Driving Force

by Dick Francis

  “Why do you say no one was injured?” Lizzie sounded indignant. “Freddie was injured.”

  Sandy eyed me with long knowledge. “Injured to him means both legs broken and his guts hanging out.”

  “Men!” Lizzie said.

  Sandy said to me, “Do you want me to call out Doc Farway?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  He listened to my emphatic reply and smiled at Lizzie. “See?”

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  Sandy and Lizzie both looked at their watches. “Three thirty-two,” Sandy said with precision. “My message to headquarters was timed at three twenty-six.”

  Still leaning on Sandy’s car, I couldn’t decide which to guard, my business or my home. The damage already done might not be all. With such wanton pointless behavior as stamping on daffodils, logical prediction could get nowhere. The graffiti mind, the urge to throw stones at windows, looting, destruction for its own sake, they were the natural glee of untamed humanity. It was civilization and social conscience that were artificial.

  The side door of Harve’s house opened directly into the farmyard. He came hurrying out in jeans, shrugging his arms into an anorak, anxiety plain.

  “Freddie! Sandy!” His relief was partial. “One of my kids got up for a pee and woke me to say there was a police car by the horse vans. What’s happened?” He looked along the intact row of vehicles and repeated, puzzled, “What’s the matter?”

  “Some vandals broke into my house,” I explained. “We came to see if they’d been here too, but they haven’t.”

  Harve looked more worried, not less.

  “I walked round late,” he said. “It was all OK.”

  “What time?” I asked.

  “Oh, I’d say about ten.”

  “Um,” I said, “you weren’t out here by any chance an hour or so later? You didn’t hear anything?”

  He shook his head. “When I went in I watched a video of a football match for a while, and went to bed.” He still looked anxious. “Why?”

  “I came here at roughly half-past eleven. The gates were open and someone was moving about. I thought it was you.”

  “No, not that late. I shut the gate at ten. Everyone was back by then, see?”

  “Thanks, Harve.”

  “Who was here at half-past eleven?” he demanded.

  “That’s rather the point. I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone close enough to recognize whether I knew them or not.”

  “But if they didn’t do any damage . . .” Harve frowned. “What were they here for?”

  It was a question worth answering but I was not at that moment going to put forward the one reason I could think of. It was logical, besides: perhaps too logical for the poltergeist-type irrationality of so much that had happened that night.

  Sandy and Lizzie between them told Harve about my bit of seaside bathing, Harve looking increasingly horrified.

  “You might have drowned!” he said, exclaiming.

  “Mm. But there we are, I didn’t.” I belatedly asked Harve to keep watch in the farmyard for what was left of the night. “Doze in your own van,” I suggested, “and phone me the minute you see anything odd.”

  With his promise to do that once he’d told his wife and brought a hot drink and a blanket, I went back to my house with Sandy and Lizzie and left them in the kitchen tuttutting at life over steaming tea. As for me, I went wearily upstairs, decided to shower, lay down instead on top of the duvet for a minute still in fleecy boots and padded jacket, felt the world whirl briefly and fell instantly and comprehensively asleep.

  I didn’t wake until Lizzie shook me, her voice urgent.

  “Freddie! Freddie, are you all right?”

  “Mm.” I struggled from the depths. “What is it?”

  “The police are here.”

  “What?”

  Realization and remembrance came back with unwelcome clarity. I groaned. I felt unwell. I inconsequentially thought of Alfred, King of Wessex, who delivered his country from Danish invaders although suffering from half the diseases known to the ninth century. Such fortitude! And he could write and translate Latin as well.

  “Freddie, the police want to talk to you.”

  King Alfred had had hemorrhoids, I’d read once. With all that on his mind, no wonder he’d let the cakes burn.

  “Freddie!”

  “Tell them I’ll be down in five minutes.”

  When she’d gone I took off the night’s clothes, showered, shaved, dressed again in fresh things, combed my hair carefully and, at least on the outside, began to look like F. Croft Esquire, master of a few things he would rather not have surveyed.

  The sitting room looked no better in the opal light of dawn, and the soul had gone out of the tangled heap of metal that had been my precious car. I walked from one disaster to the other with the policemen, who weren’t the two who had come to Jogger. They were older, wearier, hard worked and unimpressed by my troubles, which they seemed to suggest I had brought on myself. I answered their questions monosyllabically, partly from malaise, chiefly from ignorance.

  No, I didn’t know who had done the damage.

  No, I couldn’t guess.

  No, I knew of no one who held a business grudge against me.

  Had I dismissed a worker? No. One had recently left of his own choice.

  Had I had any personal enemies? None that I knew of.

  I must have some, they said. Everyone had enemies.

  Well, I thought privately, reflecting on Hugo Palmerstone, I had no personal enemy who could be sure my house would be empty at two A.M. on the Wednesday morning of Cheltenham races. Not unless, of course, they’d tapped me on the head . . .

  Who hated me this much? If I knew, I said, I would certainly tell.

  Had anything been stolen?

  That question stopped me short. So many things had been smashed that I hadn’t thought of theft. My car could have been stolen. My television, my computer, the china birds, the Waterford vase, all had had value. I hadn’t, I said lamely, inspected my safe.

  They accompanied me indoors again, looking as if they couldn’t believe I hadn’t checked the safe first.

  “There isn’t much in there,” I said.

  “Money?”

  “Yes, money.”

  How much was not much? Less than a thousand, I said.

  The safe stood in the corner behind my desk, its fireproof metal casing camouflaged inside a polished wooden cabinet. The unharmed cabinet doors opened easily but the combination lock inside had been chopped about with the same heavy cutting edge as everything else. The lock had withstood the assault, but its mechanism proved to be jammed.

  “Nothing’s been stolen,” I said. “The safe won’t open.”

  The Fax machine on top of the safe’s cabinet would send no more messages. The copier on the table alongside had copied its last. A simple blow to each had ended their lives.

  My own anger, not blazing, immediate and tearful like Lizzie’s, but a slow inner burn of fury, increased sharply at the spiteful splitting of two machines I—and the insurance—could easily replace. The cruelty got to me. Whoever had done all this, whoever had thrown me into the water, had meant me to suffer, had meant me to feel as I felt. I would give no one the extra pleasure, I resolved, of hearing me scream and moan. I would find out who and why, and even the score.

  The police asked about my trip to Southampton but I could tell them very little: I’d been dropped into the water, I’d swum, I’d climbed out, I’d phoned my sister to collect me.

  No, I hadn’t seen who hit me.

  No, I hadn’t seen a doctor. No need.

  In the middle of telling them I didn’t remember anything at all of the journey to Southampton, I began to know that at some point or other I had had my eyes open. I’d seen the moonlight. I’d even spoken. I’d said, “Beautiful night for flying.” Delirious.

  “If this doesn’t give him flu, nothing will . . .”

  They had known, I t
hought, that I was at least semiconscious when they tipped me in.

  Concussion was unpredictable, as I’d found at other times. Bits of memory could surface long after the impact. One could also appear to be conscious—people would say one had walked and talked—but afterwards one couldn’t remember that. Total recall could happen hours, days or weeks after the event, or sometimes remain blank forever. I could remember the grass hitting my face one time; I could remember the fence I’d fallen at in the second race of the day and I could remember which horse I’d been riding. I still had no memory of driving to the racecourse that morning, or of the first race which, the record books told me, I had won by seven lengths half an hour before the fall.

  I had traveled to Southampton in the trunk of an ordinary car. The knowledge drifted in. I didn’t know how I knew, but I was sure.

  The police had brought a photographer who took a few flash shots and departed, and a fingerprinter who stayed longer but gave his opinion in one succinct word, “Gloves.”

  Lizzie mooned round her helicopter, stroking it now and then and muttering “Bastards” under her breath. She said she would have to fly back to Edinburgh on the shuttle, as she had a lecture to give that afternoon. She vowed her partners in the helicopter would strangle whoever had crunched it.

  Find him first, I thought.

  The morning seemed disjointed. The police wrote a statement which put what they’d found and what I’d told them into police-force language, and I signed it in the kitchen. Sandy made tea. The other policemen, sipping, said “Ta.”

  “Ta,” I said too. Light-headed, I thought.

  One of the policemen said he believed the damage to my property to be a personal vendetta. He suggested I should think about it. He thought I might know who had attacked me. He cautioned me against taking a personal revenge.

  “I don’t know who did it,” I said truthfully. “I would tell you if I did.”

  He looked as if he didn’t believe me. “Think it over, sir,” he said.

  I stifled a spurt of irritation and thanked him for coming. Lizzie walked into the kitchen saying “Bastards” quite loudly. I wanted to laugh. She took a mug of tea and walked out.

  When his colleagues had gone, Sandy said awkwardly, “They’re good lads, you know.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “They’ve seen too much,” he said. “I’ve seen too much myself. It’s hard to feel sympathy over and over. We end up not feeling it. See what I mean?”

  “You’re a good lad yourself, Sandy,” I said.

  He looked gratified and gave me his own commendation in return.

  “You’re well liked in Pixhill,” he said. “I never heard anyone bad-mouth you. I reckon if you’d had enemies this bad, I’d have heard of it.”

  “I’d have thought I’d have heard of it too.”

  “I reckon this was destruction for its own sake. They enjoyed it.”

  I sighed. “Yes.”

  “Three times this last week,” he said, “someone’s run a supermarket cart straight into the side of a car in the car park in Newbury. Smashed the sides of the cars right in, all crumpled and scratched. Not for any reason except just to do damage. People come back to find it and it’s their frustration that’s the worst. The supermarket employs a guard, but no one’s caught the vandal yet. You can’t deal with that sort of vandalism. And if he’s caught red-handed one day, all he’ll get is probation.”

  “He’s probably a teenager.”

  Sandy nodded. “They’re the worst. But arsonists, remember, are usually a bit older. And it wasn’t no teenager, I’d reckon, that got into this house.”

  “What age, then?”

  Sandy pursed his lips. “Twenties. Thirties perhaps. Not much older than forty. After that the driving force weakens. You don’t get sixty-year-olds doing this sort of thing. It’s fraud that sees them in court.”

  I pondered a few things and said, “You know Jogger’s tools were stolen from his van?”

  “Aye. I heard.”

  “He had an ax in the van.”

  Sandy stared. “I thought it was mechanic’s tools.”

  “There was a slider, and in a big open red plastic crate he had a hydraulic jack, spanners, tire irons, jump leads, pliers, wiring, a grease gun, cleaning rags, all sorts of oddments . . . and an ax, like firemen use, that he’d carried ever since a tree fell across one of the vans. Before I owned the business, that was.”

  Sandy nodded. “I remember. In one of those hurricane-like winds.”

  “You might keep an eye out for Jogger’s stuff, in the village.”

  “I’ll put the word around,” he said earnestly.

  “Say there would be a reward. Nothing fancy, but worthwhile for good information.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “It’ll be Jogger’s inquest at any minute,” I said.

  Sandy looked at his watch in alarm. “I’ll have to be going. I’ve not shaved yet, or dressed.”

  “I expect you’ll phone later.”

  He promised he would, and drove away. Lizzie yawned into the kitchen and announced that if I needed her she would be upstairs asleep. I would wake her, please, at eleven, and drive her to Heathrow to catch the shuttle. She had just on my bedroom phone told one of her partners of the demise of the Robinson 22. He was speechless, she said. He would inform the insurers when he got his voice back and probably I would be hearing from them, as they were bound to send an inspector. Did I mind leaving my car where it was until after that? No, I supposed I didn’t.

  She gave me an absentminded kiss on the cheek and advised me to go back to bed.

  “I’m going to the farmyard,” I said. “Too much to do.”

  “Then lock the door behind you, there’s a dear.”

  I locked the back door and drove to the farmyard, finding Nina there drinking coffee in the canteen with Nigel. They were discussing the journey to fetch Jericho Rich’s daughter’s show jumper from France, Nina seeming oblivious to Nigel’s dark-lashed eyes and sultry mouth. They had heard from Harve all about the night’s alarms and were glad, they said, to find me functioning.

  Nina brought her coffee and followed me into the office.

  “Are you really all right?” she inquired.

  “More or less.”

  “I’ve some news for you,” she said, and paused, “but . . .”

  “Fire away. Is it the little glass tubes?”

  “What? No, not those, there hasn’t been a report on those yet. No, this is that advertisement in Horse and Hound.”

  I thought back. So much seemed to have crowded in since Sunday. “Oh yes . . . the transport ad. ‘Anything considered.’ ”

  “Yes, that’s right. Patrick got the magazine to tell him who had inserted it. And it’s rather extraordinary . . .”

  “Do go on.”

  “It was a Mr. K. Ogden of Nottingham.”

  “No!” My eyebrows shot up. “Well, well, that really is extraordinary.”

  “I thought you’d think so. The magazine said they checked him out the first time he ran the ad. They wanted to make sure there was nothing criminal in it. Seems they were satisfied Mr. Ogden was harmlessly offering his services as an adviser or personal courier, rather on the lines of a universal aunt. The phone number in the advertisement is that of his own house. The magazine checked it. They supposed he must be getting work from the ad, as he’s kept on paying for the insertions.”

  “Wow,” I said blankly. “He can’t have been doing too well, though. He was wanted for bouncing checks and other pathetic bits of fraud. He might have seemed bona fide to the Horse and Hound—and maybe he was once—but I’d guess he’d stopped worrying about the legality of every transaction, as long as he was being paid.”

  “You can’t assume that,” she protested primly.

  “Stands to reason.” I shrugged. “But I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he didn’t know there were six tubes in the thermos. Just maybe. I wouldn’t bet on it.”

&
nbsp; “Cynic.”

  “I’d be cynical about anything after last night.”

  “What do the police think about last night?”

  “They didn’t say much. They said it was a wise man who knew his own enemies, or words to that effect.”

  “Oh.” She blinked. “And do you?”

  “I think Sandy Smith’s right. Smashing up my things was out-of-control vandalism, done on the pleasure principle. I think I walked into the farmyard when I wasn’t expected, and the rest was embroidery. Infantile glee. Sly childish impulse to hurt.”

  “Some child, by the sound of things.”

  “An immature adult, then.”

  “Or a psychotic.”

  “A better word for it.”

  She finished her coffee. “I suppose we’d better get on if we’re to catch that ferry. Realistically, is anything odd likely to happen on this trip?”

  “I don’t know. Did I tell you exactly where the container is, under your van?”

  “Not exactly, no.”

  “It’s a metal tube fixed fore and aft in a space that runs beneath the floorboards and above the fuel tanks. That space is outside the main longitudinal struts of the chassis, but hidden by the coachwork sides. You can’t see the space from the outside or from underneath, but if you know the tube’s there, it’s easily accessible. You can screw the end of it on and off without trouble, Jogger said.”

  “I might go under and take a look.”

  Rather her than me. “Nigel was going to make a new slider for rolling underneath,” I said.

  “Yes, he made it. He was showing it to Harve.”

  “If you want to look, use the slider. Tell Harve and Nigel I told you there’s a diesel inspection sort of glass bowl screwed on underneath, on the fuel line between the tanks and the engine. You can check by that that the diesel’s clean. If it is, the bowl will look clear. Any dirt in the diesel drops into the bowl and one can unscrew it and clean it out. We had a filthy lot of fuel delivered once. The inspection globe was black with muck. Anyway, tell Harve you want to see it.”

  “I had an inspection arrangement in my own van.”

  “Sorry, I forgot.”

  She smiled. “I’ll take a look.”

  She went out and did so. Harve and Nigel thought her fussy, she said, coming back and brushing off dust. “And you could smuggle anything in that tube,” she added. “I’ll keep an eye on it.” She looked at the telephone. “A quick word with Patrick, do you mind?”