by Dick Francis
‘You’re barmy,’ the bartender yelled, and to me, viciously, ‘Creep.’
His loud voice brought colleagues in the shape of a worried man in a dark suit who looked junior and ineffective, and a girl in a short pert waitress uniform, long fawn legs below a scarlet tunic, scarlet headband over her hair.
Ridger took stock of the opposition and found himself very much in charge. The ineffective junior announced himself to be the assistant manager, which drew looks of scorn and amazement from the waitress and the barman. Assistant to the assistant, I rather gathered. Ridger explained forcibly again that no liquor was to be sold pending investigations, and all three of them said they knew nothing about anything, and we would have to talk to… er… talk to…
‘The management?’ I suggested.
They nodded dumbly.
‘Let’s do that,’ I said. ‘Where’s the manager?’
The assistant to the assistant manager finally said that the manager was on holiday and the assistant manager was ill. Head office was sending someone to take over as soon as possible.
‘Head office?’ I said. ‘Didn’t Larry Trent own the place?’
‘Er…’ said the assistant unhappily. ‘I really don’t know. Mr Trent never said he didn’t, I mean, I thought he did. But when I got here this morning the telephone was ringing, and it was head office. That’s what he said, anyway. He wanted to speak to the manager, and when I explained he said he would send someone along straight away.’
‘Who ran things last night?’ Ridger demanded.
‘What? Oh… we’re closed, Sunday nights.’
‘And yesterday lunchtime?’
‘The assistant manager was here, but he’d got ‘flu. He went home to bed as soon as we closed. And of course Mr Trent had been here until opening time, seeing that everything was all right before he went to Mr Hawthorn’s party.’
All three looked demoralised but at the same time slightly defiant, seeing the policeman as their natural enemy. Relations scarcely improved when Ridger’s reinforcements rolled up: two uniformed constables bringing tape and labels for sealing all the bottles.
I diffidently suggested to Ridger that he should extend his suspicions to the wines.
‘Wines?’ he frowned. ‘Yes, if you like, but we’ve got enough with the spirits.’
‘All the same,’ I murmured, and Ridger told the assistant to show me where they kept the wine, and to help me and one of his constables bring any bottles I wanted into the bar. The assistant, deciding that helpfulness would establish his driven-snow innocence, put no obstacles in my way, and in due course, and after consulting the wine list, the assistant, the constable and I returned to the bar carrying two large baskets full of bottles.
The spirits bottles all having been sealed, there was at our return a lull of activity in the Silver Moondance Saloon. I unloaded the bottles onto two tables, six white wine on one, six red on another, and from my jacket pocket produced my favourite corkscrew.
‘Hey,’ the barman protested. ‘You can’t do that.’
‘Every bottle I open will be paid for,’ I said, matter-of-factly. ‘And what’s it to you?’
The barman shrugged. ‘Give me twelve glasses,’ I said, ‘and one of those pewter tankards,’ and he did. I opened the six bottles of varying white wines and under the interested gaze of six pairs of eyes poured a little of the first into a glass. Niersteiner, it said on the label: and Niersteiner it was. I spat the tasted mouthful into the pewter tankard, to disgusted reaction from the audience.
‘Do you want him to get drunk?’ Ridger demanded, belatedly understanding. ‘The evidence of a drunk taster wouldn’t be acceptable.’
I tasted the second white. Chablis, as it should have been.
The third was similarly O.K., a Pouilly Fuissé.
By the time I’d finished the sixth, a Sauternes, the barman had greatly relaxed.
‘Nothing wrong with them?’ Ridger asked, not worried.
‘Nothing,’ I agreed, stuffing the corks back. ‘I’ll try the reds.’
The reds were a St Emilion, a St Estôphe, a Måcon, a Valpolicella, a Volnay and a Nuits St Georges, all dated 1979. I smelled and tasted each one carefully, spitting and waiting a few moments in between sips so that each wine should be fresh on the tongue, and by the time I’d finished everyone else was restive.
‘Well,’ Ridger demanded, ‘are they all right?’
‘They’re quite pleasant,’ I said, ‘but they’re all the same.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ I said, ‘that notwithstanding all those pretty labels, the wine in all of these bottles is none of them. It’s a blend. Mostly Italian, I would say, mixed with some French and possibly some Yugoslav, but it could be anything.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ the barman said impatiently. ‘We have people every day saying how good the wines are.’
‘Mm,’ I said neutrally. ‘Perhaps you do.’
‘Are you positive?’ Ridger asked me. ‘They’re all the same?’
‘Yes.’
He nodded as if that settled it and instructed the constables to seal and label the six reds with the date, time and place of confiscation. Then he told the barman to find two boxes to hold all the labelled bottles, which brought a toss of the head, a mulish petulance and a slow and grudging compliance.
I kept my word and paid for all the wine, the only action of mine which pleased the barman from first to last. I got him to itemise every bottle on a Silver Moondance billhead and sign it ‘Received in full’, and then I paid him by credit card, tucking away the receipts.
Ridger seemed to think paying was unnecessary, but then shrugged, and he and the contable began putting the wine into one of the boxes and the whiskies into the other; and into this sullenly orderly scene erupted the man from head office.
FIVE
The man from head office was not at first sight intimidating. Short, fortyish, dark-haired, of medium build and wearing glasses, he walked enquiringly into the saloon in a grey worsted business suit as if not sure of the way.
Ridger, taking him, as I did, for a customer, raised his voice and said, ‘The bar is closed, sir.’
The man took no notice but advanced more purposefully until he stood near enough to see the bottles in the boxes. He frowned at them and glanced at the policeman, and I could see in him a distinct change of mental gear. A tightening of muscles; a sharpening of attention: cruise to overdrive in three seconds.
‘I’m a police officer,’ said Ridger firmly, producing his authorisation. The bar is closed until further notice.’
‘Is it indeed?’ said the newcomer ominously. ‘Be so good as to explain why.’ The first impression was wrong, I thought. This man could intimidate quite easily.
Ridger blinked. ‘It’s a police matter,’ he said. ‘It’s no concern of yours.’
‘Every concern,’ said the man shortly. ‘I’ve come from head office to take over. So just what exactly is going on?’ His voice had the edge of one not simply used to command but used to instant action when he spoke. His accent, so far as he had one, was straightforward business-English, devoid both of regional vowels and swallowed consonants, but also without timbre. Good plain grain, I thought; not malt.
‘Your name, sir?’ asked Ridger stolidly, ignoring the sharp tone as if he hadn’t heard it, which I was sure he had.
The man from head office looked him up and down, assessing the altogether statement of brushed hair, belted raincoat, polished shoes. Ridger reacted to that aggressively, his spine stiffening, the desire to be the dominator growing unmistakably in the set of his jaw. Interesting, I thought.
The man from head office allowed the pause to lengthen until it was clear to everyone that he was giving his name as a result of thought, not out of obedience to Ridger.
‘My name is Paul Young,’ he said finally, with weight. ‘I represent the company of which this restaurant is a subsidiary. And now, what exactly is going
on here?’
Ridger’s manner remained combative as he began announcing in his notebook terminology that the Silver Moondance would be prosecuted for contraventions of the Sale of Goods Act.
Paul Young from head office interrupted brusquely. ‘Cut the jargon and be precise.’
Ridger glared at him. Paul Young grew impatient. Neither would visibly defer to the other, but Ridger did in the end explain what he was removing in the boxes.
Paul Young listened with fast growing anger, but this time not aiming it at Ridger himself. He turned his glare instead on the barman (who did his best to shelter behind his pimples), and thunderously demanded to know who was responsible for selling substitutions. From the barman, the waitress and the assistant assistant in turn he got weak disclaiming shakes of the head and none of the defiance that they had shown to Ridger.
‘And who are you?’ he enquired rudely, giving me the up and down inspection. ‘Another policeman?’
‘A customer,’ I said mildly.
Seeing nothing in me to detain him he returned his forceful attention to Ridger, assuring him authoritatively that head office had had no knowledge of the substitutions and that the fraud must have originated right here in this building. The police could be assured that head office would discover the guilty person and prosecute him themselves, ensuring that nothing of this sort could happen again.
It was perfectly clear to Ridger as to everyone else present that Paul Young was in fact badly jolted and surprised by the existence of fraud, but Ridger with smothered satisfaction said that the outcome would be for the police and the courts to decide, and that meanwhile Mr Young could give him the address and telephone number of head office, for future reference.
I watched Paul Young while he wrote the required information onto another billhead provided by the barman and wondered vaguely why he didn’t carry business cards to save himself that sort of bother. He had large hands, I noticed, full fleshed, with pale skin, and as he bent his head over the paper I saw the discreet pink hearing aid tucked behind his right ear, below the frame of his glasses. One could get hearing aids built-in with the earpieces of eyeglass frames, I thought, and wondered why he didn’t
What a mess, I thought, for a parent company to walk into unawares. And who, I wondered, had been on the fiddle – the manager, the wine waiter, or Larry Trent himself? Not that I wondered at all deeply. The culprit’s identity was to me less interesting than the crime, and the crime itself was hardly unique.
The six corks from the bottles of red were lying where I’d left them on the small table, the constables having sealed the open necks with wide wrappings of sticky tape instead of trying to ram back the original plugs, and I picked the corks up almost absentmindedly and put them in my pocket, tidy-minded out of habit.
Paul Young straightened from his writing and handed the sheet of paper to the assistant assistant, who handed it to me, who passed it on to Ridger, who glanced at it, folded it, and tucked it into some inner pocket below the raincoat.
‘And now, sir,’ he said, ‘dose the bar.’
The barman looked to Paul Young for instructions and got a shrug and an unwilling nod, and presently an ornamental grille unrolled from ceiling to bar-top, imprisoning the barman in his cage. He clicked a few locks into place and went out through the rear door, not returning to the saloon.
Ridger and Paul Young argued for a while about how soon the Silver Moondance could resume full business, each still covertly manoeuvring for domination. I reckoned it came out about quits because they finally backed off from each other inconclusively, both still in aggressive postures, more snarl than teeth.
Ridger removed his constables, the boxes and myself to the carpark leaving Paul Young to deal with his helpless helpers, and the last I saw of the man from head office, in a backward glance as I went through the western swing doors, was the businesslike glasses turning to survey his large empty-tabled discontinued asset in black and scarlet, the colours of roulette.
Ridger muttered under his breath several times as he drove me back to my shop and broke out into plain exasperation when I asked him for a receipt for the case of wines, which he was transporting in the boot.
‘Those twelve bottles do belong to me,’ I pointed out. ‘I paid for them, and I want them back. You said yourself that you’d got enough with the whisky to prosecute. The wines were my own idea.’
He grudgingly admitted it and gave me a receipt.
‘Where do I find you?’ I asked.
He told me the address of his station and without the least gratitude for the help he had solicited, drove brusquely away. Between him and Paul Young I thought, definitely not much to choose.
In the shop Mrs Palissey had had a veritable barrage of customers as sometimes happened on Monday mornings, and was showing signs of wear.
‘Go to lunch,’ I said, although it was early, and with gratitude she put on her coat, took Brian in tow, and departed to the local cafe for pie and chips and a gossip with her constant friend, the traffic warden.
The customers kept coming and I served them with automatic ease, smiling, always smiling, giving pleasure to the pleasure-seekers. For years, with Emma, I had positively enjoyed the selling, finding my own satisfaction in giving it to others. Without her the warmth I had felt had grown shallow, so that now I dispensed only a surface sympathy, nodding and smiling and hardly listening, hearing only sometimes, not always, the unsaid things in the shopping voices. The power I’d once had had drained away, and I didn’t really care.
During a short lull I wrote the list for the wholesaler, planning to go as soon as Mrs Palissey returned, and noticed that Brian, unasked by me, had swept and straightened the store room. The telephone rang three times with good substantial orders and the till, when consulted, showed a healthy profit margin on the morning’s trading. Ironic, the whole thing.
Two customers came in together, and I served the woman first, a middle-aged frightened lady who called every day for a bottle of the cheapest gin, tucking it away secretively in a large handbag while taking furtive glances out of the window for passing neighbours. Why didn’t she buy it by the case, I’d once long ago asked her teasingly, as it was cheaper by the case, but she’d been alarmed and said no, she enjoyed the walk; and the loneliness had looked out of her eyes along with the fear of being called an alcoholic, which she wasn’t quite, and I’d felt remorse for being heartless, because I’d known perfectly well why she bought one private bottle at a time.
‘Nice day, Mr Beach,’ she said breathlessly, her glance darting to the street.
‘Not too bad, Mrs Chance.’
She gave me the exact money, coins warmed by her palm, notes carefully counted, watching nervously while I wrapped her comfort in tissue.
‘Thank you, Mrs Chance.’
She nodded dumbly, gave me a half smile, pushed the bottle into her handbag and departed, pausing at the door to reconnoitre. I put the money in the till and looked enquiringly at the man waiting patiently to be served next, and found myself face to face with no customer but the investigator Wilson from the day before.
‘Mr Beach,’ he said.
‘Mr Wilson.’
Externally he wore exactly the same clothes, as if he had never been to bed or to shave, which he had. He looked rested and clean, and moved comfortably in his slow hunchbacked fashion with the knowing eyes and the non-communicating face.
‘Do you always know what your customers want without asking them?’ he said.
‘Quite often,’ I nodded, ‘but usually I wait for them to say.’
‘More polite?’
‘Infinitely.’
He paused. ‘I came to ask you one or two questions. Is there anywhere we can talk?’
‘Just talk,’ I said apologetically. ‘Would you like a chair?’
‘Are you alone here?’
‘Yes.’
I fetched the spare chair for him from the office and put it by the counter, and had no sooner done so than three
people came in for Cinzano, beer and sherry. Wilson waited through the sales without doing much more than blink, and when the door closed for the third time he stirred without impatience and said, ‘Yesterday, during the party, were you at any time talking to the Sheik?’
I smiled involuntarily. ‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘Why does the idea amuse you?’
‘Well… the Sheik considers all this…’ I waved a hand around the bottle-lined walls, ‘… as being positively sinful. Forbidden. Pernicious. Much as we regard cocaine. To him I’m a pusher. In his own country I’d be in jail, or worse. I wouldn’t have introduced myself to him. Not unless I wanted to invite contempt.’
‘I see,’ he said, almost nodding, contemplating the Islamic view. Then he slightly pursed his lips, approaching, I guessed, the question he had really come to ask.
‘Think back,’ he said, ‘to when you were outside the tent, when the horsebox rolled.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why were you out there?’
I told him about fetching more champagne.
‘And when you went out, the horsebox was already rolling?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘When I went out I glanced up at the cars and everything was all right. I remember noting that no one had yet left… and hoped I’d taken enough champagne to last out.’
‘Was there anyone near the horsebox?’
‘No.’
‘You’re certain?’
‘Yes. No one that I could see.’
‘You’ve consulted your memory… before this moment?’
I half smiled. ‘Yes. You might say so.’
He sighed. ‘Did you see anyone at all anywhere near any of the cars?’
‘No. Except… only a child with a dog.’
‘Child?’
‘They weren’t near the horsebox. Nearer the Sheik’s Mercedes, really.’
‘Can you describe the child?’
‘Well…’ I frowned. ‘A boy.’
‘Clothes?’
I looked away from him, gazing vacantly at the racks of wine, thinking back. ‘Dark trousers… perhaps jeans… and a dark blue sweater.’