Slay Ride

by Dick Francis

  We went indoors for a drink and a good lunch, and over coffee I asked her other things.

  ‘You said Bob never hid papers. Are you sure?’

  ‘Oh yes. He wasn’t secretive. Never. He was more careless, really, than anything else, when it came to papers and documents and things like that.’

  ‘It seems quite extraordinary that two men should come all the way from Norway to search your house for papers.’

  She frowned. ‘Yes, it does.’

  ‘And to search it so violently, so destructively, so thoroughly.’

  ‘And they were so angry, too.’

  ‘Angry, I expect, because they’d worked hard and hadn’t found what they’d come for.’

  ‘But what did they come for?’

  ‘Well…’ I said slowly. ‘Something to do with Norway. What papers did Bob ever have that had anything to do with Norway?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing much. A few receipts, for the accounts. Race-cards, sometimes. A cutting from a Norwegian paper with a picture of him winning a race. Nothing, honestly, that anyone could want.’

  I drank my coffee, considering. I said, ‘Look at it the other way round… Did he ever take any papers to Norway?’

  ‘No. Why should he?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just wondered. Because those men might have been looking for something he hadn’t taken to Norway, not for something he had brought away.’

  ‘You do think some weird things.’

  ‘Mm…’

  I paid the bill and drove her home. She was silent most of the way, but thoughtful, and the fruit of that was a plum.

  ‘I suppose… well, it’s stupid, really… but it couldn’t have anything to do with blue pictures?’

  ‘What sort of blue pictures?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see them. Only Bob said that’s what they were.’

  I pulled up outside her gate but made no move to leave the car.

  ‘Did he get them in Norway?’

  She was surprised. ‘Oh no. It was like you said. He was taking them over there with him. In a brown envelope. It came by hand the night before he went. He said they were blue pictures which a chap in Oslo wanted him to bring over.’

  ‘Did he say what chap?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I hardly listened. I’d forgotten all about it until you said…’

  ‘Did you see the brown envelope? How big was it?’

  ‘I must have seen it. I mean, I know it was brown.’ She frowned, concentrating. ‘Fairly big. Not an ordinary letter. About the size of a magazine.’

  ‘Was it marked “photographs”, or anything like that?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I can’t remember. It’s more than six weeks ago.’ Her eyes filled suddenly with tears. ‘He put it in his overnight grip at once, so as not to forget to take it.’ She sniffed twice, and found a handkerchief. ‘So he did take it to Norway. It wasn’t in the house for those men to find. If that’s what they were looking for… they did all that for nothing.’ She put the handkerchief to her mouth and stifled a sob.

  ‘Was Bob interested in blue pictures?’ I asked.

  ‘Like any other man, I suppose,’ she said through the handkerchief. ‘He’d look at them.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t collect them himself?’

  She shook her head.

  I got out of the car, opened the door her side, and went with her into the cottage. She looked at the racing pictures of Bob which hung in the hall.

  ‘They tore all those photographs out of the frames,’ she said. ‘Some of them were ruined.’

  Many of the prints were about ten inches by eight. A magazine-sized brown envelope would have held them easily.

  I stayed another hour simply to keep her company, but for the evening ahead she insisted that she would be all right alone. She looked round the barenesses of the sitting-room and smiled to herself. She obviously found the place friendly, and maybe Bob was there too.

  When I went she gave me a warm kiss on the cheek and said, ‘I can’t thank you enough…’ and then broke off and opened her eyes wide.

  ‘Golly,’ she said. ‘That was the second lot.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘Blue pictures. He took some before. Oh… months ago. Back in the summer.’ She shook her head in fresh frustration. ‘I can’t remember. I just remember him saying… blue pictures.’

  I kissed her in return.

  ‘Take care of yourself,’ I said.

  ‘You, too.’

  8

  A little matter of doping-to-win took me to Plumpton races in Sussex the following day but I saw no harm in some extra spadework on the side. Rinty Ranger, busy in second and fifth races, was comparatively easy to pin down between the third and the fourth.

  ‘What did you say?’ he repeated in exaggerated amazement. ‘Take pornography to Scandinavia? Christ, that’s like wasting pity on bookmakers. They don’t need it, mate. They don’t bloody need it.’

  ‘Bob Sherman told his wife he was taking blue pictures to Norway.’

  ‘And she believed it?’

  ‘The point is, did he?’

  ‘He never said a word about it to me.’

  ‘Do me a favour,’ I said, ‘Find out in the changing room here today if anyone ever asked any jockey to act as a messenger… a carrier… of any papers of any sort from Britain to Norway.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Bob Sherman’s dead.’

  ‘Yes.’ He thought. ‘O.K.’

  He gave me a noncommittal wave as he walked out to the fifth, in which he rode a bright, tight, tactical race to be beaten half a length by a better horse, but came straight out of the weighing room after he had changed and put an end to my easy theory.

  ‘None of them who have ridden in Norway has ever been asked to take over any papers or pictures or anything like that.’

  ‘Would they say, if they had?’

  He grinned. ‘Depends how much they’d been paid to forget.’

  ‘What do you think yourself?’

  ‘Hard to tell. But they all seemed surprised. There weren’t any knowing looks, sort of, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Carry on asking, would you? Tomorrow and so on. Say they can tell me hush hush, if they like. No kick backs if they’ve been fiddling currency.’

  He grinned again. ‘Some copper you are. Bend the rules like curling tongs.’

  That evening I telephoned Baltzersen at his home. There was no news, he said. He had consulted his friends in the police, and they would raise no objections if I joined the hunt. On the contrary, they would, as before, let me see what they’d got, to save me reploughing their furrows.

  ‘So, Mr Cleveland, will you come?’

  ‘I guess so,’ I said.

  With flattering relief he said, ‘Good, good,’ explosively, and added ‘Come tomorrow.’

  ‘ ’Fraid I can’t. I have to give evidence in court tomorrow, and the case may last two days. Soonest would be Thursday morning.’

  ‘Come straight to the racecourse then. We have a meeting on Thursday and another on Sunday, but I fear they may be the last this year. It’s a little colder now, and we have had frost.’

  I wrote ‘warm clothes’ in large letters on my memo pad and said I’d see him at the races.

  ‘By the way,’ I said. ‘You know I told you the people who broke into the Shermans’ house were looking for papers? Mrs Sherman now remembers that Bob took with him to Norway a packet which had been entrusted to him, which he believed contained blue pictures. Did anyone mention to you, or to the police, or to Arne in all those preliminary investigations into his disappearance, anything at all about his bringing such a packet with him, or delivering it?’

  There was an unexpectedly long silence on the other end of the line, but in the end he only said uncertainly, ‘Blue pictures… what are those?’

  ‘Pornography.’

  ‘I see.’ Another pause. ‘Please explain a little.’

  I
said, ‘If the package reached its destination, then it cannot be that particular package that the men were searching for. So I could stop chasing after innocent blue pictures and start looking elsewhere.’

  ‘Ja. I see.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I haven’t heard of any such package, but perhaps Arne or the police have done. I will ask them. Of course you know it is unlikely that anyone would need to bring pornography secretly into this country?’

  ‘It would have to be special,’ I said, and left it at that.

  All Tuesday and Wednesday morning I spent in court giving evidence for the prosecution in an insurance swindle involving grievous cruelty to horses, and Wednesday afternoon I sat in the office juggling six jobs at once like some multi-armed Siva. Looking for Bob Sherman’s murderei had meant advancing myself a week’s leave when I was too busy to take one, and by seven o’clock when I locked up and left, I was wishing he’d got himself bumped off at any other time.

  I went home on tube and feet, thinking comforting thoughts about a large scotch indoors followed by a stroll round to a local grill for a steak. I shut the street door without letting it bang, put one foot in front of the other up the carpeted stairs, unlocked the door to my own flat and switched on the lights; and it was at that point that the day stopped operating according to schedule.

  I heard, felt, maybe assimilated by instinct, a change in the air behind me. Nothing as definite as a noise. More a current. Undoubtedly a threat.

  All those useful dormant jungle reactions came to my rescue before a thought process based on reason had time to get off the ground. So I was already whipping round to face the stairs and pushing further through my own doorway when the man with the knife did his best to send me early to the cemetery.

  He did not have reddish hair, angry yellow eagle eyes or a Norwegian sweater. He did have rubber gloves, a stocky muscular body, a lot of determination and a very sharp blade.

  The stab which had been supposed to stop my heart from the back ripped instead through some decent Irish tweed, through a blue cotton shirt below that, and down half a dozen inches of skin on my chest.

  He was surprised and fed up that at first he hadn’t succeeded, but he’d heard all about try try again. He crowded through my door after me with the knife already rising for another go. I backed through the tiny hall and into the sitting-room, unable to take my eyes off his intentions long enough to find any household object to fight him off with.

  He came on with a feint and a slice at my middle regions and I got another rip in my jacket and a closer look at some narrowed and murderous eyes.

  He tried next a sort of lunging jump, the point of the knife coming in fast and upward. I tried to leap away backwards, tripped on a rug, fell on my back and found my hand hitting the base of the standard lamp. One wild clutch and I’d pulled it over, knocking him off his aim just when he thought he finally had me. The lamp hit him with a crash, and while he was off balance I got both my hands on his knife arm; but it was then that I discovered the rocklike muscles. And also, unfortunately, that he was more or less ambidexterous.

  He shifted the knife like lightning from his right hand to his left and I avoided the resulting stab only by a sort of swinging jump over an armchair, using his arm as a lever. The blade hit a cushion and feathers floated up like snow-flakes.

  I threw a cigarette box at him and missed, and after that a vase which hit but made no difference. As long as I kept the armchair between us he couldn’t reach me, but neither did he give me much chance of getting past him to the still open door to the stairs.

  Behind me on a wide shelf stood my portable television. I supposed it might stop him if I threw it at him, but on the other hand… I stretched out backwards without losing sight of his knife, found the on-off switch, and turned the volume up to maximum.

  The din when it started took him totally by surprise and gave me a fractional chance. I pushed the armchair viciously forward at his knees and he overbalanced, twisting as he tried to get his feet under him. He went down as far as one knee, partially recovered, and toppled altogether when I shoved again with the chair. But it was nothing permanent. He was rolling back to his feet like a cat before I had time to get round the big chair and step on some of his tender bits.

  Up until that point he had said not a word and now if he did I wouldn’t hear: the television literally vibrated with the intense noise of some pop star or other’s Special Spectacular; and if that didn’t bring the U.S. cavalry, nothing would.

  He came. Looking cross. Ready to blow like a geyser. And stood there in consternation in my open door.

  ‘Fetch the police,’ I yelled, but he didn’t hear. I slapped the off-switch.

  ‘Fetch the police,’ I yelled again, and my voice bounced off the walls in the sudden silence.

  The man with the knife turned to see, gave himself fresh instructions, and went for my friend from downstairs. I did a sort of sliding rugger tackle, throwing myself feet first at his legs. He stumbled over my shoes and ankles and went down on his side. I swept one leg in an arc and by sheer good luck kicked him on the wrist. The knife flew out of his hand at least ten feet, and fell nearer to me than him, and only at that point did he think of giving up.

  He scrambled to his feet, looked at me with the first sign of uncertainty, then made up his mind, turned on his heel, crashed past my neighbour and jumped down the stairs in two giant strides. The front door slammed behind him with a force that shook the building, and from the window I saw him running like the Olympics under the street lamps.

  I looked breathlessly at the mess in my sitting-room and at my man from downstairs.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  He took a tentative step into the sitting-room.

  ‘You’re bleeding,’ he said.

  ‘But not dying.’

  I picked up the standard lamp.

  ‘Was he a burglar?’ he asked.

  ‘A murderer,’ I said. ‘Enter a murderer.’

  We looked at each other in what was no doubt professional curiosity on both sides, because all he said next was, ‘Sit down, you’re suffering from shock.’

  It was advice I’d given pretty often to others, and it made me smile. All the same there was a perceptible tremble somewhere around my knees, so I did as he said.

  He looked around the room, looked at the knife still lying where it had fallen, and took it all quietly.

  ‘Shall I carry out your instructions, or were they principally a diversion?’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Fetch the police.’

  ‘Oh… It can wait a bit.’

  He nodded, considered a moment, and then said, ‘If jou’ll excuse me asking, why was he trying to kill you?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  My neighbour’s name was Stirling. C. V. Stirling, according to the neat white card beside his bell push. He had grey patches neatly brushed back over his ears and nostrils pinched into an expression of distaste for bad smells. His hands looked excessively clean and well manicured, and even in these bizarre circumstances he wore a faint air of exasperated patience. A man used to being the brightest person around, I guessed, with the power to make it felt.

  ‘Did he need to?’

  ‘It would have been helpful,’ I said.

  He came a pace nearer.

  ‘I could do something about that bleeding, if you like.’

  I looked down at the front of my shirt, which had changed colour pretty thoroughly from blue to red.

  ‘Could you?’

  ‘I’m a surgeon,’ he said. ‘Ear, nose and throat, actually. Other areas by arrangement.’

  I laughed. ‘Stitch away, then.’

  He nodded, departed downstairs, and returned with a neat flat case containing the tools of his trade. He used clips, not needles. The slice through my skin was more gory than deep, bleeding away persistently like a shaving nick. When he’d finished, it was a thin red line under a sticking plaster.

  ‘You were lucky,’ he said.

&n
bsp; ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘Do you do this sort of thing often? Fight for your life, I mean.’

  ‘Very rarely.’

  ‘My fee for professional services rendered is a little more chat.’

  I smiled wryly.

  ‘OK. I’m an investigator. I don’t know why I was attacked unless there’s someone around who particularly does not want to be investigated.’

  ‘Good God.’ He stared at me curiously. ‘A private eye? Philip Marlowe, and all that?’

  ‘Nothing so fancy. I work in racing; for the Jockey Club. Looking into small frauds, most of the time.’

  ‘This,’ he waved at my chest and the knife and the scattered cushion feathers, ‘Doesn’t look like a small fraud.’

  It didn’t. It didn’t look, either, even like a severe warning off. It looked like a ruthless all-out push for a final solution.

  I changed my clothes and took him round to the grill for the overdue steak. His name was Charles, he said, and we walked home as friends. When I let myself in upstairs and reviewed the general untidiness it occurred to me that in the end I had never called in the police. It seemed a little late to bother, so I didn’t.

  9

  I caught the eleven twenty-five to Norway the next morning with the knife wrapped in polythene in my sponge-bag; or rather the black zipped leather case which did that duty. It was a hunter’s knife, the sort of double sided blade used for skinning and disjointing game. The cutting edges had been sharpened like razors and the point would have been good as a needle. A professional job: no amateur could have produced that result with a few passes over a carborundum.

  The handle was of horn of some sort, but workmanlike, not tourist-trap stuff. Between handle and blade protruded a short silver bar for extra leverage with fingers. There were no fingerprints on it anywhere, and no blood. Punched into the blade near the hilt were the words Norsk Stål.

  Its owner hadn’t, of course, intended to leave it behind. Just one dead body neatly disposed inside its own front door, out of sight and undiscovered for a minimum of twenty-four hours.

  He hadn’t followed me into the house: he’d been there before I came, waiting higher up the stairs for me to come home.