Proof

by Dick Francis

  I wedged the envelope on the till where she couldn’t miss it and hoped she would never read it. Then with a last look round I locked my door and drove away, and tried not to wonder if I would ever come back.

  Half the time I thought Kenneth Charter must know his man. Stewart Naylor was true blue. Half the time I trusted Gerard’s fizzler in the night. Intuition existed. Solutions came in sleep.

  It would probably turn out to be an anticlimax of a journey not worth melodramatic notes to policemen or all this soul-searching. We would drive to the bottling plant, we would not break in, there would be plentiful evidence of legal prosperity and we would drive sedately home. It would not be another day of Sunday bloody horrors.

  Gerard met me in a car park we had agreed on, he having meanwhile been home to leave the Martineau Park spoils in his garage. From there we went towards London in his Mercedes, but with me driving this time.

  ‘Suppose you were Stewart Naylor,’ Gerard said. ‘Suppose you’d spent your entire working life learning to run the family bottling business and then because of the French changing their regulations found the wine flood drying to a trickle.’

  ‘Longbows,’ I said nodding.

  ‘What? Oh yes. Kenneth Charter was wrong, you know, in point of fact. It was the crossbow which put paid to the longbow… well, never mind. Crossbows, guns, whatever, from no fault of your own you’re going out of business. Kenneth Charter confirmed this morning that he hardly takes a fifth of what he used to to the Naylor plant, but it’s still quite a lot. More than to anywhere else. He says that’s how he knows that Naylor’s is healthy while others struggle.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Suppose you are Stewart Naylor and you look anxiously around for other things to bottle… tomato sauce, cleaning fluid, whatever… and you find everyone else in your line of business is in the same boat and doing the same. Ruin raises its ugly head and gives you a good long threatening glare’ He paused as I passed a lorry, then went on, ‘We supposed earlier that at that point a convenient crook came along offering salvation in return for dishonesty and that our beleaguered bottler accepted. But suppose it wasn’t like that. Suppose Stewart Naylor needed no seducing but without help thought up his own crooked scheme?’

  ‘Which was,’ I said, ‘to buy wine himself instead of bottling for others. To bottle it and label it as better than it was, and then sell it.’ I frowned. ‘And at that point you get discovered and prosecuted.’

  ‘Not if you have a half-brother who likes horses. You set him up… on bank money… in a Silver Moondance, and you take him your wine to sell. It sells well and for about twenty times more than it cost you, even including the bottles. Money starts flowing in, not out… and that’s when the greed complex hits you.’

  ‘The greed complex?’ I asked.

  ‘Addiction,’ Gerard said. ‘The first step is the huge one. The decision. To snort cocaine or not to. To borrow the Christmas Club’s money, just once. To sell the first secret. To design a label for a non-existent chateau and stick it on a bottle of wine-lake. The first step’s huge, the second half the size, by the sixth step it’s a habit. Suppose our Steward Naylor begins to think that if he could arrange other outlets he could double and redouble his receipts?’

  ‘O.K.’ I said. ‘Suppose.’

  ‘At this point we have to suppose a henchman called Zarac, whom one conveniently instals as head waiter at the Silver Moondance. One of his duties is to cast about for possibilities of expansion and in due course he arrives on Vernon’s doorstep at Martineau Park. He reports back to Paul Young… er… Paul Young query Stewart Naylor… who goes to see Vernon and hey presto, the fake wine business takes a deep breath and swells to double size. Money now rolls in to the extent that concealing it is a problem. Never mind. Half-brother Larry is a whiz at horses. Pass Larry the embarrassing cash, magic-wand it into horseflesh, ship it to California, convert it again at a profit if possible and bank it… intending, I dare say, to collect it one day and live in the sun. In my experience the last chapter seldom happens. The addiction to the crime becomes so integral to the criminal that he can’t give it up. I’ve caught several industrial spies because they couldn’t kick their taste for creeping about with cameras.’

  ‘Clean up and clear out,’ I suggested.

  ‘Absolutely. Almost never done. They come back for a second bite, and a third, and just once more… and whammo, one too much.’

  ‘So Stewart Naylor turned his ideas to scotch?’

  ‘Ah,’ Gerard said. ‘Suppose when your son visits his divorced father one day he brings his friend Kenneth Junior with him? Or suppose he’s often brought him? Stewart Naylor knows Kenneth Junior’s father quite well… Kenneth Charter’s tankers have brought wine to Naylor’s plant for many years. Suppose our crime-addicted Stewart casts an idle eye on Kenneth Junior and reflects that Charter’s tankers carry scotch and gin as well as wine, and that whereas the wine profits are healthy, from stolen scotch they would be astronomical.’

  ‘But he couldn’t ask Kenneth Junior outright to sell his dad’s tankers’ routes and destinations and time-tables. Kenneth Junior might have gone all righteous and buzzed home to spill the beans…’

  ‘But he does think Kenneth Junior is ripe for a spot of treason as he’s probably heard him bellyaching about his life with father…’

  ‘So he sends Zarac to recruit him,’ I said. ‘Sends Zarac perhaps to the Diamond snooker hall? Or the disco? Somewhere like that? And Zarac says here’s a lot of money, kid. Get me a tanker’s keys, get me a tanker’s route, and I’ll give you some more cash. And three months later he pays again. And again. And then says get me another tanker’s keys, kid, the first one’s too hot…’

  ‘Don’t see why not, do you?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Zarac,’ Gerard said thoughtfully, ‘held a very strong hand anyway when it came to blackmail.’

  I nodded. ‘Too strong for his own good.’

  We came to the end of the motorway and turned off into narrower streets to thread the way to Ealing.

  ‘Do you know how to find this plant?’ I said. ‘Or do we ask a policeman?’

  ‘Map,’ Gerard said succinctly, producing one from the glove compartment. ‘It shows the roads. When we reach the road, drive slowly, keep the eyes skinned.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘And drive straight past,’ he said. ‘When we see what’s what, we’ll decide what to do.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘If you turn left a mile ahead we’ll be about five miles from target. I’ll steer you.’

  ‘Right.’

  We turned left at a major intersection onto a dual carriageway through sleepy suburbs where in countless ovens Sunday roasts spluttered to lunchtime.

  ‘We’ll get a profile done tomorrow of that scotch we took from Martineau,’ Gerard said.

  ‘And of the sample I took from the Silver Moondance bottle.’

  ‘They should be the same.’

  ‘They will be;’

  ‘You’re exceedingly positive.’

  I grinned. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go on, then. What’s the joke?’

  ‘Well… you know that the tankerful set off from Scotland every time at fifty-eight per cent alochol? And that at Ran-noch’s own bottling plant they would have added water to dilute it to forty?’

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded.

  ‘Have you any idea how much water that entails?’

  ‘No, of course not. How much?’

  ‘About two thousand seven hundred gallons. More than ten tons by weight.’

  ‘Good grief!’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Rannoch’s would be careful about that water. They’d use pure spring water of some sort, even if it hadn’t actually come from a Scottish loch. But I’ll swear that Charter’s stolen loads have been diluted from an ordinary tap.’

  ‘Is that bad?’

  I laughed. ‘It sure is. Any Scottish distiller would hav
e a fit. They say that Scotch whisky is only the way it is because of the softness and purity of loch water. When I tasted the Silver Moondance scotch again in my shop I could sort of smell chemicals very faintly in the aftertaste. A lot of tap water isn’t too bad, but some is awful. Makes disgusting tea. Ask the residents around here.’

  ‘Here?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Western parts of London. Notorious.’

  ‘Good grief.’

  ‘It will turn up in the profile, too.’

  ‘Water?’

  ‘Mm. Purifying chemicals. There shouldn’t be any in neat scotch.’

  ‘But won’t tap water spoil the scotch profile? I mean… will we still be able to prove our samples are identical with the original sent off from Scotland?’

  ‘Yes, don’t worry. Tap water won’t affect the whisky profile, it’ll just show up as extra components.’

  ‘Will it matter that the scotch is diluted?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘The gas chromatograph just shows up the presence of things, not their quantity.’

  He seemed relieved. ‘Turn right at the next traffic lights.

  Could the gas chromatograph tell where any particular sample of tap water came from?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Amazing.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘There’s something you don’t know.’

  ‘Yeah… Well, I don’t know the dynasties of China or how to say no thanks in fifteen languages or the way to this bottling plant.’ And I’d like to turn straight round and go home, I thought. The nearer we got to Naylor’s the more my nervousness increased… and I thought of my father, brave as brave, setting off into battlefields, inspiring his men… and why couldn’t I be like him instead of feeling my mouth go dry and my breath shorten before we were even in the heartland of deepest Ealing.

  ‘Turn left here,’ Gerard said. ‘Then the third on the right. That’s our road.’

  He was totally calm. No strain or anxiety in voice or face. I consciously unclenched my fingers from their grip on the steering wheel and tried without noticeable success to relax to Gerard’s level.

  Hopeless. Even my teeth were tightly together when we turned into the third on the right and went slowly along.

  ‘There it is,’ Gerard said matter of factly. ‘See?’

  I glanced to where he indicated and saw a pair of very tall entrance gates, shut, set in a length of very tall brick wall. On the gates in faded white lettering were the words ‘Bernard Nay tor Bottling’, with below them a padlock the size of a saucer.

  We wouldn’t be able to get in, I thought. Thank goodness for that.

  ‘Turn left at the end,’ Gerard said. ‘Park there if you can.’

  It was one of those suburbs built before zoning where light industries sat among dwelling houses as an integral part of the community. When I’d parked the Mercedes at a kerbside among a row of residents’ wheels we walked past lace curtains and shrubby front gardens to get back to the high wall. Eating their roast beef, I thought, and the Yorkshire puddings and the gravy… ten minutes past lunchtime and my stomach fluttering with enough butterflies to stock a Brazilian rain forest.

  We walked slowly as if out for a stroll and in the short street there was only one other pedestrian, an elderly man waiting patiently for his dog at lampposts.

  When we reached the gates, eight feet high, dark green sun-faded paint, Gerard stopped and faced them, head back as if reading the big white letters spreading across.

  ‘There’s broken glass embedded in the top of those walls,’ I said. ‘Barbed wire along the top of the gates. Don’t tell me you can pick that half-ton padlock.’

  ‘No need,’ Gerard said placidly. ‘Open your eyes. In many massive gates conspicuously bolted there’s a smaller door inset, wide enough for one person only. There’s one right ahead of us in the left hand gate with quite an ordinary looking spring lock, and if I can’t let us in through there I’ve been wasting the best years of my life.’

  He stopped his apparent reading of the legend on the gates and resumed his stroll, glancing as if casually at the small gate cut in the large.

  ‘Do you smoke?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said in surprise.

  ‘Tie a shoelace.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, understanding, and bent down obligingly to pretend to tie bows on my laceless slip-ons.

  ‘A doddle,’ Gerard said, above my head.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Step in.’

  I saw to my astonishment that the narrow door was already swinging open. He’d been so fast. He was tucking a piece of clear plastic into his top pocket and glancing down to where the dog was again detaining his master.

  Gerard stepped through the gate as if belonging there and with a rapid acceleration of heartbeats I went after him. He pushed the gate shut behind me and the spring lock fell into place with a click. He smiled faintly, and I saw with incredulity that beneath the tiredness and the malaise he was quietly enjoying himself.

  ‘There may be people in here,’ I said.

  ‘If there are… we found the gate open. Curiosity.’

  We both looked at the insides of the very large gates. The padlock outside had been at least partly for show: on the inside there were thick bolts into the ground and a bar let into sockets waist high so that no amount of direct pressure from outside could force the gates open.

  ‘Factories often cut that hole in their defences,’ Gerard said, waving at the way we had come in. ‘Especially old ones like this, built in the age of innocence.’

  We were in a big concreted yard with a high brick building running the whole length of it on our right: small square barred windows pierced the walls in two long rows, one up, one down. At the far end of the yard, facing us, was a one-storey modern office building of panel-like construction, and on our immediate left was a gate-house which on busy days would have contained a man to check people and vehicles in and out.

  No gatekeeper. His door was shut. Gerard twisted the knob, but to no avail.

  Alongside the door was a window reminiscent of a ticket office, and I supposed that on working days that was where the gate-house keeper actually stood. Gerard peered through it for some time at all angles, and then readdressed himself to the door.

  ‘Mortice lock,’ he said, inspecting a keyhole. ‘Pity.’

  ‘Does it matter?’ I said. ‘I mean, there wouldn’t be much of interest in a gate-house.’

  Gerard glanced at me forgivingly. ‘In old factories like this it’s quite common to find the keys to all the buildings hanging on a board in the gate-house. The gatekeeper issues keys as needed when employees arrive.’

  Silenced, I watched with a parched mouth while he put a steel probe into the keyhole and concentrated on feeling his way through the tumblers, his eyes unfocussed and unseeing, all the consciousness in his fingers.

  The place was deserted. No one came running across the yard demanding impossible explanations. There was a heavy click from the gate-house door and Gerard with a sigh of satisfaction put his steel probe away and again twisted the doorknob.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said calmly, as the door opened without protest. ‘Now let’s see.’

  We stepped into a wooden floored room which contained a chair, a time-punch clock with barely six cards in a slot-holder designed for a hundred, a new-looking fire extinguisher, a poster announcing Factory Act regulations and a shallow unlocked wall-cupboard. Gerard opened the cupboard and it was just as he’d said: inside there were four rows of labelled hooks, and upon all the hooks, labelled keys.

  ‘All there,’ Gerard said with immense satisfaction. ‘There really is no one here. We have the place to ourselves.’ He looked along the labels, reading. ‘We’ll start with the offices. I know more about those. Then… what?’

  I read the labels also. ‘Main plant. Bottle store. Label room. Vats. Dispatch. How long have we got?’

  ‘If Stewart Naylor is Paul Young and does what he said, he’ll
be on his way now to Martineau Park. If the police detain him there we’ve at least two or three hours.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel like that,’ I said.

  ‘No. Always scary, the first few times.’

  He left me again speechless. He took the keys he wanted from the hooks and indicated that I should do the same. Then we left the gate-house, closing the door (unnecessarily, I thought) behind us and walked on into the main part of the yard.

  Another large brick building was revealed to the left; and any residual hopes I might have had of our establishing Stewart Naylor’s innocence and retreating in prudence were cancelled at that point. Tucked into the left hand corner of the yard stood a grey Bedford van, brown lines down the sides, devoid of number plates. I went across and looked through its windows but it held nothing: no wine, no fuzzy wigs, no shotgun.

  ‘God in heaven,’ Gerard said. ‘That’s the very one, isn’t it?’

  ‘Identical, if not.’

  He sighed deeply and glanced round the yard. ‘There’s no big delivery van here marked Vintners Incorporated. It’s probably on its way to Martineau. Let’s take the offices, then, and… er… try not to leave any trace of our having been here.’

  ‘No,’ I said weakly.

  We walked across the concrete, our shoes scrunching it seemed to me with alarming noise, and Gerard unlocked the door of the office building as if he were the manager arriving in pinstripes.

  As revealed by the time-punch cards, the plant for its size was almost unstaffed. There were six small offices in the office block, four of them empty but for desk and chair, two of them showing slight paperwork activity: beyond those a locked suite of rooms marked ‘Managing Director’ on the outer door said in smaller letters underneath, ‘Knock and Enter’.

  We entered without knocking, using the appropriate key from the gate-house. Inside, first of all, was a pleasasnt looking office, walls lined with calendars, charts, and posters of wine districts in France. There were two desks, one managerial, one secretarial, both clearly in everyday use. In-trays bore letters, receipts were spiked, an african violet bloomed next to a pot of pens.