Slay Ride

by Dick Francis

‘Once it’s set up,’ I said, ‘I’ll move on.’

  He looked at me curiously.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Don’t know yet.’

  They shook their heads and tut-tutted slightly, but gripped hands with cordiality as we separated into a couple of homeward taxis. It was after midnight when I reached the house where I lived behind the Brompton Road, but as usual the lights were still on in the rooms below my own small flat. The street door banged if you let it go, reverberating through the walls, and perhaps that, I thought, as I shut it gently, explained the ground floor tenant’s hypersensitivity. He was a self-contained man, greyish, fiftyish, very neat and precise. Our acquaintanceship after six months of living stacked one over the other extended simply to his trips to my door urging an instant lessening of decibels on the television. Once I had asked him in for a drink, but he politely declined, preferring solitude downstairs. Hardly the entente cordiale of the century.

  I went up, opened my own door, and shut that quietly also. The telephone bell, starting suddenly in all that noble silence, made me jump.

  ‘Mr Cleveland?’ The voice was hurried, practically incoherent. ‘Thank goodness you’re back at last… This is William Romney… Emma’s grandfather… She didn’t want me to ring you so late, but I must… Two men were searching her house when she went in and they hit her… Mr Cleveland… she needs your help…’

  ‘Stop a minute,’ I said. ‘First thing you need is the police.’

  He calmed down a fraction. ‘They’ve been here. Just left. I called them.’

  ‘And a doctor for Emma?’

  ‘Yes, yes. He’s gone, too.’

  ‘What time did all this happen?’

  ‘About seven this evening… we drove over from my house just to fetch some things for her… and there was a light on… and she went in first and they jumped on her… they hit us both… I do wish… well… tell you the truth…. I think we’re both still frightened.’

  I stifled a sigh. ‘Where exactly are you?’

  ‘At Emma’s house, still.’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘Oh, I see. Near Newbury. You go down the M4…’ He gave me details of the journey, certain in his own mind that I would hurry to their aid. He made it impossible for me to say take a tranquilliser and I’ll come in the morning, and anyway by the sound of his voice nothing short of a full anaesthetic was going to give him any rest.

  At least at night it was a fast straightforward journey, so I took the M.G.B. down there in fifty minutes flat. The Shermans’ house proved to be a modernised pair of farm cottages down an uninhabited lane, a nerve-testing isolation at the best of times.

  Lights were on in every window, and at the sound of my car William Romney’s anxious figure appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Thank goodness, thank goodness,’ he said agitatedly, coming down the short path to meet me. ‘I don’t know what we would have done… if you hadn’t been coming…’

  I refrained from saying that I thought they should have gone back to his house or otherwise stayed in a hotel, and once through the door I was glad I hadn’t, because it wouldn’t have helped. Shock prevents people from leaving the scene of personal disaster of their own accord, and of the scope and depth of their shock there could be no doubt.

  The house was a shambles. Pictures had been torn from the walls, curtains from the windows, carpets from the floor. Furniture was not merely turned inside out, but smashed. Lamps, vases, ornaments lay in pieces. Papers and books scattered the wreckage like autumn leaves.

  ‘It’s all like this,’ Romney said. ‘The whole house. All except the spare bedroom. That’s where they were when we interrupted them. The police say so…’

  Emma herself was in the spare bedroom, lying awake with eyes like soot smudges. Both of her cheeks were swollen and puffy, with red marks showing where blows had landed. Her lower lip had been split, and one eyebrow ended in a raw skinned patch.

  ‘Hullo,’ I said inadequately, and pulled up a chair so that I could sit beside her. Her grandfather hovered around making fussing noises, obviously freshly worried by the darkening bruises but tiring Emma beyond bearing. He looked more upset than ever when I asked him if I could speak to her alone, but in the end he reluctantly returned to the devastation below.

  I held her hand.

  ‘David…’

  ‘Wait a bit,’ I said. ‘Then tell me.’

  She nodded slightly. She was lying on the blankets of the unmade bed, still wearing the brown and white checked dress, her head supported by two coverless pillows and with a flowered quilt over her from the waist down.

  The room was hot with a pulsating gas fire, but Emma’s hand was cold.

  ‘I told the police,’ she said, ‘I think they were Norwegians.’

  ‘The two men?’

  She nodded. ‘They were big… They had thick sweaters and rubber gloves… They talked with accents…’

  ‘Start at the beginning,’ I said.

  She loosened her mouth, obviously troubled by the split and swelling lip.

  ‘We came over to get me some different clothes. I was beginning to feel better… There was a light on upstairs but I thought Mrs Street who has been looking after the house had left it on… but when I unlocked the front door and went into the hall they jumped on me… they switched all the lights on… I saw the mess… One of them hit me in the face and I screamed for Grandad… When he came in they knocked him over… so easily, it was awful… and they kicked him… One of them asked me where Bob would hide papers… and when I didn’t answer at once he just went on… punching me in the face… with his fists… I didn’t answer because I didn’t know… Bob doesn’t hide things… didn’t… oh God…’

  Her fingers curled tight round mine.

  ‘All right, all right, Emma,’ I said, meaning nothing except that I understood. ‘Wait a bit.’

  We waited until some of the tension left her body; then she swallowed and tried again.

  ‘The telephone rang then, and it seemed to worry them. They talked to each other, and then suddenly they just threw me into a chair… and they went away… through the front door… Grandad got up off the floor but the telephone stopped before he reached it… but anyway he called the police…’

  The tired voice stopped. I said, ‘Did the men wear masks of any sort?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you know them again?’

  ‘The police asked… they want me to look at photographs… but I don’t know… I was trying to avoid being hurt… I tried to put my hands in front of my face… and I shut my eyes…’

  ‘How about your grandfather?’

  ‘He says he might know them… but it was over so quickly, really.’

  ‘I suppose they didn’t tell you what papers they were looking for?’

  She shook her head miserably. ‘The police asked me that, over and over.’

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘How does your face feel now?’

  ‘Awfully stiff. Dr West gave me some pills, though. He says he’ll look in again tomorrow.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes… I didn’t want to go back to Grandad’s. This… this is.. home.’

  ‘Do you want the bed made properly?’

  ‘No thank you. I’m comfortable like this… too tired to move.’

  ‘I’ll go down, then, and give your grandfather a hand.’

  ‘All right…’ Anxiety flooded her suddenly. ‘But you won’t go, will you?’

  I promised her, and in fact I slept in trousers and shirt on the sofa in the sitting-room on a cleared oasis amid the rubble. William Romney, taxed almost too far, snored gently with a strong sedative on the double bed in the Shermans’ own room, and from three o’clock to five the cottage was dark and quiet.

  I awoke suddenly with a soft wail in my ears like the sound of a lamb in a snowstorm.

  ‘David…’

  It was Emma’s voice from upstairs, urgent and quavery.

  I tossed off th
e rug, stood up, and beat it up there fast. I’d left her door open and the fire on, and as I went in I could see the ultimate disaster looking out of her great dark eyes.

  ‘David…’ Her voice filled with unconsolable desolation. ‘David… I’m bleeding.’

  She lost the baby and very nearly her life. I went to see her three days after she’d been whisked away in a bell-ringing ambulance (three days because no one was allowed in sooner) and was surprised to discover that she could and did look even paler than she had in Oslo. The swellings had gone down in her face, though the bruises showed dark in patches. Her eyes were dulled, which seemed a mercy.

  The five minutes visit passed on the surface.

  ‘Nice of you to come,’ she said.

  ‘Brought you some grapes.’

  ‘Very kind.’

  ‘Sorry about the baby.’

  She nodded vaguely, but some sort of drug was dealing with that pain also.

  ‘Hope you’ll soon be better.’

  ‘Oh yes. Yes, I will.’

  William Romney shook with fury, stamping up and down my office with outrage.

  ‘Do you realise that it is a week tomorrow since we were attacked and no one has done anything? People can’t just vanish into thin air… those men must be somewhere… why can’t the police find them? It isn’t right that thugs should just walk into a defenceless girl’s house and tear things to pieces and hurt her so much that she nearly dies of it… It’s disgraceful that the police haven’t found those despicable bastards…’

  The word was a strong one for him: he looked almost surprised that he’d used it, and nothing could have more clearly stated the fierceness of his feelings.

  ‘I believe neither you nor Emma could identify the men from police photographs,’ I said, having checked via a friendly police contact that this was so.

  ‘They weren’t there. There weren’t any pictures of them. Can’t say that’s surprising… why don’t the police get photographs of Norwegian crooks for us to look at?’

  ‘It would probably mean your going to Norway,’ I said. ‘And Emma’s in no state, physical or emotional, to do that.’

  ‘I’ll go then,’ he said belligerently. ‘I’ll go, at my own expense. Anything… anything to see those men punished for what they’ve done to Emma.’

  His thin face was flushed with the strength of his resentment. I wondered if part of his fury sprang from unnecessary guilt that he hadn’t been young and strong enough to defend or rescue her from two aggressive toughs. Amends in the shape of effort and expense were what he was offering, and I saw no reason to dissuade him from a journey which would bring him mental ease even if no concretely helpful results.

  ‘I’ll fix it for you, if you like,’ I said.

  ‘What…?’

  ‘To go to Norway and look at the mug-shots.’

  His resolution took shape and hardened. He straightened his stooping shoulders, calmed his voice, and stopped wearing out so much of the Jockey Club’s carpet.

  ‘Yes. Please do that. I’ll go as soon as I can.’

  I nodded. ‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘Do you smoke? And how’s Emma?’

  He sat down, declined a desk-box of cigarettes, and said that last evening, when he’d seen her, Emma was very much stronger.

  ‘She says she’ll be out of hospital in two or three days.’

  ‘Good.’

  He didn’t look as if it were good. He said in recurring worried anger, ‘What on earth is that poor girl going to do? Her husband murdered… her home wrecked… I suppose she can live with me, but…’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll live in her own house,’ I said. ‘For a while, at least. Best if she does. Get her grieving done properly.’

  ‘What an extraordinary thing to say.’

  ‘When can you go?’ I said, reaching for the telephone.

  ‘At once.’

  ‘Right.’

  Øvrevoll racecourse answered in the shape of the manager, who gave me the home and office telephone numbers of Lars Baltzersen. He answered from his office, and I explained the situation. Of course, he said in dismay, of course he could arrange it with the police. For tomorrow? Certainly. Poor Mrs Sherman, he said, please give her my condolences. I said I would, and asked if there had been any recent progress.

  ‘None at all, I’m afraid,’ he said. He hesitated for several seconds, and then went on, ‘I have been thinking… I suppose… if the police don’t solve this crime… that you wouldn’t come back yourself, and see what you can do?’

  I said, ‘I’m not experienced in murder investigation.’

  ‘It must in essence be the same as any other sort.’

  ‘Mm… My masters here might not be willing for me to take the time.’

  ‘If I asked them myself, as an international favour? After all, Bob Sherman was a British jockey.’

  ‘Wouldn’t Norway prefer to ship him home and forget about the whole nasty incident?’

  ‘No, Mr Cleveland,’ he said severely. ‘A murder has been done, and justice should follow.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Then… you’ll come?’

  I thought. ‘Wait another week. Then if neither your police nor ours have found any new leads, and if you still want me to, well, maybe I can. But… don’t expect too much, will you?’

  ‘No more than before,’ he said dryly, and disconnected.

  William Romney had adjusted by then to the prospect of travelling the next day, and began to fuss mildly about tickets, currency and hotels. I shooed him out because he could do all that for himself, and I had a good deal of work on hand to start with, and more still if I had to clear time for another trip to Oslo. The police, I hoped, would quickly dig down to the roots themselves and save me from proving to the world that I couldn’t.

  William Romney went to Norway, spent two full days there and returned depressed. The Norwegian police did not have photographs of the intruders, or if they did, Romney did not recognise them.

  Emma left hospital and went home to put her house straight. An offer from me to help her do that was declined; one to come down and take her out to lunch was accepted.

  ‘Sunday?’ I suggested.

  ‘Fine.’

  Sunday found the carpets flat on the floors, the pictures back on the walls, the broken mess cleared away, and the curtains bundled up for the cleaners. The house looked stark and unlived in, but its mistress had come a long way back to life. For the first time since I had known her, she was wearing lipstick. Her hair was newly washed, her clothes neat, her manner composed. The pretty girl lurked not far away now, just below the still over-pale skin, just behind the still unhappy eyes.

  ‘It’s his funeral on Thursday,’ she said.

  ‘Here?’

  She nodded. ‘In the church in the village. Thank you for doing everything about bringing him home.’

  I had delegated the whole job. ‘I only got it done,’ I said.

  ‘Anyway… thanks.’

  The October day was calm and sunny and crisp round the edges. I took her to a Thames-side pub where pointed yellow willow leaves floated slowly past on grey water and anglers flicked maggots on hooks to wily fish. We walked along the bank; slowly, because she was still weak from haemorrhage.

  ‘Have you any plans?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know… I’ve thought a lot, of course, while I’ve been in hospital. I’ll go on living in the cottage for a while, I think. It feels right, somehow. In the end I suppose I’ll sell it, but not yet.’

  ‘How are the finances?’

  She produced a flicker of smile. ‘Everyone is being fantastic. Really marvellous. Did you know, the owners Bob rode for in Norway clubbed together and sent me a cheque? How kind people are.’

  Conscience money, I thought sourly, but I didn’t say so.

  ‘Those two men who burst into your house, do you mind if we talk about them?’

  She sighed. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Describe them.’

&nbs
p; ‘But…’

  ‘Yes, I’ve read what you told the police. You didn’t look at them, you shut your eyes, you only saw their sweaters and their rubber gloves.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘No. What you told the police was all you could bear to remember, and you would have shut out even that if they hadn’t pressed you for answers.’

  ‘That’s nonsense.’

  ‘Try it another way. Which one hit you?’

  She said instantly, ‘The bigger one with the…’ Her voice stopped uncertainly.

  ‘With the what?’

  ‘I was going to say, with the reddish hair. How odd. I didn’t remember until now that one of them had reddish hair.’

  ‘What about the other?’

  ‘Brown. Brown hair. He was kicking Grandad.’

  ‘The one who was hitting you… what was he saying?’

  ‘Where does your husband keep secret papers? Where does he hide things? Tell us where he hides things.’

  ‘Good English?’

  Ye-es. Pretty good. He had an accent.’

  ‘What were his eyes like, while he was hitting you?’

  ‘Fierce… frightful… like an eagle… sort of black and yellow… very angry.’

  There was a small silence, then she said, ‘Yes, I do remember, like you said. I shut it out.’

  After a few seconds, ‘He was quite young, about the same as you. His mouth was very tight… his lips were stiff… his face looked hard… very angry.’

  ‘How tall?’

  ‘Same as you, about. Broader, though. Much heavier. Big thick shoulders.’

  ‘Big shoulders in a thick sweater. What sort of thick sweater? Did it have a pattern?’

  ‘Well, yes, that was why…’ She stopped again.

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why I thought at once that he was Norwegian… before he even spoke. Because of the patterns in his sweater. They were sort of white patterns… two colours, though, I think… all over a brown sweater. I’d seen dozens like it in the shops in Oslo.’ She looked puzzled. ‘Why didn’t I think of that before?’

  ‘Memories often work like that. Sort of delayed action.’

  She smiled. ‘I must say it’s easier remembering things quietly here by the river than in all that mess with my face hurting and policemen asking me questions from all sides and bustling about…’