by Dick Francis
“So how come your father knew about this microcoder thing?” he asked.
“It’s a long story,” I said, trying to close the discussion.
“It’s a long journey,” he said.
“Yeah, well, not long enough.”
“So what’s next?” said Luca.
“Days off tomorrow and Monday, then Towcester on Tuesday evening,” I said.
“No,” he said, irritated.“I meant what’s next with this microcoder thing?”
“How difficult would it be to make another one exactly the same?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “As far as I remember, it’s just a radio transmitter that concentrates the radio signal at a point where you would put the RFID. It didn’t appear that sophisticated.”
“Could you make another one?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” he said slowly.
“I don’t want you to,” I added quickly. “I just wondered if you could.”
“Yeah, I reckon I might,” he said. “Or if I couldn’t, one of the little hooligans from the electronics club would probably be able to do it in no time. They are like bloody magic when it comes to electronics. One of them even made a device that fooled the authorities into thinking he was at home wearing his court-ordered ankle tag when he was really out all night breaking into people’s cars. He said it gave him the best alibi anyone could ever want. Even the coppers were impressed.”
“How did they find out?” I asked.
“Oh, these lads may be damn clever when it comes to electronics,” he said. “But they can be pretty dense otherwise. The bloody idiot broke into an unmarked police car that was parked right outside the police station, and everything he did was recorded on an in-car video camera.”
I laughed.“Almost as bad as that bank robber recently who wrote his demand note on the back of a check from his own checkbook. It had his name printed on it.”
“It’s a good thing villains are stupid or we’d all be victims,” Luca said with a laugh.
“But they are not all stupid,” I said, becoming serious. “Remember, we never hear about the clever ones because they don’t get caught.”
“Good point,” he said.
Talking about not getting caught reminded me of the stash of banknotes still hidden in the cupboard under my stairs. Who did they belong to? Were they meant to be payment for Shifty-eyes for killing horses? Or maybe they were his cut for approving the insurance claims after the horses were dead. Either way, I was pretty sure they weren’t actually mine, even if I did have a sort of claim to inherit them after my father’s death, for they had been in his luggage.
“So do you want a copy of this microcoder?” Luca said, bringing me back from my daydreams.
“No, not really,” I said. “I just wondered why it was so important to get this particular one back if any half-witted juvenile delinquent could simply make another.”
“But they would have to have something to copy,” he said. “And they would have to know the right frequency to set it at.”
“Is that difficult?” I asked.
“Not if you have the original,” he said.“But much more difficult, maybe impossible, without it.”
“So if our Mr. John Smith—or whatever his name is—is so keen to get his hands on the original, is it because he doesn’t have access to another one?” I said. “But you would have thought that the Australian Racing Board had access to whatever resources they needed. I think that’s why I don’t trust him. It doesn’t ring quite true.”
“So does that mean you won’t give it to him?” Luca asked.
“No,” I said slowly. “But I might just ensure it doesn’t work properly before I hand it over.”
“That might be dangerous,” said Luca, grinning.
“You think so?” I asked.
“Yeah, but why not? Live dangerously.”
Or not at all, I thought.
Sophie came home on Sunday, and her younger sister, Alice, came to stay at our house in Station Road to help out.
“I don’t need any help,” Sophie said.
But we both knew she did. The change from institutional life to being at home was a huge step. Not least because there would be no one there to call on for help, for a chat or for a word of encouragement, especially when I was away at the races.
Alice was just the person we needed. She was busy, efficient, loving and free. And I was very fond of her, but in small doses. One week of busy domestic efficiency was enough for any man.
On Sunday morning, Alice arrived—very early, of course—from her home in Surrey and tut-tutted about the state of the house, especially the cobwebs in the bathroom and the unmentionable leftovers in the deeper recesses of the refrigerator. In no time, she had donned a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves and was transforming the place.
She wasn’t in any way angry about my domestic shortcomings, and she made no snide remarks about how men couldn’t keep themselves tidy, let alone the house, but Alice sometimes had a way of making me feel totally inadequate, and this was one of those times.
When we left together in my Volvo for the hospital at noon, the house was sparkling and fresh, and I was grateful. It wasn’t just that Alice wanted everything to be clean and neat for her sister’s homecoming, which of course she did, it was that she, and I, knew that Sophie would otherwise feel pressured into doing the house-work and that, in turn, would make her feel guilty about having been in the hospital. That guilt could be enough to restart the whole sorry manic-depressive sequence all over again. Sophie’s mania had always begun with obsessive cleaning of the house.
However, I was more confident that this time the drugs were doing their thing. But it was vitally important to make sure Sophie kept taking them. All too often in the past, she would eventually begin to crave the manic highs, flushing her medication down the lavatory, seemingly unconcerned and indifferent about the dire consequences and the prospect of another extended period of hospitalization.
She was packed and ready when we arrived. Her room, which had become so familiar to me, was now bare of her possessions and back to its “hospital ward” status. Jason, her favorite nurse, was there to wish her good-bye and to help take her bags down to my car outside the front door.
“Thank you,” she said to him, putting her arms around his neck and kissing him on the cheek. “Thank you to all the staff.”
Jason looked embarrassed by this show of affection, but he took it in good grace.
“I won’t say it’s been a pleasure,” he said to me. “But Mrs. Talbot has been a model patient.”
He stood by the door and waved as we drove down the driveway, through the high gates and out into the real world.
Mr. John Smith, or whoever, was waiting outside our house when we arrived home about an hour later. As I parked the Volvo, he climbed out of the dark blue Ford that I had last seen disappearing ahead of me from the rest area near Stratford. He had not been sitting in the driver’s seat, so I assumed there must be another man with him, but again I couldn’t see properly against the reflection from the windshield.
Dammit, I thought. I really didn’t want to have to start explaining to Sophie about microcoders, bundles of banknotes and murder in the Ascot racetrack parking lot.
The last thing we needed was for him to force his way through my front door and disrupt Sophie’s longed-for return home, so I marched straight across the road to talk to him. He came forward to meet me.
“Is that your friend?” he asked, nodding towards the house.
I turned and saw Alice lifting Sophie’s suitcase from the car. It must have appeared to Mr. Smith that someone was arriving back from holiday.
“Yes,” I said, turning back to him.
“Where’s the microcoder?” he demanded.
“In her baggage, I expect,” I said. “You wait here, and I’ll go and get it for you.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No,” I said quickly. “If
you want me to hand it over, you will have to wait here.”
I turned to walk back across the road, and he began to follow. “No,” I said again, this time more forcefully. “Either you wait here for me to get it or I will have to explain to my friend what you are doing here and about how I broke your wrist in my house. And she works for the police.”
He stopped. “You told me she was an electronics specialist,” he said.
Had I? I thought. I couldn’t recall.
“She maintains police radios,” I said. The trouble with telling lies is that they get more complicated as time goes on and more difficult to remember.
“OK,” he said. “I’ll wait here, but you have just two minutes. Understand?”
“Five,” I said. “I’ll bring it out in five.”
It wasn’t just threats I didn’t like. I didn’t respond particularly well to orders either.
I didn’t wait for him to reply but strode straight back across the road to follow Sophie and Alice through the front door. This time, he didn’t follow me.
“Who’s that man?” asked Sophie, turning in the doorway and looking back.
“Just a bookmaking friend. He’s come to collect something.”
“Aren’t you going to ask him in?” she said.
“I did,” I replied, “but he’s in a hurry to get home. He said he’d wait while I fetched it.”
“What is it?” she said.
“Just a TV remote that Luca has been fixing.” I went to the cupboard under the stairs and took out the microcoder. “This,” I said, holding it up to her.
She lost interest. “Fancy some tea?” she asked.
“Love some,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Sophie went into the kitchen with Alice to put the kettle on, and I waited a while in the hall, studying my watch, until its hands had moved slowly around a full five minutes. I didn’t want to give Mr. Smith, or whoever he was, the pleasure of having me come running at his command.
He was still standing where I’d left him. I held out the microcoder to him, and he took it.
“Thank you, Mr. Talbot,” he said. “And the chips?”
“You didn’t ask for the chips,” I said.
“Well, I am now.”
“Wait here.”
I went back across the road, collected the little bag of glass grains from the cupboard and went out to hand them to him. He studied the bag.
“Where are the rest of them?” he said.
“That’s all I have,” I said. “That’s all there ever were.”
“There should be twelve of them.”
“And how many are there now?” I asked innocently.
“Eight.”
“Sorry, that’s all I have,” I said.
He didn’t seem very happy. “Are you sure?” he demanded.
“Yes, I’m certain,” I said. “If I had any more, I’d give them to you. They’re no good to me, are they?” That might be true, I thought, but it hadn’t stopped me keeping a couple of them back: one complete chip and the one I had broken with the knife, just in case.
But there had definitely been only ten chips in the bag when I had found it in my father’s rucksack. So if there really had been twelve originally, two of them were indeed unaccounted for. Perhaps Paddy Murphy could enlighten me as to their whereabouts.
“It will have to do,” he said, as if to himself. Then he looked up at me. “Mr. Talbot, I won’t say I’ve enjoyed our little business together”—he held up his still-plastered right wrist—“but thank you nevertheless for returning the microcoder.”
He turned, walked over to the dark blue Ford, climbed in and was driven swiftly away by his unidentified chauffeur.
He might not still be thanking me, I thought, when he found out that his precious microcoder now wouldn’t work.
I hadn’t been lying when I told Sophie that Luca had fixed it. He’d fixed it, good and proper, by scratching right through the minute connectors on the printed circuit boards using a box cutter.
Sophie’s first night home was not quite an unbridled success, nor was it a disaster either. In fact, far from it.
There was the expected little spat between the sisters when Alice refused point-blank to allow Sophie to help prepare our supper.
“It’s my house,” Sophie complained to me. “And she won’t let me do anything in my own damn kitchen.”
“Let her do it,” I replied soothingly. “You know that she means well.” I stroked Sophie’s hand, and she slowly relaxed. “Come and sit down. Enjoy having someone cook for you.”
“I’ve done enough of that over the past five months, thank you very much,” she said. However, she still came and sat next to me on the sofa to watch the television.
I knew why Alice was so determined to do it all and why she was so worried. The memory of Sophie’s manic cleaning in that kitchen was fresh in both our minds.
“It’s good to be home,” Sophie said, snuggling into me.
“It’s good to have you home, my darling.”
We cuddled closer together on the sofa while watching experts on antiques trying to appear interested about dusty old junk salvaged from people’s attics while the junk’s owners tried to look surprised, and not too disappointed, by the meagerness of the valuations.
“It’s ready,” said Alice, putting her head around the living-room door.
The three of us sat at the kitchen table eating grilled salmon fillets, with penne pasta and peas.
“That was lovely,” I said, laying down my knife and fork.
“Mmm,” said Sophie, agreeing. “And much better than hospital food. Thank you, darling Alice.” Sophie smiled at her sister and winked at me. I positively beamed back at her.
My Sophie of old was back. But for how long? How I wished it was forever.
Needless to say, Sophie was not allowed to help with the washing up either, which amused her no end. I couldn’t remember a time when she had come home from a stay in the hospital so aware and with such an acute sense of humor.
But coming home had tired her, and we all turned in early, me taking Sophie up to our bed almost as I had done on our wedding night, and to do again the same things that all newlywed couples do.
For the first time in almost a week, due to having my mind on other matters, I went to sleep without wedging Sophie’s dressing-table chair under the bedroom door handle.
17
The creak of someone walking over the third step brought me instantly from deep sleep to sharp awareness. It was already light. I lay there in bed, holding my breath and trying hard to listen for any movement on the stairs. I turned my head and looked at the door. Sophie still slept soundly beside me.
How could I have put her in such danger? I thought. What a fool I was.
The door handle slowly depressed and the door began to open. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. What was I to do?
“I made you some tea,” said Alice, coming into the room, carrying a tray with two mugs of steaming liquid.
“Oh, Alice,” I said with such relief in my voice that I almost cried. “Thank you.”
“It’s a beautiful morning,” she said in a whisper, looking at Sophie.
“Yes,” I replied in the same manner. “I’ll leave her to sleep.”
Alice put the tray down on my bedside table and, with a wave, she departed. I heard step three creak twice, as usual, as she went down.
What was I doing? I thought.
Was it time to go to the police and hold my hands up for my failings and ask for their help and protection?
It was all well and good for me to perform the James Bond, secret-agent act when it was only my life and my future on the line. But what would Sophie do without me, especially now that she was home and getting better? Maybe her recovery wouldn’t last forever, but surely I had an obligation to her in the meantime.
Shifty-eyes was still out there somewhere, and he surely would still be searching for his money. I was actuall
y quite surprised that he hadn’t already found me. Mr. John Smith had seemingly had no problem in turning up in my home in the dead of night. Perhaps it was not as easy as I thought to get records from a Coroner’s Court. Or perhaps Shifty-eyes would have had to give his name to get them, and I suspected he might have been reluctant to do that. Maybe he still didn’t know that I existed, but I thought it unlikely.
Thinking about the Coroner’s Court reminded me that today was when I should call their office to see if an order had been signed to allow for my father’s funeral to take place. I wondered if my sisters knew yet that their father was dead, or whether they even cared.
Sophie slept in until nine-thirty, while the mug of tea cooled to room temperature on her bedside table. I took her up a fresh one and sat on the bed with her as she drank it.
“What a wonderful night,” she said, stretching her arms high above her head. “This bed is just so comfortable.” She snuggled down again under the covers.
“It’s been a very lonely bed without you in it,” I said.
“Oh, Ned,” she said, stroking my leg. “Let’s really try and make it work this time. I’m so tired of all this.”
If only, I thought. We had said this all too often in the past. False hope had burned in our breasts on so many occasions only to be dashed each time by seemingly unstoppable events.
“Yup,” I agreed, ruffling her hair. “Let’s really make it work this time.”
But first I had some unfinished business to deal with.
I left her to dress and titivate herself in front of her dressing-table mirror while I went downstairs to call the coroner’s office.
“The Thames Valley Police are still apparently objecting to a burial order,” I was informed by one of the officials. “You could try calling them and asking. It may be an oversight on their part.”
“Thank you,” I said. For nothing.
I called Thames Valley Police headquarters and asked to be put through to Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn.