Straight

by Dick Francis

  “I’ve found them,” the undertaker called, picking up a large display of pink and bronze chrysanthemums. “Here you are.”

  “Great. Well, we’ll have these roses as well, and this wreath next to them, which is from the staff in his office. Is that all right?”

  It appeared to be. Annette and June had decided on all-white flowers after agonizing and phoning from the office, and they’d made me promise to notice and tell them that they were pretty. We had decided that all the staff should stay behind and keep the office open as trade was so heavy, though I’d thought from her downcast expression that June would have liked to have made the journey.

  I asked the official where all the other flowers had come from: from businesses, he said, and he would collect all the cards afterward and give them to me.

  I supposed for the first time that perhaps I should have taken Greville back to London to be seen off by colleagues and friends, but during the very quiet half-hour that followed had no single regret. The clergyman engaged by the undertakers asked if I wanted the whole service read as I appeared to be the only mourner, and I said yes, go ahead, it was fitting.

  His voice droned a bit. I half-listened and half-watched the way the sunshine fell onto the flowers on the coffin from the high windows along one wall and thought mostly not of Greville as he’d been alive but what he had become to me during the past week.

  His life had settled on my shoulders like a mantle. Through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I’d learned enough of his business never to forget it. People who’d relied on him had transferred their reliance onto me, including in a way his friend Elliot Trelawney who wanted me as a Greville substitute to drink with. Clarissa Williams had sent her flowers knowing I would see them, wanting me to be aware of her, as if I weren’t already. Nicholas Loder aimed to manipulate me for his own stable’s ends. Prospero Jenks would soon be pressing hard for the diamonds for his fantasy, and the bank loan hung like a thundercloud in my mind.

  Greville, lying cold in the coffin, hadn’t meant any of it to happen.

  A man of honor, I thought. I mentally repeated his own prayer for him, as it seemed a good time for it. May I deal with honor. May I act with courage. May I achieve humility. I didn’t know if he’d managed that last one; I knew that I couldn’t.

  The clergyman droned to a halt. The official removed the three lots of flowers from the coffin to put them on the floor and, with a whirring and creaking of machinery that sounded loud in the silence, the coffin slid away forward, out of sight, heading for fire.

  Goodbye, pal, I said silently. Goodbye, except that you are with me now more than ever before.

  I went outside into the cold fresh air and thanked everyone and paid them and arranged for all of the flowers to go to St. Catherine’s Hospital, which seemed to be no problem. The official gave me the severed cards and asked what I wanted to do with my brother’s ashes, and I had a ridiculous urge to laugh, which I saw from his hushed face would be wildly inappropriate. The business of ashes had always seemed to me an embarrassment.

  He waited patiently for a decision. “If you have any tall red rose trees,” I said finally, “I daresay that would do, if you plant one along there with the others. Put the ashes there.”

  I paid for the rose tree and thanked him again, and waited for a while for Brad to return, which he did looking smug and sporting a definite grin.

  “I found it,” he said.

  “What?” I was still thinking of Greville.

  “Your brother’s wheels.”

  “You didn’t!”

  He nodded, highly pleased with himself.

  “Where?”

  He wouldn’t say. He waited for me to sit and drove off in triumph into the center of town, drawing up barely three hundred yards from where the scaffolding had fallen. Then, with his normal economy, he pointed to the forecourt of a used car sales business where under strips of fluttering pennants rows of offerings stood with large white prices painted on their windshields.

  “One of those?” I asked in disbelief.

  Brad gurgled; no other word for the delight in his throat. “Round the back,” he said.

  He drove into the forecourt, then along behind the cars, and turned a corner, and we found ourselves outside the wide-open doors of a garage advertising repairs, oil changes, MOT tests and Ladies and Gents. Brad held the car-finder out of his open window and pressed the red button, and somewhere in the shadowy depths of the garage a pair of headlights began flashing on and off and a piercing whistle shrieked.

  A cross-looking mechanic in oily overalls came hurrying out. He told me he was the foreman in charge and he’d be glad to see the back of the Rover 3500, and I owed him a week’s parking besides the cleaning of the spark plugs of the V8 engine, plus a surcharge for inconvenience.

  “Taking up space for a week when it was meant to be for an hour, and having that whistle blast my eardrums three times today.”

  “Three times?” I said, surprised.

  “Once this morning, twice this afternoon. This man came here earlier, you know. He said he’d bring the Rover’s new owner.”

  Brad gave me a bright glance. The car-finder had done its best for us early on in the morning, it seemed: it was our own eyes and ears that had missed it, out of sight as the car had been.

  I asked the foreman to make out a bill and, getting out of my own car, swung over to Greville’s. The Rover’s doors would open, I found, but the trunk was locked.

  “Here,” said the foreman, coming over with the account and the ignition keys. “The trunk won’t open. Some sort of fancy lock. Custom made. It’s been a bloody nuisance.”

  I mollifyingly gave him a credit card in settlement and he took it off to his cubbyhole of an office.

  I looked at the Rover. “Can you drive that?” I asked Brad.

  “Yerss,” he said gloomily.

  I smiled and pulled Greville’s keys out of my pocket to see if any of them would unlock the trunk; and one did, to my relief, though not a key one would normally have associated with cars. More like the keys to a safe, I thought; and the lock revealed was intricate and steel. Its installation was typically Greville, ultra security-conscious after his experiences with the Porsche.

  The treasure so well guarded included an expensive-looking set of golf clubs, with a trolley and a new box of golf balls, a large brown envelope, an overnight bag with pajamas, clean shirt, toothbrush and a scarlet can of shaving cream, a portable telephone like my own, a personal computer, a portable fax machine, an opened carton of spare fax paper, a polished wooden box containing a beautiful set of brass scales with feather-light weights, an anti-thief device for locking onto the steering wheel, a huge flashlight, and a heavy complicated-looking orange metal contraption that I recognized from Greville’s enthusiastic description as a device for sliding under flat tires so that one could drive to a garage on it instead of changing a wheel by the roadside.

  “Cor,” Brad said, looking at the haul, and the foreman too, returning with the paperwork, was brought to an understanding of the need for the defenses.

  I shut the trunk and locked it again, which seemed a very Greville-like thing to do, and took a quick look round inside the body of the car, seeing the sort of minor clutter which defies the tidiest habit: matchbooks, time-clock parking slips, blue sunglasses, and a cellophane packet of tissues. In the door pocket on the driver’s side, jammed in untidily, a map.

  I picked it out. It was a road map of East Anglia, the route from London to Ipswich drawn heavily in black with, written down one side, the numbers of the roads to be followed. The marked route, I saw with interest, didn’t stop at Ipswich but went on beyond, to Harwich.

  Harwich, on the North Sea, was a ferry port. Harwich to the Hook of Holland; the route of one of the historic crossings, like Dover to Calais, Folkstone to Ostend. I didn’t know if the Harwich ferries still ran, and I thought that if Greville had been going to Holland he would certainly have gone by air. All the same he
had, presumably, been going to Harwich.

  I said abruptly to the foreman, who was showing impatience for our departure, “Is there a travel agent near here?”

  “Three doors along,” he said, pointing, “and you can’t park here while you go there.”

  I gave him a tip big enough to change his mind, and left Brad keeping watch over the cars while I peg-legged along the street. Right on schedule the travel agent came up, and I went in to inquire about ferries for the Hook of Holland.

  “Sure,” said an obliging girl. “They run every day and every night. Sealink operates them. When do you want to go?”

  “I don’t know, exactly.”

  She thought me feeble. “Well, the Saint Nicholas goes over to Holland every morning, and the Koningin Beatrix every night.”

  I must have looked as stunned as I felt. I closed my open mouth.

  “What’s the matter?” she said.

  “Nothing at all. Thank you very much.”

  She shrugged as if the lunacies of the traveling public were past comprehension, and I shunted back to the garage with my chunk of new knowledge which had solved one little conundrum but posed another, such as what was Greville doing with Queen Beatrix, not a horse but a boat.

  Brad drove the Rover to London and I drove my own car, the pace throughout enough to make a snail weep. Whatever the Ipswich garage had done to Greville’s plugs hadn’t cured any trouble, the V8 running more like a V4 or even a V1½ as far as I could see. Brad stopped fairly soon after we’d left the town and, cursing, cleaned the plugs again himself, but to no avail.

  “Needs new ones,” he said.

  I used the time to search thoroughly through the golf bag, the box of golf balls, the overnight bag and all the gadgets.

  No diamonds.

  We set off again, the Rover going precariously slowly in very low gear up hills, with me staying on its tail in case it petered out altogether. I didn’t much mind the slow progress except that resting my left foot on the floor sent frequent jabs up my leg and eventually reawoke the overall ache in the ankle, but in comparison with the ride home from Ipswich five days earlier it was chickenfeed. I still mended fast, I thought gratefully. By Tuesday at the latest I’d be walking. Well, limping, maybe, like Greville’s car.

  There was no joy in reflecting, as I did, that if the spark plugs had been efficient he wouldn’t have stopped to have them fixed and he wouldn’t have been walking along a street in Ipswich at the wrong moment. If one could foresee the future, accidents wouldn’t happen. “If only” were wretched words.

  We reached Greville’s road eventually and found two spaces to park, though not outside the house. I’d told Brad in the morning that I would sleep in London that night to be handy for going to York with the Ostermeyers the next day. I’d planned originally that if we found the Rover he would take it on the orbital route direct to Hungerford and I would drive into London and go on home from there after I got back from York. The plugs having changed that plan near Ipswich, it was now Brad who would go to Hungerford in my car, and I would finish the journey by train. Greville’s car, ruin that it was, could decorate the street.

  We transferred all the gear from Greville’s trunk into the back of my car, or rather Brad did the transferring while I mostly watched. Then, Brad carrying the big brown envelope from the Rover and my own overnight grip, we went up the path to the house in the dark and set off the lights and the barking. No one in the houses around paid any attention. I undid the three locks and went in cautiously but, as before, once I’d switched the dog off, the house was quiet and deserted. Brad, declining food and drink, went home to his mum, and I, sitting in Greville’s chair, opened the big brown envelope and read all about Vaccaro, who had been a very bad boy indeed.

  Most of the envelope’s contents were a copy of Vaccaro’s detailed application, but on an attached sheet in abbreviated prose Greville had handwritten:Ramon Vaccaro, wanted for drug-running, Florida, U.S.A. Suspected of several murders, victims mostly pilots, wanting out from flying drug crates. Vaccaro leaves no mouths alive to chatter. My info from scared-to-death pilot’s widow. She won’t come to the committee meeting but gave enough insider details for me to believe her.

  Vaccaro seduced private pilots with a big pay-off, then when they’d done one run to Colombia and got away with it, they’d be hooked and do it again and again until they finally got rich enough to have cold feet. Then the poor sods would die from being shot on their own doorsteps from passing cars, no sounds because of silencers, no witnesses and no clues. But all were pilots owning their own small planes, too many for coincidence. Widow says her husband scared stiff but left it too late. She’s remarried, lives in London, always wanted revenge, couldn’t believe it was the same man when she saw local newspaper snippet. Vaccaro’s Family Gaming, with his photo. Family! She went to Town Hall anonymously, they put her on to me.

  We don’t have to find Vaccaro guilty. We just don’t give him a gaming license. Widow says not to let him know who turned his application down, he’s dangerous and vengeful, but how can he silence a whole committee? The Florida police might like to know his whereabouts. Extradition?

  I telephoned Elliot Trelawney at his weekend home, told him I’d found the red-hot notes and read them to him, which brought forth a whistle and a groan.

  “But Vaccaro didn’t kill Greville,” I said.

  “No.” He sighed. “How did the funeral go?”

  “Fine. Thank you for your flowers.”

  “Just sorry I couldn’t get there, but on a working day, and so far ...”

  “It was fine,” I said again, and it had been. I’d been relieved, on the whole, to be alone.

  “Would you mind,” he said, diffidently, “if I arranged a memorial service for him? Sometime soon. Within a month?”

  “Go right ahead,” I said warmly. “A great idea.”

  He hoped I would send the Vaccaro notes by messenger on Monday to the Magistrates Court, and he asked if I played golf.

  In the morning, after a dream-filled night in Greville’s black and white bed, I took a taxi to the Ostermeyers’ hotel, meeting them in the lobby as arranged on the telephone the evening before.

  They were in very good form, Martha resplendent in a red wool tailored dress with a mink jacket, Harley with a new English-looking hat over his easy grin, binoculars and racing paper ready. Both of them seemed determined to enjoy whatever the day brought forth and Harley’s occasional ill-humor was far out of sight.

  The driver, a different one from Wednesday, brought a huge super-comfortable Daimler to the front door exactly on time, and with all auspices pointing to felicity, the Ostermeyers arranged themselves on the rear seat, I sitting in front of them beside the chauffeur.

  The chauffeur, who announced his name as Simms, kindly stowed my crutches in the trunk and said it was no trouble at all, sir, when I thanked him. The crutches themselves seemed to be the only tiny cloud on Martha’s horizon, bringing a brief frown to the proceedings.

  “Is that foot still bothering you? Milo said it was nothing to worry about.”

  “No, it isn’t, and it’s much better,” I said truthfully.

  “Oh, good. Just as long as it doesn’t stop you riding Datepalm.”

  “Of course not,” I assured her.

  “We’re so pleased to have him. He’s just darling.”

  I made some nice noises about Datepalm, which wasn’t very difficult, as we nosed through the traffic to go north on the M highway.

  Harley said, “Milo says Datepalm might go for the Charisma ‘Chase at Kempton next Saturday. What do you think?”

  “A good race for him,” I said calmly. I would kill Milo, I thought. A dicey gallop was one thing, but no medic on earth was going to sign my card in one week to say I was fit; and I wouldn’t be, because half a ton of horse over jumps at thirty-plus miles an hour was no puffball matter.

  “Milo might prefer to save him for the Mackeson at Cheltenham next month,” I said judiciously
, sowing the idea. “Or of course for the Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup two weeks later.” I’d definitely be fit for the Hennessy, six weeks ahead. The Mackeson, at four weeks, was a toss-up.

  “Then there’s that big race the day after Christmas.” Martha sighed happily. “It’s all so exciting. Harley promises we can come back to see him run.”

  They talked about horses for another half hour and then asked if I knew anything about a Dick Turpin.

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Some guy said he was riding to York. I didn’t understand any part of it.”

  I laughed. “It happened a couple of centuries ago. Dick Turpin was a highwayman, a real villain, who rode his mare Black Bess north to escape the law. They caught him in York and flung him in jail, and for a fortnight he held a sort of riotous court in his cell, making jokes and drinking with all the notables of the city who came to see the famous thief in his chains. Then they took him out and hanged him on a piece of land called the Knavesmire, which is now the racecourse.”

  “Oh, my,” Martha said, ghoulishly diverted. “How perfectly grisly.”

  In time we left the M1 and traveled northeast to the difficult old A1, and I thought that no one in their senses would drive from London to York when they could go by train. The Ostermeyers, of course, weren’t doing the driving.

  Harley said as we neared the city, “You’re expected at lunch with us, Derek.”

  Expected, in Ostermeyer speech, meant invited. I protested mildly that it wasn’t so.

  “It sure is. I talked with Lord Knightwood yesterday evening, told him we’d have you with us. He said right away to have you join us for lunch. They’re giving their name to one of the races, it’ll be a big party.”

  “Which race?” I asked with curiosity. Knightwood wasn’t a name I knew.

  “Here it is.” Harley rustled the racing newspaper. “The University of York Trophy. Lord Knightwood is the University’s top man, president or governor, some kind of figurehead. A Yorkshire VIP. Anyway, you’re expected.”