Flying Finish

by Dick Francis

  Then he went round behind the girder and unlocked both the padlocks on my wrists. The chain fell off, but owing to a mixture of surprise and stiffened shoulders I could do nothing towards getting my hands down to undo the bicycle chain before Billy was across the bay for his gun and turning with it at the ready.

  ‘Stand up,’ he said. ‘Nice and easy. If you don’t, I’ll throw this in the petrol.’ This, in his left hand, was a cigarette lighter: a gas lighter with a top which stayed open until one snapped it shut. The flame burned bright as he flicked his thumb.

  I stood up stiffly, using the girder for support, the sick and certain knowledge of what Billy intended growing like a lump of ice in my abdomen. So much for not being afraid of death. I had changed my mind about it. Some forms were worse than others.

  Billy’s mouth curled. ‘Ask, then,’ he said.

  I didn’t. He waved his pistol slowly towards the floor. ‘Outside, matey. I’ve a little job for you to do. Careful now, we don’t want a bleeding explosion in here if we can help it.’ His face was alight with greedy enjoyment. He’d never had such fun in his life. I found it definitely irritating.

  The can was heavy as I dragged it along with slow steps to the door and through on to the grass outside. Petrol slopped continuously in small amounts through the loosened cap, leaving a highly inflammable trail in my wake. The night air was sweet and the stars were very bright. There was no moon. A gentle wind. A beautiful night for flying.

  ‘Turn right,’ Billy said behind me. ‘That’s Alf along there where the light is. Go there, and don’t take too bloody long about it, we haven’t got all night.’ He sniggered at his feeble joke.

  Alf wasn’t more than a tennis court away, but I was fed up with the petrol can before I got there. He had been digging, I found. A six or seven foot square of grass had been cut out, the turf lying along one edge in a tidy heap, and about a foot of earth had been excavated into a crumbling mound. A large torch standing on the pile of turf shone on Alf’s old face as he stood in the shallow hole. He held the spade loosely and looked at Billy enquiringly.

  ‘Go for a walk,’ Billy said loudly. Alf interpreted the meaning if not the words, nodded briefly, leaned the spade against the turf, stepped up on to the grass and shuffled away into the engulfing dark.

  ‘O.K., then,’ said Billy. ‘Get in there and start digging. Any time you want to stop, you’ve only got to ask. Just ask.’

  ‘And if I do?’

  The light shone aslant on Billy’s wide bright eyes and his jeering delighted mouth. He lifted the pistol a fraction. ‘In the head,’ he said. ‘And I’ll have bloody well beaten you, your effing bloody lordship. And it’s a pity I haven’t got the whole lot like you here as well.’

  ‘We don’t do any harm,’ I said, and wryly knew that history gave me the lie. There’d been trampling enough done in the past, and resentment could persist for centuries.

  ‘Keep both hands on the spade,’ he said. ‘You try and untie the bicycle chain, and you’ve had it.’

  He watched me dig, standing safely out of reach of any slash I might make with the spade and snapping his lighter on and off. The smell of petrol rose sharply into my nostrils as it oozed drop by drop through the leaking cap and soaked into the ground I stood on. The earth was soft and loamy, not too heavy to move, but Billy hadn’t chosen this task without careful malice aforethought. Try as I might, I found I could scarcely shift a single spadeful without in some way knocking or rubbing my arm against my side. Jersey and shirt were inadequate buffers, and every scoop took its toll. The soreness increased like a geometrical progression.

  Billy watched and waited. The hole grew slowly deeper. I told myself severely that a lot of other people had had to face far worse than this, that others before me had dug what they knew to be their own graves, that others had gone up in flames for a principle … that it was possible, even if not jolly.

  Billy began to get impatient. ‘Ask,’ he said. I threw a spadeful of earth at him in reply and very nearly ended things there and then. The gun barrel jerked up fiercely at my head, and then slowly subsided. ‘You’ll be lucky,’ he said angrily. ‘You’ll have to go down on your bloody knees.’

  When I was sure my feet must be below his line of sight I tugged my foot as far away from the petrol can as the chain would allow, and jammed the spade down hard on the six inches of links between the knots. It made less noise than I’d feared on the soft earth. I did it again and again with every spadeful, which apart from being slightly rough on my ankle produced no noticeable results.

  ‘Hurry up,’ Billy said crossly. He flicked the lighter. ‘Hurry it up.’

  Excellent advice. Time was fast running out and Yardman would be back. I jammed the spade fiercely down and with a surge of long dead hope felt the battered links begin to split. It wasn’t enough. Even if I got free of the petrol can I was still waist deep in a hole, and Billy still had his revolver: but even a little hope was better than none at all. The next slice of the spade split the chain further. The one after that severed it: but I had hit it with such force that when it broke I fell over, sprawling on hands and knees.

  ‘Stand up,’ Billy said sharply. ‘Or I’ll …’

  I wasn’t listening to him. I was acknowledging with speechless horror that the grave which was big enough for Patrick and Mike and Bob as well as myself was already occupied. My right hand had closed on a piece of cloth which flapped up through the soil. I ran my fingers along it, burrowing, and stabbed them into something sharp. I felt, and knew. A row of pins.

  I stood up slowly and stared at Billy. He advanced nearly to the edge of the hole, looked briefly down, and back at me.

  ‘Simon,’ I said lifelessly. ‘It’s … Simon.’

  Billy smiled. A cold, terrible, satisfied smile.

  There was no more time. Time was only the distance from his gun to my head, from his gas lighter to my petrol-soaked shoes and the leaking can at my feet. He’d only been waiting for me to find Simon. His hunger was almost assuaged.

  ‘Well,’ he said, his eyes wide. ‘Ask. It’s your last chance.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Ask,’ he repeated furiously. ‘You must.’

  I shook my head. A fool, I thought. I’m a bloody fool. I must be mad.

  ‘All right,’ he said, raging. ‘If I had more time you’d ask. But if you won’t …’ His voice died, and he seemed suddenly almost as afraid as I was at what he was going to do. He hesitated, half lifting the gun instead: but the moment passed and his nerve came back, renewed and pitiless.

  He flicked the lighter. The flame shot up, sharp and blazing against the night sky. He poised it just for a second so as to be sure to toss it where I couldn’t catch it on the way: and in that second I bent down, picked up the petrol can, and flung it at him. The loose cap unexpectedly came right off on the way up, and the petrol splayed out in a great glittering volatile stream, curving round to meet the flame.

  A split second for evasion before the world caught fire.

  The flying petrol burnt in the air with a great rushing noise and fell like a fountain over both the spots where Billy and I had just been standing. The can exploded with a gust of heat. The grave was a square blazing pit and flames flickered over the mound of dug out soil like brandy on an outsize plum pudding. Five gallons made dandy pyrotechnics.

  I rolled out on my back over the lip of the grave with nothing to spare before it became a crematorium, and by some blessed miracle my feet escaped becoming part of the general holocaust. More than I had hoped.

  Billy was running away screaming with his coat on fire along the left shoulder and down his arm. He was making frantic efforts to get it off but he was still clinging to his gun and this made it impossible. I had to have the gun and would have fought for it, but as I went after him I saw him drop it and stagger on, tearing at his jacket buttons in panic and agony: and my spine and scalp shuddered at the terror I had escaped.

  With weak knees I half stumbled, half r
an for the place where the revolver had fallen. The light of the flames glinted on it in the grass, and I bent and took it into my hand, the bulbous silencer heavy on the barrel and the butt a good fit in my palm.

  Billy had finally wrenched his jacket off and it lay on the ground ahead in a deserted smouldering heap. Billy himself was still on his feet and making for the hangar, running and staggering and yelling for Alf.

  I went after him.

  Alf wasn’t in the hangar. When I reached it Billy was standing with his back to me in the place where the car had been, rocking on his feet and still yelling. I stepped through the door and shut it behind me.

  Billy swung round. The left sleeve of his shirt had burned into ribbons and his skin was red and glistening underneath. He stared unbelievingly at me and then at his gun in my hand. His mouth shut with a snap; and even then he could still raise a sneer.

  ‘You won’t do it,’ he said, panting.

  ‘Earls’ sons,’ I said, ‘learn to shoot.’

  ‘Only birds.’ He was contemptuous. ‘You haven’t the guts.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Billy. You’ve been wrong about me from the start.’

  I watched the doubt creep in and grow. I watched his eyes and then his head move from side to side as he looked for escape. I watched his muscles bunch to run for it. And when I saw that he finally realised in a moment of stark astonishment that I was going to, I shot him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Cessna had full tanks. Hurriedly I pressed the master switch in the cockpit and watched the needles swing round the fuel gauges. All the instruments looked all right, the radio worked, and the latest date on the maintenance card was only three days old. As far as I could tell from a cursory check, the little aircraft was ready to fly. All the same …

  Alf and Rous-Wheeler came bursting in together through the door, both of them startled and wild looking and out of breath. Back from their little walks and alarmed by the bonfire. Alf gave an inarticulate cry and hurried over to Billy’s quiet body. Rous-Wheeler followed more slowly, not liking it.

  ‘It’s Billy,’ he said, as if stupefied. ‘Billy.’

  Alf gave no sign of hearing. They stood looking down at Billy as he lay on his back. There was a small scarlet star just left of his breastbone, and he had died with his eyes wide open, staring sightlessly up to the roof. Alf and Rous-Wheeler looked lost and bewildered.

  I climbed quickly and quietly out of the Cessna and walked round its tail. They turned after a moment or two and saw me standing there not six paces away, holding the gun. I wore black. I imagine my face was grim. I frightened them.

  Alf backed away two steps, and Rous-Wheeler three. He pointed a shaking arm at Billy.

  ‘You … you killed him.’

  ‘Yes.’ My tone gave him no comfort. ‘And you too, if you don’t do exactly as I say.’

  He had less difficulty in believing it than Billy. He made little protesting movements with his hands, and when I said, ‘Go outside. Take Alf,’ he complied without hesitation.

  Just outside the door I touched Alf’s arm, pointed back at Billy and then down to where the grave was. The flames had burnt out.

  ‘Bury Billy,’ I shouted in his ear.

  He heard me, and looked searchingly into my face. He too found no reassurance: and he was used to doing what I said. Accepting the situation with only a shade more dumb resignation than usual he went slowly back across the concrete. I watched him shut the glazing eyes with rough humane fingers, and remembered the cup of coffee he’d given me when I badly needed it. He had nothing to fear from me as long as he stayed down by the grave. He picked Billy up, swung him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, and carried him out and away across the grass, a sturdy old horseman who should never have got caught up in this sort of thing. Any more than I should.

  I stretched an arm back into the hangar and pulled down the lever which controlled the runway lights. At each end of the long strip the four powerful beams sprang out, and in that glow Alf could see where he was going and what he was going to do.

  That Cessna, I thought, glancing at it, probably had a range of about six or seven hundred miles …

  ‘You,’ I said abruptly to Rous-Wheeler. ‘Go and get into the plane we came in. Go up the forward steps, back through the galley, right back through the cabin, and sit down on those seats. Understand?’

  ‘What …?’ He began nervously.

  ‘Hurry up.’

  He gave me another frightened glance and set off to the plane, a lumbering grey shape behind the runway lights. I walked three steps behind him and unsympathetically watched him stumble in his fear.

  ‘Hurry.’ I said again, and he stumbled faster. The thought of the Citroen returning was like a devil on my tail. I was just not going to be taken again. There were five bullets left in the gun. The first for Rous-Wheeler, the next for Yardman, and after that … he would have Giuseppe with him, and at least two others. Not nice.

  ‘Faster.’ I said.

  Rous-Wheeler reached the ladder and stumbled up it, tripping over half the steps. He went awkwardly back through the plane just as I had said and flopped down panting on one of the seats. I followed him. Someone, Alf I supposed, had given the mares some hay, and one of the bales from Billy’s now dismantled wall had been clipped open and split. The binding wire from it lay handy on the flattened aft box. I picked it up to use on Rous-Wheeler, but there was nothing on the comfortable upholstered double seat I could tie him to.

  He made no fuss when I bound his wrists together. His obvious fear made him flabby and malleable, and his eyes looked as if he could feel shock waves from the violence and urgency which were flowing through me.

  ‘Kneel down,’ I said, pointing to the floor in front of the seats. He didn’t like that. Too undignified.

  ‘Kneel,’ I said. ‘I haven’t time to bother about your comfort.’

  With a pained expression that at any other time would have been funny he lowered himself on to his knees. I slid the ends of the wire through one of the holes in the seat anchorages on the floor, and fastened him there securely by the wrists.

  ‘I ss … say,’ he protested.

  ‘You’re bloody lucky to be alive at all, so shut up.’

  He shut up. His hands were tied only a couple of feet away from the blanket which covered Patrick. He stared at the quiet mound and he didn’t like that either. Serve him right, I thought callously.

  ‘What … what are you going to do?’ he said.

  I didn’t answer. I went back up the cabin, looking at the way they’d re-stored the cargo. Aft box still flat. The walls of the next one, dismantled, had been stacked in the starboard alley. On the peat tray now stood a giant packing case six feet long, four feet wide, and nearly five feet tall. Chains ran over it in both directions, fastening it down to the anchorages. It had rope handles all the way round, and Yardman had said something about using a block and tackle, but all the same manoeuvring it into its present position must have been a tricky sweaty business. However, for the sake of forwarding the passage of this uninformative crate Yardman had also been prepared to steal a plane and kill three airmen. Those who had no right to it wanted it very badly.

  I went up further. The four mares were unconcernedly munching at full haynets and paid me scant attention. Through the galley and into the space behind the cockpit, where Mike’s body still lay. Burial had been the last of the jobs. Uncompleted.

  The luggage compartment held four more crates, the size of tea chests. They all had rope handles and no markings.

  Beyond them was the open door. It represented to me a last chance of not going through with what I had in mind. Yardman hadn’t yet come back, and the Cessna was ready. If I took it, with its radio and full tanks, I would undoubtedly be safe, and Yardman’s transport business would be busted. But he’d still have the D.C.4 and the packing cases …

  Abruptly I pulled up the telescopic ladder and shut the door with a clang. Too much trouble, I told myself,
to change my mind now. I’d have to take Rous-Wheeler all the way back to the Cessna or shoot him, and neither course appealed. But the situation I found in the cockpit nearly defeated me before I began.

  Billy had shot Bob as he sat, through the back of the head. The upper part of him had fallen forward over the wheel, the rest held firmly in the seat by the still fastened safety strap across his thighs. In the ordinary way even stepping into the co-pilot’s seat in the cramped space was awkward enough, and lifting a dead man out of it bodily was beyond me. Blacking my mind to the sapping thought that this was a man I had known, and considering him solely as an object which spelled disaster to me if I didn’t move it I undid the seat belt, heaved the pathetic jack-knifed figure round far enough to clear his feet and head from the controls, and fastened the belt tight across him again in his new position, his back half towards me.

  With the same icy concentration I sat in Patrick’s place and set about starting the plane. Switches. Dozens of switches everywhere: On the control panel, on the roof, in the left side wall and in the bank of throttles on my right. Each labelled in small metal letters, and too many having to be set correctly before the plane would fly.

  Patrick had shown me how. Quite different from doing it. I pared the pre-starting checks down to the barest minimum; fuel supply on, mixture rich, propeller revs maximum, throttle just open, brakes on, trimmer central, direction indicator synchronised with the compass.

  My boats were burned with the first ignition switch, because it worked. The three bladed propeller swung and ground and the inner port engine roared into action with an earsplitting clatter. Throttle too far open. Gently I pulled the long lever with its black knob down until the engine fell back to warming up speed, and after that in quick succession and with increasing urgency I started the other three. Last, I switched on the headlights: Alf might not have heard the engines, but he would certainly see the lights. It couldn’t be helped. I had to be able to see where I was going. With luck he wouldn’t know what to do, and do nothing.