by Dick Francis
Caroline came over and sat with me during the intermission while the rest of the orchestra disappeared down some concrete steps at the back of the stage.
“What do they all do during the intermission?” I asked as we watched them go.
“Same as the audience, I expect,” she said. “Some have a cup of tea. There’s usually some waiting for us in the dressing room. Others have something a little stronger, although they’re not supposed to. One or two go outside for a smoke. Believe it or not, some sit and go to sleep for fifteen minutes.”
“What do you normally do?” I asked her, taking her hand.
“All of the above.” She laughed.
“Do you want to go and have your tea, then?” I asked her.
“No. I want to stay here. I share a dressing room with twelve other women and I’d much rather be here with you.”
Good. I would much rather it too.
“I’m going back to Delafield tomorrow,” I said. “I’m going to have a snoop around the Lake Country Polo Club. Rolf Schumann was a vice president of the club, and one of those killed by the bomb at Newmarket was the president.”
“But I can’t come with you,” she said miserably. “There are some changes to the program for tomorrow night, and I have rehearsals at eleven and at three.”
“How about on Saturday?” I asked.
“We have a matinee on Saturday at two-thirty, as well as the evening performance,” she said. “You go tomorrow without me, but be careful. Remember, someone tried to kill Rolf Schumann, and that same person may have tried to kill you twice already.”
“You don’t need to remind me,” I said.
THE LAKE COUNTRY POLO CLUB was a very grand affair, with rows and rows of white-painted stables with brown roofs alongside four or five polo fields and a mass of club facilities. There were also dozens of horses in white-railed paddocks, their heads down as they chewed the spring grass. This was clearly a busy place, but also one where everything oozed money, and lots of it.
I pulled the Buick nose first into the visitors parking lot next to the club offices and walked in where it said RECEPTION on the door. There was a woman in a white crewneck sweatshirt and jeans sitting at a desk, typing on a computer. She looked up.
“Can I help you?” she said.
“I wondered if Mr. Komarov is anywhere about,” I said.
“No,” she said. “I’m afraid he won’t be back here now until next month at the earliest. For the Delafield Cup, I expect. He’s usually here for that.”
So they knew Mr. Komarov. In fact, they seemed to know him quite well.
“So he doesn’t own this club, then?” I asked her, feigning surprise.
“Oh no,” she said. “But he does own most of the ponies. His pony man is here, if you’d like to see him?” I wasn’t sure whether I did, but, before I could stop her, she lifted a phone and pushed some buttons. “What did you say your name was?” she asked me.
I hadn’t, in fact, said anything about my name. “Mr. Buck,” I said, looking out at my car. I very nearly said Buick.
Someone answered at the other end. “Kurt,” said the woman. “I have a Mr. Buck here asking after Mr. Komarov. He wants to know when he will be coming back to the club. Can you help?” She listened for a moment and then said, “Hold on, I’ll ask him.” She looked up at me. “Kurt says to ask you how you know Mr. Komarov.”
“I don’t,” I said. “But I want to ask him about something that happened in England.”
She relayed the message and then listened briefly. “Where in England?” she asked me.
“Newmarket,” I said loudly.
She didn’t say anything but listened a while longer. “Fine, I’ll tell him.” She hung up. “Kurt is coming over to see you,” she said to me. “Kurt’s in charge of all Mr. Komarov’s ponies.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll wait for him outside.”
Why were the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end and signaling danger, danger? Perhaps it would be safer to get back in the car and leave immediately. Instead, I went for a stroll and walked through a horse passageway beneath the empty grandstand and out onto the polo pitch beyond.
It put the Guards Polo Club in the shade. While it was true that there wasn’t a Royal Box, the rest of the facilities for watching were outstanding, with covered stands and hundreds of padded armchairlike seats for maximum comfort. The playing area had been set up for what the man at the Guards Club had called arena polo, but it could obviously be converted into a larger field for the real thing by removal of the boundary boards. There was plenty enough of the well-tended grass for even the biggest polo pitch.
I was standing, looking at the grandstand, when a man called out to me.
“Mr. Buck?” he shouted as he came through the passageway. Kurt, I presumed, and he wasn’t alone. A second man was with him, and he made me feel decidedly uncomfortable. Whereas Kurt was small and jockeylike in stature, his sidekick was tall and wide. And he carried a five-foot-long polo mallet across his chest like a soldier might carry a gun. I was left in no doubt that it was there to intimidate. It worked. I was very intimidated. Why hadn’t I got in the car and gone away when I had had the opportunity?
I stood in the middle of the grass polo arena and my exit route was on the other side of the grandstand. I had no choice but to brazen it out.
“What do you want?” Kurt asked brusquely. No word of welcome. But there wouldn’t be. His body language said it all. I wasn’t welcome one little bit.
I smiled, tying to relax. “I understand,” I said cheerfully, “that you know Mr. Komarov. Is that right?”
“It might be,” he said. “Depends on who wants to know.”
“I was hoping Mr. Komarov might be able to help me identify something,” I said.
“What?” he said.
“It’s in my car,” I said. I set off quickly past him towards the passageway.
“What is it?” he asked again.
“I’ll show you,” I said over my shoulder without breaking step. He wasn’t to know that the item was, in fact, in my trouser pocket, but I had no intention of getting it out here. I thought I would be safer at the car, but that might only be illusory.
Kurt didn’t seem happy and snorted through his nose, but he followed, and, sadly, so did his shadow. I walked ahead of them, and while I didn’t actually run they would have had to in order to overtake me. The larger man was unfit, and by the time I reached my car he was some way back and blowing hard.
But I hadn’t driven all this way for nothing. I still wanted to find out what I had come here for in the first place. I opened the car door and reached inside as if I was finding something, but I was actually getting it out of my pocket. I turned around and held the shiny steel ball out to Kurt in my open palm, like giving a piece of sugar to a horse.
He was dumbstruck. He stared at the ball and then at my face, as if searching for words.
“Where the fuck did you get that?” he said. He made a grab for it, but I closed my hand and easily beat his grasp.
“Tell me what is it and I’ll tell you where I found it,” I said.
“You give me that back right now,” he said, winding himself into a rage.
“You can have it back if you tell me what it is,” I said, sounding like a teacher who has confiscated some type of electronic gadget from a miscreant schoolboy but doesn’t know what it is.
Without warning, the big guy swung the polo mallet and struck me on the forearm. He was partially behind me, and I didn’t see the mallet coming until the very last millisecond. I had no time to avoid it, but, thankfully, I had time to relax as he hit me. Otherwise, I think he would have broken my arm completely in two. As it was, it wasn’t great. The mallet caught me just above my right wrist. There was a sharp crack, and my arm went instantly numb. I dropped the shiny metal ball. It rolled away towards Kurt. As he stooped to pick it up, I dived into the car, slammed the door and pushed the central locking button.
; My right arm wouldn’t work. I couldn’t get the key in the ignition, which was on the right side of the steering column. I spent valuable seconds trying and failing before leaning completely over to my right and getting the key into the slot using my left hand. I turned the key, started the car and threw the automatic gearshift into reverse with my left hand. The rear window of the Buick disintegrated behind me. I ignored it. I looked through the space where the glass had been and gunned the engine. The car leaped backwards towards the mallet-wielding maniac behind me. Surprisingly, he deftly sidestepped the car and swung the mallet again in my direction. The passenger’s door window shattered, showering me with tiny squares of glass. Kurt was at the driver’s door, banging on the window and hauling on the door handle, but he had no mallet and his fist was no match for the toughened glass.
I braked hard to a stop and shoved the gearshift back into drive with my elbow. But the mallet maniac hadn’t finished. As the car accelerated forward towards the gate and the highway, he took one last swing. The business end of the mallet came right through the laminated windshield in front of the passenger’s seat, and stuck there. I didn’t stop. I caught a glimpse of the look of panic on the man’s face as I shot off with the mallet head stuck firmly through the glass. He had his hand equally firmly stuck in the twisted leather loop on the handle end.
In the rearview mirror, I saw the loop pluck him off his feet. I heard him strike the side of the vehicle somewhere low down on the nearside rear door, but I wasn’t going to stop, not even if I had to drag him all the way back to Chicago. As it was, he somehow disentangled his hand and dropped away before I turned out onto Silvernail Road and sped away towards the relative safety of the thundering eighteen-wheelers on I-94, the polo mallet still sticking out sideways from the windshield.
After a mile or so, I pulled over to the shoulder and managed to extricate the mallet. The leather loop on the handle had broken. I hoped that the wrist that had so recently been in it would be broken as well. I threw it on the backseat and set off again, glad that I wouldn’t now have to explain to any highway patrol why I had a polo mallet stuck out of my windshield. The Buick was missing two windows completely, and had a two-inch-diameter hole plus multiple cracks in the windshield, but I could live with that. The fact that I was alive at all was what really mattered to me.
“Damn,” I shouted out loud. Not only had I got my arm injured, and I was pretty sure that a bone had been broken by that blow, but I had also lost the shiny metal ball.
I’ll have to go and get another, I thought, and turned the car around at the next junction. I just hoped that Dorothy Schumann hadn’t had second thoughts about lending me one of the balls since Caroline and I had been at her house the previous day.
My trip to the Lake Country Polo Club had taught me two useful pieces of information. First, the balls were significant. How exactly they were significant, I hadn’t yet worked out. And second, if some of his staff were anything to go by, Mr. Komarov was definitely not on the side of the angels.
BY THE TIME I got back to the Hyatt Hotel, my arm was hurting like hell. I pulled up at the valet parking booth and received some very strange looks from the staff. I ignored them, picked up the polo mallet from the backseat and went into the lobby. I tossed the car keys to the concierge and explained to him that some of the glass had got damaged and would he deal with it with the rental company.
“Certainly, sir,” he said. He looked briefly at the polo mallet. “Right away, sir.” Absolutely nothing fazes a good concierge.
I went up in the elevator and lay on Caroline’s bed. The bedside clock showed me that it was three o’clock. The orchestra were just starting their second rehearsal. I realized that I wasn’t very comfortable, so I removed everything from my pockets and put it all on the bedside table: wallet, money, room key, handkerchief and a shiny metal ball about the size of a golf ball and made in two halves that was somehow crucial to the bombing of Newmarket racetrack some four thousand miles away.
Mrs. Schumann hadn’t been at all pleased to hear that I had already lost the ball that she had been so insistent that I should keep safe. However, I eventually managed to coax her into handing over another ball, but only after I had convinced her that it would be decisive in finding out why her Rolf had been so injured.
Maybe I had been convincing myself too.
17
C aroline returned between the final rehearsal and the evening performance to find me still lying on her bed, and in a bad way. In spite of me swallowing copious painkillers, my arm was so sore that every movement caused me to wince.
“You need a doctor,” Caroline said. She was very concerned, and not a little frightened.
“I know, but I don’t want to use my credit card to pay for it,” I said.
“Do you really think someone can trace you from your credit card?” she said.
“I’m not taking the chance,” I said. “Especially after today. Who knows what Komarov is capable of? I think he’s somehow responsible for killing nineteen people at the Newmarket races. He won’t worry about killing one more.” Or two, I thought, and I didn’t like it. “How long have you got before the performance?”
“About an hour before I have to go,” she said.
“It will have to be enough,” I said. “Come on, let’s go, and bring your credit card with you.”
“How do you know they can’t trace mine as well?” she asked, suddenly alarmed.
“I don’t,” I said. “But I think it’s less likely that they will search for Miss Aston when trying to find Max Moreton.”
We went by taxi to the Northwestern Memorial Hospital emergency room on Erie Street, with me biting back a scream with every bump, with every pothole.
As at any accident-and-emergency department in England, there were endless forms to fill out and lots of waiting time. Here, though, as well as the appointments with the medical staff there was also the all-important one with the hospital cashier.
“Do you have insurance, Mr. Moreton?” asked the casually dressed young woman behind the counter.
“I believe I do have some travel insurance, but I can’t find the details,” I said.
“Then I’ll put ‘no’ down on the form,” she said, and check-marked it accordingly. “Do you therefore intend to self-pay for your treatment?”
“Yes,” I said. “At least for the time being.”
She worked away for a while. “As you are a non-U.S. citizen, I will need full prepayment of this estimate before you can be treated,” she said.
“How much is it?” I asked her. She pushed a piece of paper towards me with her final figure at the bottom. “I only want my arm seen to,” I said, reading it. “I don’t want to buy the whole damn hospital.”
She wasn’t amused. “Full prepayment of this estimate will be needed before any treatment is given,” she repeated.
“What would happen if I couldn’t pay it?” I asked.
“Then you would be asked to go someplace else,” she said.
“How about if I was dying?” I said.
“You’re not dying,” she replied. But I got the impression that if I had been and couldn’t have paid, I might still be expected to go and die someplace else, preferably another hospital.
Caroline gave the woman her credit card and flinched only slightly when she saw the amount on the slip she was asked to sign. We went back and sat down in the waiting area, with an assurance that I would be called soon. I kissed her gently, and promised to repay her as soon as I got home.
“What if someone kills you first?” she whispered. “Then what would I do?” She grinned. It made me feel better.
“I’ll leave it to you in my will,” I said, grinning back. Laugh in the face of adversity, for laughter is the best medicine.
We sat for a while together. The clock on the wall crept around to six-forty.
“I hate to say it,” she said, “but I’ve got to go now or I’ll miss the performance, and then I really will get fired. Are
you sure you’ll be all right?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”
“They won’t keep you in here all night, will they?” she asked.
“Not without more money,” I said with a hollow laugh. “No, I don’t think so. I’ll see you later at the hotel.” She was reluctant to go. “Go on, go,” I said, “or you’ll be late.”
She waved as she went through the automatic doors. I didn’t really want her to go. I needed her here, mopping my brow and easing my pain, not caressing that damn Viola.
“Mr. Moreton,” shouted a nurse, bringing me back to my reality.
I BEAT Caroline back to the hotel room, but only by about ten minutes. As before, she was high on the applause-induced adrenaline rush, while I was high on a mix of nitrous oxide and painkillers. And I was sporting a fiberglass cast on my wrist that stretched from the palm of my hand, around the thumb, to the elbow.
An X-ray had clearly shown that I had a broken wrist, my ulna having been well and truly cracked right through, about an inch above the joint. Fortunately, it hadn’t been displaced much, and the fracture had been reduced by a doctor simply pulling on my hand until the ends of the bone had returned to their rightful positions. I hadn’t enjoyed the experience, in spite of the partial anesthetic effects of the nitrous oxide. Laughing gas it may be, but the procedure had not been a laughing matter.
The cast was designed to immobilize the joint, and the doctor had told me it would have to stay on for at least six weeks. I remembered the stories my father used to tell about his injuries when he was a jump jockey. He always claimed that he was a quick healer, and he often told of how he would start trying to remove a plaster with scissors only about a week after breaking a bone. But jump jockeys are mad, everyone knows that.
As instructed, I kept my right arm raised on a pillow throughout the night to reduce swelling under the cast. It wasn’t great for romance, but it did keep the pain to a minimum.