by Dick Francis
While Sandy and the coroner’s officer climbed back into the cab, I squatted down beside the bags and unzipped the top of the grip.
“I don’t think you should do that,” Farway protested.
The grip, half full, held overnight necessities: shaving kit, pajamas, clean shirt, nothing very new, nothing out of the ordinary. I closed the zip and snapped open the briefcase, which wasn’t locked.
“Hey,” Farway said.
“If a man dies on my property,” I said reasonably, “I’d like to get to know him.”
“But you’ve no right . . .”
I looked anyway through the meager contents, which seemed to me wholly uninformative. A calculator. Writing pad, nothing written on it. A bunch of postcards in an elastic band, all the same, a view of a country hotel, advertisement handouts. A bottle of aspirins, a packet of indigestion tablets, two small airline-size bottles of vodka, both full.
“Look here,” Farway said uncomfortably.
I shut the briefcase and stood up. “All yours,” I said.
The undertakers took their time, and when they finally brought Kevin Keith out it was through the front passenger door, not via the grooms’ door farther back through which we had all so far climbed to reach the rear seat. It appeared that, death having done its stiffening work, the only way out for the body was to load it forward onto the stretcher laid along the front seats: so it came out that way, feet forward, wrapped amorphically in canvas, retaining straps in place.
As bodies went, it appeared that this one was heavy and awkward in shape, the bent right arm being impossible to straighten. Certainly respect for the dead as such was markedly absent, the problem seeming to present itself rather as of the order of extricating an obstinate grand piano from a small angular attic. I supposed body-collectors got used to it. One of the men, besides remarks like “Heave now” and “That arm’s jamming on the door,” was assessing the chances of his football team on the following Saturday. They lifted the stretcher unceremoniously through the open back doors of the black hearse as if engaged in trash disposal and I saw them transfer the canvas-wrapped Ogden off the stretcher into an opened metal coffin.
Farway too, more used to corpses than I, was taking the removal of this one prosaically. He told me he wouldn’t be doing the postmortem himself but it looked to him like straightforward cardiac arrest. Plain unlucky. The inquest should be a brief formality. He would be certifying death. I might not be called.
He said good night neutrally, folded himself into his car and followed the hearse as it rolled away off my tarmac. Sandy, taking with him the grip and the briefcase, drove off peacefully in the rear.
All suddenly seemed very quiet. I looked up at the stars, eternal in the face of mortality. I wondered if Kevin Keith Ogden had known he was dying, lying along a leatherette bench seat behind a thundering engine.
I thought quite likely not. There had been times when I’d been knocked out in racing falls, when the last thing I’d seen had been a whirling blurring vision of grass and sky. After the impact I wouldn’t have known if I’d died; and I’d thought sometimes, gratefully waking up, that an unaware death would be a blessing.
I climbed yet again into the cab. The rolled-up horse rug still bore the imprint of Ogden’s head and there was an unappealing stain halfway along the seat, threatening action on the morrow. Damn the man, I thought.
Brett had left the key in the ignition, another taboo in my book. I stepped over into the front compartment and removed the key ring, checking that at least the brakes were on and all but the cabin lights were off. Finally, switching off those interior lights also I jumped down from the passenger door, locking it behind me.
The front passenger door and the driver’s door both locked with the same key that started the engine, a large complicated key supplied by the manufacturers. I locked the driver’s door—Brett hadn’t—and with the second more ordinary key on the ring locked the grooms’ door. A third key locked the small compartment under the dashboard that contained the mobile telephone power switch and various documents, which I’d checked and found secure.
I walked again right round the van, making a last inspection. Everything seemed as it should be. The two ramps for horses were up and bolted. The five doors for humans, two for the front seats, three for the attendants, were similarly immovable. The flap over the intake to the diesel tanks, fastened by the fourth and last key on the key ring, was proof against siphoning thieves.
Feeling all the same uneasy I went back to the house and locked the back door behind me, which I didn’t do always. I stretched out a hand to switch off the outside lights and then changed my mind and left them on.
The fleet usually spent the night inside a large brick-walled converted farmyard, the wide strong entrance gates padlocked. The nine-van standing alone on my tarmac seemed unaccustomedly vulnerable, even though rigs of that size were seldom stolen. There were too many identity numbers engraved on too many parts, quite apart from the name CROFT RACEWAYS painted in about six places, the whole thing hardly inconspicuous for anyone trying to avoid notice.
I reheated the old stew, sloshed some red wine into it for excitement and ate the result while leaving the sitting room curtains open so that I could see the horse van all the time.
Absolutely nothing happened. My unease slowly abated, and I put down its existence simply to the fact of Ogden’s demise.
I made and received a few more telephone calls, checking particularly with my senior driver that all the other vans were back at the farm. The rest of the day’s journeys, it seemed, had for once gone uneventfully to plan: no mix-ups over time, no engine troubles, no equipment or attendants left behind. All the drivers had filled in their log sheets and popped them as requested into the letter box of the office. The padlocks were on the gates. No keys were anywhere accessible. Despite the dead passenger, the overall message I received was that the boss could relax and go to bed.
The boss, in the end, did just that, though from my bedroom, which was over the sitting room, I still had a clear view of the horse van out under the lights. I left the curtains wide open and although I never slept with them fully closed I nevertheless woke several times because of the continuing unusual brightness outside. At about three in the morning I became suddenly fully alert, disturbed by more than plain light. Disturbed by a moving flash across the ceiling, indistinct, like sheet lightning, seen through my eyelids.
The weather had been mild recently, though it was still early March, but it seemed to me that the temperature had dropped ten degrees in the past few hours. In bare feet and sleeping shorts I stood up and went to the window, shivering.
At first sight nothing seemed changed. Shrugging, I half turned to return to the warm bed and then stopped stock-still in serious alarm.
The grooms’ door, through which we’d all climbed, was slightly open, not securely locked, as I’d left it.
Open.
I stared hard, but there was no mistake. There was a black line of shadow where the door no longer fitted flat and snugly into position. The flash of light I’d seen must have been a reflection from its window as the door had been opened.
Without considering clothes I sprinted headlong downstairs and along to the back door, unlocking it, throwing my feet into gumboots and snatching an old raincoat from a peg. Trying to fit my arms into its sleeves I ran across the tarmac and pulled the door wide.
There was a figure inside there, in black, as surprised to see me as I to see him. At first he had his back towards me, then when he whirled round with a fierce exclamation, more an explosion of escaping breath than an actual word, I saw that his head was covered with a black hood, his eyes alive through holes, the cliché disguise of robbers and terrorists.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled at him, trying myself crazily to climb up after him. Stupid thing to do in gumboots: the stepholes weren’t designed for their clumsy width.
Black-mask snatched up the rolled horse rug, gave it a fast
shake to open its folds and threw it over me while I was still halfway up. I slid off the toeholds, stepped back unbalanced into a void and landed in a heap on the tarmac. The black figure, dimly seen, jumped over onto the driver’s seat, unlatched the door on that side, leaped athletically to the ground and ran for the shadows, lithe and scudding.
Perhaps in sneakers I could have made it a contest. In gumboots and an unbelted raincoat still only half on, it was hopeless. I stood up disgustedly, disentangling myself from the horse rug, fastening the raincoat belatedly and listening in vain for any sound of departing footsteps.
None of it made sense, nor did standing around shivering in inappropriate clothes in the middle of the night. There was nothing worth stealing in the van save perhaps the radio or phone, but the black figure hadn’t seemed to be attacking either. He hadn’t in fact seemed to be doing anything in particular, when I looked back to my first sight of him, but simply standing in the cab with his back to me. There had been dust and streaks of dirt on his clothes. As far as I could remember he hadn’t been carrying anything. No tools, not even a flashlight. If he’d opened the grooms’ door with either a key or a lockpick, he must have put it in a pocket.
The keyhole of the grooms’ door was in the handle itself. There was no key in the lock, nor, when I looked, any obvious scratches or signs of force or tampering.
Cold and cross I threw the horse rug back into the cab, shut the grooms’ door and the driver’s-side door and went back to the house to fetch the keys again to relock them.
Out of respect for my carpets I slid my feet out of the gumboots and padded through the hall and across the sitting room to the desk, not bothering to switch on any lights in there owing to being able to see perfectly well because of the glow outside. I retrieved the keys from the desk drawer, retraced my steps, resumed the gumboots and clomped back towards the wheels.
Coming close, I saw without belief that there was a black moving shadow again inside the cab. Monstrous, I thought, and what in God’s name could he want? He was standing behind the driver’s seat, feeling forward into the storage shelf that spread across the whole width of the cab high and above the front seats, projecting out over the windshield. The spacious shelf, common to all of my fleet, was used by the drivers and attendants to stow their personal belongings, often changes of clothing and occasionally a sleeping bag and pillow. There was a full-length mattress installed for the use of several of the drivers who slept there habitually on overnight stops, preferring it to cheap lodgings. Brett had told me he expected better. Your own choice, I assured him.
The busy figure in the cab saw me coming and was out and away again before I could reach him. I ran in his wake sluggishly, as if through treacle, my bare feet half sliding out of the boots at every stride. He headed down the drive and seemed to melt into the shadows of the trees by the exit to the road.
Uselessly, I followed him to the road itself, but he was nowhere to be seen. It was a country road, unfenced, with open gateways to other houses. Trees and bushes by the hundred, hiding places unlimited. It would have taken half an army to find him.
Puzzled and dispirited I retraced my way back to the van. The driver’s door stood wide open, as he’d left it. I climbed up clumsily and stood behind the seat, as he had, looking into the storage shelf, switching on the cabin light for a better view.
The shelf was empty except for the mattress and a plastic carrier-bag which proved on inspection to contain remains of Brett-type sustenance: screwed-up wrappers from chocolate bars, an empty sandwich-shaped casing bearing a label announcing “Beef and Tomato,” with the price underneath, and two empty Coke cans.
I put the bag back where it had been. It was each driver’s business to keep his own van clean and I didn’t feel like picking up after Brett. Whatever he and Dave had been doing that day, giving lifts to moribund businessmen seemed just the start of it. Those two would have a lot of explaining to do in the morning.
I carefully locked the doors again, and again walked back to the house, but once inside felt far from reassured. The agile visitor had got into the van the first time without breaking a window or other observable force and presumably could get in again the same way.
Without knowing in the least what he wanted, I still didn’t like the idea of his returning a third time. It also occurred to me disturbingly that perhaps he intended to leave something, or destroy something, or disable the van altogether. In alarm and doubt I shed the gumboots and raincoat and ran upstairs for substitutes in the shape of two sweaters, jeans, socks, and shoes I could run in. I pulled my own old sleeping bag from a cupboard and with a last check through the window to see if a third visitation was in progress—no sign of it—I went downstairs for a padded jacket and gloves.
With all these aids to warmth, I crossed yet again to the van and settled myself in the front passenger seats, moderately comfortable in body if not in mind.
Time slid by.
I dozed.
No one came.
2
Predictably, I woke stiff and cold as soon as nature’s lighting system began creeping into the electric stuff, and I trailed yawning across to the kitchen for warmth and coffee. The newspapers and the mail arrived. I sorted through the bills, read the headlines and turned to the racing pages, ate some cornflakes and answered the first phone calls of the day.
My routine working hours started at six or seven and normally ended at midnight, Sundays included, but it was a way of life, not a hardship. It was the same for trainers, all of whom seemed to believe that if they were up and caring for their horses by or before dawn, everyone who worked for them should be available likewise.
Plans tended to change overnight. The first call on that day, a Friday, was from the trainer of a horse that had got cast in its stable and injured himself by threshing about on the floor, trying to get himself back onto his feet.
“The bugger’s twisted his off-hind. My head lad found him, hopping lame.” The big healthy voice reverberated into my ear. “He can’t run at Southwell, sod it. Strike him off your list, will you?”
I said I would. “Thanks for letting me know.”
“I know you run tight schedules,” he boomed. “The four for Sandown are OK. Don’t send that Brett for them, he’s a whiner, he upsets my lads.”
I assured him he wouldn’t get Brett.
“Right, Freddie. See you at the sports.”
Without wasting time, I buzzed my head driver and asked if the vans for Southwell had already left.
“Warming up,” he assured me.
“Cross off Larry Dell. Their horse got cast.”
“Got you.”
I put down the kitchen receiver and went through to the sitting room where most of the desk top was taken up by the week’s comprehensive chart indicating which van was going where with whose horses. I wrote it always in pencil because of the constant changes.
On an adjacent table, easily reached by swiveling the green leather chair, stood a computer, monitor and keyboard. Theoretically, it was easier to call each van to the screen to enter or rearrange its journeys, and actually I did keep the details of the journeys recorded there permanently once they’d been completed, but for an advance overview I still clung to my pencil and eraser.
Along at the farm, in the main office, my two bright secretaries, Isobel and Rose, kept the computer competently accurate and up to the minute, and despaired of my old-fashioned methods. The terminal in my sitting room was a sort of substation upon which appeared all the changes they’d made on the main computer, and that was what I chiefly used it for: checking what had been organized in my absence.
In return, I typed in any changes which came in before or after their office hours and, one way or another, we had not so far left any expectant runner waiting in vain for the coach to take it to the ball.
I checked down the list on what looked like a typical Friday for the first week of March. Two vans going north to Southwell, where the all-weather track held both Fl
at and jumping races all winter. Four vans collecting runners for the afternoon’s program of steeplechasing at Sandown, south of London. One nine-horse van taking broodmares to Ireland. One six-van taking broodmares to Newmarket, one taking broodmares to Gloucestershire, another taking mares to a stud down in Surrey: the thoroughbred breeding season in full flood.
One van was out of action, scheduled for maintenance. One was going to France. One would be taking Jericho Rich’s fillies to Newmarket. Brett and his nine-horser, standing outside my window in the strengthening dawn, were due to spend the day shuttling a whole string for a trainer moving to Pixhill from out on Salisbury Plain: not long journeys but multiple and, from my point of view, good profit.
The following week would see the Cheltenham Festival, peak of the steeplechasing year, with the Flat season proper getting into gear the week after, its crowded program bringing me six months of good business. March was sigh-of-relief time, the fogs and freezes of winter relaxing their paralyzing menace: there was no income to be made from a row of vans standing silent in the snow, but the drivers had to be paid all the same.
My head driver phoned back. Harve by name, short for Harvey.
“Pat’s got flu,” he said. “She’s in bed.”
“Shit.”
“It’s a bugger, the flu this year. Knocks you out. It’s not her fault.”
“No,” I said. “How’s Gerry?”
“Still bad. We could put those broodmares off till Monday.”
“No, they’re near to foaling. I promised they’d go to Surrey today. I’ll sort something out.”
Pat and Gerry were reliable drivers: if they said they were too ill to work, then they were. Reshuffle required.