Dead Heat

by Dick Francis

  I discovered that more Germans had emigrated to the United States than from any other nation, including Ireland and England, and that many of them had settled in the state of Wisconsin since the climate and agriculture were similar to those at home. So great was the influx that, according to one Web site I visited, a third of the total population of the state in 1900 had been born in Germany. Milwaukee, the largest city in Wisconsin, and less than thirty miles from Delafield, had even been known as the German Athens during the nineteenth century.

  Adding “Delafield” narrowed my search down to just a few hundred, and there he was: Rolf Schumann, president of Delafield Industries, Inc., with his date of birth, education details, family tree, the lot. Good old Internet.

  I spent the next hour or so discovering not a great deal useful about Mr. Schumann. He was sixty-one years old, and had been president of Delafield Industries for seven years, having been their finance director before that. It appeared that he was a pillar of society in Delafield and was involved either as a donor to or an administrator of various local charities. I learned that he was a leading light in the Delafield Chamber of Commerce and an elder at one of the local Lutheran churches. There was absolutely nothing I found to suggest that he would be the target of a bomber six thousand miles from his home.

  Back in the 1840s, Delafield Industries, Inc., had been established at a local blacksmith’s forge, making hand tools for the new settlers of Wisconsin to work the land and grow their corn. With the coming of the internal combustion engine, the firm had diversified first into tractors and then into every type of agricultural machinery. According to their own Web site, the company was now the biggest supplier of combine harvesters to midwestern farmers, and even I knew there was an awful lot of corn in the American Midwest. Unless huge success and mammoth money-making were motives for murder from jealous competitors, I could glean no reason why Delafield Industries should be a target.

  I didn’t seem to be doing very well in my new career as an investigator.

  Carl came into the office and handed me a letter. “This came for you the day before yesterday,” he said.

  It was the letter from Forest Heath District Council informing me that they intended to prosecute me. I remembered that I had been on my way to collect the other letter from Suzanne Miller when my brakes had failed. I called her office number.

  “Hello, Suzanne,” I said, “Max Moreton here.”

  “Hello, Max,” she said in her trill manner. “Are you all right? I heard about your accident.”

  “I’m fine, Suzanne, thank you,” I said. “Just a little concussion, although my car has had it completely.”

  “Oh dear,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

  “And I’m sorry that I never made it to you to collect the letter from Forest Heath District Council.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” she said. “But it’s still here, waiting for you.”

  “They sent another copy to the restaurant,” I said.

  “I thought they might have,” she said.

  “Have you had any luck with the lists I asked you to get?” I asked, coming to the real purpose of my call.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you with the guest list from the dinner,” she said. “The one you already have is the only one available. Short of calling all the people named on the list and asking them for the names of their guests, I can’t think of anything else to do. But I’ve had a bit more luck with the Delafield Industries list. Apparently, the Special Branch asked for lists of the guests in all the boxes. Something to do with security for that Arab.” She didn’t sound too impressed by the Special Branch. “Fat lot of good it did.”

  She still thought, like everyone else apart from me, that the bomb had been aimed at the prince.

  “Where are the lists?” I asked her.

  “The Special Branch has them, I suppose,” she said. “I only found out about the lists because another of the box holders told me. He was rather indignant at having to tell the police the names of his guests. If you ask me, it was because he had his mistress with him and he wanted to keep her name a secret.”

  “Are you sure?” I said.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “He told my staff she was his niece, but it was obvious she wasn’t. We had a great time playing them along.” She laughed over the phone.

  I wouldn’t have believed it of her. “Who was it?” I asked eagerly.

  “I’d better not say,” she said, but then she did. She couldn’t resist it. I knew who it was. Everyone in racing would have known who it was. She then told me the name of his mistress too. How delicious. “But don’t tell anyone,” she said seriously. I didn’t need to. In time, Suzanne would see to that.

  “So how do I get the list from Special Branch?” I asked.

  “Why don’t you ask them for it,” she said.

  So I did.

  I typed “Special Branch UK” into my computer and found a Web site that told me that every police force has its own Special Branch. So I called the Suffolk Police, who told me that protection for VIPs was handled by Special Branch of the Met, the Metropolitan Police. They kindly gave me a number.

  “We don’t give out information to members of the public,” I was told firmly by a Detective Inspector Turner when I called and asked for the lists.

  “But I’m not just a member of the public; I was there,” I said. “I was blown up by the bomb and I ended up in the hospital.” I didn’t tell him that it was only for a bit of a sore knee and a scratched leg.

  “And what, exactly, is it you are after?” he said.

  I explained to him that I had been the chef at the lunch that had been served in the bombed box and that one of my staff had been killed in the explosion. He was appropriately sympathetic. I told him that I believed the Special Branch had been given a list of all the guests invited to that box, and I was trying to obtain that list, so that I could invite the survivors to join a self-help therapy group being set up in the name of my dead waitress. To help them recover from the trauma of the bombing.

  It was the best I could think of on the spur of the moment.

  “I’ll see what I can do, sir,” he said.

  I thanked him, and gave him my e-mail address as well as my telephone number.

  I looked at my watch. It was nearly half past four. I called Caroline.

  “Hello,” she said over the line. “I was just thinking about you.”

  “Good thoughts, I hope,” I said.

  “Mostly.” I wasn’t sure about her tone.

  “Not regretting last night, are you?” I said.

  “Oh, you know. All a bit sudden.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. As far as I was concerned, all the best things in life were a bit sudden, and she was no exception. But I wasn’t going to push things. Who was it, I thought, who said, “Things may come to those who wait”?

  “Have you had a good afternoon?” I asked.

  “Wonderful,” she said. “I’ve played my viola for three whole hours. My fingers are tired, but I feel so alive. Music is like oxygen-without it, I’d suffocate.”

  “I thought you would be packing,” I said.

  “I’m not going now until Monday,” she said. “The first night in Chicago is not until Wednesday, and the rest of the orchestra are going off to see Niagara Falls for the weekend. I will join them in Chicago on Monday night.”

  “Will you come back to Newmarket, then?” I asked.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I’m having my hair done tomorrow at four, and I have to get ready for the trip.”

  “Oh,” I said rather glumly. “When will I see you, then?”

  “Don’t sound so miserable,” she said. “I said I can’t come to Newmarket, but you could come here if you want to.”

  I did want to. “When?”

  “Whenever,” she said. “Come tomorrow and stay until Monday morning. You can help me get to Heathrow with all my stuff and see me off to the States.”

  I hated the thought of seein
g her off to anywhere. “OK,” I said. “I’ll be at your place tomorrow around lunchtime.”

  “No, later,” she said. “I’ve got to go shopping before my hair appointment. Come at seven, and we’ll go down the pub for dinner.”

  “That’ll be lovely,” I said. “I’ll call you later.”

  We hung up, and I sat at my desk, smiling. I had never been so eager to see someone in my life. Was this it? I wondered. It was all a bit sudden, and a bit scary.

  I asked my computer who had said the quote. It came back with the answer: Abraham Lincoln. But his full quote was: “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” In the future, I resolved to hustle.

  I SPENT another hour at my computer, hunting for anything that would give me a direction in which to look. I dug out the copy of the Cambridge Evening News that had listed the dead and searched the Internet for any lead for each name. Nothing. I did discover that one of the Delafield men who had died, Gus Witney, had been connected with the equine world, being involved with a polo club. The Lake Country Polo Club, to be precise.

  I looked it up. The club had a very expansive Web site for what was clearly an expanding enterprise. Sure enough, Gus Witney was there, named as their president, and there was even a photograph of him smiling. They clearly were not very quick at updating their site, as nearly two weeks had now passed since their president had died and there was still no mention of it. The club was sponsored, not unexpectedly, by Delafield Industries, Inc., and Rolf Schumann himself was named in the list of patrons and vice presidents.

  There was a link to the United States Polo Association, and I was surprised to see that polo was such a big activity over there. Obviously, it wasn’t in the same league as baseball or football, but there were more than four times as many polo clubs in the U.S. as there were Thoroughbred racetracks. And about ten times as many clubs as in England. Now, that was a surprise. I had always thought of polo as a minor sport, and a peculiarly British minor sport at that, played by British army cavalry officers on the plains of India to while away the boredom of a long posting far from home.

  YOU’VE GOT MAIL, my computer said via a little blue box in the bottom right corner of the screen.

  It was from Detective Inspector Turner. It was the Delafield guest list for 2,000 Guineas day. Good old D.I. Turner. However, it didn’t give me what I wanted. What he had sent was a scan of a piece of paper that had originally had the full invited list printed on it. However, someone had drawn a thick black line through the seven names of those who had failed to show up. Against sixteen of the remaining names, someone had placed a d, presumably for “deceased,” since there were d’s next to Elizabeth Jennings, MaryLou Fordham and the Walterses. Also, someone had handwritten “Louisa Whitworth” and “Elaine Jones” at the bottom of the list. They too had a d next to their names. I remembered from the Cambridge Evening News report that Elaine Jones had been the unfortunate woman killed by flying masonry.

  I suppose I shouldn’t complain. I had asked for the list of survivors and D.I. Turner had given me exactly that, together with the names of those who had died. But what I still lacked was the names of the seven people who should have been there but weren’t.

  I called the number I had used earlier.

  “Is D.I. Turner there?” I asked.

  I had to wait a few minutes before he came on the line. I thanked him for sending me the list, but could he help just one more time? He listened patiently to my explanation, that I would like to have the names of those who had escaped death only by a fraction, in order that they too might share in the benefit of the therapy group, did he have the seven missing names?

  He seemed to hesitate, but then he agreed to try to find the original list.

  “Can’t promise we still have it,” he said. “Not so important for us to keep a list of people who weren’t there, especially when they weren’t even the intended target.”

  I thought about telling him my theory that, actually, they were the intended target, but it still seemed rather fanciful, and I had no hard facts to back it up. My afternoon’s searching on the Internet had hardly turned up anything of note, and I was beginning to seriously doubt my original thoughts that my car crash had been deliberately arranged. I simply thanked him again and said that I would be waiting for the list.

  “I go off duty in half an hour,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I hung up. Was I right or were the police right? Perhaps I should have shared my ideas with the policeman and then at least he could have shown me the errors in my reasoning. Maybe, as Caroline had said, the police had more information than I did, information from MI5 and the other intelligence services. Or maybe they were just sticking to the Arab prince theory because they didn’t have any other.

  I thought about calling Neil Jennings, but it seemed too soon to intrude on his grief by asking questions about how and why he had been invited to the Delafield box. Instead, I called the Kealys.

  “Hello, Max,” said Emma. “Are you checking up whether we’re coming tomorrow?”

  I had to think about what she was talking about. “No,” I said. “I just assumed you were.”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “I think there will be six of us, as usual.”

  “Great,” I said. I decided not to mention that I wouldn’t be at the restaurant. I would be down the pub with Caroline. I couldn’t remember when I was last “down the pub” on a Saturday night. I was looking forward to it. “No, the real reason I called was to ask if you knew why you had been invited to that lunch on Guineas day.”

  “Oh that,” she said. “We had a runner in the race. I think that was the reason.”

  “But they couldn’t have asked all the trainers,” I said.

  “I don’t know about that,” said Emma. “We were, and I know Neil and Elizabeth were invited as well. Elizabeth and I had discussed it.” She paused briefly. “Poor Elizabeth.”

  “Yes,” I said. I waited a few seconds. “Emma, I’m sorry to be a nuisance, but can you remember when you received the invitation?”

  “Oh.” There was a pause. “I can’t, I’m afraid. It was some time ago, I know that.”

  “Was it a proper printed invitation, on stiff card?” I asked.

  Another pause. “I don’t think it was,” she said. “I can’t remember it being on the mantelpiece. That’s where we put all our invitations.” I suspected that their mantelpiece was kept pretty full.

  “Well,” I said, “thanks anyway.”

  “No problem,” she said. “I’ll ask George when he gets in. He’s out at some damn committee meeting for the club he’s chairman of. I’ll call you if he thinks of anything more.”

  “Thanks. Bye, now.” I hung up. Another dead end.

  I looked again at the list that Detective Inspector Turner had sent. Of the seventeen names not crossed out and without a d next to them, I knew eleven. I suspected that the others, the ones I didn’t recognize, were Delafield people, one of whom, according to Ms. Harding at the newspaper, had since died from her burns. The eleven that I did recognize included one couple who were regulars at the Hay Net, and at least four others lived locally and had been occasional customers. The remaining five were from farther afield, and included a trainer and his wife from Middleham in Yorkshire, the wife of the Irish businessman who had been killed and an ex-jockey from the West Country who now made a meager living giving tips to corporate guests at race meetings. I couldn’t remember him giving a talk before the lunch, but I would have been in the kitchen by then anyway. None of them looked likely targets of a terrorist.

  The last one was Rolf Schumann. Was he the target?

  I checked my e-mails again. Nothing new.

  I looked at my watch and the half hour was up. D.I. Turner would have gone off duty for the day, maybe for the weekend, so I would just have to be patient and wait.

  It was seven-thirty and the restaurant dinner service was beginning to get into full swing, so I went int
o the kitchen to check if everything was going well and was promptly ordered out by Carl.

  “You’re sick,” he said. “Go home, and let us get on with it.”

  “I’m not sick,” I said. “I’ve just got a headache. You can’t catch concussion, you know.”

  He grinned at me. “No matter. We are coping fine without you. This is Oscar.” Carl pointed at a new face in the kitchen. “He’s doing fine.” Oscar smiled. Gary didn’t. He was clearly not having one of his good days. I left them and returned to my office. I would have loved to go home, but I still wanted to search a little more on the Internet and I had no computer at home.

  I checked my e-mails yet again but still nothing more. I was beginning to give up on D.I. Turner when my phone rang. It was him.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I have found a copy of the original list, but I can’t seem to work this damn scanner, now the secretary’s gone home. And I’ve got to go home now as well. I’m meant to be taking the missus out to the cinema for her birthday, and I’m going to be late as it is. I’ll send it to you next week.”

  “Couldn’t you just read it out?” I said. “I’ll write them down.”

  “Oh all right. But quickly.”

  I grabbed a pen and wrote down the names on the back of an old menu card. Neil Jennings was there as expected, as were George and Emma Kealy, and I knew of two of the other four, Patrick and Margaret Jacobs, who together ran a successful saddlery business in the town. The other couple I’d never heard of. Their names were Pyotr and Tatiana Komarov.

  I thanked him and wished him a pleasant evening with his wife and to blame me for his lateness. He said he intended to, and hung up.

  I looked at the names I had written on the menu. Why had I thought that the key to everything would be the names of those invited to but not present in the bombed box? Patrick and Margaret Jacobs were nice people who, I knew, looked after their customers with efficiency and charm. They seemed well respected, even liked, by most of the local Newmarket trainers, some of whom had even brought them to dinner at the Hay Net. I searched through the copy of the guest list for the Friday-night dinner and, sure enough, “Mr. amp; Mrs. Patrick Jacobs” were listed as having been present.