by Dick Francis
I had been as drunk as that only once before, and it wasn’t the night they told me Elizabeth would die, but four days later when they said she would live. I’d downed uncountable double whiskies and I’d eaten almost nothing for a week. It was odd to remember the delirious happiness of that night because of course it hadn’t after all been the end of an agony but only the beginning of the years of pain and struggle and waste …
I found myself staring vacantly at the off-side wing mirror. If I conshen … well, concentrated … very hard, I thought bemusedly, I would be able to see what it reflected. A pointless game. It simply irritated me that I couldn’t see clearly if I wanted to. Looked obstinately at the mirror and waited for the slowed-down focussing process to come right. Finally, with a ridiculous smile of triumph, I saw what it saw down the street. Nothing much. Nothing worth the trouble. Only a silly old taxi parked by the kerb. Only a silly man in a raincoat getting into it.
Raincoat.
Raincoat.
The alarm bells rang fuzzily in my sluggish head. I opened the door and fumbled my way on to the pavement, kicking the coffee over in the process. Leaned against the side of the van and looked down towards the taxi. It was still parked. By the telephone box. Where the man in the raincoat had been ringing someone up.
They say sudden overwhelming disaster sobers you, but it isn’t true. I reeled across the pavement and up the step to Tonio’s door. Forgot all about blowing the car horn. Banged the solid knocker on his door, and called him loudly. He appeared at the top of the stairs, which led to his consulting room on the first floor and his flat above that.
‘Shut up, Ty,’ he said. ‘I won’t be long.’
‘Shome … someone’s followed us,’ I said. ‘It’s dangerous.’ He wouldn’t understand, I thought confusedly. He wouldn’t know what I was talking about. I didn’t know where to start explaining.
Elizabeth, however, must have told him enough.
‘Oh. All right, I’ll be down in one minute.’ His head withdrew round the bend in the stairs and I swivelled unsteadily to take another look down the street. Taxi still there, in the same place. Light out, not for hire. Just waiting. Waiting to follow us again if we moved. Waiting to tell Vjoersterod where we’d gone.
I shook with futile rage. Vjoersterod hadn’t after all been satisfied that Ross’s truncheon and the threats against Elizabeth had been enough to ensure a permanent state of docility. He’d left Raincoat outside to watch. Just in case. I hadn’t spotted him. Had been much too drunk to spot anything. But there he was. Right on our tail.
I’ll fix him, I thought furiously. I’ll fix him properly.
Tonio started to come down the stairs, escorting a thin, bent, elderly man whose breath rasped audibly through his open mouth. Slowly they made it to the bottom. Tonio held his arm as they came past me, and helped him over the threshold and down the step to the pavement. An almost equally elderly woman emerged from the Rover parked directly behind my van. Tonio handed him over, helped him into the car, came back to me.
‘He likes to come at night,’ he explained. ‘Not so many fumes from the traffic, and easier parking.’
‘Lord Fore … Fore something,’ I said.
‘Forlingham,’ Tonio nodded. ‘Do you know him?’
‘Used to go racing. Poor old thing.’ I looked wuzzily up the street. ‘See that taxi?’
‘Yes.’
‘Following us.’
‘Oh.’
‘So you take ’Lizabeth on to the nursing home. I’ll stop the taxi.’ A giggle got as far as the first ridiculous note. ‘What’s worse than raining cats and dogs? I’ll tell you … hailing taxis.’
‘You’re drunk,’ Tonio said. ‘Wait while I change my coat.’ He was wearing formal consultants’ dress and looked young and glamorous enough to be a pop singer. ‘Can we wait?’
I swung out a generous arm in a wide gesture. ‘The taxi,’ I said owlishly, ‘is waiting for us.’
He went to change his coat. I could hear Elizabeth’s pump thudding safely away; wondered if I ought to go and reassure her; thought that in my state I probably couldn’t. The Forling-hams started up and drove away. The taxi went on waiting.
At first I thought what I saw next was on the pink elephant level. Not really there. Couldn’t be there. But this time, no hallucination. Edging smoothly round the corner, pulling gently into the kerb, stopping behind the taxi, one Silver Wraith, property of Hire Cars Lucullus.
Raincoat emerged from the taxi and reported to the Rolls. Two minutes later he returned to the taxi, climbed in, and was driven away.
Tonio ran lightly down the stairs and came to a halt beside me in a black sweater instead of a coat.
‘Let’s get going,’ he said.
I put my hand clumsily on his arm.
‘Shee … I mean, see that Rolls down there, where the taxi was.’
‘Yes.’
‘In that,’ I said carefully, is the man who … oh God, why can’t I think … who said he would … kill … ’Lizabeth if I didn’t do what he wanted … well … he might … he might not … but can’t rish … risk it. Take her … Take her. I’ll stop … him following you.’
‘How?’ Tonio said unemotionally.
I looked at the Tower of Pisa holding the door open.
‘With that.’
‘It’s heavy,’ he objected, assessing my physical state.
‘Oh for God’s sake stop arguing,’ I said weakly. ‘I want her to go where they can’t find her. Please … please get going … go on, Tonio. And drive away slowly.’
He hesitated, but finally showed signs of moving. ‘Don’t forget,’ he said seriously, ‘that you are no use to Elizabeth dead.’
‘’Spose not.’
‘Give me your coat,’ he said suddenly. ‘Then they’ll think it’s still you in the van.’
I took off my coat obediently, and he put it on. He was shorter than me. It hung on him. Same dark head, though. They might mistake us from a distance.
Tonio gave a riproaring impression of my drunken walk, reeling right round the back of the van on his way to the driving seat. I laughed. I was that drunk.
He started the van and drove slowly away. I watched him give one artistic weave across the road and back. Highly intelligent fellow, Tonio Perelli.
Down the road, the Silver Wraith began to move. Got to stop him, I thought fuzzily. Got to stop him smashing up our lives, smashing up other people’s lives. Someone, somewhere, had to stop him. In Welbeck Street, with a doorstop. Couldn’t think clearly beyond that one fact. Had to stop him.
I bent down and picked up the Leaning Tower by its top two storeys. As Tonio had said, it was heavy. Bruised-muscle-tearingly heavy. Tomorrow its effects would be awful. Fair enough. Tomorrow would be much more awful if I put it down again … or if I missed.
The Rolls came towards me as slowly as Tonio had driven away. If I’d been sober I’d have had all the time in the world. As it was, I misjudged the pace and all but let him go cruising by.
Down one step. Don’t trip. Across the pavement. Hurry. Swung the wrought-iron Tower round with both hands as if I was throwing the hammer and forgot to leave go. Its weight and momentum pulled me after it; but although at the last moment Ross saw me and tried to swerve away, the heavy metal base crashed exactly where I wanted it. Drunks’ luck. Dead centre of the windscreen.
Scrunch went the laminated glass in a radiating star. Silver cracks streaked across Ross’s vision. The huge car swerved violently out into the centre of the road and then in towards the kerb as Ross stamped on the brakes. A screech of tyres, a scraping jolt. The Rolls stopped abruptly at a sharp angle to the pavement with its rear end inviting attention from the police. No police appeared to pay attention. A great pity. I wouldn’t have minded being scooped in for being drunk and disorderly and disturbing the peace …
I had rebounded off the smooth side of the big car and fallen in a heap in the road. The Rolls had stopped, and that was that. Job done. No clear th
ought of self-preservation spearheaded its way through the mist in my head. I didn’t remember that Tonio’s. solid front door stood open only a few yards away. Jelly had taken over from bone in my legs. Welbeck Street had started revolving around me and was taking its time over straightening out.
It was Ross who picked me up. Ross with his truncheon. I was past caring much what he did with it: and what he intended, I don’t know, because this time I was saved by the bell in the shape of a party of people in evening dress who came out into the street from a neighbouring house. They had cheerful, gay voices full of a happy evening, and they exclaimed in instant sympathy over the plight of the Rolls.
‘I say, do you need any help …?’
‘Shall we call anyone … the police, or anything?’
‘Can we give you a lift …?’
‘Or call a garage?’
‘No thank you,’ said Vjoersterod in his most charming voice. ‘So kind of you … but we can manage.’
Ross picked me to my feet and held on grimly to my arm. Vjoersterod was saying, ‘We’ve been having a little trouble with my nephew. I’m afraid he’s very drunk … still, once we get him home everything will be all right.’
They murmured sympathetically. Began to move away.
‘S’not true,’ I shouted. ‘They’ll prob’ly kill me.’ My voice sounded slurred and much too melodramatic. They paused, gave Vjoersterod a group of sympathetic, half-embarrassed smiles, and moved off up the street.
‘Hey,’ I called. ‘Take me with you.’
Useless. They didn’t even look back.
‘What now?’ Ross said to Vjoersterod.
‘We can’t leave him here. Those people would remember.’
‘In the car?’
While Vjoersterod nodded he shoved me towards the Rolls, levering with his grasp on my right arm. I swung at him with the left, and missed completely. I could see two of him, which made it difficult. Between them they more or less slung me into the back of the car and I sprawled there face down, half on and half off the seat, absolutely furious that I still could not climb out of that crippling alcoholic stupor. There was a ringing in my head like the noise of the livid green corridors of gas at the dentist’s. But no stepped-up awakening to daylight and the taste of blood. Just a continuing extraordinary sensation of being conscious and unconscious, not alternately, but both at once.
Ross knocked out a few of the worst-cracked pieces of the windscreen and started the car.
Vjoersterod, sitting beside him, leaned over the back of his seat and said casually, ‘Where to, Mr Tyrone? Which way to your wife?’
‘Round and round the mulberry bush,’ I mumbled indistinctly. ‘And goodnight to you too.’
He let go with four-letter words which were much more in keeping with his character than his usual elevated chat.
‘It’s no good,’ Ross said disgustedly. ‘He won’t tell us unless we take him to pieces and even then … if we did get it out of him … what good would it do? He’ll never write for you. Never.’
‘Why not?’ said Vjoersterod obstinately.
‘Well, look at it this way. We threatened to kill his wife. Does he knuckle under? Yes, as long as we’re there. The moment our backs are turned, first thing he does is to move her out. We follow, find her, he shifts her off again … That could go on and on. All we can do more is actually kill her, and if we do that we’ve no hold on him anyway. So he’ll never write for you, whatever we do.’
Full marks, I said to myself fatuously. Masterly summing up of the situation. Top of the class.
‘You didn’t hit him hard enough,’ Vjoersterod said accusingly, sliding out of the argument.
‘I did.’
‘You can’t have.’
‘If you remember,’ Ross said patiently, ‘Charlie Boston’s boys made no impression either. They either do or don’t respond to the treatment. This one doesn’t. Same with the threats. Same with the drink. Usually one method is enough. This time we use all three, just to make sure. And where do we get? We get nowhere at all. Just like Gunther Braunthal last year.’
Vjoersterod grunted. I wondered remotely what had become of Gunther Braunthal. Decided I didn’t really want to know.
‘I can’t afford for him to get away with it,’ Vjoersterod said.
‘No,’ Ross agreed.
‘I don’t like disposals in England,’ Vjoersterod went on in irritation. ‘Too much risk. Too many people everywhere.’
‘Leave it to me,’ Ross said calmly.
I struggled up into a sitting position, propping myself up on my hands. Looked out of the side window. Lights flashing past, all one big whirl. We weren’t going very fast, on account of the broken windscreen, but the December night air swept into the car in gusts, freezing me in my cotton shirt. In a minute, when my head cleared a fraction, I would open the door and roll out. We weren’t going very fast … If I waited for a bit of main street, with people … couldn’t wait too long. Didn’t want Ross attending to my disposal.
Vjoersterod’s head turned round my way. ‘You’ve only yourself to thank, Mr Tyrone. You shouldn’t have crossed me. You should have done what I said. I gave you your chance. You’ve been very stupid, Mr Tyrone. Very stupid indeed. And now, of course, you’ll be paying for it.’
‘Huh?’ I said.
‘He’s still drunk,’ Ross said. ‘He doesn’t understand.’
‘I’m not so sure. Look what he’s done in the past hour. He’s got a head like a bullet.’
My eyes suddenly focussed on something outside. Something I knew, that everyone knew. The Aviary in Regent’s Park, pointed angular wire opposite the main entrance to the Zoo. Been there before with Vjoersterod. He must be staying somewhere near there, I thought. Must be taking me to where he lived. It didn’t matter that it was near the Zoo. What did matter was that this was also the way to the nursing home where Tonio had taken Elizabeth. It was less than a mile ahead.
I thought for one wild horror-stricken moment that I must have told Vjoersterod where to go; then remembered and knew I hadn’t. But he was much too close. Much too close. Supposing his way home took him actually past the nursing home, and he saw the van … saw them unloading Elizabeth even … He might change his mind and kill her and leave me alive … which would be unbearable, totally and literally unbearable.
Distract his attention.
I said with as much clarity as my tongue would allow: ‘Vjoersterod and Ross. Vjoersterod and Ross.’
‘What?’ said Vjoersterod.
The shock to Ross resulted in a swerve across the road and a jolt on the brakes.
‘Go back to South Africa before the bogies get you.’
Vjoersterod had twisted round and was staring at me. Ross had his eyes too much on the mirror and not enough on the road. All the same, he started his indicator flashing for the right turn which led over the bridge across Regent’s Canal and then out of the Park. Which led straight past the nursing home, half a mile ahead.
‘I told the Stewards,’ I said desperately. ‘I told the Stewards … all about you. Last Wednesday. I told my paper … it’ll all be there on Sunday. So you’ll remember me too, you’ll remember …’
Ross turned the wheel erratically, sweeping wide to the turn. I brought my hands round with a wholly uncoordinated swing and clamped them hard over his eyes. He took both of his own hands off the wheel to try and detach them and the car rocked straight half way through the turn and headed across the road at a tangent, taking the shortest distance to the bank of the Canal.
Vjoersterod shouted frantically and pulled with all his strength at my arm, but my desperation was at least the equal of his. I hauled Ross’s head back towards me harder still, and it was their own doing that I was too drunk to care where or how the car crashed.
‘Brake,’ Vjoersterod screamed. ‘Brake, you stupid fool.’
Ross put his foot down. He couldn’t see what he was doing. He put his foot down hard. On the accelerator.
The Rolls l
eaped across the pavement and on to the grass. The bank sloped gently and then steeply down to the Canal, with saplings and young trees growing here and there. The Rolls scrunched sideways into one trunk and ricochetted into a sapling which it mowed down like corn.
Vjoersterod grabbed the wheel, but the heavy car was now pointed downhill and going too fast for any change of steering. The wheel twisted and lurched out of his hand under the jolt of the front wheel hitting another tree and slewing sideways. Branches cracked around the car and scraped and stabbed at the glossy coachwork. Vjoersterod fumbled on the glove shelf and found the truncheon, and twisted round in his seat and began hitting my arm in panic-stricken fury.
I let go of Ross. It was far too late for him both to assess the situation and do anything useful about it. He was just beginning to reach for the hand brake when the Rolls crashed down over the last sapling and fell into the Canal.
The car slewed convulsively on impact, throwing me around like a rag doll in the back and tumbling Vjoersterod and Ross together in the front. Black water immediately poured through the broken windscreen and began filling the car with lethal speed.
How to get out … I fumbled for a door handle in the sudden dark, couldn’t find one, and didn’t know what I had my feet on, didn’t know which way up I was. Didn’t know if the car was on its back or its nose … Didn’t know anything except that it was sinking.
Vjoersterod began screaming as the water rose up his body. His arm was still flailing about and knocking into me. I felt the truncheon still in his hand. Snatched it from him and hit it hard against where I thought the rear window must be. Connected only with material. Felt around wildly with my hand, found glass above my head and hit at that.
It cracked. Laminated and tough. Cursed Rolls-Royce for their standards. Hit again. Couldn’t get a decent swing. Tried again. Crunched a hole. Water came through it. Not a torrent, but too much. The window was under the surface. Not far under. Tried again. Bash, bash. Made a bigger hole but still not enough … and water fell through it and over me and from the front of the car the icy level was rising past my waist.