Proof

by Dick Francis

  ‘I’d trust Vernon with my life,’ he said.

  Not me, I thought. I wouldn’t.

  ‘Only Vernon and yourself have keys?’ Gerard persisted.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Keys to the alarm and the store, that is. The racecourse has a key to the outer door, the green one.’

  Gerard nodded non-committally. Quigley turned his back on the problem and produced a third and a fourth key to undo the heavy door into the actual store, each key having to be turned twice, alternately: and considering the value of the liquor stacked inside, I supposed the vault-like precautions weren’t unjustified.

  ‘Can your keys be duplicated?’ Gerard asked.

  ‘What? No, they can’t. They can be obtained only from the firm who installed the system, and they wouldn’t issue duplicates without my say-so.’

  Quigley was younger than I first thought. Not mid-forties, I judged, standing near him in the brighter storeroom lights: more like mid-thirties aping the manner of fifty.

  ‘A family firm, did you say?’ I asked.

  ‘Basically, yes. My father’s retired.’

  Gerard gave him a dry look. ‘He’s still chairman, I believe, your father?’

  ‘Presides over board meetings, yes,’ Quigley said patronis-ingly. ‘Makes him feel wanted. Old people need that, you know. But I run things. Have done for three years. This is a big firm, you know. We don’t cater only for this racecourse, but for many other sporting events and also for weddings and dances. Very big, and growing.’

  ‘Do you keep everything here?’ I asked. ‘Your linen, tableware, glasses, things like that?’

  He shook his head. ‘Only the liquor here, because of the high security of this place. Everything else is at our central depot two miles away. Equipment, food stores and offices. We ship everything from there by van daily as required. It’s a very big operation, as I said.’ He sounded vastly self-satisfied. ‘I have streamlined the whole business considerably.’

  ‘Were spirits by the tot in the private boxes here your own idea ?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’ His eyebrows rose. ‘Yes, of course. Got to fall in line with other racecourse caterers. Much more profitable. Got to answer to shareholders, you know. Shareholders are always with us.’

  ‘Mm,’ I said.

  He heard doubt in my tone. He said sharply, ‘Don’t forget it’s to the box-holder’s advantage. When only a little has been used, we don’t insist on them buying the whole bottle.’

  ‘True,’ I said neutrally. A Quigley-Swayle face-to-face could draw blood: diverting prospect. ‘Your strawberry tartlets are excellent.’

  He looked at me uncertainly and explained to Gerard that all the paperwork to do with wines, beer and spirits passed through the small office to our left. Vernon, he said without happiness, was wholly in charge.

  ‘He chooses and orders?’ Gerard said.

  ‘Yes. He’s done it for years.’

  ‘And pays the bills?’

  ‘No. We have a computerised system. The checked invoices go from here to the office two miles away to be paid through the computer. Saves time. I installed it, of course.’

  Gerard nodded, ignoring the smugness.

  ‘We keep beer in here, as you see,’ Quigley said. ‘This is just back-up. Normally we get suppliers to deliver on the day of need.’

  Gerard nodded.

  ‘Outside in the passage… we’ve just passed it… is the one passenger lift which comes down here… in this part of the stands the ground floor as far as the public is concerned is above our heads. We transfer from here to the bars and the boxes using that lift: to the bars on all floors. Early on racedays we are extremely busy.’

  Gerard said he was sure.

  ‘Through here are the wines and spirits,’ Quigley said, leading the way into the main storeroom. ‘As you see.’

  Gerard saw. Quigley walked a few steps ahead of us and Gerard said quietly, ‘Where were you yesterday?’

  ‘Lying up here… on the Pol Roger.’

  He looked at me with curiosity. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You look… it can’t be right… you look of all things ashamed.’

  I swallowed. ‘When I was up there… I was frightened sick.’

  He looked round the storeroom; at the possibilities and limitations of concealment; and he said judiciously, ‘You’d have been a fool not to be scared stiff. I don’t think there’s much doubt Paul Young would have killed you if he’d found you. Killing the second time is easier, I’m told. Fear in a fearful situation is normal. Absence of fear is not. Keeping one’s nerve in spite of fear is courage.’

  He had a way, I thought, of speaking without sympathy while giving incredible comfort. I didn’t thank him, but profoundly in my heart I was grateful.

  ‘Shall we start?’ he said as we rejoined Quigley. ‘Tony, you said the suspect cases are somewhere at the far end?’

  ‘Yes.’

  We all moved through the central canyon between the piled-high city blocks of cartons until we reached the end wall.

  ‘Where now?’ Quigley demanded. ‘I see nothing wrong. This all looks exactly the same as usual.’

  ‘Always Bell’s whisky at the end here?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The size of the Bell’s block would have shamed the wholesalers I regularly bought from. Even Gerard looked daunted at the possibility of having to open the whole lot to find the bad apples, which was nothing to the vision of paralytic drunkenness crossing my own imagination.

  ‘Er…’ I said. ‘There may be marks of some sort on the boxes. Someone was putting black felt tip squiggles on the gin when it was being checked in.’

  ‘Mervyn, probably,’ Quigley said.

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  I walked back to the gin and looked at Mervyn’s handiwork: a hasty curling cross with two diagonals almost joined in a circle on the right side. The only problem was that it appeared also on every Bell’s case in sight. No other distinguishing mark seemed to be on any that we could see without dismantling the whole mountain.

  ‘Vernon must have been able to tell one from another, easily,’ Gerard said. ‘He wouldn’t risk not knowing his stuff at a glance.’

  ‘I don’t believe all this,’ Quigley announced irritably. ‘Ver-non’s a most efficient manager.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ Gerard murmured.

  ‘Perhaps we could find the wine,’ I suggested. ‘It might be less difficult.’

  Wine was stacked in narrower blocks on the opposite wall from the spirits, the quantity in each stack less but the variety more: and I found St Estèphe and St Emilion six deep behind a fronting wall of unimpeachable Mouton Cadet.

  Quigley consented to the opening of a case of St Estèphe, which laid bare the familiar false label in all its duplicity.

  ‘This is it,’ I said. ‘Shall we taste it to make sure?’

  Quigley frowned. ‘You can’t be right. It’s come from a respectable supplier. Vintners Incorporated. There’s their name stamped on the box.’

  ‘Taste the wine,’ Gerard said.

  I produced my corkscrew, opened a bottle and went back to the office section to search for a glass. All I could find were throwaway expanded polystyrene beakers which would have given Henri Tavel a fit: but even in the featherweight plastic the bottle’s contents were unmistakable.

  ‘Not St Estèphe,’ I said positively. ‘Shall I try the St Emilion?’

  Quigley shrugged. I opened a case and a bottle, and tasted.

  ‘It’s the same,’ I said. ‘Shall we look for the other four?’

  They were all there, all hidden behind respectable facades of the same sort of wine: the Mâcon behind Mâcon, and so on. The contents of all were identical, as at the Silver Moondance: and all six wines had been supplied, according to the cases, by Vintners Incorporated.

  ‘Um,’ Gerard said thoughtfully, ‘do Vintners Incorporated supply Bell’s whisky also?’

&n
bsp; ‘But they’re a well-known firm,’ Quigley protested.

  ‘Anyone,’ Gerard pointed out, ‘can cut a stencil and slap the name Vintners Incorporated onto anything.’

  Quigley opened his mouth and then slowly closed it. We returned to the Bell’s and immediately found a section at the back of the block with Vintners Incorporated emblazoned obviously on the side.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Quigley said. Then, ‘Oh, very well. Taste it.’

  I tasted it. Waited. Let aftertaste develop. Beyond that let nuances linger in mouth, throat and nose.

  ‘He can’t tell,’ Quigley said impatiently to Gerard. ‘There’s nothing wrong with it. I told you.’

  ‘Have you ever had complaints?’ I asked eventually.

  ‘Of course we have,’ he said. ‘What caterer hasn’t? But none of them has been justified.’

  I wondered if Martineau Park would turn up on Ridger’s lists. No hope of finding out until he came back on Wednesday.

  ‘This isn’t Bell’s,’ I said. ‘Too much grain, hardly any malt.’

  ‘Sure?’ Gerard said.

  ‘It’s what we’re looking for,’ I said, nodding.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Quigley asked, and then without waiting for an answer said aggrievedly, ‘How could Vernon possibly be so disloyal?’

  His reply came through the doorway in the shape of the man himself: Vernon in his leather jacket, large, angry and alarmed.

  ‘What the bloody hell is going on here?’ he shouted, advancing fast down the storeroom. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  He stopped dead when Gerard moved slightly, disclosing the presence of Quigley.

  He said, ‘Oh… Miles… I didn’t expect…’

  He sensed something ominous in our stillness. His gaze shifted warily from Quigley to Gerard and finally to me: and I was a shock to him of cataclysmic proportions.

  NINETEEN

  ‘Let’s straighten this out,’ Gerard said matter of factly in the office section, to which we had all moved. ‘The fraud as I see it is as follows.’

  His voice was as unhurried and unemotional as an accountant summing up an unexciting audit and was having a positively calming effect on Quigley if not on Vernon.

  ‘It appears to me from a preliminary inspection of the invoices at present to hand in this office that the following sequence of events has been taking place. And perhaps I should explain to you,’ he said directly to Vernon, ‘that the unravelling of commercial fraud is my normal and constant occupation.’

  Vernon’s small intense eyes stared at him blankly and under the large drooping moustache the mouth moved in twitches, tightening and loosening with tension. He half stood, half sat, his bulk supported by the desk on which he had done his constructive paperwork, and he had folded his arms across his chest as if not accepting in the least the accusations now coming his way. The fine dew, however, stood again on his forehead, and I guessed that all he could be grateful for was that this present inquisitor was not his dangerous friend Paul Young.

  ‘A supplier proposed to you the following scheme,’ Gerard said. ‘You as liquor manager here would order extensively from him and in return receive a sizable commission. A kick-back. You were to sell what he provided as if it were part of your firm’s regular stock. However, what he provided was not as described on the invoice. Your firm was paying for Bell’s whisky and fine wines and receiving liquor of lower quality. You certainly knew this. It considerably increased your pay off.’

  Quigley, standing by the doorway, rocked slowly on his heels as if disassociating himself from the proceedings. Gerard, seated on the only chair, dominated the moment absolutely.

  ‘Your provider,’ he said, ‘chose the name of a respectable supplier with whom you didn’t already do business and sent you everything stencilled “Vintners Incorporated”. You received normal-looking invoices from your supplier with that heading and your treasurer’s department sent cheques normally in return. They were perhaps negligent in not checking that the address printed on the invoice heading was truly that of Vintners Incorporated, as you have just heard me doing on the telephone, but no doubt Mr Quigley’s firm as a whole deals with dozens of different suppliers and has no habit of checking each one.’ He broke off and turned his head towards Quigley. ‘I always advise firms to check and keep checking. Such a simple matter. When an address has been entered once into a computerised system such as yours, it’s seldom ever checked. The computer goes on sending payments without question. Invoices may indeed be routinely paid without the goods ever being delivered.’ He turned back to Vernon. ‘On how many occasions did that happen?’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Vernon said.

  ‘Vernon,’ Quigley said, and it was a shattered word of disillusion, not of disbelief. ‘Vernon, how could you? You’ve been with the family for years.’

  Vernon gave him a look in which contempt was clearly a component. Vernon might have remained loyal to the father, I thought, but had been a pushover under the son.

  ‘Who is this provider?’ Quigley said.

  I saw Gerard wince internally: it wasn’t a question he would have asked except obliquely, trying to squeeze out a name by finesse.

  Vernon said, ‘No one.’

  ‘He’s coming here this afternoon,’ I said.

  Vernon stood up compulsively and unfolded his arms.

  ‘You bloody spy,’ he said intensely.

  ‘And you’re afraid of him,’ I said. ‘You don’t want to follow Zarac to the cemetery.’

  He glared at me. ‘You’re not Peter Cash,’ he said suddenly. ‘I know who you are. You’re that interfering bloody wine merchant, that’s who you are. Beach, bloody Beach.’

  No one denied it. No one asked him, either, how he knew anything about any bloody interfering wine merchant called Beach. He could only have known if Paul Young had told him

  ‘Who’s Peter Cash?’ Quigley asked, lost.

  ‘He told the racecourse people his name was Peter Cash,’ Vernon said violently. ‘Insurance.’ He nearly spat. ‘He didn’t want us knowing who he was.’

  ‘Us?’ Gerard asked.

  Vernon shut his mouth tight under the curtain of moustache.

  ‘I’d guess,’ I said slowly, ‘that you turned up this early today because you intended to take all the “Vintners Incorporated” cases out of here and be long gone before your provider arrived at two.’

  Vernon said, ‘Rot,’ but without conviction, and Quigley shook his head despairingly.

  ‘It’s possible,’ Gerard said with authority, ‘that Mr Quigley wouldn’t himself press charges against you, Vernon, if you cared to answer some questions.’

  Quigley stiffened. I murmured ‘Shareholders?’ at his elbow and felt his opposition falter and evaporate. With the faintest twitch of humour to his mouth Gerard said, ‘For instance, Vernon, how close were your ties with Zarac at the Silver Moondance?’

  Silence. The dew on Vernon’s forehead coagulated into visible drops and he brushed the back of one hand over the moustache in evident nervousness. The struggle within him continued for a lengthening time until his doubts forced a way out.

  ‘How can I know?’ he said. ‘How can I be sure he wouldn’t get the force here the minute I said anything?’ He, it appeared, was Miles Quigley. ‘Keep the trap shut and stay out of trouble, that’s what I say,’ Vernon said.

  ‘Wise advice, if we were the police,’ Gerard said. ‘But we’re not. Whatever you say here won’t be taken down and used in evidence. Mr Quigley can give you an assurance and you can believe it.’

  Mr Quigley looked as if he were well on the way from injured sorrow to vengeful fury at Vernon’s defection, but still had enough of an eye to the annual general meeting to see that swallowing the unpalatable now could save him corporate indigestion later on.

  ‘Very well,’ he said rigidly. ‘No prosecutions.’

  ‘On condition,’ Gerard added, ‘that we consider your answers to be frank.’

  Vernon s
aid nothing. Gerard neutrally repeated his question about Zarac, and waited.

  ‘I knew him,’ Vernon said at length, grudgingly. ‘He used to come here for wine if they ran out at the Silver Moondance.’

  ‘Your provider’s wine?’ Gerard said. ‘The “Vintners Incorporated” labels?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Why of course?’

  Vernon hesitated. Gerard knew the answer: testing him, I thought.

  Vernon said jerkily, ‘Larry Trent was his brother.’

  ‘Zarac’s brother?’

  ‘No, of course not. My… well… provider’s.’

  ‘His name?’

  ‘Paul Young.’ Vernon had less trouble with that answer, not more. He sounded glib, I thought. He was lying.

  Gerard didn’t press it. He said merely, ‘Paul Young was Larry Trent’s brother, is that it?’

  ‘Half-brother.’

  ‘Did you know Zarac before this Paul Young persuaded you to join his scheme?’

  ‘Yes, I did. He came here for regular wine like restaurants do sometimes and said he knew of a good fiddle, no risks, for someone in my position. If I was interested, he would let me in.’

  Gerard pondered. ‘Did the Silver Moondance normally get its wine straight from, er, Paul Young?’

  ‘Yes, it did.’

  ‘Did you know Larry Trent?’

  ‘I met him.’ Vernon’s voice was unimpressed. ‘All he cared about was horses. His brother was bloody good to him, letting him strut about pretending to own that place, giving him money by the fistful for his training fees and gambling. Too bloody good to him by half, Zarac said.’

  I heard in memory Orkney Swayle saying Larry Trent was jealous of his brother; the brother who gave him so much. Sad world; ironic.

  ‘What was the relationship between Larry Trent and Zarac?’

  They both worked for his brother. For Paul Young.’ Again the unfamiliarity over the name. Gerard again let it go.

  ‘Equal footing?’

  ‘Not in public, I don’t suppose.’

  ‘Why did Paul Young kill Zarac?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Vernon said, indistinctly, very disturbed. ‘I don’t know.’