by Dick Francis
‘Thanks,’ I said, and Luke-John commented that that took us a long way, didn’t it. He turned his attention crossly to a pile of letters which had flooded in contradicting one of the football writers, and Derry began to assess the form for the big race on Boxing Day. All over the vast office space the Tuesday picking of teeth and scratching of scabs proceeded without haste, the slow week still slumbering. Tuesday was gossip day. Wednesday, planning. Thursday, writing. Friday, editing. Saturday, printing. Sunday, Blaze away. And on Mondays the worked-on columns lit real fires or wrapped fish and chips. No immortality for a journalist.
Tuesday was also Tally day. Neither at home nor at the office had a copy come for me by post. I went downstairs to the next-door magazine stand, bought one, and went back inside the Blaze.
The pictures were off-beat and rather good, the whole article well presented. One had to admit that Shankerton knew his stuff. I forgave him his liberties with my syntax.
I picked up Derry’s telephone and got through to the Tally despatch department. As expected, they didn’t send free copies to the subjects of any articles: not their policy. Would they send them? Oh sure, give us the addresses, we’ll let you have the bill. I gave them the six addresses, Huntersons, Ronceys, Sandy Willis, Collie Gibbons, Dermot Finnegan, Willie Ondroy.
Derry picked up the magazine and plodded through the article, reading at one third Luke-John’s wide angled speed.
‘Deep, deep,’ he said ironically, putting it down. ‘One hundred and fifty fathoms.’
‘Sixty will go in tax.’
‘A hard life,’ Derry sighed. ‘But if you hadn’t picked on Roncey, we would never have cottoned on to this non-starter racket.’
Nor would I have had any cracked ribs. With them, though, the worst was over. Only coughing, sneezing, laughing, and taking running jumps were sharply undesirable. I had stopped eating Elizabeth’s pills. In another week, the cracks would have knitted.
‘Be seeing you,’ I said to Derry. Luke-John waved a freckled farewell hand. Carrying Tally I went down in the lift and turned out of the front door up towards the Strand, bound for a delicatessen shop which sold Austrian apple cake which Elizabeth liked.
Bought the cake. Came out into the street. Heard a voice in my ear. Felt a sharp prick through my coat abeam the first lumbar vertebra.
‘It’s a knife, Mr Tyrone.’
I stood quite still. People could be stabbed to death in busy streets and no one noticed until the body cluttered up the fairway. Killers vanished into crowds with depressing regularity.
‘What do you want?’ I said.
‘Just stay where you are.’
Standing on the Fleet Street pavement, holding a magazine and a box of apple cake. Just stay where you are. For how long?
‘For how long?’ I said.
He didn’t answer. But he was still there, because his knife was. We stood where we were for all of two minutes. Then a black Rolls rolled to a silent halt at the kerb directly opposite where I stood. The door to the back seat swung open.
‘Get in,’ said the voice behind me.
I got in. There was a chauffeur driving, all black uniform and a stolid acne-scarred neck. The man with the knife climbed in after me and settled by my side. I glanced at him, knew I’d seen him somewhere before, didn’t know where. I put Tally and the apple cake carefully on the floor. Sat back. Went for a ride.
10
We turned north into the Aldwych and up Drury Lane to St. Giles’ Circus. I made no move towards escape, although we stopped several times at traffic lights. My companion watched me warily, and I worked on where I had seen him before and still came up with nothing. Up Tottenham Court Road. Left, right, left again. Straight into Regent’s Park and round the semicircle. Stopped smoothly at the turnstile entrance to the Zoo.
‘Inside,’ said my companion, nodding.
We stepped out of the car, and the chauffeur quietly drove off.
‘You can pay,’ I remarked.
He gave me a quick glance, tried to juggle the money out of his pocket one handed, and found he couldn’t manage it if he were to be of any use with his knife.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You pay. For us both.’
I paid, almost smiling. He was nowhere near as dangerous as he wanted to be thought.
We checked through the turnstiles. ‘Where now?’ I said.
‘Straight ahead. I’ll tell you.’
The Zoo was nearly empty. On that oily Tuesday November lunch time, not even the usual bus loads from schools. Birds shrieked mournfully from the aviary and a notice board said the vultures would be fed at three.
A man in a dark overcoat and black homburg hat was sitting on a seat looking towards the lions’ outdoor compounds. The cages were empty. The sun-loving lions were inside under the sun lamps.
‘Over there,’ said my companion, nodding.
We walked across. The man in the black homburg watched us come. Every line of his clothes and posture spoke of money, authority, and high social status, and his manner of irritating superiority would have done credit to the Foreign Office. As Dembley had said, his subject matter was wildly at variance with his appearance.
‘Did you have any trouble?’ he asked.
‘None at all,’ said the knife man smugly.
A bleak expression crept into pale grey eyes as cold as the stratosphere. ‘I am not pleased to hear it.’
The accent in his voice was definite but difficult. A thickening of some consonants, a clipping of some vowels.
‘Go away, now,’ he said to the knife man. ‘And wait.’
My nondescript abductor in his nondescript raincoat nodded briefly and walked away, and I nearly remembered where I’d seen him. Recollection floated up, but not far enough.
‘You chose to come,’ the man in the homburg said flatly.
‘Yes and no.’
He stood up. My height, but thicker. Yellowish skin, smooth except for a maze of wrinkles round his eyes. What I could see of his hair was nearly blond, and I put his age down roughly as five or six years older than myself.
‘It is cold outside. We will go in.’
I walked with him round inside the Big Cats’ House, where the strong feral smell seemed an appropriate background to the proceedings. I could guess what he wanted. Not to kill: that could have been done in Fleet Street or anywhere on the way. To extort. The only question was how.
‘You show too little surprise,’ he said.
‘We were waiting for some … reaction. Expecting it.’
‘I see.’ He was silent, working it out. A bored-looking tiger blinked at us lazily, claws sheathed inside rounded pads, tail swinging a fraction from side to side. I sneered at him. He turned and walked three paces and three paces back, round and round, going nowhere.
‘Was last week’s reaction not enough for you?’
‘Very useful,’ I commented. ‘Led us straight to Charlie Boston. So kind of you to ask. That makes you a side kick of his.’
He gave me a blazingly frosty glare. ‘I employ Boston.’
I looked down, not answering. If his pride were as easily stung as that he might give me more answers than I gave him.
‘When I heard about it I disapproved of what they did on the train. Now, I am not so sure.’ His voice was quiet again, the voice of culture, diplomacy, tact.
‘You didn’t order it, then.’
‘I did not.’
I ran my hand along the thick metal bar which kept visitors four feet away from the animals’ cages. The tiger looked tame, too gentle to kill. Too indifferent to maul, to maim, to scrape to the bone.
‘You know what we want,’ said the polite tiger by my side. ‘We want to know where you have hidden the horse.’
‘Why?’ I said.
He merely blinked at me.
I sighed. ‘What good will it do you? Do you still seriously intend to try to prevent it from running? You would be much wiser to forget the whole thing and quietly fold your tent and steal away.�
��
‘You will leave that decision entirely to me.’ Again, the pride stuck out a mile. I didn’t like it. Few enemies were as ruthless as those who feared a loss of face. I began to consider before how wide an acquaintanceship the face had to be preserved. The wider, the worse for me.
‘Where is it?’
‘Tiddely Pom?’ I said.
‘Tiddely Pom.’ He repeated the name with fastidious disgust. ‘Yes.’
‘Quite safe.’
‘Mr Tyrone, stop playing games. You cannot hide for ever from Charlie Boston.’
I was silent. The tiger yawned, showing a full set of fangs. Nasty.
‘They could do more damage next time,’ he said.
I looked at him curiously, wondering if he seriously thought I would crumble under so vague a threat. He stared straight back and was unmoved when I didn’t answer. My heart sank slightly. More to come.
‘I suspected,’ he said conversationally, ‘when I heard that you were seen at Plumpton races the day following Boston’s ill-judged attack, that physical pressure would run us into too much difficulty in your case. I see that this assessment was correct. I directed that a different lever should be found. We have, of course, found it. And you will tell us where the horse is hidden.’
He took out the black crocodile wallet and removed from it a small sheet of paper, folded once. He gave it to me. I looked. He saw the deep shock in my face and he smiled in satisfaction.
It was a photo-copy of the bill of the hotel where I had stayed with Gail. Mr and Mrs Tyrone, one double room.
‘So you see, Mr Tyrone, that if you wish to keep this interesting item of news from your wife, you must give us the address we ask.’
My mind tumbled over and over like a dry-cleaning machine and not a useful thought came out.
‘So quiet, Mr Tyrone? You really don’t like that, do you? So you will tell us. You would not want your wife to divorce you, I am sure. And you have taken such pains to deceive her that we are certain you know she would throw you out if she discovered this …’ He pointed to the bill. ‘How would she like to know that your mistress is coloured? We have other dates, too. Last Sunday week, and the Sunday before that. Your wife will be told it all. Wealthy women will not stand for this sort of thing, you know.’
I wondered numbly how much Gail had sold me for.
‘Come along, Mr Tyrone. The address.’
‘I need time,’ I said dully.
‘That’s right,’ he said calmly. ‘It takes time to sink in properly, doesn’t it? Of course you can have time. Six hours. You will telephone to us at precisely seven o’clock this evening.’ He gave me a plain white card with numbers on it. ‘Six hours is all, Mr Tyrone. After that, the information will be on its way to your wife, and you will not be able to stop it. Do you clearly understand?’
‘Yes.’ I said. The tiger sat down and shut its eyes. Sympathetic.
‘I thought you would.’ He moved away from me towards the door. ‘Seven o’clock precisely. Good day, Mr Tyrone.’
With erect easy assurance he walked straight out of the Cat House, turned a corner, and was gone. My feet seemed to have become disconnected from my body. I was going through the disjointed floating feeling of irretrievable disaster. A disbelieving part of my mind said that if I stayed quite still the nutcracker situation would go away.
It didn’t, of course. But after a while I began to think normally instead of in emotional shock waves; began to look for a hole in the net. I walked slowly away from the tiger, out into the unwholesome air and down towards the gate, all my attention turned inward. Out of the corner of my eye I half caught sight of my abductor in his raincoat standing up a side path looking into an apparently empty wire-netted compound, and when I’d gone out of the turnstile on to the road it hit me with a thump where I’d seen him before. So significant a thump that I came to a rocking halt. Much had urgently to be understood.
I had seen him at King’s Cross station while I waited for Gail. He had been standing near me: had watched her all the way from the Underground until she had reached me. Looking for a lever. Finding it.
To be watching me at King’s Cross, he must have followed me from the Blaze.
Today, he had picked me up outside the Blaze.’
I walked slowly, thinking about it. From King’s Cross in the morning I had gone on the train to Newcastle, but I hadn’t come back on my return ticket. Collie Gibbons had. I’d taken that unexpected roundabout route home, and somewhere, maybe back at Newcastle races, I’d shaken off my tail.
Someone also must either have followed Gail, or have gone straight into the hotel to see her after I had left. I baulked at thinking she would sell me out with my imprint still on our shared sheets. But maybe she would. It depended on how much they had offered her, I supposed. Five hundred would have tempted her mercenary heart too far.
No one but Gail could have got a receipt from the hotel. No one but Gail knew of the two Sunday afternoons. No one but Gail thought my wife was rich. I coldly faced the conclusion that I had meant little to her. Very little indeed. My true deserts. I had sought her out because she could dispense sex without involvement. She had been consistent. She owed me nothing at all.
I reached the corner and instinctively turned my plodding steps towards home. Not for twenty paces did I realise that this was a desperate mistake.
Gail didn’t know where I lived. She couldn’t have told them. They didn’t know the true facts about Elizabeth: they thought she was a rich woman who would divorce me. They picked me up this morning outside the Blaze … At the same weary pace I turned right at the next crossing.
If the man in the black homburg didn’t know where I lived, the Raincoat would be following to find out. Round the next corner I stopped and looked back through the thick branches of a may bush, and there he was, hurrying. I went on slowly as before, heading round imperceptibly towards Fleet Street.
The Homburg Hat had been bluffing. He couldn’t tell Elizabeth about Gail, because he didn’t know where to find her. Ex-directory telephone. My address in none of the reference books. By sheer luck I twice hadn’t led them straight to my own front door.
All the same, it couldn’t go on for ever. Even if I fooled them until after the Lamplighter, one day, somehow, they would tell her what I’d done.
First they buy you, then they blackmail, Bert Checkov had said. Buy Gail, blackmail me. All of a piece. I thought about blackmail for three long miles back to the Blaze.
Luke-John and Derry were surprised to see me back. They made no comment on a change in my appearance. I supposed the inner turmoil didn’t show.
‘Have any of the crime reporters a decent pull with the police?’ I asked.
Derry said ‘Jimmy Sienna might have. What do you want?’
‘To trace a car number.’
‘Someone bashed that ancient van of yours?’ Luke-John asked uninterestedly.
‘Hit and run,’ I agreed with distant accuracy.
‘We can always try,’ Derry said with typical helpfulness. ‘Give me the number, and I’ll go and ask him.’
I wrote down for him the registration of Homburg Hat’s Silver Wraith.
‘A London number,’ Derry remarked. ‘That might make it easier.’ He took off across the room to the Crime Desk and consulted a mountainous young man with red hair.
I strolled over to the deserted News Desk and with a veneer of unconcern over a thumping heart dialled the number Homburg Hat had told me to ring at seven. It was three-eighteen. More than two hours gone out of six.
A woman answered, sounding surprised.
‘Are you sure you have the right number?’ she said.
I read it out to her.
‘Yes, that’s right. How funny.’
‘Why is it funny?’
‘Well, this is a public phone box. I had just shut the door and was going to make a call when the phone started ringing … Are you sure you have the right number?’
‘I can’t have,’ I
said. ‘Where is this phone box, exactly?’
‘It’s one of a row in Piccadilly underground station.’
I thanked her and rang off. Not much help.
Derry came back and said Jimmy Sienna was doing what he could, good job it was Tuesday, he was bored and wanted something to pass the time with.
I remembered that I had left my copy of Tally and Elizabeth’s apple cake on the floor of the Rolls. Debated whether or not to get replacements. Decided there was no harm in it, and went out and bought them. I didn’t see Raincoat, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there, or that they hadn’t swapped him for someone I wouldn’t know.
Derry said Jimmy Sienna’s police friend was checking the registration number but would use his discretion as to whether it was suitable to pass on to the Blaze. I sat on the side of Derry’s desk and bit my nails.
Outside, the fog which had been threatening all day slowly cleared right away. It would. I thought about unobserved exits under the bright Fleet Street lights.
At five, Luke-John said he was going home, and Derry apologetically followed. I transferred myself to Jimmy Sienna’s desk and bit my nails there instead. When he too was lumbering to his feet to leave, his telephone finally rang. He listened, thanked, scribbled.
‘There you are,’ he said to me. ‘And good luck with the insurance. You’ll need it.’
I read what he’d written. The Silver Wraith’s number had been allocated to an organisation called ‘Hire Cars Lucullus.’
I left the Blaze via the roof. Tally, apple cake and mending ribs complicated the journey, but after circumnavigating ventilation shafts and dividing walls I walked sedately in through the fire door of the next-door newspaper, a popular daily in the full flood of going to press.
No one asked me what I was doing. I went down in the lift to the basement and out to the huge garage at the rear where rows of yellow vans stood ready to take the wet ink bundles off to the trains. I knew one of the drivers slightly, and asked him for a lift.