by Dick Francis
“Policy.”
“Whose policy?”
“The public wants demolition, they gobble up spite.”
“Yes, but—”
“Look, Sid, we get the word from on high. And don’t ask who on high, I don’t know. I don’t like it. None of us likes it. But we have the choice: go along with overall policy or go somewhere else where we feel more in tune. And do you know where that gets you? I work for The Pump because it’s a good paper with, on the whole, fair comment. OK, so reputations topple. Like I said, that’s what Mrs. Public wants. Now and then we get a request, such as ‘lean hard on Sid Halley.’ I did it without qualms, as you’d clammed up on me.”
He looked all the time at the machine, playing fast.
“And India Cathcart?” I asked.
He pulled the lever and waited until two lemons and a jumping horse came to rest in a row.
“India . . . ,” he said slowly. “For some reason she didn’t want to trash you. She said she’d enjoyed her dinner with you and you were quiet and kind. Kind! I ask you! Her editor had to squeeze the poison out of her drop by drop for that first long piece. In the end he wrote most of her page himself. She was furious the next day when she read it, but it was out on the streets by then and she couldn’t do anything about it.”
I was more pleased than I would have expected, but I wasn’t going to let Kevin see it. I said, “What about the continued stab wounds almost every week?”
“I guess she goes along with the policy. Like I said, she has to eat.”
“Is it George Godbar’s policy?”
“The big white chief himself? Yes, you could say the editor of the paper has the final say.”
“And Lord Tilepit?”
He gave me an amused glance. Two pears and a lemon. “He’s not a hands-on proprietor of the old school. Not a Beaverbrook or a Harmsworth. We hardly know he’s alive.”
“Does he give the overall policy to George Godbar?”
“Probably.” A horse, a demon and some cherries. “Why do I get the idea that you are interviewing me, instead of the other way round?”
“I cannot imagine. What do you know about Owen Cliff Yorkshire?”
“Bugger all. Who is he?”
“Quite likely a friend of Lord Tilepit.”
“Sid,” he protested, “I do my job. Rapes, murders, little old ladies smothered in their sleep. I do not chew off the fingernails of my paycheck.”
He banged the slot machine frustratedly. “The bloody thing hates me.”
“It has no soul,” I said. I fed in a stray token myself with my plastic fingers and pulled the handle. Three horses. Fountains of love. Life’s little irony.
Kevin Mills took his paunch, his mustache and his disgusted disgruntlement off to his word processor, and I again phoned Norman as John Paul Jones.
“My colleagues now think John Paul Jones is a snitch,” he said.
“Fine.”
“What is it this time?”
“Do you still have any of those horse nuts I collected from Betty Bracken’s field, and those others we took from the Land-Rover?”
“Yes, we do. And as you know, they’re identical in composition.”
“Then could you find out if they were manufactured by Topline Foods Limited, of Frodsham in Cheshire?”
After a short silence he said cautiously, “It could be done, but is it necessary?”
“If you could let me have some of the nuts I could do it myself.”
“I can’t let you have any. They are bagged and counted.”
“Shit.” And I could so easily have kept some in my own pocket. Careless. Couldn’t be helped.
“Why does it matter where they came from?” Norman asked.
“Um ... You know you told me you thought there might be a heavyweight somewhere behind the scenes? Well, I’ve been asked to find out.”
“Jeez,” he said. “Who asked you?”
“Can’t tell you. Client confidentiality and all that.”
“Is it Archie Kirk?”
“Not so far as I know.”
“Huh!” He sounded unconvinced. “I’ll go this far. If you get me some authenticated Topline nuts I’ll see if I can run a check on them to find out if they match the ones we have. That’s the best I can do, and that’s stretching it, and you wouldn’t have a prayer if you hadn’t been the designer of our whole prosecution—and you can not quote me on that.”
“I’m truly grateful. I’ll get some Topline nuts, but they probably won’t match the ones you have.”
“Why not?”
“The grains—the balance of ingredients—will have changed since those were manufactured. Every batch must have its own profile, so to speak.”
He well knew what I meant, as an analysis of ingredients could reveal their origins as reliably as grooves on a bullet.
“What interests you in Topline Foods?” Norman asked.
“My client.”
“Bugger your client. Tell me.” I didn’t answer and he sighed heavily. “All right. You can’t tell me now. I hate amateur detectives. I’ve got you a strip off that dirty Northampton material. At least, it’s promised for later today. What are you going to do about it, and have you cracked Ellis Quint’s alibi yet?”
“You’re brilliant,” I said. “Where can I meet you? And no, I haven’t cracked the alibi.”
“Try harder.”
“I’m only an amateur.”
“Yeah, yeah. Come to the lake at five o‘clock. I’m picking up the boat to take it home for winter storage. OK?”
“I’ll be there.”
“See you.”
I phoned the hospital in Canterbury. Rachel, the ward sister told me, was “resting comfortably.”
“What does that mean?”
“She’s no worse than yesterday, Mr. Halley. When can you return?”
“Sometime soon.”
“Good.”
I spent the afternoon exchanging my old vulnerable analog mobile cellular telephone for a digital mobile receiving eight splintered transmissions that would baffle even the Thames Valley stalwarts, let alone The Pump.
From my apartment I then phoned Miss Richardson of Northamptonshire, who said vehemently that no, I certainly might not call on her again. Ginnie and Gordon Quint were her dear friends and it was unthinkable that Ellis could harm horses, and I was foul and wicked even to think it. Ginnie had told her about it. Ginnie had been very distressed. It was all my fault that she had killed herself.
I persevered with two questions, however, and did get answers of sorts.
“Did your vet say how long he thought the foot had been off when the colt was found at seven o‘clock?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Could you give me his name and phone number?”
“No.”
As I had over the years accumulated a whole shelfful of area telephone directories, it was not so difficult via the Northamptonshire Yellow Pages to find and talk to Miss Richardson’s vet. He would, he said, have been helpful if he could. All he could with confidence say was that neither the colt’s leg nor the severed foot had shown signs of recent bleeding. Miss Richardson herself had insisted he put the colt out of his misery immediately, and, as it was also his own judgment, he had done so.
He had been unable to suggest to the police any particular time for the attack; earlier rather than later was as far as he could go. The wound had been clean: one chop. The vet said he was surprised a yearling would have stood still long enough for shears to be applied. Yes, he confirmed, the colt had been lightly shod, and yes, there had been horse nuts scattered around, but Miss Richardson often gave her horses nuts as a supplement to grass.
He’d been helpful, but no help.
After that I had to decide how to get to the lake, as the normal taken-for-granted act of driving now had complications. I had a knob fixed on the steering wheel of my Mercedes which gave me a good grip for one- (right)handed operation. With my left, unfeeling hand I sh
ifted the automatic-gear lever.
I experimentally flexed and clenched my right hand. Sharp protests. Boring. With irritation I resorted to ibuprofen and drove to the lake wishing Chico were around to do it.
Norman had winched his boat halfway onto its trailer. Big, competent and observant, he watched my slow emergence to upright and frowned.
“What hurts?” he asked.
“Self-esteem.”
He laughed. “Give me a hand with the boat, will you? Pull when I lift.”
I looked at the job and said briefly that I couldn’t.
“You only need one hand for pulling.”
I told him unemotionally that Gordon Quint had aimed for my head and done lesser but inconvenient damage. “I’m telling you, in case he tries again and succeeds. He was slightly out of his mind over Ginnie.”
Norman predictably said I should make an official complaint.
“No,” I said. “This is unofficial, and ends right here.”
He went off to fetch a friend to help him with the boat, and then busied himself with wrapping and stowing his powerful outboard engine.
I said, “What first gave you the feeling that there was some heavyweight meandering behind the scenes?”
“First?” He went on working while he thought. “It’s months ago. I talked it over with Archie. I expect it was because one minute I was putting together an ordinary case—even if Ellis Quint’s fame made it newsworthy—and the next I was being leaned on by the superintendent to find some reason to drop it, and when I showed him the strength of the evidence, he said the Chief Constable was unhappy, and the reason for the Chief Constable’s unhappiness was always the same, which was political pressure from outside.”
“What sort of political?”
Norman shrugged. “Not party politics especially. A pressure group. Lobbying. A bargain struck somewhere, along the lines of ‘get the Quint prosecution aborted and such-and-such a good thing will come your way!’ ”
“But not a direct cash advantage?”
“Sid!”
“Well, sorry.”
“I should frigging well hope so.” He wrapped thick twine around the shrouded engine. “I’m not asking cash for a strip of rag from Northamptonshire.”
“I grovel,” I said.
He grinned. “That’ll be the day.” He climbed into his boat and secured various bits of equipment against movement en route.
“No one has entirely given in to the pressure,” he pointed out. “The case against Ellis Quint has not been dropped. True, it’s now in a ropy state. You yourself have been relentlessly discredited to the point where you’re almost a liability to the prosecution, and even though that’s brutally unfair, it’s a fact.”
“Mm.”
In effect, I thought, I’d been commissioned by Davis Tatum to find out who had campaigned to defeat me. It wasn’t the first time I’d faced campaigns to enforce my inactivity, but it was the first time I’d been offered a fee to save myself. To save myself, in this instance, meant to defeat Ellis Quint: so I was being paid for that, in the first place. And for what else?
Norman backed his car up to the boat trailer and hitched them together. Then he leaned through the open front passenger window of the car, unlocked the glove compartment there and drew out and handed to me a plastic bag.
“One strip of dirty rag,” he said cheerfully. “Cost to you, six grovels before breakfast for a week.”
I took the bag gratefully. Inside, the filthy strip, about three inches wide, had been loosely folded until it was several layers thick.
“It’s about a meter long,” Norman said. “It was all they would let me have. I had to sign for it.”
“Good.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Clean it, for a start.”
Norman said doubtfully, “It’s got some sort of pattern in it but there wasn’t any printing on the whole wrapping. Nothing to say where it came from. No garden center name, or anything.”
“I don’t have high hopes,” I said, “but frankly, just now every straw’s worth clutching.”
Norman stood with his legs apart and his hands on his hips. He looked a pillar of every possible police strength but what he was actually feeling turned out to be indecision.
“How far can I trust you?” he asked.
“For silence?”
He nodded.
“I thought we’d discussed this already.”
“Yes, but that was months ago.”
“Nothing’s changed,” I said.
He made a decision, stuck his head into his car again and this time brought out a business-sized brown envelope which he held out to me.
“It’s a copy of the analysis done on the horse nuts,” he said. “So read it and shred it.”
“OK. And thanks.”
I held the envelope and plastic bag together and knew I couldn’t take such trust lightly. He must be very sure of me, I thought, and felt not complimented but apprehensive.
“I’ve been thinking,” I said, “do you remember, way back in June, when we took those things out of Gordon Quint’s Land-Rover?”
“Of course I remember.”
“There was a farrier’s apron in the Land-Rover. Rolled up. We didn’t take that, did we?”
He frowned. “I don’t remember it, but no, it’s not among the things we took. What’s significant about it?”
I said, “I’ve always thought it odd that the colts should stand still long enough for the shears to close round the ankle, even with head collars and those nuts. But horses have an acute sense of smell . . . and all those colts had shoes on—I checked with their vets—and they would have known the smell of a blacksmith’s apron. I think Ellis might have worn that apron to reassure the colts. They may have thought he was the man who shod them. They would have trusted him. He could have lifted an ankle and gripped it with the shears.”
He stared.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“It’s you who knows horses.”
“It’s how I might get a two-year-old to let me near his legs.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “that’s how it was done.”
He held out his hand automatically to say good-bye, then remembered Gordon Quint’s handiwork, shrugged, grinned and said instead, “If there’s anything interesting about that strip of rag, you’ll let me know?”
“Of course.”
“See you.”
He drove off with a wave, trailing his boat, and I returned to my car, stowed away the bag and the envelope and made a short journey to Shelley Green, the home of Archie Kirk.
He had returned from work. He took me into his sitting room while his smiling wife cooked in the kitchen.
“How’s things?” Archie asked. “Whisky?”
I nodded. “A lot of water . . .”
He indicated chairs, and we sat. The dark room looked right in October: imitation flames burned imitation coals in the fireplace, giving the room a life that the sun of June hadn’t achieved.
I hadn’t seen Archie since then. I absorbed again the probably deliberate grayness of his general appearance, and I saw again the whole internet in the dark eyes.
He said casually, “You’ve been having a bit of a rough time.”
“Does it show?”
“Yes.”
“Never mind,” I said. “Will you answer some questions?”
“It depends what they are.”
I drank some of his undistinguished whisky and let my muscles relax into the ultimate of nonaggressive, noncombative postures.
“For a start, what do you do?” I said.
“I’m a civil servant.”
“That’s not ... well ... specific.”
“Start at the other end,” he said.
I smiled. I said, “It’s a wise man who knows who’s paying him.”
He paused with his own glass halfway to his lips.
“Go on,” he said.
�
��Then ... do you know Davis Tatum?”
After a pause he answered, “Yes.”
It seemed to me he was growing wary; that he, as I did, had to sort through a minefield of facts one could not or should not reveal that one knew. The old dilemma—does he know I know he knows—sometimes seemed like child’s play.
I said, “How’s Jonathan?”
He laughed. “I hear you play chess,” he said. “I hear you’re a whiz at misdirection. Your opponents think they’re winning, and then ... wham.”
I played chess only with Charles at Aynsford, and not very often.
“Do you know my father-in-law?” I asked. “Ex-father-in-law, Charles Roland?”
With a glimmer he said, “I’ve talked to him on the telephone.”
At least he hadn’t lied to me, I thought; and, if he hadn’t lied he’d given me a fairly firm path to follow. I asked about Jonathan, and about his sister, Betty Bracken.
“That wretched boy is still at Combe Bassett, and now that the water-skiing season is over he is driving everyone mad. You are the only person who sees any good in him.”
“Norman does.”
“Norman sees a talented water-skier with criminal tendencies.”
“Has Jonathan any money?”
Archie shook his head. “Only the very little we give him for toothpaste and so on. He’s still on probation. He’s a mess.” He paused. “Betty has been paying for the water skiing. She’s the only one in our family with real money. She married straight out of school. Bobby’s thirty years older—he was rich when they married and he’s richer than ever now. As you saw, she’s still devoted to him. Always has been. They had no children; she couldn’t. Very sad. If Jonathan had any sense he would be nice to Betty.”
“I don’t think he’s that devious. Or not yet, anyway.”
“Do you like him?” Archie asked curiously.
“Not much, but I hate to see people go to waste.”
“Stupid boy.”
“I checked on the colt,” I said. “The foot stayed on.”
Archie nodded. “Betty’s delighted. The colt is permanently lame, but they’re going to see if, with his breeding, he’s any good for stud. Betty’s offering him free next year to good mares.”
Archie’s sweet wife came in and asked if I would stay to dinner; she could easily cook extra. I thanked her but stood up to go. Archie shook my hand. I winced through not concentrating, but he made no comment. He came out to my car with me as the last shreds of daylight waned to dark.