by Dick Francis
‘I’m not the father-figure you were hoping for,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t think you’d be so young.’
‘Which do you want most,’ I asked. ‘A father-figure, or someone to find Bob?’ But it was too soon to expect her to see that the two things didn’t necessarily go together. She needed the comfort as much as the search.
‘He didn’t steal that money,’ she said.
‘How do you know?’
‘He just wouldn’t.’ She spoke with conviction, but I wondered if the person she most wanted to convince was herself.
A waiter knocked on the door, bringing a tray, and Emma felt well enough to sit at the table and eat. She started slowly, still in a weak state, but by the end it was clear she was fiercely hungry.
As she finished the last of the bread I said, ‘In about three hours we’ll have dinner.’
‘Oh no.’
‘Oh yes. Why not? Then you’ll have plenty of time to tell me about Bob. Hours and hours. No need to hurry.’
She looked at me with the first signs of connected thought and almost immediately glanced round the room. The awareness that she was in my bedroom flashed out like neon in the North Pole. I smiled. ‘Would you prefer the local nick? One each side of a table in an interview room?’
‘Oh! I… suppose not.’ She shuddered slightly. ‘I’ve had quite a lot of that, you see. In a way. Everyone’s been quite kind, really, but they think Bob stole that money and they treat me as if my husband was a crook. It’s… it’s pretty dreadful.’
‘I understand that,’ I said.
‘Do you?’
The meal had done nothing for her pallor. The eyes still looked as hollowed and black-smudged, and the strain still vibrated in her manner. It was going to take more than champagne and soup to undo the knots.
‘Why don’t you sleep for a while?’ I suggested. ‘You look very tired. You’ll be quite all right here, and I’ve some reports which I ought to write. I’d be glad to get them out of the way.’
‘I can’t sleep,’ she said automatically, but when I determinedly took papers out of my briefcase, spread them on the table, and switched on a bright lamp to see them by, she stood up and hovered a bit and finally lay down again on the bed. After five minutes I walked over to look, and she was soundly asleep with sunken cheeks and pale blue veins in her eyelids.
She wore a camel coloured coat, which she had relaxed as far as unbuttoning, and a brown and white checked dress underneath. With the coat falling open, the bulge in her stomach showed unmistakably. Five months, I thought, give or take a week or two.
I pushed the papers together again and returned them to the briefcase. They were the various statements and accounts relating to her husband’s disappearance, and I had no report to write on them. I sat instead in one of the Grand’s comfortable armchairs and thought about why men vanished.
In the main they either ran to something or from something: occasionally a combination of both. To a woman; from a woman. To the sunshine; from the police. To political preference; from political oppression. To anonymity: from blackmail.
Sometimes they took someone else’s money with them to finance the future. Bob Sherman’s sixteen thousand kroner didn’t seem, at first sight, to be worth what he’d exchanged for it. He earned five times as much every year.
So what had he gone to?
Or what had he gone from?
And how was I to find him by Monday afternoon?
She slept soundly for more than two hours with periods of peaceful dreaming, but after that went into a session which was distressing her. She moved restlessly and sweat appeared on her forehead, so I touched her hand and called her out of it.
‘Emma. Wake up. Wake up, now, Emma.’
She opened her eyes fast and wide with the nightmare pictures still in them. Her body began to tremble.
‘Oh, ‘she said. ‘Oh God…’
‘It’s all right You were dreaming. It was only a dream.’
Her mind finished the transition to consciousness, but she was neither reassured nor comforted.
‘I dreamed he was in jail… there were bars… and he was trying to get out… frantically… and I asked him why he wanted to get out, and he said they were going to execute him in the morning… and then I was talking to someone in charge and I said what had he done, why were they going to execute him, and this man said… he’d stolen the racecourse… and the law said that if people stole racecourses they had to be executed…’
She rubbed a hand over her face.
‘It’s so silly,’ she said. ‘But it seemed so real.’
‘Horrid,’ I said.
She said with desolation, ‘But where is he? Why doesn’t he write to me? How can he be so cruel?’
‘Perhaps there’s a letter waiting at home.’
‘No. I telephone… every day.’
I said, ‘Are you… well… are you happy together?’
‘Yes,’ she said firmly, but after five silent seconds the truer version came limping out. ‘Sometimes we have rows. We had one the day he came here. All morning. And it was over such a little thing… just that he’d spent a night away when he didn’t have to… I’d not been feeling well and I told him he was selfish and thoughtless… and he lost his temper and said I was too damn demanding… and I said I wouldn’t go with him to Kempton then, and he went silent and sulky because he was going to ride the favourite in the big race and he always likes to have me there after something like that, it helps him unwind.’ She stared into a past moment she would have given the world to change. ‘So he went on his own. And from there to Heathrow for the six-thirty to Oslo, same as usual. Only usually I went with him, to see him off and take the car home.’
‘And meet him again Sunday night?’
‘Yes. On Sunday night when he didn’t come back at the right time I was worried sick that he’d had a fall in Norway and hurt himself, and I telephoned to Gunnar Holth… but he said Bob hadn’t fallen, he’d ridden a winner and got round in the other two races, and as far as he knew he’d caught the plane as planned. So I rang the airport again… I’d rung them before, and they said the plane had landed on time… and I begged them to check and they said there was no Sherman on the passenger list…’ She stopped and I waited, and she went on in a fresh onslaught of misery, ‘Surely he knew I didn’t really mean it? I love him… Surely he wouldn’t just leave me, without saying a word?’
It appeared, however, that he had.
‘How long have you been married?’
‘Nearly two years.’
‘Children?’
She glanced down at the brown and white checked mound and gestured towards it with a flutter of slender fingers. ‘This is our first.’
‘Finances?’
‘Oh… all right, really.’
‘How really?’
‘He had a good season last year. We saved a bit then. Of course he does like good suits and a nice car… All jockeys do, don’t they?’
I nodded. I knew also more about her husband’s earnings than she seemed to, as I had access to the office which collected and distributed jockeys’ fees; but it wasn’t so much the reasonable income that was significant as the extent to which they lived within it.
‘He does get keen on schemes for making money quickly, but we’ve never lost much. I usually talk him out of it. I’m not a gambler at all, you see.’
I let a pause go by. Then, ‘Politics?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Is he interested in communism?’
She stared. ‘Good heavens, no.’
‘Militant in any way?’
She almost laughed. ‘Bob doesn’t give a damn for politics or politicians. He says they’re all the same, hot air and hypocrisy. Why do you ask such an extraordinary question?’
I shrugged. ‘Norway has a common frontier with Russia.’
Her surprise was genuine on two counts: she didn’t know her geography and she did know her husb
and. He was not the type to exchange good suits and a nice car and an exciting job for a dim existence in a totalitarian state.
‘Did he mention any friends he had made here?’
‘I’ve seen nearly everyone I can remember him talking about. I’ve asked them over and over… Gunnar Holth, and his lads, and Mr Kristiansen, and the owners. The only one I haven’t met is one of the owner’s sons, a boy called Mikkel. Bob mentioned him once or twice… he’s away at school now, or something.’
‘Was Bob in any trouble before this?’
She looked bewildered. ‘What sort?’
‘Bookmakers?’
She turned her head away and I gave her time to decide on her answer. Jockeys were not allowed to bet, and I worked for the Jockey Club.
‘No,’ she said indistinctly.
‘You might as well tell me,’ I said. ‘I can find out. But you would be quicker.’
She looked back at me, perturbed. ‘He only bets on himself, usually,’ she said defensively. ‘It’s legal in a lot of countries.’
‘I’m only interested in his betting if it’s got anything to do with his disappearance. Was anyone threatening him for payment?’
‘Oh.’ She sounded forlorn, as if the one thing she did not want to be given was a good reason for Bob to steal a comparatively small sum and ruin his life for it.
‘He never said… I’m sure he would have told…’ She gulped. ‘The police asked me if he was being blackmailed. I said no, of course not… but if it was to keep me from knowing something… how can I be sure? Oh, I do wish, I do wish he’d write to me…’
Tears came in a rush and spilled over. She didn’t apologise, didn’t brush them away, and in a few seconds they had stopped. She had wept a good deal, I guessed, during the past three weeks.
‘You’ve done all you can here,’ I said. ‘Better come back with me on Monday afternoon.’
She was surprised and disappointed. ‘You’re going back so soon? But you won’t have found him.’
‘Probably not. But I’ve a meeting in London on Tuesday that I can’t miss. If it looks like being useful I’ll come back here afterwards, but for you, it’s time now to go home.’
She didn’t answer at once, but finally, in a tired, quiet, defeated voice, said ‘All right.’
4
Arne was having difficulty with his complex, constantly looking over his shoulder to the extent of making forward locomotion hazardous. Why he should find any threat in the cheerful frost-bitten looking crowd which had turned up at 0vrevoll for the Norsk Grand National was something between him and his psychiatrist, but as usual his friends were suffering from his affliction.
He had refused, for instance, to drink a glass of wine in a comfortable available room with a king-sized log fire. Instead we were marching back and forth outside, him, me, and Per Bjørn Sandvik, wearing out shoe leather and turning blue at the ears, for fear of bugging machines. I couldn’t see how overhearing our present conversation could possibly benefit anyone, but then I wasn’t Arne. And at least this time, I thought philosophically, we would not be mown down by a speedboat.
As before, he was ready for the outdoor life: a blue padded hood joined all in one to his anorak. Per Bjørn Sandvik had a trilby. I had my head. Maybe one day I would learn.
Sandvik, one of the Stewards, was telling me again at first hand what I’d already read in the statements: how Bob Sherman had had access to the money.
‘It’s collected into the officials’ room, you see, where it is checked and recorded. And the officials’ room is in the same building as the jockeys’ changing room. Right? And that Sunday, Bob Sherman went to the officials’ room to ask some question or other, and the money was stacked there, just inside the door. Arne saw him there himself. He must have planned at once to take it.’
‘What was the money contained in?’ I asked.
‘Canvas bags. Heavy double canvas.’
‘What colour?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Brown.’
‘Just dumped on the floor?’
He grinned. ‘There is less crime in Norway.’
‘So I’ve heard,’ I said. ‘How many bags?’
‘Five.’
‘Heavy?’
He shrugged. ‘Like money.’
‘How were they fastened?’
‘With leather straps and padlocks.’
Arne cannoned into a blonde who definitely had the right of way. She said something which I judged from his expression to be unladylike, but it still didn’t persuade him to look where he was going. Some enemy lay behind, listening: he was sure of it.
Sandvik gave him an indulgent smile. He was a tall pleasant unhurried man of about fifty, upon whom authority sat as lightly as fluff. Arne had told me he was ‘someone at the top in oil’, but he had none of the usual aura of big business: almost the reverse, as if he derived pleasure from leaving an impression of no power, no aggression. If so, he would be a board-room opponent as wicked as a mantrap among the daisies. I looked at him speculatively. He met my eyes. Nothing in his that shouldn’t be.
‘What was it intended to do with the bags, if Sherman hadn’t nicked them?’ I asked.
‘Lock them in the safe in the officials’ room until Monday morning, when they would go to the bank.’
‘Guarded,’ Arne said, eyes front for once, ‘By a night watchman.’
But by the time the night watchman had clocked in, the booty had vanished.
‘How did the officials all happen to desert the room at once, leaving the money so handy?’ I asked.
Sandvik spread his thickly gloved hands. ‘We have discussed this endlessly. It was accidental. The room can only have been empty for five minutes or less. There was no special reason for them all being out at one time. It just happened.’
He had a high-register voice with beautifully distinct enunciation, but his almost perfect English sounded quite different from the home-grown variety. I worked it out after a while: it was his I’s. The British pronounced ‘I’ with their tongue lolling back in the throat, the Norwegians said theirs with the tongue tight up behind the teeth. Retaining the Norwegian T gave Sandvik’s accent a light, dry, clear-vowelled quality which made everything he said sound logical and lucid.
‘No one realised, that evening, that the money had been stolen. Each of the officials took it for granted that another had put the bags in the safe as they were no longer to be seen. It was the next day, when the safe was opened for the money to be banked, that it was found to be missing. And then, of course, we heard from Gunnar Holth that Sherman had disappeared as well.’
I thought. ‘Didn’t Gunnar Holth tell me that Bob Sherman stayed with you once or twice?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’ Sandvik briefly pursed his well-shaped mouth. ‘Twice. But not the time he stole the money, I’m glad to say.’
‘You liked him, though?’
‘Oh yes, well enough, I suppose. I asked him out of politeness. He had ridden several winners for me, and I know what Gunnar’s bunk room is like…’ He grinned slightly. ‘Anyway, he came. But we had little of common interest except horses, and I think he really preferred Gunnar’s after all.’
‘Would you have expected him to steal?’
‘It never crossed my mind. I mean, it doesn’t does it? But I didn’t know him well.’
Arne could not bear the close quarters of the crowd on the stands, so we watched the first race, a hurdle, from rising ground just past the winning post. The racecourse, forming the floor of a small valley, was overlooked on all sides by hillsides of spruce and birch, young trees growing skywards like the Perpendicular period come to life. The slim dark evergreens stood in endless broken vertical stripes with the yellow-drying leaves and silver trunks of the birch, and the whole backdrop, that afternoon, was hung along the skyline with fuzzy drifts of misty low cloud.
The light was cold grey, the air cold damp. The spirits of the crowd, sunny Mediterranean. An English jockey won the race on the favo
urite and the crowd shouted approval.
It was time, Sandvik said, to go and see the Chairman, who had not been able to manage us sooner on account of lunching a visiting ambassador. We went into the Secretariat building adjoining the grandstand, up some sporting print-lined stairs, and into a large room containing not only the Chairman but five or six supporting Stewards. Per Børn Sandvik walked in first, then me, then Arne pushing his hood back, and the Chairman went on looking enquiringly at the door, still waiting for me, so to speak, to appear. I sometimes wondered if it would help if I were fat, bald and bespectacled: if premature ageing might produce more confidence and belief than the thin-six-feet-with-brown-hair job did. I’d done a fair amount of living, one way or another, but it perversely refused to show.
‘This is David Cleveland,’ Sandvik said, and several pairs of eyes mirrored the same disappointment.
‘How do you do,’ I murmured gently to the Chairman, and held out my hand.
‘Er…’ He cleared his throat and recovered manfully. ‘So glad you have come.’
I made a few encouraging remarks about how pleasant I found it in Norway and wondered if any of them knew that Napoleon was promoted General at twenty-four.
The Chairman, Lars Baltzersen, was much like his letters to my office, brief, polite and effective. It took him approximately ten seconds to decide I wouldn’t have been given my job if I couldn’t do it, and I saw no need to tell him that my boss had died suddenly eighteen months earlier and left the manager-elect in charge a lot sooner than anyone intended.
‘You sound older on the telephone,’ he said simply, and I said I’d been told so before, and that was that.
‘Go anywhere you like on the racecourse,’ he said. ‘Ask anything… Arne can interpret for those who do not speak English.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Do you need anything else?’
Second sight, I thought; but I said, ‘Perhaps, if possible, to see you again before I go at the end of the afternoon.’
‘Of course. Of course. We all want to hear of your progress. We’ll all gather here after the last race.’
Heads nodded dubiously, and I fully expected to justify their lowly expectations. Either briefed or bored or merely busy, they drifted away through the door, leaving only Arne and the Chairman behind.