Proof

by Dick Francis

  ‘But you knew he did kill him?’

  ‘Jesus…’

  ‘Yes,’ Gerard went on. ‘Go on. You do know, and you can tell us.’

  Vernon spoke suddenly as if compelled. ‘He said Zarac wanted the Silver Moondance. Wanted it given to him on a plate. Given to him or else. Sort of blackmail.’

  Vernon was a sweating mixture of fear, indignation, sympathy and candour and had begun to experience the cathartic release of confession.

  I watched in fascination. Gerard said smoothly, ‘He justified the killing to you?’

  ‘Explained it,’ Vernon said. ‘He came here with the Silver Moondance liquor piled up in his Rolls. He said he was loading it with Zarac’s help. He made three trips. There was so much. The third time he came he was different. He was flushed… excited… very strong. He said I would hear Zarjc was dead, and to keep my mouth shut. He said Zarac had wanted power over him, and he couldn’t have that… and then I heard later how he’d killed him… made me vomit… Zarac wasn’t a bad guy… Jesus, I never meant to get mixed up in murder. I didn’t. It was supposed to be just an easy fiddle for good money…’

  ‘And for how long,’ Gerard said flatly, ‘has the fiddle been in progress?’

  ‘About fifteen months.’

  ‘Wine and whisky all the time?’

  ‘No. Just wine to start with. Whisky these past six months.’

  ‘Always Bell’s?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where did the fake Bell’s whisky go from here?’

  ‘Where?’ Vernon took a moment to understand. ‘Oh. We sold it in the bars here all the time. Sometimes in the boxes too. Also it went to the other sports fixtures Quigley’s cater for, and weddings and dances in halls everywhere. All over.’

  Quigley’s face went stiff and blank with almost comical shock.

  ‘Anywhere you thought no one would notice the difference?’ Gerard asked.

  ‘I suppose so. Most people can’t. Not in a crowded place, they can’t. There’s too many other smells. Zarac told me that, and he was right.’

  Wine waiters, I knew, were cynics. I also thought that but for Orkney’s anti-caterer obsession and his refusal to accept what they routinely offered, I might even have found the Rannoch/Bell’s in his box.

  ‘Do you know what precise whisky you were selling in Bell’s bottles?’ Gerard asked.

  Vernon looked as if he hadn’t considered it closely. ‘It was scotch.’

  ‘And have you heard of a young man called Kenneth Charter?’

  ‘Who?’ Vernon said, bewildered.

  ‘Return to Paul Young,’ Gerard said without visible disappointment. ‘Did he plan with you the robbery at Mr Beach’s shop?’

  Vernon wasn’t so penitent as not to be able to afford me a venomous glance. ‘No, not really. He just borrowed one of our vans. I lent him the keys.’

  ‘What?’ Quigley exclaimed. ‘The van that was stolen?’

  Quigley… Quality House Provisions. I picked up one of the printed catering pricelists from the desk beside Gerard and belatedly read the heading: Crisp, Duval and Quigley Ltd, incorporating Quality House Provisions. Quigley’s own van outside my back door.

  ‘They meant to bring it back,’ Vernon said defensively. ‘They didn’t expect that bloody man to turn up on a Sunday tea-time.’ He glared at me balefully. ‘They said he might have seen the number plate and they’d keep the van for a while but we’d get it back eventually. When the heat died down they’d dump it somewhere. They told me to report it missing, but I didn’t get a chance, the police were round at the office before you could sneeze.’

  ‘They,’ Gerard said calmly. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘They work for… Paul Young.’

  ‘Names?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Try again.’

  ‘Denny. That’s all I know. One’s called Denny. I was just told Denny would pick up the van. They were going to bring the wines here from the shop for me to sort through but they didn’t come although I waited until nine. Then I heard he turned up,’ Vernon jerked his head in my direction, ‘and something happened to put them off so they never came here. I heard later they got the wrong stuff anyway, so it was all a bloody muddle for nothing.’

  ‘Did anyone tell you what it was that happened to put them off?’ Gerard asked casually.

  ‘No, except they panicked or something because something happened they didn’t expect, but I didn’t hear what.’

  Both Gerard and I believed him. He couldn’t have stood there so unconcernedly disclaiming knowledge in front of us if he’d known that the something that had happened was our being shot.

  ‘How well do you know them?’ Gerard asked.

  ‘I don’t. Denny drives the delivery van which brings the stuff here. The other comes sometimes. They never talk much.’

  ‘How often do they deliver?’

  ‘About once a week. Depends.’

  ‘On how much you’ve sold?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t they use that van to rob Mr Beach’s shop?’

  ‘It’s big… it’s got Vintners Incorporated on the door… it was in for repairs, or something.’

  ‘And can you describe Denny and his mate?’

  Vernon shrugged. ‘They’re young.’

  ‘Hair style?’

  ‘Nothing special.’

  ‘Not frizzy black Afro?’

  ‘No.’ Vernon was positive and slightly puzzled. ‘Just ordinary.’

  ‘Where do they come from? Where do they bring the wine from?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Vernon said. ‘I never asked. They wouldn’t have said. They’re not friendly. They work for Paul Young… that’s all I know.’

  He said Paul Young this time far more easily. Getting accustomed, I thought.

  ‘When did you first meet Paul Young?’

  ‘Right when I started. When I told Zarac I was interested. He said the boss would come to check me out and explain what he wanted, and he came. He said we’d get on well together, which we did mostly.’

  Until Vernon started in business on the side, stealing from his master: but he wasn’t confessing that, I noticed.

  ‘And what is Paul Young’s real name?’ Gerard asked.

  The open doors of the confessional slammed rapidly shut.

  Vernon said tightly, ‘His name is Paul Young.’

  Gerard shook his head.

  ‘Paul Young,’ Vernon insisted. ‘That’s what his name is.’

  ‘No,’ Gerard said.

  Vernon’s sweat ran from his forehead across his temple and down to his jaw. ‘He told me the police had seen him in the Silver Moondance when he went there unawares after his brother died, and that was the name he gave them because he didn’t want to be investigated because of the drinks, and he said they’d be looking for him now because of Zarac, they’d be looking for Paul Young who didn’t exist, he just said the first name that came into his head… He said if ever, if ever anyone came here asking, which he said he was certain they wouldn’t, but if ever… I was to call him Paul Young. And my God, my God, that’s what I’m calling him and I’m not telling you his real name, he’d kill me somehow… and I’m not joking, I know it. I’ll go to jail… but I’m not telling you.’

  He’d spoken with total conviction and in understandable fear, but all the same I was slightly surprised when Gerard didn’t press him, didn’t lean on him further.

  He said merely, ‘All right.’ And after a pause, ‘That’s all, then.’

  Vernon for a wild moment seemed to think he had been let off all hooks, straightening up with a returning echo of burly authority.

  Quigley instantly deflated him, saying in pompous outrage,

  ‘Gie me your keys, Vernon. At once.’ He held out his hand peremptorily. ‘At once.’

  Vernon silently brought a ring of keys from his pocket and handed them over.

  ‘Tomorrow you can look for another job,’ Quigley said. ‘I’ll stick to my
agreement. I won’t prosecute. But you’ll get no reference. I’m disappointed in you, Vernon, I don’t understand you. But you’ll have to go, and that’s it.’

  Vernon said blankly, ‘I’m forty-eight.’

  ‘And you had a good job here for life,’ Gerard said, nodding. ‘You blew it. Your own fault.’

  As if for the first time Vernon seemed to be looking realistically at his doubtful future. New lines of worry deepened round his eyes.

  ‘Do you have a family?’ Gerard said.

  Vernon said faintly, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Unemployment is preferable to imprisonment,’ Gerard said austerely, as no doubt he had said to many a detected cheat: and Quigley as well as Vernon and myself heard the iron in his voice. Actions had to be accounted for and responsibility accepted. Consequences had to be faced. Constant forgiveness destroyed the soul…

  Vernon shivered.

  With Quigley’s permission, after Vernon had gone, Gerard and I loaded into his Mercedes (driven round to the green door) a case of ‘Vintners Incorporated’ Bell’s and a case each of the ‘Vintners Incorporated’ wines. In effect Gerard and Quigley watched while I shifted the cases. Back to my normal occupation, I thought with a sigh, and let the fork-lift truck take most of the strain off my mending muscles.

  ‘What do I do with the rest?’ Quigley said helplessly. ‘And how are we going to cope with the Autumn Carnival without Vernon? No one else knows the routine. He’s been here so long. He is the routine… he developed it.’

  Neither Gerard nor I offered solutions. Quigley gloomily set about double-double-locking his treasure house and switching on the alarm, and we made the final reverse trip to the outer world.

  ‘What should I do?’ Quigley asked, fastening the green door ‘I mean… about that murder?’

  Gerard said, ‘Vernon told you his version of what Paul Young told him, which was itself no doubt only a version of the facts. That’s a long way from first-hand knowledge.’

  ‘You mean… I could do nothing?’

  ‘Act as your judgment dictates,’ Gerard said pleasantly and unhelpfully, and for once in his life I guessed Quigley was searching his self-importance and finding only doubt and irresolution.

  Gerard said, ‘Tony and I will tell the police that Paul Young may arrive here at any time from now on. After that, it’s up to them.’

  ‘He said he was coming at two o’clock,’ Quigley corrected.

  ‘Mm. But he might suspect Vernon would do what Vernon did mean to do, in other words clear off with the loot before Paul Young got here. Paul Young could be here at any minute.’ Gerard seemed unconcerned but he was alone in that. Quigley made his mind up to leave us as soon as possible and I felt very much like following.

  ‘He won’t be able to get in as I have all the keys,’ Quigley said. ‘I suppose I must thank you, Mr McGregor. I don’t like any of this. I can only hope that with Vernon gone we’ll have no more trouble.’

  ‘Certainly hope not,’ Gerard said blandly, and we both watched Quigley drive away with hope already straightening the shoulders and throwing forward the chin. ‘He might be lucky, he might not,’ Gerard said.

  ‘I don’t want to be here when Paul Young gets here,’ I said.

  He half smiled. ‘More prudent not. Get in my car and we’ll fetch your car first and then find a telephone box.’

  We both drove for five miles and stopped in a small village where he made the call from the public telephone outside the post office. I gave him the priority number Ridger had told me, and I listened to his brief message.

  ‘It’s possible,’ he said to the police, ‘that the man known as Paul Young may arrive at the caterers’ entrance in the grandstands of Martineau Park racecourse at any time today from now onwards.’ He listened to a reply and said, ‘No. No names. Goodbye.’

  Smiling, he replaced the receiver. ‘O.K.,’ he said. ‘Duty done.’

  ‘To some extent,’ I said.

  ‘Everything’s relative.’ He was cheerful although still looking far from well. ‘We know where Kenneth Charter’s scotch is.’

  ‘Some of it,’ I said.

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘But not where it went between the tanker and the Vintners Incorporated deliveries.’

  ‘To a bottling plant, as you said.’

  He was leaning against his car, arm in sling, looking frail, a recuperating English gentleman out for a harmless Sunday morning drive in the country. There was also a glimmer of humour about him and the steel core looking out of the eyes, and I said abruptly, ‘You know something you haven’t told me.’

  ‘Do you think so? What about?’

  ‘You’ve found the bottling plant!’

  ‘Found a bottling plant, yes. Somewhere to start from anyway. I thought I’d go and take a look this afternoon. Preliminary recce.’

  ‘But it’s Sunday. There’ll be no one there.’

  ‘That’s sometimes an advantage.’

  ‘You don’t mean… break in?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘It depends. Sometimes there’s a caretaker. I’m good at government inspectors, even on Sundays.’

  Slightly aghast I said, ‘Well… where is it?’

  ‘Roughly twenty-five miles this side of Kenneth Charter’s headquarters.’ He smiled slightly. ‘By Friday afternoon we had concluded in the office that your idea of looking first at the plants to which Charter’s tankers took wine had been good but wrong. There were five of them. We screened them all first, and all of them were rock-solid businesses. Then some time during last night… you know how things float into your head while you’re half asleep… I remembered that one of them had had two links with Charter, not just one, and that maybe, just maybe, that second link is more important than we thought.’

  ‘Tell me,’ I said.

  ‘Mm. I don’t want to be too positive.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake…’

  ‘All right then. We established right at the beginning of our bottle-plant enquiries that one of the plants is owned by a man called Stewart Naylor. It was at the top of the list that Charter gave us, and the first we checked.’

  ‘Stewart Naylor?’ I thought. ‘He’s… he’s… um… isn’t he mentioned in Kenneth Junior’s notebook? Oh yes… the father who plays war games… David Naylor’s father.’

  ‘Top of the class. Stewart Naylor owns Bernard Naylor Bottling. Started by his grandfather. Old respectable firm. I woke up with that word Naylor fizzing like a sparkler in my head. I telephoned Kenneth Charter himself early this morning and asked him about his son’s friendship with David Naylor. He says he’s known the father, Stewart Naylor, for years: they’re not close friends but they know each other quite well because of their business connection and because their sons like each other’s company. Kenneth Charter says David Naylor is the only good thing in Kenneth Junior’s lazy life, he keeps Kenneth Junior off the streets. War games, Kenneth Charter thinks, are a waste of time, but better than glue-sniffing.’

  ‘His words?’ I asked amused.

  ‘Aye, laddie.’

  ‘Do you really think…’

  ‘Kenneth Charter doesn’t. Grasping at straws, he thinks it. He says Bernard Naylor Bottling is twenty-four carat. But we’ve found no other leads at all, and we’ve been checking bottling plants up and down the country until the entire staff are sick at the sound of the words. Three days’ concentrated work, fruitless. A lot of them have gone out of business. One’s a library now. Another’s a boot and shoe warehouse.’

  ‘Mm,’ I said. ‘Could Stewart Naylor have an illegitimate half-brother?’

  ‘Anyone can have an illegitimate half-brother. It happens to the best.’

  ‘I mean…’

  ‘I know what you mean. Kenneth Charter didn’t know of one.’ He shrugged. ‘Naylor’s plant’s a long shot. Either a bullseye or a case for apology. I’ll go and find out.’

  ‘Right now?’

  ‘Absolutely right now. If Stewart Naylor is by any chance also Paul
Young, he should be going to or from Martineau Park this afternoon, not stalking about among his bottles.’

  ‘Did you ask Kenneth Charter what he looked like?’

  ‘Yes… ordinary, he said.’

  All these ordinary men… ‘Is he deaf?’ 1 asked.

  Gerald blinked. ‘I forgot about that.’

  ‘Ask him,’ I said. ‘Telephone now, before you go.’

  ‘And if Stewart Naylor is deaf… don’t go?’

  ‘Quite right. Don’t go.’

  Gerard shook his head. ‘All the more reason to go.’

  ‘It’s flinging oneself into the Limpopo,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps. Only perhaps. Nothing’s certain.’ He returned to the telephone, however, and dialled Kenneth Charter’s house and then his office, and to neither attempt was there a reply.

  ‘That’s it, then,’ he said calmly. ‘I’ll be off.’

  ‘Have you ever been in a bottling plant?’ I said despairingly. ‘I mean… do you know what to look for?’

  ‘No.’

  I stared at him. He stared right back. In the end I said, ‘I spent a year in and out of bottling plants in Bordeaux.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me, then, what to look for.’

  I thought of pumps and machinery. I thought of vats and what might be in them. I said hopelessly, ‘You need me with you, don’t you?’

  ‘I’d like it,’ he said. ‘But I won’t ask. It’s on the very edge of consultancy… and maybe beyond.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know the wine if you fell into it, would you?’ I said. ‘Nor the scotch?’

  ‘Not a chance,’ he agreed placidly.

  ‘Bloody sodding hell,’ I said. ‘You’re a bugger.’

  He smiled. ‘I thought you’d come, really, if I told you.’

  TWENTY

  I put a notice on my shop door saying,’Closed. Very sorry. Staff illness. Open Monday 9.30 a.m.’

  I’m mad, I thought. Crazy.

  If I didn’t go, he would go on his own.

  My thoughts stopped there. I couldn’t let him go on his own when it was I who had the knowledge he needed. When he felt tired and ill and I was well and almost as strong as ever.

  I sat at my desk and wrote a note to Sergeant John Ridger saying I’d been told to look in the Bernard Naylor bottling plant for the Silver Moondance scotch, and I was going there with Gerard McGregor (I gave his address) to check. I sealed the note in an envelope and wrote on it an instruction to Mrs Palissey: Take this to the police station if you haven’t heard from me by ten this morning and tell them to open it.