Comeback

by Dick Francis

  “Wynn Lees?” he said cheerfully in his high loud voice. “He tacked a man’s trousers to his bollocks.” He laughed long and hard, wheezing slightly. “With a rivet gun,” he added.

  I glanced at Ken. He was going rigid with shock, his mouth open.

  “Dad!” Zoe protested automatically.

  “True,” her father said. “I think it was true, you know.” He frowned, troubled, as the memory slid away. “I dream a bit, now and then.”

  “Do you know him, sir?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Wynn Lees.”

  The blue eyes sparkled at me. “He went away ... I expect he’s dead. Six is Vinderman.”

  “Come on, Dad,” Zoe said, moving along the row of boxes.

  He said mischievously, as if reciting a nursery rhyme, “Revised Edition, Wishywashy, Pennycracker, Glue.”

  Zoe said, “They don’t want to be bothered with all that, Dad.”

  I asked him lazily, “What comes after Glue?”

  “Faldy, Vinderman, Kodak, Boy Blue.”

  I smiled broadly. He laughed happily, pleased.

  “They’re the names of horses he used to train long ago,” Zoe said. “He forgets the names of today’s.” She took his arm. “Let’s get on, the lads are all waiting.”

  He went amenably, and we came to a horse that Zoe said had been much stronger and tougher since he’d been cut. For cut, read castrated, I thought. Most male steeplechasers were geldings.

  “Oliver Quincy did it,” Zoe said.

  Ken nodded. “He’s good at it.”

  “He came out several times, did three or four of them. Dad likes him.”

  Ken said neutrally, “Oliver can be good company when he chooses.”

  “Oliver?” Mackintosh asked. “Did you say Oliver?”

  “Yes, sir. Oliver Quincy.”

  “He told me a joke. Made me laugh. I can’t remember it.”

  “He does tell jokes,” Ken agreed.

  Oliver’s joke had fallen flat on Sunday morning: “What four animals did a woman like most.” My mother would love it, I thought.

  We came to the last box. “Poverty,” Mackintosh said, feeding a carrot to a chestnut with a white star. “How’s he doing, Reg?”

  “Coming along fine, sir.”

  “Is she still in season?” Zoe asked him.

  Reg shook his head. “She’ll be fine for Saturday.”

  “What’s her name?” I asked. “Shall I bet?”

  “Metrella,” Zoe said, “and don’t. Well, thanks, Reg. That’s all. I’ll be down later.”

  Reg nodded and Zoe swept everyone back into the Land Rover except for the dogs, who bounded home at varying speeds in the wake.

  Zoe invited us halfheartedly to go in for a drink and didn’t mind when we declined.

  “Come again,” Mackintosh said warmly.

  “Thank you, sir,” Ken said.

  I looked along the sweep of the fine mellow frontage, the mill wheel out of sight round the far end, the old stream gone forever.

  “Splendid house,” I said. “A piece of history. I wonder who lived here before.”

  “As it’s been here two centuries, I can’t tell you everyone,” Zoe said, “but the people Dad bought it from were a family called Travers.”

  KEN WANTED TO talk not about the Mackintoshes but about his session with the Superintendent, which had pressing priority in his mind. When we reached his car we sat on for a while in mine and he told me what had gone on in the office after I’d left.

  “Superintendent Ramsey wanted to know if there were any surgical gloves missing. I ask you, how could we know? We buy them by the hundred pairs. We order more when we get low. Carey told him to stop asking, no one knew.”

  “You and Carey were both there?”

  “Yes, for a while. I told Ramsey we had several sizes of gloves. Yvonne uses size six and a half. Mine are much bigger. He asked dozens of questions. What are the gloves made of? Where do we buy them? How often do we count them? Where do we dispose of them? I asked him if he’d found any used gloves lying about, but he wouldn’t say.”

  While he drew breath I said, “What are they made of, then?”

  “Latex. You’ve seen them often enough. Each pair is packed in its own sterile packet. You’ve seen me throw them in the bin. I mean, sometimes I might use three pairs during one operation. It always depends. So then he started on gowns, caps and masks. Same thing, except not so many sizes. We throw them away. We throw the packets away. All we could pretty well swear to was that there were no lab coats missing, because those aren’t disposable, they go to the laundry. Ramsey said wasn’t it extravagant to throw so much away. He has no understanding of sterile procedure. He’d never heard of shoe-covers. After that army of doctors, police and photographers had marched through the operating room, any hope of deducing who’d been in there would have vanished, I would have thought.”

  “Mm.”

  “And why should he think anyone would need to be sterile to commit murder?”

  “You told me yourself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “So as not to leave any personal telltale litter on Scott. No hair, no skin, no fluff, no nothing.”

  He blinked. “Do you really believe that?”

  “I don’t know, but I’d guess they didn’t find any fingerprints on the stapler, and took it from there.”

  “It’s all ghastly,” he said.

  “What else did they ask?”

  “They asked if I thought Scott had killed the horses.”

  “Mm.”

  “What do you mean, mm? He couldn’t have done.” He was indignant at my response. “He was a nurse.”

  “And an anesthetist.”

  “You’re as bad as the police.”

  “It’s always been a possibility,” I said reasonably. “I’m not saying he killed them, I’m saying he had the ability and the opportunity. Just like you.”

  He thought it over. “Oh.”

  “Maybe he found out who killed them,” I said.

  Ken swallowed. “I didn’t believe you when you said things were dangerous. I mean, killing horses is one thing but killing a man is different.”

  “If you have the means to kill without trace, that’s dangerous.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “And Scott is the second person dead here.”

  “The second? Oh, you mean the arsonist?”

  “Everyone forgets him,” I said. “Or her, of course.”

  “Her?”

  “How about the nurse who left in a huff?”

  “Surely the police checked on her!”

  “Yes, I expect so,” I reflected. “How about us going to see Nagrebb?”

  He hated the idea. “Nagrebb’s bad enough but his son’s worse.”

  “I thought you said he had a daughter.”

  “He has. Two sons and a daughter. One of the sons is also a show-jumper and he’s the meanest bastard that ever sat in a saddle.”

  “That’s saying something, with Wynn Lees about.”

  “You’ll be wanting to see him next!”

  “Actually, no, I don’t think so.”

  “You’ve a vestige of sense left, then.”

  “Well,” I said, “who trained the Fitzwalter horse?”

  “He trained it himself. He holds a permit.”

  “Does he?” I didn’t know why I should be surprised. Many owners of steeplechasers trained their own horses. “I thought you said it was a colt.”

  “Yes, it was. A three-year-old colt. It had run and won on the Flat as a two-year-old, and Fitzwalter bought it because he likes to get them going and run them as three- and four-year-old hurdlers and then put them over fences a bit later on.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Fitzwalter? Opinionated, but not too bad as a trainer. If you’re thinking of going to see him, I don’t mind coming with you. He took it quite well when his horse died.”

  “Where does he live?�
�

  “Five miles or so. Do you want me to phone, to see if he’s home?”

  “We might as well.”

  “He hasn’t stopped employing me, though. I mean, you don’t have to persuade him, like the others. And how did you tame Zoe so quickly? She was positively putty. Not a claw in sight.”

  “I don’t know. I thought her attractive. She probably saw that.”

  “Attractive!”

  “In a way.”

  “Astounding. Anyway, Fitzwalter engages us on a sort of contract basis, and it’s still in operation.”

  “Good, then can you drop in without his calling you out specifically?”

  He nodded. “I often pop in if I’m passing.”

  “Let’s pop, then.”

  He consulted the small address book, phoned, got an affirmative answer, removed himself from my car to his own and led the way through country lanes and up a winding hill to a bare upland and a gray stone house. The house, unremarkable, stood next to about three acres of smashed and rotting cars, a jumbled rusting dump of old dreams.

  We turned off the road into a straight drive that led past the house and ended by a small open-ended stable yard that looked as if it had been constructed from old sheds, a barn, a garage or two, and a henhouse.

  “Fitzwalter’s a scrap metal merchant,” Ken said unnecessarily as we got out of the cars. “At weekends, that pile of junk is buzzing with crowds looking for parts, wheels, valves, seats, pistons, he sells anything. Then he compresses the picked carcasses and ships them to be melted down. Makes a fortune.”

  “An odd mixture, scrap metal and horses,” I said.

  Ken was amused. “You’d be surprised. Half the kids pot-hunting at horse shows and gymkhanas are funded this way. Well, OK, not half, but definitely some.”

  In the yard, doors were open, lads carried buckets: evening stables were in full swing. Fitzwalter, whom Ken called and introduced simply as Fitz, came out of a garage-like stall and greeted us with a wave. He wore patched corduroys streaked blackly with oil and a big checked rough wool shirt. No jacket, despite the chill in the air. He had straight black hair, dark eyes and tanned skin, and was thin, energetic and perhaps sixty.

  “You should see him at the races,” Ken said under his breath as we walked into the yard to join him. “He has his suits made. Looks like a city gent.”

  He looked more like a gypsy at that moment, but his voice was standard English and his manner businesslike. He excused himself from shaking hands as they were covered with sulfanilamide powder, instead wiping them casually on his trousers. He seemed pleased enough to see Ken and, nodding to include me, asked him to just take a quick look at the rash inside his mare’s stifle.

  We walked to the box he’d come out of, which proved to contain a pair of enormous chestnut hindquarters and a flicking tail. Presumably she also had a head and the usual front half, but they were out of sight beyond. Ken and Fitz sidled unconcernedly past the kicking area, but I stayed further back, out of reach.

  Unable to hear the professional consultation within, I watched instead the activity out in the yard and listened to the clink and clank of the buckets.

  I had no feeling here of familiarity. Memory held a blank.

  “Try Vaseline instead,” Ken was saying, coming out.

  “Keep the rash moist for a while instead of trying to dry it up too soon. She’s looking well otherwise.”

  He and Fitzwalter moved across the expanse of packed earth and dead brown weeds and headed for the barn. In there, I discovered, following, were two roomy stalls strong enough for carthorses but each containing a good-looking narrow bay horse tied to the wall by its head collar.

  Ken and Fitzwalter looked at each in turn. Ken ran his hand down the legs. A good deal of nodding went on.

  “How many horses do you train?” I asked Fitzwalter interestedly.

  “Six at present,” he said. “It’s the busiest time of year, you see. I’ve room for seven, but we lost one a while back.”

  “Yes, Ken told me. Bad luck.”

  He nodded and asked Ken, “Did you ever find out what hit him?”

  “No, ’fraid not.”

  Fitzwalter scratched his neck. “Good little colt,” he said, “pity he had a chipped bone.”

  “Did you have him insured?” I asked sympathetically.

  “Yes, but not for enough.” He shrugged easily. “Some I insure, some I don’t. Most times the premium’s too high so I don’t insure. I risk it. With him, well, he was expensive when I bought him so I took some cover. Not enough, though. Win some, lose some.”

  I smiled noncommittally. He was perhaps lying, I thought.

  “Decent insurance company, was it?” I asked.

  “They paid up, that’s the main thing.” He laughed briefly, showing his teeth, and led the way out of the barn. “I’m running the five-year-old tomorrow at Worcester,” he said to Ken. “What about a blood count to see if she’s in good shape?”

  “Sure,” Ken said, and returned forthwith to his car for the necessaries of collecting a blood sample, telling Fitzwalter he would borrow a neighboring vet’s lab for the count. “Ours went up in smoke,” he said, “if you remember.”

  Fitzwalter nodded and thanked him and offered drinks, but we again declined. He looked at Ken speculatively, as he had been doing on and off all along, and came to a decision.

  “One of my lads,” he said, “told me a rumor that I really can’t believe.”

  Ken said, “What rumor?”

  “That you had one of your people murdered this morning.” He inspected Ken’s face and got his answer. “Who was it? Not Carey!”

  “Scott Sylvester, our anesthetist,” Ken said reluctantly.

  “What happened?”

  “We don’t know,” Ken said, shying away from describing Scott’s state. “It’ll be on the news . . . and in the papers.”

  “You don’t seem much worried,” Fitzwalter said critically. “I was expecting you to tell me. When you didn’t, I thought it couldn’t be true. How was he killed?”

  “We don’t know,” Ken said uncomfortably. “The police are trying to find out.”

  “I don’t like the sound of it.”

  “It’s devastating,” Ken agreed. “We’re trying to go on as normal but frankly I don’t know how long we’ll be able to.”

  Fitzwalter’s dark eyes looked into the distance, considering. “I’ll have to talk to Carey,” he said.

  “Carey’s very upset. Scott had been with us a long time,” Ken said.

  “Yes, but why was he killed? You must know more than you’re saying.”

  “He was dead in the hospital when we arrived this morning,” Ken told him. “In the operating theater. The police came and took him away and asked us questions, but so far we don’t have any answers and the police haven’t told us what they think. It’s all too soon. We’ll know more tomorrow.”

  “But,” Fitzwalter insisted, “was he shot? Was there blood?”

  “I don’t think so,” Ken said.

  “Not a shotgun?”

  Ken shook his head.

  “Suicide?”

  Ken was silent. I said for him, “It wasn’t suicide.”

  Fitzwalter’s attention sharpened on me for the first time. “How do you know?”

  “I saw him. His wrists and ankles were tied. He couldn’t have killed himself.”

  He accepted my positive tone. “Who are you, exactly?” he asked.

  “Just a friend of Ken’s.”

  “Not involved in the practice?”

  “Only visiting.”

  “A vet?”

  “Oh, no,” I said, “far from it.”

  He lost interest and turned back to Ken. “I think it’s extraordinary you didn’t tell me first thing.”

  “I try to forget it,” Ken said.

  He could try, but it was impossible. I would never forget Scott’s head. The memory had been coming back in flashes of nausea all day. It must have been the same
for Ken.

  Fitzwalter shrugged. “I think I only met the man that time when the colt died. I reckoned he’d dropped off to sleep and not been watching properly, but it’s unlikely he could have saved him anyway. That’s the man, isn’t it?”

  Ken nodded.

  “Well, I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks,” Ken said. He sighed deeply. “When it was just dead horses, life was simpler.”

  “Yes, I heard you had an epidemic.”

  “Everyone’s heard,” Ken said despondently.

  “And a fire and another body. I don’t see how Hewett and Partners can survive.”

  Ken didn’t answer. The oftener anyone strung the disasters together, the more impossible became the prospects. Even a quick solution to everything might not avoid the wreckage, and a quick solution lived in cloud-cuckoo-land.

  “Time to go,” I said, and Ken nodded.

  “How do we stand?” he asked Fitzwalter. “You and I.”

  Fitzwalter shrugged. “I need a vet. You know the horses. I’ll phone Carey. I’ll see what can be worked out.”

  “Thanks very much.”

  Fitzwalter came halfway with us to the cars.

  “Anytime you want to scrap that old Ford,” he told Ken, “I’ll give you a price.”

  Ken’s car rattled with age and use but he looked indignant.

  “There’s miles in the old bus yet.”

  Fitzwalter gave him a pitying shake of the head and turned away. Ken patted his old bus affectionately and folded his gangly height into it behind the wheel. We were both supposed to be returning to Thetford Cottage but it seemed he had as little eagerness as I.

  “How about a pint?” he said. “I haven’t eaten all day and I feel queasy and I frankly can’t talk to Greg for more than five minutes without rigor mortis.”

  His last words disturbed him after he’d said them. Scott was everywhere in our minds.

  “I’ll follow you,” I said, and he nodded.

  As the day darkened, we passed by the tangled metal dump, went down the winding hill and through the country lanes and ended in a quiet old pub where only the chronically thirsty were yet propping up the bar.

  I couldn’t face beer and settled for brandy in a lot of water, realizing I also hadn’t eaten and was feeling more not less unsettled.

  “It’s hopeless, isn’t it?” Ken said, staring into his glass. “Talking to Fitz, I could see it. You give me hope sometimes, but it’s an illusion.”