by Dick Francis
‘Cheerful.’
‘Fact of life.’
He drove me back towards the shop, saying he would return in the morning with tomorrow’s list of suspicious premises.
‘Can’t you bring the whole list instead of in bits?’ I asked.
‘It’s still being compiled. We started today with our own patch, but we may have to wait for information from others.’
‘Mm – Do you have a first name, Sergeant?’
He looked faintly surprised. ‘John,’ he said.
‘In the pubs tomorrow, do you mind if I use it? I damn nearly called you Sergeant twice in front of barmen today.’
He considered it. ‘Yes. All right. Do you want me to call you Tony?’
‘It would make more sense.’
‘All right.’
‘What do you do off duty?’ I asked.
‘Garden,’ he said. ‘Grow vegetables, mostly.’
‘Married?’
‘Yes, been married fourteen years. Two daughters, proper little madams.’ An indulgence in his face belied the sharpness in his voice. ‘Your wife died, they say.’
‘Yes.’
‘Sorry about that.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant.’
He nodded. John was for business, a temporary intimacy that wouldn’t commit him to friendship. I could sense his approval, almost his relief, at my avoidance of John in private.
He left me outside my door and drove tidily away, indicator blinking, carefully efficient to the last. Mrs Palissey had been rushed off her feet, she was glad to say, and was I sure I was fit to drive myself to the hospital because to be honest, Mr Beach, I did smell a wee bit of drink.
I reflected that I’d ordered, paid for and swallowed a good deal of a dozen neat whiskies and if I still felt sober it was an illusion. I went to the hospital by taxi and received disgusted sniffs from the nursing sister (the same one), who stripped off the tube bandage to see what was cooking underneath.
‘People who drink heal more slowly,’ she said severely.
‘Do they?’
‘Yes.’
With her head not far from mine she one by one unstuck the antiseptic patches she’d applied the previous Sunday, and I tried to breathe shallowly through my nose in the opposite direction. Without much success, it seemed, judging from the offended twitch of her nostrils.
‘Most of these are healing better than you deserve,’ she said finally. ‘Three are inflamed and another looks troublesome… Do they hurt?’
‘Well… sort of.’
She nodded. ‘One should expect it. Several were more than an inch deep.’ She began sticking on new patches. ‘I’ll put a stitch in this bad one up here on your biceps, to hold it together. And keep off alcohol. There are much better pain killers.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said dryly, and thought of the boozy tomorrow and of fifty thousand pubs to Watford.
Back in the shop I saw Mrs Palissey and Brian off with the deliveries and dealt with some paperwork, and in the lull between late afternoon customers eventually got dutifully around to looking at the photostats of Kenneth Junior’s notebook.
Gerard’s firm had made a good job of their deciphering and checking and my respect for his organisation consolidated from vague expectation into recognition that Deglet’s were experienced experts in a way I hadn’t appreciated.
Gerard’s fat envelope contained an explanatory note and about fifteen sheets of typing paper. The centre of each sheet bore the stat of one page of the small notebook, and from each entry in the notebook a fine straight line led to explanation in the margin.
Gerard’s note was typewritten:
Tony,
All the enquiries were done by telephone, not in person. Answers were given freely by Kenneth Charter himself, also by his wife and daughter and elder son, although with them as with friends and shops our questions had to be cautious, as Kenneth Charter forbade us to represent Kenneth Junior in a criminal light.
The sheets are numbered in the order in which the pages occurred in the notebook. Kenneth Charter dates the first page as having been written at the beginning of August as it refers to Mrs Charter’s birthday on August 8th. One may assume that the entries were written consecutively after that, but it is not certain, and there are no other positive dates, as you will see.
Please write down immediately any thoughts which cross your mind as you read. Don’t leave such thoughts until afterwards as they are apt to evaporate.
G
I turned to the first of the notebook pages and found that the first entry of all read:
Buy card for Mum’s birthday next week.
A fine straight line led to the marginal note: August 8th.
Kenneth Junior’s handwriting was inclined to shoot off at both forward and backward sloping angles in the same word, but was otherwise distinctly formed and easy to read. The Deglet’s annotator had written in neat fine black script, utterly different but equally legible. I could hardly complain that Gerard had set me a technically difficult task.
The second entry on the first page read:
Go to D.N.’s for w.g.
The marginal note said: D.N. is David Naylor, Kenneth Junior’s only close friend. It is thought the letters w.g. stand for war games, as they are David Naylor’s hobby.
The first page also read:
Collect trousers front cleaners.
Ask Dad for cash.
Tell B.T. to fuck off.
The line from the last entry led to: B.T. is probably Betty Townsend, a girl Kenneth Junior had been seeing. Mrs Charter says she was a nice girl but clinging.
Poor Betty Townsend.
I turned to page two and found a list of telephone numbers, each with an identification in the margin, along with an address.
Odeon cinema (local)
Diamond snooker club (local)
David Naylor (Friend. Unemployed)
Clipjoint (Barber’s shop, local)
Lisa Smithson (Occasional girlfriend. Unemployed)
Ronald Haleby (Friend. Works as doorman at local disco)
The next many pages contained entries which were only understandable because of the telephone numbers and spoke eloquently of a drifting purposeless life. Kenneth Junior’s lists were almost a diary, embracing such revelations as ‘Snort with R.H. Sunday, take cash’ and ‘Get abortion number for L.S.’ but were mainly on the more mundane level of ‘Tell Mum to buy toothbrush’, ‘Play snooker at Diamond’s’ and ‘Rewire plug on stereo’.
One later page read:
Haircut.
Go to Halifax.
Buy tank for w.g., Phone D.N.
Get keys of N.T. for duplicates.
Meet R.H. in Diamond’s.
Pay L.S. for abortion.
Deglet’s annotations were:
(1) Clipjoint say Kenneth Junior went there at about ten day intervals for shampoo and styling. He bought expensive products and tipped lavishly.
(2) Kenneth Junior is most unlikely to have been to the town of Halifax. Suggest this reference means Halifax Build ing Society, though his parents don’t know if he had an account there. Kenneth Charter thought that apart from unemployment benefit his son had no money except what he himself gave him, but this cannot be right as Charter did not give him enough extra for cocaine and abortions.
(3) Tank must be toy tank for war games.
(4) Not traced.
I frowned for a while over the letters N.T. but could make no more of them than Deglet’s had. What did one need keys for? House, car, suitcase, drawer, locker, desk, mail box, deposit box… infinitum. N.T. was perhaps a person. Person unknown.
On the next page there was a single entry, the one which had started the bushfire.
The Reading telephone number followed by:
Tell Z UNP 786Ypicks up B’s Gin Mon 10 a.m. approx.
I made a wry face over the bald and still disturbing treachery and turned over to what was left: three more pages very much like the others, with only a few
new themes.
Go with D.N. for w.g. with S.N! bore the Deglet explan-nation: S.N. is Stewart Naylor, David Naylor’s father. Stewart Naylor lives apart after divorce. David Naylor visits his father occasionally. Stewart Naylor is noted for skill in war games, which probably accounts for the exclamation mark.
On the last page of all it said:
Get visa for Australia.
Ask R.H. about pushers in Sydney.
Pay L.S. That’s her lot.
Go to Halifax.
Remember to ask Dad for cash.
Collect keys from Simpers and send them off.
There was a final Deglet explanation: Simpers is a hardware shop which duplicates keys. They have no record of work done for Kenneth Junior or anyone else in the family. They normally cut keys immediately, while you wait, but not if they don’t keep the blanks in stock and have to send away for them. In that case they ask for an address and a deposit. If Kenneth junior obtained keys in that way from Simpers he gave a name and address not his own.
I shuffled the pages together and put them back in the envelope, looking dubiously at the very few thoughts and comments I’d jotted down for Gerard; and half an hour later, when he telephoned, I offered them reluctantly and apologetically.
‘Just say what ocurred to you,’ he said a touch impatiently. ‘Anything at all may be useful.’
‘Well… those keys.’
‘What about them?’
‘Well… what sort of keys do the tankers have?’
There was utter silence from Gerard.
‘Are you still there?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I am.’ Another pause. ‘Go on talking.’
‘Um… I wondered at the beginning about it always being the same tanker which was stolen, and I thought it might be because of something dead simple, like that one being the only tanker the thieves had the keys for. Because they would have needed the keys to unlock the cab door when the driver was in the service stations, in order to put the gas in there, and lock the door again so.the driver found nothing suspicious when he got back.’
‘Hm,’ Gerard said. ‘The police assumed the thieves used lock-pickers.’
‘The right key would be quicker.’
‘I agree.’
‘Kenneth Junior had easy access to Charter’s office and everywhere else in the place before the first theft. You might ask Charter Senior where the tanker keys are kept.’
‘Yes, I will.’
‘It struck me that maybe it was keys to a second tanker that Kenneth Junior was having cut. I mean, N.T. might stand for Next Tanker or New Tanker or something. Anyway, it might be worth taking some tanker keys to Simpers and seeing if they keep those blanks in stock or if they’d need to send away for them. And it might be as well to warn Kenneth Charter that someone, somewhere, might have the keys to another of his tankers… if any of this is right, of course.’
‘Right or wrong, I’ll warn him.’
‘I’m afraid that’s all,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think of much else. Except…’
‘Except?’
‘Except that to himself Kenneth Junior didn’t seem so bad. He sold information for presumably spot cash and he banked it in something ultra-conservative like a building society. He might have enjoyed his snort with the disco doorman but he wasn’t addicted. He paid for the girl’s abortion. That’s none of it heavy villainy.’
‘No. A moderately stable personality. I thought so too. Staying at home, buying a birthday card for his mother, being impressed by his friend’s father… but totally without loyalty to his own.’
‘Teenage rebellion gone a step too far.’
‘Right,’ Gerard said. ‘Untrustworthy little bugger. But there you are, he’s earning us money. Life’s full of such ironies.’
I said with a smile in my voice, ‘Want another? We’re now looking for that scotch courtesy of the police.’
I told him about my day’s journeyings with Ridger and raised a chuckle on account of Mrs Alexis.
‘I wasn’t sure about Mrs Alexis,’ I said. ‘She did have all those wines on her list. She says she’s sold them all. She wears such a knowing expression the whole time that you can’t tell if she knows anything specific. Maybe I’ll go back.’
‘She sounds an utter dragon.’
‘Very good value,’ I said. ‘She likes men who swing from chandeliers.’
‘But you don’t. You’re not the type.’
‘No… I should be safe.’
He laughed. ‘How was your arm? I have to go myself tomorrow.’ ‘Not bad. And good luck.’
Ridger returned punctually in the morning and we set off to cover a territory in and around Henley-on-Thames, where in July each year the rowing regatta brought the sleepy town to bulging expensive life. In late October, in a cold drizzle, it was quiet. Ducks swam silently on the grey river and shoppers huddled head-down under umbrellas. Ridger and I went into bar after bar brushing off raindrops and I lost count after a while of the Bell’s.
All of the Bell’s rang true. Not a cracked note among them.
One of the barmen gave us short change, slapping down coins in a handful while sloshing water onto the counter top, so that I should snatch them up without checking, but Ridger said that that didn’t rate a clipboard entry. He produced his badge, however, and warned the barman, who scowled. As the high spot of the morning it didn’t rate much, but one couldn’t expect a Mrs Alexis every day of the week.
Some of the pubs had two bars. One had three. My friend John insisted on making sure of every Bell’s bottle in sight.
Awash with tomato juice he returned me to my shop at two-thirty and I sat heavy-headed in my office regretting the whole enterprise. I would simply have to take something to spit into, I thought, even if spitting alerted the barman and disgusted the other customers. Getting half cut every lunch-time was no joke.
Mrs Palissey drove Brian away with a big load of deliveries and between each sporadic afternoon customer I sat down and felt thick with sleep. When the door buzzer roused me for the fifth time I went into the shop yawning.
‘That’s no way to greet manna from heaven,’ my customer said.
Mrs Alexis stood there, larger than life, bringing out her own sun on a wet afternoon. I shut my mouth slowly, readjusted it to a smile, and said, ‘I was coming to see you again at the first opportunity.’
‘Were you now?’ she said, mockery in full swing. ‘So this is where our little wine merchant dwells.’ She peered about her good-humouredly, oblivious to the fact that her ‘little’ wine merchant stood a fraction under six feet himself and could at least look her levelly in the eyes. Nearly all men, I guessed, were ‘little’ to her.
‘I was passing,’ she said.
I nodded. Amazing, the number of people who said that.
‘No, I bloody well wasn’t,’ she amended explosively. ‘I came here on purpose.’ She lifted her chin almost defiantly. ‘Does that surprise you?’
‘Yes,’ I said truthfully.
‘I liked the look of you.’
‘That surprises me too.’
‘Bloody cool, aren’t you?’
I was still half drunk, I thought. Almost a third of a bottle of scotch on an empty stomach, whichever way you looked at it. Ulcer land.
‘How’s the chimney?’ I asked.
She grinned, showing teeth like a shark.
‘Bloody Wilfred hasn’t forgiven me.’
‘And the fire?’
‘Burning like Rome.’ She eyed me assessingly. ‘You’re young enough to be my bloody son.’
‘Just about.’
‘And do you want to know about those bloody wines or don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do indeed.’
‘I wasn’t going to tell that police sergeant. Wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Pompous little killjoy.’
I said ‘Mm’ non-committally.
‘I bought them, all right,’ she said. ‘But I damn soon sent them back.’
I breathed in deeply, t
rying to do nothing to distract her.
‘I ran short of Bell’s,’ she said. ‘So I ‘phoned across to the pub opposite to borrow some. Nothing odd in that, we always help each other out. So he brings a whole unopened bloody case over, saying it came from a new supplier who offered good discounts, especially on wine, which was more my sort of thing than his. He gave me a ‘phone number and told me to ask for Vernon.’
I looked at her.
‘Should have known better, shouldn’t I?’ she said cheerfully.
‘Should have suspected it had all fallen off the back of a bloody lorry.’
‘But you telephoned?’
‘That’s right. Very good wines, just under normal price. So I said right, shunt along a case of each, I’d put them on the wine list and see if anyone liked them.’
‘And did they?’
‘Sure.’ She gave me the shark smile. ‘Shows how much some of these so-called buffs really know.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then I got someone in the bar one day kicking up a fuss and saying he’d been given the wrong whisky. I’d given it to him myself out of a Bell’s bottle, one I’d got from my neighbour. I tasted it but I don’t like the stuff, can’t tell one from another. Anyway I gave him some Glenlivet free to placate him and apologised and when he’d gone I rang up my neighbour pretty damn quick, but he said he was certain it was O.K., Vernon worked for a big firm.’
‘Which big firm?’
‘How the hell do I know? I didn’t ask. But I’ll tell you, I wasn’t taking any risks so I poured the rest of the case of Bell’s down the drain and chalked it up to experience. Damn good thing I did, because the next bloody day I got the Weights and Measures people round with their little measuring instruments following a strong complaint from a customer. And that damned man drank my Glenlivet, too, and still reported me.’
‘And I don’t suppose he’s been back,’ I said, smiling.
Td’ve strangled him.’
if it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else.’
‘You don’t have to be so bloody right. Anyway, after that I asked a man I know who buys for a wine society to come out straight away and taste those splendid wines, and when he told me they were all the same I rang up that bloody Vernon and told him to collect what was left and repay me for the whole lot or I’d give his bloody ‘phone number to the police.’