Straight

by Dick Francis

  “They’re quavery. It must have been some crash. Martha keeps crying. It seems a car ran into the back of the bus and two people in the car were terribly injured. She saw them, and it’s upsetting her almost as much as knowing Simms was shot. Can’t you come and comfort her?”

  “You and Harley can do it better.”

  “She thought you were dying too. She’s badly shocked. You’d better come.”

  “They gave her a sedative at the hospital, didn’t they?”

  “Yes,” he agreed grudgingly. “Harley too.”

  “Look ... persuade them to sleep. I’ll come in the morning and pick them up and take them back to their hotel in London. Will that do?”

  He said unwillingly that he supposed so.

  “Say goodnight to them from me,” I said. “Tell them I think they’re terrific.”

  “Do you?” He sounded surprised.

  “It does no harm to say it.”

  “Cynic.”

  “Seriously,” I said, “they’ll feel better if you tell them.”

  “All right then. See you at breakfast.”

  I put down the receiver and on reflection a few minutes later got through to Brad.

  “Cor,” he said, “you were in that crash.”

  “How did you hear about it?” I asked, surprised.

  “Down the pub. Talk of Hungerford. Another madman. It’s shook everyone up. My mum won’t go out.”

  It had shaken his tongue loose, I thought in amusement.

  “Have you still got my car?” I said.

  “Yerss.” He sounded anxious. “You said keep it here.”

  “Yes. I meant keep it there.”

  “I walked down your house earlier. There weren’t no one there then.”

  “I’m not there now,” I said. “Do you still want to go on driving?”

  “Yerss.” Very positive. “Now?”

  “In the morning.” I said I would meet him at eight outside the hotel near the railway station at Swindon, and we would be going to London. “OK?”

  “Yerss,” he said again, signing off, and it sounded like a cat purring over the resumption of milk.

  Smiling and yawning, a jaw-cracking combination, I ran a bath, took off my clothes and the bandage and lay gratefully in hot water, letting it soak away the fatigue along with Simms’s blood. Then, my overnight bag having survived unharmed along with the crutches, I scrubbed my teeth, put on sleeping shorts, rewrapped the ankle, hung a “Do not disturb” card outside my door and was in bed by nine and slept and dreamed of crashes and fire and hovering unidentified threats.

  Brad came on the dot in the morning and we went first to my place in a necessary quest for clean clothes. His mum, Brad agreed, would wash the things I’d worn in the crash.

  My rooms were still quiet and unransacked and no dangers lurked outside in daylight. I changed uneventfully and repacked the traveling bag and we drove in good order to Lambourn, I sitting beside Brad and thinking I could have done the driving myself, except that I found his presence reassuring and I’d come to grief on both of the days he hadn’t been with me.

  “If a car passes us and sits in front of us,” I said, “don’t pass it. Fall right back and turn up a side road.”

  “Why?”

  I told him that the police thought we’d been caught in a deliberate moving ambush. Neither the Ostermeyers nor I, I pointed out, would be happy to repeat the experience, and Brad wouldn’t be wanting to double for Simms. He grinned, an unnerving sight, and gave me to understand with a nod that he would follow the instruction.

  The usual road to Lambourn turned out to be still blocked off, and I wondered briefly, as we detoured, whether it was because of the murder inquiry or simply technical difficulties in disentangling the omelette.

  Martha and Harley were still shaking over breakfast, the coffee cups trembling against their lips. Milo with relief shifted the burden of their reliance smartly from himself to me, telling them that now Derek was here, they’d be safe. I wasn’t so sure about that, particularly if both Harley and the police were right about me personally being yesterday’s target. Neither Martha nor Harley seemed to suffer such qualms and gave me the instant status of surrogate son/nephew, the one to be naturally leaned on, psychologically if not physically, for succor and support.

  I looked at them with affection. Martha had retained enough spirit to put on lipstick. Harley was making light of an adhesive bandage on his temple. They couldn’t help their nervous systems’ reaction to mental trauma, and I hoped it wouldn’t be long before their habitual preference for enjoyment resurfaced.

  “The only good thing about yesterday,” Martha said with a sigh, “was buying Dozen Roses. Milo says he’s already sent a van for him.”

  I’d forgotten about Dozen Roses. Nicholas Loder and his tizzies seemed a long way off and unimportant. I said I was glad they were glad, and that in about a week or so, when he’d settled down in his new quarters, I would start teaching him to jump.

  “I’m sure he’ll be brilliant,” Martha said bravely, trying hard to make normal conversation. “Won’t he?”

  “Some horses take to it better than others,” I said neutrally. “Like humans.”

  “I’ll believe he’ll be brilliant.”

  Averagely good, I thought, would be good enough for me: but most racehorses could jump if started patiently over low obstacles like logs.

  Milo offered fresh coffee and more toast, but they were ready to leave and in a short while we were on the road to London. No one passed us and slowed, no one am-bushed or shot us, and Brad drew up with a flourish outside their hotel, at least the equal of Simms.

  Martha with a shine of tears kissed my cheek in goodbye, and I hers; Harley gruffly shook my hand. They would come back soon, they said, but they were sure glad to be going home tomorrow. I watched them go shakily into the hotel and thought uncomplicated thoughts, like hoping Datepalm would cover himself with glory for them, and Dozen Roses also, once he could jump.

  “Office?” I suggested to Brad, and he nodded, and made the now familiar turns toward the environs of Hatton Garden.

  Little in Saxony Franklin appeared to have changed. It seemed extraordinary that it was only a week since I’d walked in there for the first time, so familiar did it feel on going back. The staff said, “Good morning, Derek,” as if they’d been used to me for years, and Annette said there were letters left over from Friday which needed decisions.

  “How was the funeral?” she asked sadly, laying out the papers on the desk.

  A thousand light-years ago, I thought. “Quiet,” I said. “Good. Your flowers were good. They were on top of his coffin.”

  She looked pleased and said she would tell the others, and received the news that there would be a memorial service with obvious satisfaction. “It didn’t seem right, not being at his funeral, not on Friday. We had a minute’s silence here at two o’clock. I suppose you’ll think us silly.”

  “Far from it.” I was moved and let her see it. She smiled sweetly in her heavy way and went off to relay to the others and leave me floundering in the old treacle of deciding things on a basis of no knowledge.

  June whisked in looking happy with a pink glow on both cheeks and told me we were low in blue lace agate chips and snowflake obsidian and amazonite beads.

  “Order some more, same as before.”

  “Yes, right.”

  She turned and was on her way out again when I called her back and asked her if there was an alarm clock among all the gadgets. I pulled open the deep drawer and pointed downward.

  “An alarm clock?” She was doubtful and peered at the assorted black objects. “Telescopes, dictionaries, Geiger counter, calculators, spy juice ...”

  “What’s spy juice?” I asked, intrigued.

  “Oh, this.” She reached in and extracted an aerosol can. “That’s just my name for it. You squirt this stuff on anyone’s envelopes and it makes the paper transparent so you can read the private letters inside.” S
he looked at my face and laughed. “Banks have got round it by printing patterns all over the insides of their envelopes. If you spray their envelopes, all you see is the pattern.”

  “Whatever did Greville use it for?”

  “Someone gave it to him, I think. He didn’t use it much, just to check if it was worth opening things that looked like advertisements.”

  She put a plain sheet of paper over one of the letters lying on the desk and squirted a little liquid over it. The plain paper immediately became transparent so that one could read the letter through it, and then slowly went opaque again as it dried.

  “Sneaky,” she said, “isn’t it?”

  “Very.”

  She was about to replace the can in the drawer but I said to put it on top of the desk, and I brought out all the other gadgets and stood them around in plain sight. None of them, as far as I could see, had an alarm function.

  “You mentioned something about a world clock,” I said, “but there isn’t one here.”

  “I’ve a clock with an alarm in my room,” she said helpfully. “Would you like me to bring that?”

  “Um, yes, perhaps. Could you set it to four-fifteen?”

  “Sure, anything you like.”

  She vanished and returned fiddling with a tiny thing like a black credit card which turned out to be a highly versatile time-piece.

  “There you are,” she said. “Four-fifteen. P.M., I suppose you mean.” She put the clock on the desk.

  “This afternoon, yes. There’s an alarm somewhere here that goes off every day at four-twenty. I thought I might find it.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh, but that’s Mr. Franklin’s watch.”

  “Which one?” I asked.

  “He only ever wore one. It’s a computer itself, a calendar and a compass.”

  That watch, I reflected, was beside my bed in Hungerford.

  “I think,” I said, “that he may have had more than one alarm set to four-twenty.”

  The fair eyebrows lifted. “I did sometimes wonder why,” she said. “I mean, why four-twenty? If he was in the stockroom and his watch alarm went off he would stop doing whatever it was for a few moments. I sort of asked him once, but he didn’t really answer, he said it was a convenient time for communication, or something like that. I didn’t understand what he meant, but that was all right, he didn’t mean me to.”

  She spoke without resentment and with regret. I thought that Greville must have enjoyed having June around him as much as I did. All that bright intelligence and unspoiled good humor and common sense. He’d liked her enough to make puzzles for her and let her share his toys.

  “What’s this one?” I asked, picking up a small gray contraption with black ear sponges on a headband with a cord like a walkabout cassette player, but with no provision for cassettes in what might have been a holder.

  “That’s a sound-enhancer. It’s for deaf people, really, but Mr. Franklin took it away from someone who was using it to listen to a private conversation he was having with another gem merchant. In Tucson, it was. He said he was so furious at the time that he just snatched the amplifier and headphones off the man who was listening and walked away with them uttering threats about commercial espionage, and he said the man hadn’t even tried to get them back.” She paused. “Put the earphones on. You can hear everything anyone’s saying anywhere in the office. It’s pretty powerful. Uncanny, really.”

  I put on my ultralight earphones and pressed the on switch on the cigarette packet-sized amplifier, and sure enough, I could straightaway hear Annette across the hallway talking to Lily about remembering to ask Derek for time off for the dentist.

  I removed the earphones and looked at June.

  “What did you hear?” she asked. “Secrets?”

  “Not that time, no.”

  “Scary, though?”

  “As you say.”

  The sound quality was in fact excellent, astonishingly sensitive for so small a microphone and amplifier. Some of Greville’s toys, I thought, were decidedly unfriendly.

  “Mr. Franklin was telling me that there’s a voice transformer that you can fix on the telephone that can change the pitch of your voice and make a woman sound like a man. He said he thought it was excellent for women living alone so that they wouldn’t be bothered by obscene phone calls and no one would think they were alone and vulnerable.”

  I smiled. “It might disconcert a bona fide boyfriend innocently calling.”

  “Well, you’d have to warn them,” she agreed. “Mr. Franklin was very keen on women taking precautions.”

  “Mm,” I said wryly.

  “He said the jungle came into his court.”

  “Did you get a voice-changer?” I asked.

  “No. We were only talking about it just before ...” She stopped. “Well ... anyway, do you want a sandwich for lunch?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She nodded and was gone. I sighed and tried to apply myself to the tricky letters and was relieved at the interruption when the telephone rang.

  It was Elliot Trelawney on the line, asking if I would messenger round the Vaccaro notes at once if I wouldn’t mind as they had a committee meeting that afternoon.

  “Vaccaro notes,” I repeated. I’d clean forgotten about them. I couldn’t remember, for a moment, where they were.

  “You said you would send them this morning,” Trelawney said with a tinge of civilized reproach. “Do you remember?”

  “Yes.” I did, vaguely.

  Where the hell were they? Oh yes, in Greville’s sitting room. Somewhere in all that mess. Somewhere there, unless the thief had taken them.

  I apologized. I didn’t actually say I’d come near to being killed twice since I’d last spoken to him and it was playing tricks with my concentration. I said things had cropped up. I was truly sorry. I would try to get them to court by ... when?

  “The committee meets at two and Vaccaro is first on the agenda,” he said.

  “The notes are still in Greville’s house,” I replied, “but I’ll get them to you.”

  “Awfully good of you.” He was affable again. “It’s frightfully important we turn this application down.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Vaccaro, I thought uncomfortably, replacing the receiver, was alleged to have had his wanting-out cocaine-smuggling pilots murdered by shots from moving cars.

  I stared into space. There was no reason on earth for Vaccaro to shoot me, even supposing he knew I existed. I wasn’t Greville, and I had no power to stand in the way of his plans. All I had, or probably had, were the notes on his transgressions, and how could he know that? And how could he know I would be in a car between Lambourn and Hungerford on Sunday afternoon? And couldn’t the notes be gathered again by someone else besides Greville, even if they were now lost?

  I shook myself out of the horrors and went down to the yard to see if Brad was sitting in the car, which he was, reading a magazine about fishing.

  Fishing? “I didn’t know you fished,” I said.

  “I don’t.”

  End of conversation.

  Laughing inwardly I invited him to go on the journey. I gave him the simple key ring of three keys and explained about the upheaval he would find. I described the Vaccaro notes in and out of their envelope and wrote down Elliot Trelawney’s name and the address of the court.

  “Can you do it?” I asked, a shade doubtfully.

  “Yerss.” He seemed to be slighted by my tone and took the paper with the address with brusqueness.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  He nodded without looking at me and started the car, and by the time I’d reached the rear entrance to the offices he was driving out of the yard.

  Upstairs, Annette said there had just been a phone call from Antwerp and she had written down the number for me to ring back.

  Antwerp.

  With an effort I thought back to Thursday’s distant conversations. What was it I should remember about Antwerp ?

  Van E
keren. Jacob. His nephew, Hans.

  I got through to the Belgian town and was rewarded with the smooth bilingual voice telling me that he had been able now to speak to his uncle on my behalf.

  “You’re very kind,” I said.

  “I’m not sure that we will be of much help. My uncle says he knew your brother for a long time, but not very well. However, about six months ago your brother telephoned my uncle for advice about a sightholder.” He paused. “It seems your brother was considering buying diamonds and trusted my uncle’s judgment.”

  “Ah,” I said hopefully. “Did your uncle recommend anyone?”

  “Your brother suggested three or four possible names. My uncle said they were all trustworthy. He told your brother to go ahead with any of them.”

  I sighed. “Does he possibly remember who they were?”

  Hans said, “He knows one of them was Guy Servi here in Antwerp, because we ourselves do business with him often. He can’t remember the others. He doesn’t know which one your brother decided on, or if he did business at all.”

  “Well, thank you, anyway.”

  “My uncle wishes to express his condolences.”

  “Very kind.”

  He disconnected with politeness, having dictated to me carefully the name, address and telephone number of Guy Servi, the one sightholder Greville had asked about that his uncle remembered.

  I dialed the number immediately and again went through the rigmarole of being handed from voice to voice until I reached someone who had both the language and the information.

  Mr. Greville Saxony Franklin, now deceased, had been my brother? They would consult their files and call me back.

  I waited without much patience while they went through whatever security checks they considered necessary but finally, after a long hour, they came back on the line.

  What was my problem, they wanted to know.

  “My problem is that our offices were ransacked and a lot of paperwork is missing. I’ve taken over since Greville’s death, and I’m trying to sort out his affairs. Could you please tell me if it was your firm who bought diamonds for him?”