by Dick Francis
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘I was asked to give you a message, Mr York.’
So he did know who I was. And he had not this minute discovered it from my wallet, which contained only money, stamps, and a cheque book in plain view. One or two things with my name on were in a flapped pocket, but he had not looked there.
‘What makes you think my name is York?’ I asked, trying a shot at outraged surprise. It was no good.
‘Mr Alan York, sir, was scheduled to drive along this road on his way from Kempton Park to the Cotswolds at approximately five fifteen p.m. on Saturday, February 27th, in a dark blue Lotus Elite, licence number KAB 890. I must thank you, sir, for making it easy for me to intercept you. You could go a month on the road without seeing another car like yours. I’d have had a job flagging you down if you’d been driving, say, a Ford or an Austin.’ His tone was still conversational.
‘Get on with the message. I’m listening,’ I said.
‘Deeds speak louder than words,’ said the driver, mildly.
He came close and unbuttoned my jacket, looking at me steadily with wide eyes, daring me to kick him. I didn’t move. He untied my tie, opened the neck of my shirt. We looked into each other’s eyes. I hoped mine were as expressionless as his. I let my arms go slack in the grip of the two men behind me, and felt them relax their hold slightly.
The driver stepped back and looked towards the fourth man, who had been leaning against the horse-box wall, silently. ‘He’s all yours, Sonny. Deliver the message,’ he said.
Sonny was young, with sideboards. But I didn’t look at his face, particularly. I looked at his hands.
He had a knife. The hilt lay in his palm, and his fingers were lightly curled round it, not gripping. The way a professional holds a knife.
There was nothing of the driver’s mock deference in Sonny’s manner. He was enjoying his work. He stood squarely in front of me and put the point of his short blade on my breastbone. It scarcely pricked, so light was his touch.
Oh bloody hell, I thought. My father would not be at all pleased to receive ransom messages reinforced by pleas from me for my own safety. I would never be able to live it down. And I was sure that this little melodrama was intended to soften me up into a suitably frightened state of mind. I sagged against the post, as if to shrink away from the knife. Sonny’s grim mouth smiled thinly in a sneer.
Using the post as a springboard I thrust forwards and sideways as strongly as I knew how, bringing my knee up hard into Sonny’s groin and tearing my arms out of the slackened grasp of the men behind me.
I leaped for the door and got it open. In the small area of the horse-box I had no chance, but I thought that if only I could get out into the thicket I might be able to deal with them. I had learned a nasty trick or two about fighting from my cousin, who lived in Kenya and had taken lessons from the Mau Mau.
But I didn’t make it.
I tried to swing out with the door, but it was stiff and slow. The driver grabbed my ankle. I shook his hand off, but the vital second had gone. The two men who had held me clutched at my clothes. Through the open door I glimpsed the man who had been leading the horse up and down. He was looking enquiringly at the horse-box. I had forgotten about him.
I lashed out furiously with feet, fists, and elbows, but they were too much for me. I ended up where I began, against the matting-padded post with my arms pulled backwards. This time the two men were none too gentle. They slammed me back against the post hard and put their weight on my arms. I felt the wrench in my shoulders and down my chest to my stomach. I shut my teeth.
Sonny, clutching his abdomen, was half sitting, half kneeling in the corner. He watched with satisfaction.
‘That hurt the bastard, Peaky,’ he said. ‘Do it again.’
Peaky and his mate did it again.
Sonny laughed. Not a nice laugh.
A little more pressure and I should have some torn ligaments and a dislocated shoulder. There didn’t seem to be much I could do about it.
The driver shut the horse-box door and picked the knife up from the floor, where it had fallen. He was not looking quite so calm as before. My fist had connected with his nose and blood was trickling out of it. But his temper was intact.
‘Stop it. Stop it, Peaky,’ he said. ‘The boss said we weren’t to hurt him. He made quite a point of it. You wouldn’t want the boss to know you disobeyed him, would you?’ There was a threat in his voice.
The tension on my arms slowly relaxed. Sonny’s smile turned to a sullen scowl. It appeared I had the boss to thank for something, even if not much.
‘Now, Mr York,’ said the driver reproachfully, wiping his nose on a blue handkerchief, ‘all that was quite unnecessary. We only want to give you a message.’
‘I don’t like listening with knives sticking into me,’ I said.
The driver sighed. ‘Yes, sir, I can see that was a mistake. It was meant for you to understand that the warning is serious, see. Take no notice of it, and you’ll find you’re in real trouble. I’m telling you, real trouble.’
‘What warning?’ I said, mystified.
‘You’re to lay off asking questions about Major Davidson,’ he said.
‘What?’ I goggled at him. It was so unexpected. ‘I haven’t been asking questions about Major Davidson,’ I said weakly.
‘I don’t know about that, I’m sure,’ said the driver, mopping away, ‘but that’s the message, and you’d do well to take heed of it, sir. I’m telling you for your own good. The boss don’t like people poking into his affairs.’
‘Who is the boss?’ I asked.
‘Now, sir, you know better than to ask questions like that. Sonny, go and tell Bert we’ve finished here. We’ll load up the horse.’
Sonny stood up with a groan and went over to the door, his hand still pressed to his groin. He yelled something out of the window.
‘Stand still, Mr York, and you’ll come to no harm,’ said the driver, his politeness unimpaired. He mopped, and looked at his handkerchief to see if his nose was still bleeding. It was. I took his advice, and stood still. He opened the door and climbed down out of the horse-box. A little time passed during which Sonny and I exchanged glares and nobody said anything.
Then there was the noise of bolts and clips being undone, and the side of the horse-box which formed the ramp was lowered to the ground. The fifth man, Bert, led the horse up the ramp and fastened him into the nearest stall. The driver raised the ramp again and fastened it.
I used the brief period while what was left of the daylight flooded into the box, to twist my head round as far as I could and take a clear look at Peaky. I saw what I expected, but it only increased my bewilderment.
The driver climbed into the cab, shut the door, and started the engine.
Bert said, Take him over to the door.’ I needed no urging.
The horse-box began to move. Bert opened the door. Peaky and his pal let go of my arms and Bert gave me a push. I hit the ground just as the accelerating horse-box pulled out of the lay-by on to the deserted road. It was as well I had had a good deal of practice at falling off horses. Instinctively, I landed on my shoulder and rolled.
I sat on the ground and looked after the speeding horse-box. The number plate was mostly obscured by thick dust, but I had time to see the registration letters. They wore APX.
The Lotus still stood in the lay-by. I picked myself up, dusted the worst off my suit, and walked over to it. I intended to follow the horse-box and see where it went. But the thorough driver had seen to it that I should not. The car would not start. Opening the bonnet to see how much damage had been done, I found that three of the four sparking plugs had been taken out. They lay in a neat row on the battery. It took me ten minutes to replace them, because my hands were trembling.
By then I had no hope of catching the horse-box or of finding anyone who had noticed its direction. I got back into the car and fastened the neck of my shirt. My tie was missing altogether.
I
took out the A.A. book and looked up the registration letters PX. For what it was worth, the horse-box was originally registered in West Sussex. If the number plate were genuine, it might be possible to discover the present owner. For a quarter of an hour I sat and thought. Then I started the car, turned it, and drove back into Maidenhead.
The town was bright with lights, though nearly all the shops were shut. The door of the police station was open wide. I went in and asked for Inspector Lodge.
‘He isn’t in yet,’ said the policeman at the enquiry desk, glancing up at the clock. It was ten past six. ‘He’ll be here any minute, if you care to wait, sir.’
‘He isn’t in yet? Do you mean he is just starting work for the day?’
‘Yes, sir. He’s on late turn. Busy evening here, Saturdays.’ he grinned. ‘Dance halls, pubs, and car crashes.’ I smiled back, sat down on the bench and waited. After five minutes Lodge came in quickly, peeling off his coat.
‘Evening, Small, what’s new?’ he said to the policeman at the enquiry desk.
‘Gentleman here to see you, sir,’ said Small, gesturing to me. ‘He’s only been waiting a few minutes.’
Lodge turned round. I stood up. ‘Good evening,’ I said.
‘Good evening, Mr York.’ Lodge gave me a piercing look but showed no surprise at seeing me. His eyes fell to the neck of my shirt, and his eyebrows rose a fraction. But he said only, ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Are you very busy?’ I asked. ‘If you have time, I would like to tell you… how I lost my tie.’ In mid-sentence I funked saying baldly that I had been manhandled. As it was, Small looked at me curiously, clearly thinking me mad to come into a police station to tell an inspector how I lost my tie.
But Lodge, whose perception was acute, said, ‘Come into my office, Mr York.’ He led the way. He hung up his hat and coat on pegs and lit the gas fire, but its glowing bars couldn’t make a cosy place of the austere, square, filing-cabineted little room.
Lodge sat behind his tidy desk, and I, as before, faced him. He offered me a cigarette and gave me a light. As the smoke went comfortingly down into my lungs, I was wondering where to begin.
I said, ‘Have you got any further with the Major Davidson business since the day before yesterday?’
‘No, I’m afraid not. It no longer has any sort of priority with us. Yesterday we discussed it in conference and consulted your Senior Steward, Sir Creswell Stampe. In view of the verdict at the inquest, your story is considered, on the whole, to be the product of a youthful and overheated imagination. No one but you saw any wire. The grooves on the posts of the fence may or may not have been caused by wire, but there is no indication when they were made. I understand it is fairly common practice for groundsmen to raise a wire across a fence so that members of the riding public shall not try to jump it and make holes in the birch.’ He paused, then went on, ‘Sir Creswell says the view of the National Hunt Committee, several of whom he has talked to on the telephone, is that you made a mistake. If you saw any wire, they contend, it must have belonged to the groundsman.’
‘Have they asked him?’ I said.
Lodge sighed. ‘The head groundsman says he didn’t leave any wire on the course, but one of his staff is old and vague, and can’t be sure that he didn’t.’
We looked at each other in glum silence.
‘And what do you think, yourself?’ I asked finally.
Lodge said, ‘I believe you saw the wire and that Major Davidson was brought down by it. There is one fact which I personally consider significant enough to justify this belief. It is that the attendant who gave his name as Thomas Cook did not collect the pay due to him for two days’ work. In my experience there has to be a very good reason for a workman to ignore his pay packet.’ He smiled sardonically.
‘I could give you another fact to prove that Major Davidson’s fall was no accident,’ I said, ‘but you’ll have to take my word for it again. No evidence.’
‘Go on.’
‘Someone has been to great pains to tell me not to ask awkward questions about it.’ I told him about the events in and around the horse-box, and added, ‘And how’s that for the product of a youthful and overheated imagination?’
‘When did all this happen?’ asked Lodge.
‘About an hour ago.’
‘And what were you doing between then and the time you arrived here?’
‘Thinking,’ I said, stubbing out my cigarette.
‘Oh,’ said Lodge. ‘Well, have you given any thought to the improbabilities in your story? My chief isn’t going to like them when I make my report.’
‘Don’t make it then,’ I said, smiling. ‘But I suppose the most glaring improbability is that five men, a horse, and a horse-box should all be employed to give a warning which might much more easily have been sent by post.’
‘That certainly indicates an organisation of unusual size,’ said Lodge, with a touch of irony.
‘There are at least ten of them,’ I said. ‘One or two are probably in hospital, though.’
Lodge sat up straighter.
‘What do you mean? How do you know?’
‘The five men who stopped me today are all taxi-drivers. Either from London or Brighton, but I don’t know which. I saw them at Plumpton races three days ago, fighting a pitched battle against a rival gang.’
‘What?’ Lodge exclaimed. Then he said, ‘Yes, I saw a paragraph about it in a newspaper. Do you recognise them positively?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sonny had his knife out at Plumpton, too, but he was pinned down by a big heavy man, and didn’t get much chance to use it. But I saw his face quite clearly. Peaky you couldn’t mistake, with that dark widow’s peak growing down his forehead. The other three were all rounded up into the same group at Plumpton. I was waiting to give someone a lift, and I had a long time to look at the taxi-drivers after the fight was over. Bert, the man with the horse, had a black eye today, and the man who held my right arm, whose name I don’t know, he had some sticking plaster on his forehead. But why were they all free? The last I saw of them, they were bound for the cells, I thought, for disturbing the peace.’
‘They may be out on bail, or else they were let off with a fine. I don’t know, without seeing a report,’ said Lodge. ‘Now why, in your opinion, were so many sent to warn you?’
‘Rather flattering, sending five, when you come to think of it,’ I grinned. ‘Perhaps the taxi business is in the doldrums and they hadn’t anything else to do. Or else it was, like the driver said, to ram the point home.’
‘Which brings me,’ said Lodge, ‘to another improbability. Why, if you were faced with a knife at your chest, did you throw yourself forward? Wasn’t that asking for trouble?’
‘I wouldn’t have been so keen if he’d held the point a bit higher up; but it was against my breast bone. You’d need a hammer to get a knife through that. I reckoned that I’d knock it out of Sonny’s hand rather than into me, and that’s what happened.’
‘Didn’t it cut you at all?’
‘Not much,’ I said.
‘Let’s see,’ said Lodge, getting up and coming round the desk.
I opened my shirt again. Between the second and third buttons there was a shallow cut an inch or so long in the skin over my breastbone. Some blood had clotted on the cut and there was a dried rusty trail down my chest where a few drops had run. My shirt was spotted here and there. Nothing. I hadn’t felt it much.
Lodge sat down again. I buttoned my shirt.
‘Now,’ he said, picking up his pen and biting the end of it. ‘What questions have you been asking about Major Davidson, and of whom have you asked them?’
‘That is really what is most surprising about the whole affair,’ I said. ‘I’ve hardly asked anything of anybody. And I certainly haven’t had any useful answers.’
‘But you must have touched a nerve somewhere,’ said Lodge. He took a sheet of paper out of the drawer. ‘Tell me the names of everyone with whom you have discussed the wire.�
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‘With you,’ I said promptly. ‘And with Mrs Davidson. And everyone at the inquest heard me say I’d found it.’
‘But I noticed that the inquest wasn’t properly reported in the papers. There was no mention of wire in the press,’ he said. ‘And anyone seeing you at the inquest wouldn’t have got the impression that you were hell-bent on unravelling the mystery. You took the verdict very calmly and not at all as if you disagreed with it.’
‘Thanks to your warning me in advance what to expect,’ I said.
Lodge’s list looked short and unsatisfactory on the large sheet of paper.
‘Anyone else?’ he said.
‘Oh… a friend… a Miss Ellery-Penn. I told her last night.’
‘Girl friend?’ he asked bluntly. He wrote her down.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Anyone else?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’ he asked, pushing the paper away.
‘I reckoned you and Sir Creswell needed a clear field. I thought I might mess things up for you if I asked too many questions. Put people on their guard, ready with their answers—that sort of thing. But it seems, from what you’ve said about dropping your enquiries, that I might as well have gone ahead.’ I spoke a little bitterly.
Lodge looked at me carefully. ‘You resent being considered youthful and hot-headed,’ he said.
‘Twenty-four isn’t young,’ I said. ‘I seem to remember England once had a Prime Minister of that age. He didn’t do so badly.’
‘That’s irrelevant, and you know it,’ he said.
I grinned.
Lodge said, ‘What do you propose to do now?’
‘Go home,’ I said, looking at my watch.
‘No, I meant about Major Davidson.’
‘Ask as many questions as I can think of,’ I said promptly.
‘In spite of the warning?’
‘Because of it,’ I said. ‘The very fact that five men were sent to warn me off means that there is a good deal to find out. Bill Davidson was a good friend, you know. I can’t tamely let whoever caused his death get away with it.’ I thought a moment. ‘First, I’ll find out who owns the taxis which Peaky and Co. drive.’