain,” I pointed out.
“I was pretty sure someone else wanted to know,” he said, “But I didn’t know how badly they want to know. Azamouth seems to be in on it. Well, I’d rather I got there first. In fact, that makes me even keener. Stay on the trail. You’ve done well so far.”
I nodded. I had expected a little more acknowledgment of the danger I had been in. “And don’t take any risks,” he said as I was leaving. Gosh, you’re getting soft, I thought. Then he added, “That you don’t have to.”
CHAPTER SIX
I looked up Tom Kinsella on the internet. There were several references to him. He and someone called Richard Cheng, both former Google employees, had developed a new program useful in the online retail trade. There was a brief news item from a computer magazine saying they had sold it.
I tried to find a telephone number for Tom Kinsella or his yacht but I could find nothing. “Go there,” Jeremy said. “Michelmore said stay on the trail, so stay on it. He’s got plenty of money to spend. You seem to do well when you’re on the spot. Track Kinsella down, get away from this London drizzle and get some California sunshine.”
“And if I go all that way and draw a blank?”
“Then we’ll think of something else.”
I arrived in Los Angeles in the early evening and stayed overnight in an airport hotel. The next morning I booked a room in a hotel in Marina del Rey near the pier, rented a car, and drove down there. It was only a few miles away; like most of Southern California, Marina del Rey is really a suburb of Los Angeles. Truth to tell, I took a slightly roundabout route so I could enjoy the drive along the Pacific Coast Highway, with the blue ocean and a beach on one side and on the other, undulating brown earth hillsides. I had only been to California once before, when two college friends and I drove across the country one summer and, for me as an Easterner, it is all exotic, the palm trees and the roller skaters in bikinis and the people walking barefoot and the street signs in Spanish as well as English.
I was certainly getting some California sunshine. The weather was perfect, warm but not hot with balmy breezes. I located the marina and went to the harbour office. A young woman there set aside her paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye and got some volumes of records off a shelf. “The last mention I have of a Tom Kinsella is eighteen months ago,” she said. “He’s on a yacht called the Lake Michigan. J Dock.”
“The Lake Michigan? Odd name for a yacht in California,” I remarked. She did not comment, but she directed me to J Dock.
The sunshine, the balmy breeze, the presence of water, the cawking of seagulls all inclined me to stroll rather than stride, relaxing into the environment. I passed bars, and stores selling fishing equipment. People ambled about in no hurry, so I ambled.
Other docks had fishing boats but J Dock was for recreation. The boats moored there were small sailboats and some motor boats, stacked two and three deep. The Lake Michigan was one of the largest, a forty-footer I would say, big
I reported to Jeremy and told him about the competition. “I think you’d better tell Michelmore what’s happened so far,” he said. So I telephoned him and went along to the office off Jermyn Street.
As usual, Michelmore was all business. No small talk about where I had been. He didn’t ask what the weather was like in Switzerland or whether the sun was shining in Nice. I gave him a stripped-down account of my events. He listened thoughtfully and looked concerned at my account of the conversation in Paris and my run-in with Molloy and his friend. “So somebody else wants to know,” he mused.
“And they’re ready to go to some lengths to find out and to see that we don’t. Like pushing me off a mountain,” I pointed out.
“I was pretty sure someone else wanted to know,” he said, “But I didn’t know how badly they want to know. Azamouth seems to be in on it. Well, I’d rather I got there first. In fact, that makes me even keener. Stay on the trail. You’ve done well so far.”
I nodded. I had expected a little more acknowledgment of the danger I had been in. “And don’t take any risks,” he said as I was leaving. Gosh, you’re getting soft, I thought. Then he added, “That you don’t have to.”
CHAPTER SIX
I looked up Tom Kinsella on the internet. There were several references to him. He and someone called Richard Cheng, both former Google employees, had developed a new program useful in the online retail trade. There was a brief news item from a computer magazine saying they had sold it.
I tried to find a telephone number for Tom Kinsella or his yacht but I could find nothing. “Go there,” Jeremy said. “Michelmore said stay on the trail, so stay on it. He’s got plenty of money to spend. You seem to do well when you’re on the spot. Track Kinsella down, get away from this London drizzle and get some California sunshine.”
“And if I go all that way and draw a blank?”
“Then we’ll think of something else.”
I arrived in Los Angeles in the early evening and stayed overnight in an airport hotel. The next morning I booked a room in a hotel in Marina del Rey near the pier, rented a car, and drove down there. It was only a few miles away; like most of Southern California, Marina del Rey is really a suburb of Los Angeles. Truth to tell, I took a slightly roundabout route so I could enjoy the drive along the Pacific Coast Highway, with the blue ocean and a beach on one side and on the other, undulating brown earth hillsides. I had only been to California once before, when two college friends and I drove across the country one summer and, for me as an Easterner, it is all exotic, the palm trees and the roller skaters in bikinis and the people walking barefoot and the street signs in Spanish as well as English.
I was certainly getting some California sunshine. The weather was perfect, warm but not hot with balmy breezes. I located the marina and went to the harbour office. A young woman there set aside her paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye and got some volumes of records off a shelf. “The last mention I have of a Tom Kinsella is eighteen months ago,” she said. “He’s on a yacht called the Lake Michigan. J Dock.”
“The Lake Michigan? Odd name for a yacht in California,” I remarked. She did not comment, but she directed me to J Dock.
The sunshine, the balmy breeze, the presence of water, the cawking of seagulls all inclined me to stroll rather than stride, relaxing into the environment. I passed bars, and stores selling fishing equipment. People ambled about in no hurry, so I ambled.
Other docks had fishing boats but J Dock was for recreation. The boats moored there were small sailboats and some motor boats, stacked two and three deep. The Lake Michigan was one of the largest, a forty-footer I would say, big
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