Proof

by Dick Francis

  ‘And what happened?’ I asked, fascinated.

  ‘The same man who delivered them came back with my cash and took his wines away, what wasn’t already drunk. He said he wasn’t Vernon, just a friend of his, but I’ll bet it was Vernon himself. He said Vernon hoped I’d keep my word about the ‘phone number because if not something very nasty would happen to me.’ She grinned, superbly unconcerned. ‘I told him if Vernon tried anything with me, I’d eat him.’

  I laughed. ‘And that was that?’

  ‘That was bloody that. Until you came round yesterday snooping.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Do you still have the ‘phone number?’

  Her brilliant eyes shone yellowly. ‘Yes, I do. How much is it worth to you? A case of Krug? Case of Pol Roger? Dom Perignon?’

  I reflected. ‘Case of Bell’s?’ I suggested.

  ‘Done.’ She picked a piece of paper without ceremony out of her handbag and gave it to me.

  If you carry it,’ I said.

  She glanced at the sling I still wore. ‘Hurt your arm?’

  ‘Shotgun pellets… I wouldn’t tell anyone, if I were you, that you’d been here to see me. I got shot at because of that wine. Vernon might not be pleased to know you’d given me his ‘phone number.’

  Her eyes opened wide and the mockery for once died right out of her face.

  I came here,’ she said flatly, ‘because of the head waiter at the Silver Moondance. Murder’s going too far. But you didn’t say…’

  I shook my head, i’m sorry. There seemed no need. I had no idea you would come here. And I’m sure you’ll be O.K. if you just keep quiet. After all, others must have Vernon’s number. Your neighbour, for one.’

  ‘Yes.’ She thought it over. ‘You’re damn right.’ Her face lightened back into its accustomed lines. ‘Any time you’re passing, my little wine merchant, call in for dinner.’

  She came with me into the storeroom to collect her trophy which she bore easily away under her arm, diving out into the drizzle with the teeth and eyes gleaming against the grey sky.

  Gerard said, ‘That’s great,’ and promised to ring back as soon as his firm had traced the number.

  ‘It’s somewhere near Oxford,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Oxford code.’

  His voice for all his enthusiasm sounded tired and when I asked after his shoulder he merely grunted without comment, which I took to mean no good news.

  ‘I’ll call you back,’ he said, and within half an hour did so, but not to say he had located Vernon’s number,

  ‘Thought you’d like to know… the office has checked with the Doncaster auctioneers. Ramekin was bought for actual cash. Banknotes. They’ve no record of who bought it. The office did a quick check also on transporters and sure enough, as you said, Ramekin was in their books. He was shipped to California to a well-known bloodstock agent. The agent is away travelling in Japan and no one in his office will release information in his absence. He’s expected home next Thursday night. Ramekin’s shipment costs were paid in cash by a Mr A. L. Trent, who has sent several other horses to California via the same shipper to the same agent. So there we are. The laundered cash is in California, either banked or still on the hoof.’

  ‘Banked, I’d bet a million.’

  ‘Yes, I’d think so. But a dead end until Friday.’

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘We’re making progress,’ he said. ‘And you might also like to know about the tanker keys.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘I talked to Kenneth Charter. He says there’s nothing exceptional about the keys to the cab or the ignition keys but he has special keys for the valves into the segments in his tankers. Part of his security arrangements. There are nine separate segments in those big tankers. He says it’s so the tanker can carry several different liquids in small loads on the same journey, if necessary. Anyway, each segment has its own particular key, to avoid mistakes with unloading, so the scotch tankers each have a bunch of nine valve keys. With goods in bond Charter has always posted a set of keys in advance to both shipper and destination so that they are never carried on the tanker itself, for security.’

  ‘Most prudent,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. So Kenneth Charter went to the Simpers shop himself this afternoon, and sure enough they said they’d twice made a set of nine keys like that, and both times they’d had to send away for the blanks. The young man who’d ordered them had given his name as Harrison each time. Kenneth Charter is spitting mad as of course the shop has no record of the shapes they cut into the blanks, and he doesn’t know which of his tankers is now at risk.’

  ‘Awkward.’

  ‘He says if he loses the whole business it won’t matter a damn. What upset him most was Kenneth Junior going to such lengths.’

  ‘Does he know how Kenneth Junior got hold of the keys?’ I asked.

  ‘He says they’re usually kept in his office, but when the tankers’ valves are being steam cleaned the keys are out in the workshop. He reckons Kenneth Junior took them from there.’

  ‘Cunning little beast.’

  ‘Absolutely. Incidentally, both Kenneth Charter and Deg-let’s have now received from Rannoch the profile analysis of all three of the stolen loads of scotch. Apparently they are all slightly different because they were blends from more than one distillery. Too technical for me. Anyway, they’re in our office ready, if we find anything to match.’

  ‘Mm. I wonder if Mrs Alexis’s neighbour still has any.’

  ‘What a thought! Get onto her pronto.’

  ‘Pity she poured hers down the drain.’

  Gerard and I disconnected and I got through to Mrs Alexis who sounded breezily unaffected and said she would find out at once; but she called back within ten minutes to say her neighbour had sold the lot some time ago and couldn’t get any more at that price because Vernon had discontinued the discount, but she thought Vernon must have got the wind up after his brush with her and had closed down altogether in her area.

  Damn, I thought, and told Gerard.

  ‘Whenever we get near that stuff it seems to recede from us like a phantom,’ he said wearily.

  ‘Maybe I’ll find it tomorrow.’

  He sighed. ‘It’s a very big haystack.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Flora came breathlessly into the shop soon after I’d opened it on the Saturday morning, saying she was on her way to fetch Jack home and wanted to thank me again for my help with Howard and Orkney Swayle.

  ‘There’s no need. I enjoyed it.’

  ‘All the same, Tony dear, I want you to have this.’ She put a gift-wrapped parcel on the counter, and when I opened my mouth to protest said, ‘Now don’t argue, Tony dear, it’s for you and it’s not enough, it’s very small and I expect you have one already, but I’ll have my hands full when Jack’s home so I thought I’d bring it for you now.’

  She patted my hand in motherly fashion and I bent to kiss her cheek.

  ‘You’re very naughty,’ I said. ‘But thank you.’

  ‘That’s right dear. Where’s your sling?’

  ‘I forgot it this morning. It’s at home.’

  ‘Don’t tire yourself, dear, will you? And we’ll need some more drinks whenever you’ve time.’ She fished in her handbag and produced a list. ‘After Jack’s home the owners will start coming again and some of them drink like fish, though I shouldn’t say it, and Jack says he’s going to add it on their bills as medicine for the horses, which you can’t blame him for, can you, dear?’

  ‘Er… no.’

  She put the list on the counter beside the present, and, saying she had a thousand things to see to on her way to the hospital, went lightfootedly away.

  I unwrapped the parcel curiously and found that although it was small in size it couldn’t have been in price. The box inside the glazed white paper had come from a jeweller in Reading, and it contained, in a nest of red velvet, a silver penknife.

  Not one that would necessarily gladden
the hearts of Boy Scouts. Not knobbly with thirteen blades and a hook for taking stones out of horses’ hooves, like the one which had been the pride of my childhood. A slim elegantly tooled affair with a sharp steel cutting blade tucked into one side and a second blade on the other which turned out to be a screwdriver. I liked both the look and the feel, and although it was true I already had a knife, it was old and blunt. I took the old knife out of my pocket and replaced it with the new, and thought friendly thoughts of Flora all morning.

  Ridger added to my pleasure by telephoning to say there would be no more pub crawls for a few days as he had been assigned to other duties, but we would resume on Wednesday and he would be along for me then at ten-fifteen.

  I suppose I should have told him about Mrs Alexis and the mysterious Vernon with his telephone number, but I didn’t. It seemed odd to me to find that my allegiance was to Gerard rather than to the police. I had caught from him quite thoroughly, it seemed, the belief that the paying client’s interests came first, with public justice second.

  I did actually half jokingly ask Ridger who I should tell if I came across the suspect scotch when I wasn’t in his own company, and he answered seriously, after earnest thought, that I’d probably better tell Chief Superintendent Wilson straight away, as Ridger himself along with many of the county’s police was having to go up north to help deal with some ugly picketing, which made a change, and he couldn’t tell who’d be on duty while he was away.

  ‘How would I reach the Chief Superintendent?’ I asked.

  He told me to wait a moment and came back with a number which would reach the Zarac investigation room direct. Night or day, he said. Priority.

  ‘Would the Silver Moondance scotch be priority?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Anything would.’

  ‘O.K., Sergeant. See you on Wednesday.’

  He said he hoped so, and goodbye.

  Relieved at being let off the drinking I sold a lot of wine to a flood of customers, with Mrs Palissey busily beaming and Brian carrying the loads out to the cars, and it seemed as if it would be for once a normal day until Tina McGregor telephoned at eleven.

  ‘Gerard’s gone up to the office,’ she said. ‘I wish he wouldn’t on Saturdays and particularly as he’s not right yet from last Sunday, but it’s like arguing with a bulldozer… Anyway, he asked me to tell you they’ve traced the number you gave him yesterday and it doesn’t look too promising. It’s the number of the big caterers at Martineau Park racecourse. He says if you’d care to go along there you might ask them if Vernon – is that right? – still works for them. He says if you should see Vernon yourself he’ll leave it up to you to decide whether or not to ask him where he got the scotch and wines from. Is that all right?’

  ‘Yes, fine,’ I said. ‘How’s his shoulder?’

  ‘He’s being utterly tight-lipped about it and they’ve put him on antibiotics.’

  ‘It’s infected?’ I asked, alarmed.

  ‘He didn’t say. I just wish he’d slow down.’

  She sounded neither anxious nor angry, but one could never tell Tina’s reactions from her voice. I said weakly, ‘I’m sorry,’ and she answered, ‘No need to be,’ in the same calm tone, and said Gerard would like me to telephone him at his home later to let him know how I got on at Martineau Park.

  It was odd, I reflected, putting down the receiver, to think that I had been at Martineau Park races so long on Tuesday afternoon totally oblivious of the existence of Vernon among the caterers Orkney Swayle so much detested. Life, as Gerard said, was full of ironies.

  Mrs Palissey, geared to my planned absence with Ridger, took my substitute trip to Martineau Park in her stride. ‘Of course, Mr Beach. No trouble at all.’

  Grudge-and-spite might be the prevailing social climate but Mrs Palissey rose gloriously above it. Mrs Palissey was a non-interfering do-gooder, heaven reward her. I said I would make it up to her later, and she said, ‘Yes, Yes,’ as if it didn’t matter one way or the other.

  I drove to Martineau Park wondering if in fact there would be anyone there. It wasn’t a race day. There would be no crowds. I hadn’t before been to a racecourse on a non-racing day and didn’t know what level of activity to expect in the way of managers, maintenance, groundsmen or cleaners. The whole catering department would very likely be locked. I would quite likely be turning round to drive straight back.

  The gates into the members’ car park at least stood open, unguarded. I drove through them and across the unpopulated expanses of cindery grass, leaving the Rover at the end of a short row of cars near the entrance to the paddock. That gate too was open and unattended, where on race days watchful officials checked the admittance badges of the throng streaming through.

  It was eerie, I thought, to see the place so deserted. Without people the bulky line of buildings seemed huge. Bustling human life somehow reduced their proportions, filled their spaces, made them friendlier, brought them to comfortable size. I hadn’t realised how big the place was in all the days I’d been there.

  There was no one about around the weighing room area, though the doors there too were open. I went curiously inside, looking at the holies from where racegoers were normally barred, peering with interest at the scales themselves and at the flat pieces of lead used for packing weight-cloths. I went on into the jockeys’ changing rooms and looked at the rows of empty pegs, empty benches, empty racks for saddles: all echoingly bare with no scrap of personal life remaining. When the racing circus moved on, it took all with it but the dust.

  Gerard might consider the detour a waste of time, but I would probably never get such an opportunity again. I peered for good measure into a room marked ‘Stewards’ which contained merely a table, six undistinguished chairs and two pictures ditto. No mementos, no records of the make-or-break enquiries held there.

  Returning to fresh air and the allotted task I came to a door marked ‘Clerk of the Course’ which stood slightly ajar. I pushed it open tentatively and found a man sitting at a desk, writing. He raised a smooth head and bushy eyebrows and said in a civilised voice, ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I’m looking for the caterers,’ I said.

  ‘Delivery entrance?’

  ‘Er… yes.’

  ‘You’ll want to go along the back of the stands to the far end. You’ll find the Tote building facing you. Turn right. You’ll see the Celebration Bar there alongside the Tote, but the door you want is to your right again before you get there. A green door. Not conspicuous. There are some empty beer crates just outside, unless they’ve moved them as I asked.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He nodded civilly and bent to his writing, and I walked to the far end of the stands and found the green door and the beer crates, as he’d said.

  I found also that deliveries were at that moment taking place. A large dark van had been drawn up outside the closed front of the Celebration Bar, a van with its rear doors opened wide and two workmen in brown overalls unloading a shipment of gin from it onto a pallet on a fork-lift truck.

  The green door itself stood open, propped that way by a crate. I walked through it behind the two men in overalls as they trundled inwards the make of gin which Orkney had refused to have in his box.

  The door, I saw, represented the outward end of a very dimly lit passage about six feet wide which stretched away into the distance as far as one could see, and I realised that it must run under the whole length of the main bank of stands, an inner spinal thoroughfare, the gut life of the building, unseen from outside.

  The gin-handlers walked onwards past three closed green painted doors marked Stores A, Stores B, and Stores C, and past an open one, Stores D, which revealed only a half dozen of the sort of deep trays used by bakers.

  A few paces beyond that the gin turned abruptly to the left, and I, turning after it, found myself in a wider side passage aiming for an open but heavy and purposeful-looking door. Beyond the door were brighter lights and more people in what was clearly a larger area a
nd I went in there wondering whether Vernon was a first name or surname, and whether there was the slightest chance of his being at work on a Saturday.

  Immediately through the heavy door there was a large storeroom stacked head high with dense-packed beer crates like those outside, only these were full. To the left was a partitioned section, walls of wood to waist height, glass above, containing a desk, files, calendar, paperwork. To the right an inner door led into a still larger storeroom, a mini-warehouse where the ranks of cases of drink rose nearly to the ceiling and advanced into the central space in deep blocks. Martineau Park, I reflected, was due to hold its Autumn Carnival jump-racing meeting near the beginning of November and was stocking up accordingly. At the Cheltenham Festival in March, one wine merchant had told me, the jump-racing crowd had in three days, apart from beer by the lakeful, despatched six thousand bottles of champagne in addition to nine thousand bottles of other wines and four thousand bottles of spirits. At Martineau, by the look of things, at least double that was expected.

  The gin went through into the inner warehouse to be added to a huge stack already growing there, and I again followed. One large man with a clipboard was checking off quantities and another with a black felt pen put a mark on each box as it was unloaded.

  No one paid me any attention. I stood there as if invisible to all of them, and it slowly struck me that each set thought I belonged to the other. The two delivery men disengaged the fork-lift from the pallet they’d brought in, picked up an empty one from a low stack and began wheeling back to the door. The man with the pen heaved the cases into their new positions, putting his mark on each, and the man with the clipboard watched and counted.

  I thought I’d better wait until they’d finished before I interrupted, and looking back it seems possible that that brief hesitation saved my life.

  The telephone rang in the office section, raucously loud.