by Dick Francis
She came into the kitchen with me and watched me make it, and made no funny remarks about bionic hands, which was a nice change from most new acquaintances, who tended to be fascinated, and to say so, at length. Instead she looked around with inoffensive curiosity, and finally fastened her attention on the calendar which hung from the knob on the pine cupboard door. Photographs of horses, a Christmas hand-out from a bookmaking firm. She flipped up the pages, looking at the pictures of the future months, and stopped at December, where a horse and jockey jumping the Chair at Aintree were silhouetted spectacularly against the sky.
‘That’s good,’ she said, and then, in surprise, reading the caption, ‘That’s you.’
‘He’s a good photographer.’
‘Did you win that race?’
‘Yes’ I said mildly. ‘Do you take sugar?’
‘No thanks.’ She let the pages fall back. ‘How odd to find oneself on a calendar.’
To me, it wasn’t odd. How odd, I thought, to have seen one’s picture in print so much that one scarcely noticed.
I carried the tray into the sitting room and put it on top of the letters on the coffee table. ‘Sit down,’ I said, and we sat.
‘All these,’ I said, nodding to them, ‘are the letters which came with the cheques for the wax.’
She looked doubtful. ‘Are they of any use?’
‘I hope so,’ I said, and explained about the mailing list.
‘Good heavens.’ She hesitated, ‘Well, perhaps you won’t need what I brought.’ She picked up her brown leather handbag, and opened it. ‘I didn’t come all this way specially,’ she said. ‘I’ve an aunt near here whom I visit. Anyway, I thought you might like to have this, as I was here, near your flat.’
She pulled out a paperback book. She could have posted it, I thought: but I was quite glad she hadn’t.
‘I was trying to put a bit of order into the chaos in my bedroom,’ she said. ‘I’ve a lot of books. They tend to pile up.’
I didn’t tell her I’d seen them. ‘Books do,’ I said.
‘Well, this was among them. It’s Nicky’s.’
She gave me the paperback. I glanced at the cover and put it down, in order to pour out the tea. Navigation for Beginners. I handed her the cup and saucer. ‘Was he interested in navigation?’
‘I’ve no idea. But I was. I borrowed it out of his room. I don’t think he even knew I’d borrowed it He had a box with some things in – like a tuck box that boys take to public school – and one day when I went into his room the things were all on the chest of drawers, as if he was tidying. Anyway, he was out, and I borrowed the book … He wouldn’t have minded, he was terribly easy-going … and I suppose I put it down in my room, and put something else on top, and just forgot it.’
‘Did you read it?’ I said.
‘No. Never got round to it. It was weeks ago.’
I picked up the book and opened it. On the fly-leaf someone had written ‘John Viking’ in a firm legible signature in black felt-tip.
‘I don’t know,’ Louise said, anticipating my question, ‘whether that is Nicky’s writing or not.’
‘Does Jenny know?’
‘She hasn’t seen this. She’s staying with Toby in Yorkshire.’
Jenny with Toby. Jenny with Ashe. For God’s sake, I thought, what do you expect? She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s not yours, you’re divorced. And I hadn’t been alone, not entirely.
‘You look very tired,’ Louise said doubtfully.
I was disconcerted. ‘Of course not.’ I turned the pages, letting them flick over from under my thumb. It was, as it promised to be, a book about navigation, sea and air, with line drawings and diagrams. Dead reckoning, sextants, magnetism and drift. Nothing of any note except a single line of letters and figures, written with the same black ink, on the inside of the back cover.
I handed it over to Louise.
‘Does this mean anything to you? Charles said you’ve a degree in mathematics.’
She frowned at it faintly. ‘Nicky needed a calculator for two plus two.’
He had done all right at two plus ten thousand, I thought.
‘Um,’ she said. ‘Lift equals 22.024 times volume times pressure, times … I should think this is something to do with temperature change. Not my subject, really. This is physics.’
‘Something to do with navigation?’ I said.
She concentrated. I watched the way her face grew taut while she did the internal scan. A fast brain, I thought, under the pretty hair.
‘It’s funny,’ she said finally, ‘but I think it’s just possibly something to do with how much you can lift with a gas bag.’
‘Airship?’ I said, thinking.
‘It depends what 22.024 is,’ she said. ‘That’s a constant. Which means,’ she added, ‘it is special to whatever this equation is all about.’
‘I’m better at what’s likely to win the three-thirty.’
She looked at her watch. ‘You’re three hours too late.’
‘It’ll come round again tomorrow.’
She relaxed into the armchair, handing back the book. ‘I don’t suppose it will help,’ she said, ‘but you seemed to want anything of Nicky’s.’
‘It might help a lot. You never know.’
‘But how?’
‘It’s John Viking’s book. John Viking might know Nicky Ashe.’
‘But … you don’t know John Viking.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘but he knows gas-bags. And I know someone who knows gas-bags. And I bet gas-bags are a small world, like racing.’
She looked at the heaps of letters, and then at the book. She said slowly, ‘I guess you’ll find him, one way or another.’
I looked away from her, and at nothing in particular.
‘Jenny says you never give up.’
I smiled faintly. ‘Her exact words?’
‘No.’ I felt her amusement. ‘Obstinate, selfish, and determined to get his own way.’
‘Not far off,’ I tapped the book. ‘Can I keep this?’
‘Of course.’
‘Thanks.’
We looked at each other as people do, especially if they’re youngish and male and female, and sitting in a quiet flat at the end of an April day.
She read my expression and answered the unspoken thought. ‘Some other time,’ she said drily.
‘How long will you be staying with Jenny?’
‘Would that matter to you?’ she said.
‘Mm.’
‘She says you’re as hard as flint. She says steel’s a pushover, beside you.’
I thought of terror and misery and self-loathing. I shook my head.
‘What I see,’ she said slowly, ‘is a man who looks ill being polite to an unwanted visitor.’
‘You’re wanted,’ I said. ‘And I’m fine.’
She stood up, however, and I also, after her.
‘I hope,’ I said, ‘that you’re fond of your aunt?’
‘Devoted.’
She gave me a cool, half ironic smile in which there was also surprise.
‘Goodbye … Sid.’
‘Goodbye, Louise.’
When she’d gone I switched on a table light or two against the slow dusk, and poured a whisky, and looked at a pale bunch of sausages in the fridge and didn’t cook them.
No one else would come, I thought. They had all in their way held off the shadows, particularly Louise. No one else real would come, but he would be with me, as he’d been in Paris … Trevor Deansgate. Inescapable. Reminding me inexorably of what I would rather forget.
After a while I stepped out of trousers and shirt and put on a short blue bathrobe, and took off the arm. It was one of the times when taking it off really hurt. It didn’t seem to matter, after the rest.
I went back to the sitting room to do something about the clutter, but there was simply too much to bother with, so I stood looking at it, and held my weaker upper arm with my strong, whole, agile right hand, as I often did, for support,
and I wondered which crippled one worse, amputation without or within.
Humiliation and rejection and helplessness and failure …
After all these years I would not, I thought wretchedly, I would damned well not be defeated by fear.
9
Lucas Wainwright telephoned the next morning while I was stacking cups in the dishwasher.
‘Any progress?’ he said, sounding very Commander-ish.
‘I’m afraid,’ I said regretfully, ‘that I’ve lost all those notes. I’ll have to do them again.’
‘For heaven’s sake.’ He wasn’t pleased. I didn’t tell him that I’d lost the notes on account of being bashed on the head and dropping the large brown envelope that contained them in the gutter. ‘Come right away, then. Eddy won’t be in until this afternoon.’
Slowly, absentmindedly, I finished tidying up, while I thought about Lucas Wainwright, and what he could do for me, if he would. Then I sat at the table and wrote down what I wanted. Then I looked at what I’d written, and at my fingers holding the pen, and shivered. Then I folded the paper and put it in my pocket, and went to Portman Square deciding not to give it to Lucas, after all.
He had the files ready in his office, and I sat at the same table as before and re-copied all I needed.
‘You won’t let it drag on much longer, will you, Sid?’
‘Full attention,’ I said. ‘Starting tomorrow. I’ll go to Kent tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Good.’ He stood up as I put the new notes into a fresh envelope and waited for me to go, not through impatience with me particularly, but because he was that sort of man. Brisk. One task finished, get on with the next, don’t hang about.
I hesitated cravenly and found myself speaking before I had consciously decided whether to or not. ‘Commander. Do you remember that you said you might pay me for this job not with money, but with help, if I should want it?’
I got a reasonable smile and a postponement of the goodbyes.
‘Of course I remember. You haven’t done the job yet. What help?’
‘Er … it’s nothing much. Very little.’ I took the paper out and handed it to him. Waited while he read the brief contents. Felt as if I had planted a landmine and would presently step on it.
‘I don’t see why not,’ he said. ‘If that’s what you want. But are you on to something that we should know about?’
I gestured to the paper, ‘You’ll know about it as soon as I do, if you do that.’ It wasn’t a satisfactory answer, but he didn’t press it. ‘The only thing I beg of you, though, is that you won’t mention my name at all. Don’t say it was my idea, not to anyone. I … er … you might get me killed, Commander, and I’m not being funny.’
He looked from me to the paper and back again, and frowned. ‘This doesn’t look like a killing matter, Sid.’
‘You never know what is until you’re dead.’
He smiled. ‘All right. I’ll write the letter as from the Jockey Club, and I’ll take you seriously about the death risk. Will that do?’
‘It will indeed.’
We shook hands, and I left his office carrying the brown envelope, and at the Portman Square entrance, going out, I met Eddy Keith coming in. We both paused, as one does. I hoped he couldn’t see the dismay in my face at his early return, or guess that I was perhaps carrying the seeds of his downfall.
‘Eddy,’ I said, smiling and feeling a traitor.
‘Hello, Sid,’ he said cheerfully, twinkling at me from above rounded cheeks. ‘What are you doing here?’ A good-natured normal inquiry. No suspicions. No tremor.
‘Looking for crumbs,’ I said.
He chuckled fatly. ‘From what I hear, it’s us picking up yours. Have us all out of work, you will, soon.’
‘Not a chance.’
‘Don’t step on our toes, Sid.’
The smile was still there, the voice devoid of threat The fuzzy hair, the big moustache, the big broad fleshy face still exuded good will: but the arctic had briefly come and gone in his eyes, and I was in no doubt that I’d received a serious warning off.
‘Never, Eddy,’ I said insincerely.
‘See you, fella,’ he said, preparing to go indoors, nodding, smiling widely, and giving me the usual hearty buffet on the shoulder. ‘Take care.’
‘You too, Eddy,’ I said to his departing back: and under my breath, again, in a sort of sorrow, ‘You too.’
I carried the notes safely back to the flat, and thought a bit, and telephoned to my man in gas-bags.
He said hallo and great to hear from you and how about a jar sometime, and no, he had never heard of anyone called John Viking. I read out the equation and asked if it meant anything to him, and he laughed and said it sounded like a formula for taking a hot air balloon to the moon.
‘Thanks very much,’ I said sarcastically.
‘No, seriously, Sid. It’s a calculation for maximum height. Try a balloonist. They’re always after records … the highest, the furthest, that sort of thing.’
I asked if he knew any balloonists but he said sorry, no he didn’t, he was only into airships, and we disconnected with another vague resolution to meet somewhere, sometime, one of these days. Idly, and certain it was useless, I leafed through the telephone directory, and there, incredibly, the words stood out bold and clear: The Hot Air Balloon Company, offices in London, number provided.
I got through. A pleasant male voice at the other end said that of course he knew John Viking, everyone in ballooning knew John Viking, he was a madman of the first order.
Madman?
John Viking, the voice explained, took risks which no sensible balloonist would dream of. If I wanted to talk to him, the voice said, I would undoubtedly find him at the balloon race on Monday afternoon.
Where was the balloon race on Monday afternoon?
Horse show, balloon race, swings and roundabouts, you name it, all part of the May Day holiday junketings at Highalane Park in Wiltshire. John Viking would be there. Sure to be.
I thanked the voice for his help and rang off, reflecting that I had forgotten about the May Day holiday. National holidays had always been work days for me, as for everyone in racing; providing the entertainment for the public’s leisure. I tended not to notice them come and go.
Chico arrived with fish-and-chips for two in the sort of hygienic greaseproof wrappings which kept the steam in and made the chips go soggy.
‘Did you know it’s the May Day holiday on Monday?’ I said.
‘Running a judo tournament for the little bleeders, aren’t I?’
He tipped the lunch on to two plates, and we ate it, mostly with fingers.
‘You’ve come to life again, I see,’ he said.
‘It’s temporary.’
‘We’d better get some work done, then, while you’re still with us.’
‘The syndicates,’ I said; and told him about the luckless Mason having been sent out on the same errand and having his brains kicked to destruction.
Chico shook salt on his chips. ‘Have to be careful then, won’t we?’
‘Start this afternoon?’
‘Sure.’ He paused reflectively, licking his fingers. ‘We’re not getting paid for this, didn’t you say?’
‘Not directly.’
‘Why don’t we do these insurance inquiries, then? Nice quiet questions with a guaranteed fee.’
‘I promised Lucas Wainwright I’d do the syndicates first.’
He shrugged. ‘You’re the boss. But that makes three in a row, counting your wife and Rosemary getting her cash back, that we’ve worked on for nothing.’
‘We’ll make up for it later.’
‘You are going on, then?’
‘I didn’t answer at once. Apart from not knowing whether I wanted to, I didn’t know if I could. Over the past months Chico and I had tended to get somewhat battered by bully boys trying to stop us in our tracks. We didn’t have the protection of being either in the Racecourse Security Service or the police. No one to defend u
s but ourselves. We had looked upon the bruises as part of the job, as racing falls had been to me, and bad judo falls to Chico. What if Trevor Deansgate had changed all that … Not just for one terrible week, but for much longer; for always?
‘Sid,’ Chico said sharply. ‘Come back.’
I swallowed. ‘Well … er … well do the syndicates. Then we’ll see.’ Then I’ll know, I thought. I’ll know inside me, one way or the other. If I couldn’t walk into tigers’ cages any more, we were done. One of us wasn’t enough: it had to be both.
If I couldn’t … I’d as soon be dead.
The first syndicate on Lucas’s list had been formed by eight people, of whom three were registered owners, headed by Philip Friarly. Registered owners were those acceptable to the racing authorities, owners who paid their dues and kept the rules, were no trouble to anybody, and represented the source and mainspring of the whole industry.
Syndicates were a way of involving more people directly in racing, which was good for the sport, and dividing the training costs into smaller fractions, which was good for the owners. There were syndicates of millionaires, coal miners, groups of rock guitarists, the clientele of pubs. Anyone from Aunty Flo to the undertaker could join a syndicate, and all Eddy Keith should have done was check that everyone on the list was who they said they were.
‘It’s not the registered owners we’re looking at,’ I said. ‘It’s all the others.’
We were driving through Kent on our way to Tunbridge Wells. Ultra-respectable place, Tunbridge Wells. Resort of retired colonels and ladies who played bridge. Low on the national crime league. Hometown, all the same, of a certain Peter Rammileese, who was, so Lucas Wainwright’s informant had said, in fact the instigating member of all four of the doubtful syndicates, although his own name nowhere appeared.
‘Mason,’ I said, conversationally, ‘was attacked and left for dead in the streets of Tunbridge Wells.’
‘Now he tells me.’
‘Chico,’ I said. ‘Do you want to turn back?’
‘You got a premonition, or something?’
After a pause, I said ‘No,’ and drove a shade too fast round a sharpish bend.
‘Look, Sid,’ he said. ‘We don’t have to go to Tunbridge Wells. We’re on a hiding to nothing, with this lark.’