Slay Ride

by Dick Francis

  ‘I want a time-table.’

  ‘They have them here at the hotel desk.’

  I grinned at him. ‘Which is the nearest station?’

  He said doubtfully, ‘The Østbanen, I suppose.’

  ‘Off we go, then.’

  He shook his head in exasperation, but off we went.

  From the Østbanen, I discovered, trains ran through Gol on the line to Bergen. Trains ran also to Lillehammer, Trondheim, and the Arctic circle. Østbanen was the main long-distance terminus in Oslo.

  It had left-luggage lockers and it even had a C14. But the locker was empty, the key was in the open door, and the tag was different.

  I took time-tables which included Gol, where Mikkel Sandvik’s school was.

  One never knew.

  ‘What now?’ Erik said.

  ‘The other railway stations,’ I said, and we went there, but without finding any matching black tags.

  ‘Where else would you find lockers like those?’

  ‘Besides railway stations? At the airport. In factories, offices, schools. Lots of places.’

  ‘Available to a foreign traveller at eight thirty on a Saturday evening.’

  ‘Ah… Fornebu. Where else?’ Where else indeed. ‘Shall we go there?’

  ‘Later,’ I said. ‘After Sven Wangen.’

  Erik objected. ‘He lives in the opposite direction, further out than the racecourse.’

  ‘All the same,’ I said. ‘Sven Wangen first.’

  ‘You’re the boss.’

  He looked carefully several times in the driving mirror as we set off, but said he was sure we were not being followed. I believed him. Nothing could have stayed with Erik when he was really trying.

  ‘Tell me about Sven Wangen,’ I said.

  He pursed his mouth in much the same disapproving way that Arne had.

  ‘His father was a collaborator,’ he said.

  ‘And no one forgets it?’

  He sniffed. ‘Officially, the past is past. But after the war, the collaborators didn’t thrive. If some town wanted a bridge built or a school, for instance, it would happen that an architect or a builder who had worked well with the Nazis would just not be the one to get the contract.’

  ‘But Sven Wangen’s father was already rich… from shipping.’

  He looked at me sideways while taking a sharp turn to the left and missed a lamp post by millimetres.

  ‘Arne Kristiansen told me,’ I said.

  ‘Inherited wealth is immoral,’ Erik said. ‘All estates should be distributed among the masses.’

  ‘Especially the estates of collaborators?’

  He grinned. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Was the father like the son?’ I asked.

  Erik shook his head. ‘A hard-headed greedy businessman. He made a lot of money out of the Nazis.’

  ‘Surely that was patriotic of him?’

  Erik wouldn’t have it. ‘He did nothing for his fellow-countrymen. He made money only for himself.’

  ‘The father destroyed the son,’ I said.

  ‘Destroyed him?’ He shook his head. ‘Sven Wangen is an overpowering boor who always gets his way. He’s nowhere near destroyed.’

  ‘He’s an empty person. Because of his father, I shouldn’t think he ever had a chance to be normally liked, and people who are spurned for no fault of their own can become terribly aggressive.’

  He thought it over. ‘Guess you may be right. But I still don’t like him.’

  Sven Wangen lived in the style to which he had been born in a huge country house built mostly of wood, partly of stone. Even on a cold wet early winter morning it looked neat, clean and prosperous. Everything growing was sharply clipped into geometric precision, a regimentation totally uncongenial to Erik’s casual, generous and untidy mind. He stared around in distaste, his give-everything-to-the-masses expression much in evidence.

  ‘All this for two people,’ he said. ‘It’s wrong.’

  The place oppressed me as well, but for a different reason. There were too many windows all looking with black eyes towards the car. If I got out and stood away from its protection I would be a sitting target for anyone in that house with a gun.

  Erik got out of the car. I had to force myself to follow him.

  And of course, no one shot. If I’d really thought they would I wouldn’t have gone. But it was one thing telling myself that Sven Wangen wasn’t going to kill me on his own doorstep and another getting my nerves to believe it. Something, I thought grimly, was going to have to be done about those stupid nerves, or I’d never complete the course.

  A middle-aged woman came to open the front door and show me down the hall to a small sitting-room with windows facing the drive. Through them I could see Erik pacing up and down in the rain radiating Marxist disapproval and stamping the undeserving bourgeoisie into the gravel with each crunch of his heel.

  Sven Wangen strolled into the room eating a sugary pastry and staring with cold eyes down from a great height.

  ‘I’d forgotten you were coming,’ he said. ‘Have you solved everything yet?’ A slight sneer. No friendliness.

  ‘Not everything.’

  A small bad-tempered flash in the supercilious eyes.

  ‘I’ve nothing to tell you. You are wasting your time.’

  They’d all told me that, and they were all mistaken.

  Without a hat, Sven Wangen was revealed as going prematurely bald, the russet hair as thick as ever round the back and sides, but almost as thin as Erik’s on top. He took a large sticky bite, chewed, swallowed: added another fraction to his overweight.

  ‘The last day Bob Sherman rode for you, did he say anything unexpected?’

  ‘No, he did not.’ He hadn’t bothered to think about it.

  ‘Did you take him for a drink to celebrate the winner he rode for you?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ He started another mouthful.

  ‘Did you talk to him at all… either before or after the race?’

  He chewed. Swallowed. Looked closely at the pastry, prospecting the next area.

  ‘In the parade ring, I gave him his orders. I told him I expected better than he’d just done for Rolf Torp. He said he understood.’

  Bite. Munch. Swallow.

  ‘After the race, he unsaddled the horse and went to weigh in. I didn’t see him again.’

  ‘While he was unsaddling, did he tell you how the mare had run?’

  ‘No. I was telling Holth she needed a good thrashing to quieten her down. Holth disagreed. I didn’t speak to Sherman.’

  ‘Didn’t you congratulate him?’ I asked curiously.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you wish you had?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  You might need to eat less, I thought, but refrained from saying so. His psychological hang-ups weren’t in this instance my affair.

  ‘Did he mention delivering a package which he had brought from England?’

  ‘No.’ He stuffed the rest of the gooey goody into his mouth and had difficulty closing his lips.

  ‘Did you ask him to ride the mare next time he came?’

  He stared, then spoke round the dough and currants. ‘He didn’t come again.’

  ‘I mean, that last day, did you ask him to ride for you again?’

  ‘Oh. No.’ He shrugged. ‘Holth always engages the jockeys. I just say who I want.’

  ‘You never telephoned to Sherman in England personally to discuss his rides for you?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Some owners do talk to their jockeys,’ I said.

  ‘I pay Holth to do that sort of thing.’

  What a lot you miss, I thought. Poor fat unloved deprived rich young man. I thanked him for his time and went back to Erik. Sven Wangen watched us through the window, licking the sugar off his fingers.

  ‘Well?’ Erik said.

  ‘He might have issued the orders, but he never killed anyone himself.’

  Erik grunted as he started the hired
Volvo towards the gate. ‘Where now?’

  ‘You’re wet,’ I said. ‘Why did you stay out in the rain?’

  He was almost embarrassed. ‘Oh… I thought I’d hear you better if you yelled.’

  We went in silence for five miles down the road and then he pulled up at a fork.

  ‘You’ll have to decide here,’ he said. ‘That way to Øvrevoll, and that way to the airport. The racecourse is much nearer.’

  ‘The airport.’

  ‘Right’

  He blasted off down the road to Fornebu as if trying to fly there.

  ‘Mind we aren’t followed,’ I said.

  ‘You’re joking.’

  The thirty mile journey, from one side of Oslo to the other, took just over half an hour.

  No one followed.

  C14 was locked and C13 next to it had a key in its door with a black tag, just the same. Both were large lockers in the bottom row of a three-high tier.

  Erik, who had allotted himself full bodyguard status, stood at my elbow and peered at the ranks of metal doors.

  ‘Are these the lot you’re looking for?’

  I nodded. ‘I think so.’

  ‘What do we do now, then?’

  ‘We walk around for a bit to make sure there’s no one here we know.’

  ‘A sensible idea.’

  We walked around and stood in corners to watch, but as far as I could see every person in the airport was a complete stranger. Drifting gently back to the lockers, Erik stood stalwartly with his back to C13 and looked ready to repel boarders while I inconspicuously fished out the hidden key and tried it in the lock next door.

  The right key, no mistake. The locker door swung open revealing a space big enough for two large suitcases: and on the scratched metal floor, looking lost and inappropriate, lay a folded piece of paper.

  I bent down, picked it up, and tucked it into my inside jacket pocket.

  ‘See anyone?’ I asked Erik, straightening again.

  ‘Not a soul we know.’

  ‘Let’s grab some coffee.’

  ‘What about the locker?’

  I looked down at C14 with its key in the lock and its door open.

  ‘We don’t need it any more.’

  Erik steered us to the airport buffet and bought coffee for both of us and a couple of open sandwiches for himself. We sat at a plastic topped table amid travellers with untidy hand luggage and children running about doing what they were told not to, and with an almost fluttery feeling of expectation I took out the paper Bob Sherman had left.

  I had supposed it would prove to be a base for blackmail: incriminating letters or photographs no one dared show his wife. But it proved to be neither of those things. It proved to be something I didn’t recognise at all.

  For one thing, the paper was thinner than I had at first supposed, and only seemed to be thick because it was folded several times. Unfolded, it turned out to be a strip six inches across but nearly three feet long, and it was divided into three columns which were intended to be read downwards. One could not, however, actually read them, as each inch and a half wide column seemed to be composed of variously shaded blocks and squares, not letters or figures. Down the long left-hand edge of the paper were numbers at regular intervals, starting with 3 at the top and ending with 14 at the bottom. Across the top in hand-written capitals was a single heading: Data Summary.

  I refolded the strip and put it back in my pocket.

  ‘What is it?’ Erik asked.

  I shook my head. ‘Don’t know.’

  He stirred his coffee. ‘Knut will find out.’

  I considered that and didn’t especially like it.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘This paper came from England. I think I’ll take it back there to find out what it is.’

  ‘It’s Knut’s case,’ he said with a certain amount of quiet obstinacy.

  ‘Mine as well.’ I hesitated. ‘Tell Knut I found the paper if you must, but I’d rather you didn’t mention it to anyone at all. I don’t want it leaking out round Oslo, and if you tell Knut he will have to record it, and if he records it, you never know who will see it. I’d much rather tell him myself when I get back. We can’t anyway make a useful plan of campaign until we know what we’re dealing with, so nothing can really be gained by telling him now.’

  He looked unconvinced, but after a while all he said was, ‘Where did you find the key to the locker?’

  ‘In Bob Sherman’s helmet.’

  His obstinancy slowly melted to resignation.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I won’t tell Knut. He could have found the key first.’

  As logic it hardly stood up, but I was grateful. I looked at my watch and said, ‘I can catch the two five to Heathrow.’

  ‘Right now?’ He sounded surprised.

  I nodded. ‘Don’t tell anyone I’ve gone. I don’t want any friend of yellow eyes waiting at the other end.

  He grinned. ‘David Cleveland? Who’s he?’ He stood up and turned to go. ‘I’ll give your regards to Odin.’

  I watched his untidy back depart forthwith through the scattered crowd towards the distant exit and felt unexpectedly vulnerable without him. But nothing dire happened. I caught the flight and landed safely at Heathrow, and after thought left my car where it was in the car park and took myself by train to Cambridge.

  Sunday evening in mid-term was as good a time as any to beard professors in their dens, but the first one I backed was a loser. He lectured in Computer Science: but my Data Summary, he said, had nothing to do with computers. Why didn’t I try Economics? I tried Economics who said why didn’t I try Geology.

  Although it was by then getting on for ten o’clock I tried Geology, who took one brief glance at the paper and said ‘Christ, where did you get this, they guard these things like gold dust’

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘A core. A chart of a core. From a drilling. See those numbers down the left hand side? I’d say they refer to the depth of each section. Might be in hundreds of feet. Might be in thousands.’

  ‘Can you tell where the drilling was done?’

  He shook his head, a youngish earnest man with a mass of reddish hair merging into an undisciplined beard.

  ‘Could be anywhere in the world. You’d need the key to the shadings even to guess what they were looking for.’

  I said in depression, ‘Isn’t there any way of finding out where it came from?’

  ‘Oh Lord yes,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Depends how important it is.’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ I said doubtfully, with a look at his clock.

  ‘Sleep is a waste of time,’ he said like a true scholar, so I told him more or less exactly why I wanted to know.

  ‘Have a beer?’ he suggested, when I’d finished.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He found two cans under a heap of uncorrected essays and ripped off the rings.

  ‘Cheers’ he said, dispensing with a glass. ‘All right. You convinced me. I’ll pass you on to the people who drew that chart.’

  I was astonished. ‘How do you know who drew it?’

  He laughed. ‘It’s like knowing a colleague’s handwriting. Any research geologist could probably tell you where that chart came from. It’s a research lab job. I’ll give the managing director a ring in the morning and explain, and see if he’ll help you. They’re awfully touchy about these charts.’ He eyed it thoughtfully. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if there’ll be an unholy row, because from what you’ve said I should think it was stolen.’

  The seeds of the unholy row were plain to see, next day, on the face of Dr William Leeds, managing director of the Wessex-Wells Research Laboratory. An impressive man, small, calm and decisive, he looked deeply disturbed at what I’d brought him.

  ‘Sit down, Mr Cleveland,’ he said.

  We sat one each side of his managerial desk.

  ‘Tell me where you got this.’

  I told him. He listened intently, without interrupting. At the end he sai
d, ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Whatx this chart is about. Who could benefit from getting hold of it, and how.’

  He smiled. ‘Fairly comprehensive.’ He looked out of his big first floor office window for a while at a row of leaf-dropping willows across a stretch of lawn. Deep in the heart of Dorset the laboratory stood in ancient parkland, a Victorian country residence sitting easily beside new low flattopped workaday workshops. Dr Leeds’ window overlooked the main artery of pathways linking the complex, a neat finger on the pulse if ever I saw one.

  ‘Almost anyone could benefit from getting hold of it,’ he said, ‘If they were unscrupulous. This chart cost perhaps half a million pounds.’

  My mouth fell open. He laughed.

  ‘Well… you have to remember that drill rigs are enormously sophisticated and expensive. You don’t get a core by digging a hole with a spade. This one…’ He tapped the paper, ‘is only five inches in diameter but about fourteen thousand feet in depth. A fourteen thousand foot drilling costs a lot of money.’

  ‘I can see,’ I said, ‘that it does.’

  ‘Of course you couldn’t sell it for that, but I should think this particular chart might be worth a hundred thousand, if you had a market.’

  I asked if he would explain in more detail.

  ‘A chart like this is information. You can always sell information illegally if you know someone ready to buy. Well… suppose this core showed a deposit of nickel, which it doesn’t, incidentally, and you knew exactly from which particular drilling it came, you would know whether it was worth investing money in the drilling company, or not. For instance, during the Poseidon nickel boom in Australia, you’d have been able to make literally millions on the stock market through knowing infallibly in advance which of the dozens of prospecting companies had made the drilling that was richest in ore.’

  ‘Good grief,’ I said.

  ‘It can work the other way too,’ he said. ‘If you know that a concession which has been expected to give a high yield is in fact not going to be good, you can sell out while the share price is still high.’

  ‘So it wouldn’t only be people engaged in mining who would be ready to buy such a chart.’

  ‘Certainly not. The people who make most out of the earth probably don’t know what a drill looks like.’

  I said, ‘Why sell the chart to someone else? Why not make millions on the stock market yourself?’