by Dick Francis
“Apparently,” I said, “someone from the police told a doctor at the hospital that the accident was due to brake failure.”
“I don’t know anything about that, sir.”
“Is there any way I could speak to the policeman who attended the accident?” I asked.
“Can you hold, please?” I didn’t have a chance to say either yes or no, before I found myself listening to a recorded message telling me of the services offered by Suffolk Constabulary. I listened to the whole thing through at least three times before a live voice came back on the line.
“I’m sorry, sir,” it said. “The officer is not available to speak to you.”
“When will he be available?” I asked. “Can I leave a message for him to call me?” I gave my cell number, but I didn’t hold out much hope that the message would get through. They were very busy, they said, but they would see what they could do.
I called the towing company. Yes, they said, they had my Golf. But it was not in great shape. Could I come and visit? I asked. Yes, they said, anytime.
Caroline returned to the sitting room after her investigation of my property.
“Nice place,” she said. “Better than my hovel in Fulham.”
“Do you want to move in?” I asked.
“Don’t push your luck, Mr. Moreton,” she said, smiling. “I’ve been looking for where I would be sleeping tonight.”
“But you are staying?” I said, perhaps a touch too eagerly for her liking.
“Yes,” she said, “but not in your bedroom. If that’s not OK by you, then I will go back to London now.”
“It’s OK,” I said. Not brilliant, I thought, but OK.
I took some painkillers for my throbbing head, and then Caroline and I went by taxi to Kentford to see my car.
As the man from the towing company had said on the telephone, it wasn’t in great shape. In fact, I had to be told which one of the wrecks was mine since I didn’t recognize it. The roof was missing completely, for a start.
“What on earth happened to it?” I asked one of their men. My pride and joy for so long was now just a mangled heap.
“The fire brigade cut the roof off to get the occupant out,” he said. “The car was on its side when I got there with my truck and the roof was already gone. Maybe it’s still in the ditch, next to where the car was.”
It didn’t matter. Even to my eyes, the car was a complete write-off. Not only had the roof disappeared, the front fender was completely ripped away and the wheel beneath was sitting at a strange angle. That must have happened, I thought, when I hit the bus.
“Has anyone been to inspect it?” I asked him.
“Not that I’m aware of. But it’s been sitting here since yesterday morning, and I don’t exactly keep guard.”
“Here” was down the side of the workshop, behind a pair of tow trucks.
“I was the driver,” I said to him.
“Blimey, you were lucky, then. I thought it was a fatal when I first arrived.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Fire brigade and ambulance spent ages getting you out. That’s never a good sign. Had you in one of those neck-brace things. You didn’t look too good, I can tell you. Not moving, like. I thought you were probably dead.”
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically.
“No,” he said. “I’m glad you’re not, like. Easier for me too.”
“Why?” I said.
“If it had been a fatal,” he said, “I would have to keep this pile of garbage here for the police inspectors, and they take bloody ages to do their stuff. Since you’re OK, I can get rid of it, off the premises, just as soon as your insurance bloke looks at it. Also,” he added with a smile, “since you’re alive I now can send you a bill for recovering it from the roadside.”
I made a mental note to phone the insurance company, not that they would give me much. I suspected that car was worth little more than the policy’s deductible, but it just might pay the wretched man’s bill for getting rid of the wreck.
“I think the accident occurred because my brakes failed,” I said. “Is there any way of checking that by looking?”
“Help yourself, it’s your car.” He turned away. “I’ve got work to do.”
“No,” I said quickly. “I wouldn’t know what to look for. Could you have a look for me?”
“It’ll cost you,” he said.
“All right,” I said. “How much?”
“Usual labor rates,” he replied.
“Can you look at it now?” I said. “While I’m here?”
“Suppose so,” he said.
“OK,” I said. “Usual rates.”
He spent about twenty minutes examining what was left of my car, but the results were inconclusive.
“Could have been the brakes, I suppose,” he said finally. “Difficult to tell.”
I assured him that it definitely was the brakes that had failed and caused the accident.
“If you were bloody certain it was the brakes, what did you want me to check it for?”
“I want to know if the brakes had been tampered with,” I said.
“What, on purpose?” He stared at me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s what I want you to tell me.”
“Blimey,” he said again. He leaned back over the car.
“Look here,” he said. I joined him in leaning over what had been the front bumper. He pointed at a jumbled mass of metal pipes and levers. “The brake system on this old Golf was a simple hydraulic, non-power-assisted system.” I nodded. I knew that. “What happens when you push the brake pedal is you force a piston along this cylinder.” He pointed at what looked like a metal pipe about an inch in diameter and about an inch and a half long. “The piston inside pushes brake fluid through the pipes to the wheels, and the pressure causes the brake pads to squeeze the brake discs. That’s what slows the car down.”
“Like a bicycle brake?” I asked.
“Well, not exactly. On a bike, there is a cable going from the brake lever to the brake pads. In a car, the pressure is transmitted through the fluid-filled pipes.”
“I see,” I said. But I wasn’t sure I did completely. “So what caused the brakes to fail?”
“Brakes will fail if air gets into the pipes instead of the brake fluid. Then, when you push the pedal, all you do is compress the air and the brakes don’t work.” He spotted my quizzical look. “You see, the brake fluid won’t compress, but air will.” I nodded. I knew that from my school chemistry.
“So all someone needed to do,” I said, “was to put some air into the pipes and the brakes wouldn’t work.”
“Yes,” he said. “But it’s not that easy. For a start, there are two brake systems on this car, so if one failed the other should still work.”
“There were no brakes at all when I pushed the pedal,” I said.
“Air must have got into the master cylinder,” he said. “That’s very unusual, but I have come across it once before. That time was due to the pipe from the reservoir to the master cylinder coming loose.” He had lost me.
“But can you tell if it was done on purpose?” I asked him.
“Difficult to tell,” he said again. “Might have been. The joins are still tight, so someone would have had to split the metal pipe.” He pointed. “It could have been done by flexing it up and down a few times until it cracked open due to fatigue. You know, like bending a wire coat hanger until it snaps.”
“But wouldn’t that make the brakes fail immediately?” I asked him.
“Not necessarily,” he said. “It might take a while for the air to seep from the cracked pipe into the master cylinder.”
“Can you tell if that is what happened here?” I asked.
He looked again at the jumble of broken pipes. “The accident seems to have smashed it all. It would be impossible to tell what had been done beforehand.”
“Would the police accident investigators have any better idea?” I asked him.
&nbs
p; He seemed a bit offended that I had questioned his ability. “No one could tell from that mess what it was like before the accident,” he said with some indignation.
I wasn’t sure that I totally agreed with him, but I didn’t think it was time to say so. Instead, I paid him half an hour’s labor cost in cash and used my cell phone to call a taxi.
“Do you have the keys of the car?” I asked the man.
“No, mate,” he said. “Never seen them. Thought they were still in it.”
They weren’t. I’d looked. “Never mind,” I said. “They wouldn’t be much use now anyway.” But they had been on a silver key fob. A twenty-first-birthday present from my mother.
“Can I send it off to the scrap, then?” he asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “Wait until the insurance man has seen it.”
“Will do,” he said. “But don’t forget, you’re the one paying for the storage.”
What a surprise.
“WELL, THAT WASN’T very conclusive,” said Caroline as we sat in the taxi taking us back to Newmarket. “What do you want to do now?”
“Go home,” I said. “I’m feeling lousy.”
We did go home, but via the supermarket in Newmarket. I sat outside in the taxi as Caroline went to buy something to eat for supper, as well as a bottle of red wine. I was pretty sure that the painkillers I was taking didn’t mix too well with alcohol, but who cared.
I lay on the sofa and rested my aching head while Caroline fussed around in the kitchen. Once or twice, she came and sat down next to me, but soon she was up and about again.
“Relax,” I said to her. “I won’t eat you alive.”
She sighed. “It’s not that. I’m restless because I haven’t got my viola here to play. I usually practice for at least two hours every day, even if I’m performing in the evening. I haven’t played a note since the day before yesterday and I’m suffering from withdrawal symptoms. I need my fix.”
“Like me and my cooking,” I said. “Sometimes, I just get the urge to cook even if there is no one to eat it. The freezers at the restaurant are full of stuff I intend getting round to eating one day.”
“Shame there’s none of it here,” she said.
“I could call and ask one of my staff to bring some over.”
“No,” she said, smiling. “I’ll take my chances and cook for the cook. It also might be better not to mention anything about this to your staff.”
“Why not?” I said.
“They might get the wrong idea.”
“And what, exactly, is the ‘wrong idea’ they might get?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “If they knew I was staying here, they might jump to the wrong conclusions.”
I wasn’t sure I liked the way the conversation was going. Too much analysis of any situation was apt to make it appear somewhat stupid, whereas uninhibited and thought-free actions were more often an accurate reflection of true feelings. The raw and honest emotion of last night in the hospital was in danger of being consumed by too much good sense and the weighing up of consequences.
“What do you play when you practice?” I asked, changing the subject. “And don’t say ‘the viola.’”
“Finger exercises mostly,” she said. “Very boring.”
“Like scales?” I had been forced to do hours of scales on the piano when I was a child. I had hated it.
“Exactly,” she said. “But I also play pieces as well. Scales alone would drive anyone crazy, even a pro musician.”
“What is your favorite piece to play?” I asked.
“Bach’s Violin Concerto in E Major,” she said. “But, of course, I play it on the viola.”
“Doesn’t it sound all wrong?”
She laughed. “No, of course not. It sounds fine. Take the song ‘Yesterday.’ You know the one, by the Beatles. It can be played on the piano, the guitar, the violin or anything else. It still sounds like ‘Yesterday,’ doesn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” I said. I would take her word for it.
I looked at my watch. It was six o’clock. The sun, if not exactly over the yardarm, was well into its descent from the zenith, so I opened the wine, and we sat and drank it, content in each other’s company.
Caroline fixed fresh salmon with a parsley sauce, new potatoes and salad, and it was delicious. We sat together on the sofa and ate it on our laps while watching a satirical news program on the television. Real domesticity.
As she had planned, Caroline didn’t sleep in my bedroom.
But, then again, neither did I.
11
C aroline got up early and called herself a taxi.
“Was it something I said?” I asked.
“Oh no,” she said, laughing. “It’s just that I have to get back to London. I’ve got a meeting at the RPO offices in Clerkenwell Green. I want to convince them to let me fly out for the rest of the tour.”
She sat on the end of the bed in my spare room, putting on some black socks. I sat up and pulled her back until she was again lying next to me, in my arms.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said. “But I’m glad it did.”
I did mean for it to happen and I was also glad it did. I kissed her.
“Are you coming back here after your meeting?” I asked.
“I can’t,” she said. “The orchestra finishes the run in New York tonight and then moves on to Chicago for the second part of the U. S. tour. I am desperate to regain my chair for that. If all goes well today, I will be flying out to Chicago on Sunday.”
It was now Friday. Sunday seemed much too soon for her to disappear from me across the wide Atlantic.
“But you haven’t even seen my restaurant,” I said. “How about tomorrow? For dinner?”
“Don’t be so eager, Mr. Moreton. I have a life, you know. And I have things to do if I’m going to be away next week.” She sat up and finished dressing.
“When will you be back from the States?” I asked.
“I don’t know that I’ll be going yet. The orchestra is due to return next weekend to spend time preparing for our Festival Hall season. It’s during that time I’m playing my solo at the Cadogan Hall. Are you still coming?”
“If you’ll still have dinner with me afterwards,” I said.
“Deal.” We sealed it with a kiss.
We went downstairs, and Caroline made us some breakfast.
“Watch that toaster,” I said to her. “It’s broken and doesn’t pop up like it should, and I’m forever forgetting and setting off the smoke alarm.”
She watched it, carefully and without incident. We sat at the kitchen table and munched our way through two slices each of toast and marmalade.
The taxi hooted from outside. Too soon, I thought, much too soon.
After Caroline left, I moped around the house all morning, wishing she were still there. I tidied the kitchen at least three times, and I even vacuumed the floor in the sitting room until the noise began to make my head ache. I had a bowl of cereal, with painkillers, for my lunch.
It was with mixed emotions that I took Caroline’s telephone call around one o’clock. She was so excited at having been welcomed back into the orchestral fold and busy making plans for her trip to Chicago. I was pleased for her, but I would have been kidding myself if I didn’t admit I was rather disappointed that she was going.
“YOU DIDN’T,” said Bernard Sims incredulously. “I’ve heard of clients sleeping with their lawyers, and jury members sleeping with each other, and even the odd judge or two sleeping with a barrister, but I’ve never before heard of the defendant sleeping with the plaintiff, not even if they were married to each other.” He laughed loudly. I wished I hadn’t told him.
He had called during the early afternoon to say that he had received another letter from Miss Aston’s lawyers giving the grounds for her complaint and inviting our side to make a reasonable offer to Miss Aston for the distress and loss of earnings she had suffered.
I had foo
lishly told him that I had taken his advice to ask her out to dinner and now a relationship had developed between us.
“But did you sleep with her?” he had asked persistently.
“Well,” I’d said finally, “what if I did?”
Now he was enjoying the situation hugely.
“Did she drop the lawsuit at the same time as she dropped her knickers?” he asked, barely able to contain his mirth.
“Bernard,” I said sharply. “That’s enough. And, no, she hasn’t dropped the suit. Her agent is insisting that she persevere with it. He wants his percentage.”
“Perhaps he’s sleeping with her too.” He was out of control.
“Bernard, I said stop it, that’s enough.” I had raised my voice.
“You’re serious about her, aren’t you?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Well, blow me down,” he said. “What shall I tell her lawyers?”
“Don’t you dare tell them anything,” I said.
“Not about that,” he said. “What shall I tell them about an offer?”
“Let me think about it over the weekend. I’ll speak to you on Monday. She’s away for a week now, so they won’t be able to tell her anything anyway.”
“Is she away with you?” he asked.
“No she isn’t,” I said. “And it would be none of your business if she was.”
“Everything about you is my business,” he said, laughing. “I’m your lawyer, remember?” He was still laughing when he hung up. I wondered if all his clients gave him so much pleasure.
At about half past two, I called Carl to ask him to come and fetch me.
“Thought you had to rest for a few days,” he said.
“I do,” I replied. “I’m not coming in to work. I need to use my computer to get on the Internet.”
“Right,” he said. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”
THERE WERE nearly a million hits when I typed “Rolf Schumann” into the search engine on my computer. Most of the hits were in German. Rolf and Schumann were obviously very common names in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and in Holland, too.
I added “Wisconsin” to my search criteria and was still surprised that the number of hits still exceeded twenty-eight thousand. It seemed that Rolf and Schumann were quite common names in Wisconsin as well.