by Dick Francis
I lit the log fire to cheer things up a bit, ate some grilled chicken and telephoned to Wykeham.
He’d had another wearing day. The insurers had been questioning his security, the detectives had annoyed all the lads, and the dog-patrol man had been found asleep in the hay barn by the head lad when he arrived at six in the morning. Wykeham had informed Weatherbys, the Jockey Club secretariat, of the horses’ deaths (a routine obligation) and all afternoon his telephone had been driving him mad as one newspaper after another had called up to ask if it were true that they had been murdered.
Finally, he said, the princess had rung to say she’d cancelled her visit to her friends at Newton Abbot and wouldn’t be there to watch her horses, and please would Wykeham tell Kit that yes, she did very definitely want him to return to Eaton Square as soon as he could.
‘What’s going on there?’ Wykeham asked, without pressing interest. ‘She sounds unlike herself.’
‘Her sister-in-law arrived unexpectedly.’
‘Oh?’ He didn’t pursue it. ‘Well done, today, with the winners.’
‘Thanks.’ I waited, expecting to hear that Dusty had said I’d fallen off, but I’d misjudged the old crosspatch. ‘Dusty says Torquil went down flat in the fifth. Were you all right?’
‘Not a scratch,’ I said, much surprised.
‘Good. About tomorrow, then …”
We discussed the next day’s runners and eventually said goodnight, and he called me Kit, which made it twice in a row. I would know things were returning to normal, I thought, when he went back to Paul.
I played back all the messages on my answering machine and found most of them echoes of Wykeham’s: a whole column of pressmen wanted to know my feelings on the loss of Cotopaxi. Just as well, I thought, that I hadn’t been at home to express them.
There was an enquiry from a Devon trainer as to whether I could ride two for him at Newton Abbot, his own jockey having been hurt: I looked up the horses in the form book, telephoned to accept, and peacefully went to bed.
The telephone woke me at approximately two-thirty.
‘Hello,’ I said sleepily, squinting at the unwelcome news on my watch. ‘Who is it?’
‘Kit …’
I came wide awake in a split second. It was Danielle’s voice, very distressed.
‘Where are you?’ I said.
‘I … oh … I need … I’m in a shop.’
‘Did you say shock or shop?’ I said.
‘Oh …’ she gulped audibly. ‘Both, I suppose.’
‘What’s happened? Take a deep breath. Tell me slowly.’
‘I left the studio … ten after two … started to drive home.’ She stopped. She always finished at two, when the studio closed and all the American news-gatherers left for the night, and drove her own small Ford car back to the garage behind Eaton Square where Thomas kept the Rolls.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘A car seemed to be following me. Then I had a flat tyre. I had to stop. I …’ she swallowed again. ‘I found … I had two tyres almost flat. And the other car stopped and a man got out… He was wearing … a hood.’
Jesus Christ, I thought.
‘I ran,’ Danielle said, audibly trying to stifle near-hysteria. ‘He started after me … I ran and ran … I saw this shop … it’s open all night … and I ran in here. But the man here doesn’t like it. He let me use his telephone … but I’ve no money, I left my purse and my coat in the car … and I don’t know … what to do …’
‘What you do,’ I said, ‘is stay there until I reach you.’
‘Yes, but … the man here doesn’t want me to … and somewhere outside … I can’t… I simply can’t go outside. I feel so stupid … but I’m frightened.’
‘Yes, you’ve good reason to be. I’ll come at once. You let me talk to the man in the shop … and don’t worry, I’ll be there in under an hour.’
She said, ‘All right,’ faintly, and in a few seconds an Asian-sounding voice said, ‘Hello?’
‘My young lady,’ I said, ‘needs your help. You keep her warm, give her a hot drink, make her comfortable until I arrive, and I’ll pay you.’
‘Cash,’ he said economically.
‘Yes, cash.’
‘Fifty pounds,’ he said.
‘For that,’ I said, ‘you look after her very well indeed. And now tell me your address. How do I find you?’
He gave me directions and told me earnestly he would look after the lady, I wasn’t to hurry, I would be sure to bring the cash, wouldn’t I, and I assured him again that yes, I would.
I dressed, swept some spare clothes into a bag, locked the house and broke the speed limit to London. After a couple of wrong turns and an enquiry from an unwilling night-walker I found the street and the row of dark shops, with one brightly lit near the end next to the Underground station. I stopped with a jerk on double yellow lines and went inside.
The place was a narrow mini-supermarket with a take-away hot-food glass cabinet near the door, the whole of the rest of the space packed to the ceiling with provisions smelling subtly of spices. Two customers were choosing hot food, a third further down the shop looking at tins, but there was no sign of Danielle.
The Asian man serving, smoothly round of face, plump of body and drugged as to eye, gave me a brief glance as I hurried in, and went back methodically to picking out the customers’ chosen chapatis and samosas with tongs.
‘The young lady,’ I said.
He behaved as if he hadn’t heard, wrapping the purchases, adding up the cost.
‘Where is she?’ I insisted, and might as well as not have spoken. The Asian talked to his customers in a language I’d never heard; took their money, gave them change, waited until they had left.
‘Where is she?’ I said forcefully, growing anxious.
‘Give me the money.’ His eyes spoke eloquently of his need for cash. ‘She is safe.’
‘Where?’
‘At the back of the shop, behind the door. Give me the money.’
I gave him what he’d asked, left him counting it, and fairly sprinted where he’d pointed. I reached a back wall stocked from floor to ceiling like the rest, and began to feel acutely angry before I saw that the door, too, was covered with racks.
In a small space surrounded by packets of coffee I spotted the door knob; grasped it, turned it, pushed the door inwards. It led into a room piled with more stock in brown cardboard boxes, leaving only a small space for a desk, a chair and a single bar electric fire.
Danielle was sitting on the chair, huddled into a big dark masculine overcoat, trying to keep warm by the inadequate heater and staring blindly into space.
‘Hi,’ I said.
The look of unplumbable relief on her face was as good, I supposed, as a passionate kiss, which actually I didn’t get. She stood though, and slid into my arms as if coming home, and I held her tight, not feeling her much through the thick coat, smelling the musky eastern fragrance of the dark material, smoothing Danielle’s hair and breathing deeply with content.
She slowly disengaged herself after a while, though I could have stood there for hours.
‘You must think I’m stupid,’ she said shakily, sniffing and wiping her eyes on her knuckles. ‘A real fool.’
‘Far from it.’
‘I’m so glad to see you.’ It was heartfelt: true.
‘Come on, then,’ I said, much comforted. ‘We’d best be going.’
She slid out of the oversize overcoat and laid it on the chair, shivering a little in her shirt, sweater and trousers. The chill of shock, I thought, because neither the shop nor store-room was actively cold.
‘There’s a rug in my car,’ I said. ‘And then we’ll go and fetch your coat.’
She nodded, and we went up through the shop towards the street door.
‘Thank you,’ I said to the Asian.
‘Did you switch the fire off?’ he demanded.
I shook my head. He looked displeased.
‘G
oodnight,’ I said, and Danielle said, ‘Thank you.’
He looked at us with the drugged eyes and didn’t answer, and after a few seconds we left him and crossed the pavement to the car.
‘He wasn’t bad, really,’ Danielle said, as I draped the rug round her shoulders. ‘He gave me some coffee from that hot counter, and offered me some food, but I couldn’t eat it.’
I closed her into the passenger seat, went round and slid behind the wheel, beside her.
‘Where’s your car?’ I said.
She had difficulty in remembering, which wasn’t surprising considering the panic of her flight.
‘I’d gone only two miles, I guess, when I realised I had a flat. I pulled in off the highway. If we go back towards the studio … but I can’t remember …’
‘We’ll find it,’ I said. ‘You can’t have run far.’ And we found it in fact quite easily, its rear pointing towards us down a seedy side-turning as we coasted along.
I left her in my car while I took a look. Her coat and handbag had vanished, also the windscreen wipers and the radio. Remarkable, I thought, that the car itself was still there, despite the two flat tyres, as the keys were still in the ignition. I took them out, locked the doors and went back to Danielle with the bad news and the good.
‘You still have a car,’ I said, ‘but it could be stripped or gone by morning if we don’t get it towed.’
She nodded numbly and stayed in the car again when I found an all-night garage with a tow-truck, and negotiated with the incumbents. Sure, they said lazily, accepting the car’s keys, registration number and whereabouts. Leave it to them, they would fetch it at once, fix the tyres, replace the windscreen wipers, and it would be ready for collection in the morning.
It wasn’t until we were again on our way towards Eaton Square that Danielle said any more about her would-be attacker, and then it was unwillingly.
‘Do you think he was a rapist?’ she said tautly.
‘It seems … well … likely, I’m afraid.’ I tried to picture him. ‘What sort of clothes was he wearing? What sort of hood?’
‘I didn’t notice,’ she began, and then realised that she remembered more than she’d thought. ‘A suit. An ordinary man’s suit. And polished leather shoes. The light shone on them, and I could hear them tapping on the ground … how odd. The hood was … a woollen hat, dark, pulled down, with holes for eyes and mouth.’
‘Horrible,’ I said with sympathy.
‘I think he was waiting for me to leave the studio.’ She shuddered. ‘Do you think he fixed my tyres?’
‘Two flat at once is no coincidence.’
‘What do you think I should do?’
‘Tell the police?’ I suggested.
‘No, certainly not. They think any young woman driving alone in the middle of the night is asking for trouble.’
‘All the same …’
‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘that a friend of a friend of mine – an American – was driving along in part of London, like I was, doing absolutely nothing wrong, when she was stopped by the police and taken to the police station? They stripped her! Can you believe it? They said they were looking for drugs or bombs … there was a terrorist scare on, and they thought she had a suspicious accent. It took her ages to get people to wake up and say she was truly going home after working late. She’s been a wreck ever since, and gave up her job.’
‘It does seem unbelievable,’ I agreed.
‘It happened,’ she said.
‘They’re not all like that,’ I said mildly.
She decided nevertheless to tell only her colleagues in the studio, saying they should step up security round the parked cars.
‘I’m sorry I made you come so far,’ she said, not particularly sounding it. ‘But I didn’t want the police, and otherwise it meant waking Dawson and getting someone there to come for me. I felt shattered … I knew you would come.’
‘Mm.’
She sighed, some of the tension at last leaving her voice. ‘There wasn’t much in my purse, that’s one good thing. Just lipstick and a hair-brush, not much money. No credit cards. I never take much with me to work.’
I nodded. ‘What about keys?’
‘Oh …’
‘The front door key of Eaton Square?’
‘Yes,’ she said, dismayed. ‘And the key to the back door of the studios, where the staff go in. I’ll have to tell them in the morning, when the day shift gets there.’
‘Did you have anything with you that had the Eaton Square address on it?’
‘No,’ she said positively. ‘I cleaned the whole car out this afternoon … I did it really to evade Aunt Beatrice … and I changed purses. I had no letters or anything like that with me.’
‘That’s something,’ I said.
‘You’re so practical.’
‘I would tell the police,’ I said neutrally.
‘No. You don’t understand, you’re not female.’
There seemed to be no reply to that, so I pressed her no further. I drove back to Eaton Square as I’d done so many times before, driving her home from work, and it wasn’t until we were nearly there that I wondered whether the hooded man could possibly have been not a rapist at all, but Henri Nanterre.
On the face of it, it didn’t seem possible, but coming at that particular time it had to be considered. If it in fact were part of the campaign of harassment and accidents, then we would hear about it, as about the horses also: no act of terrorism was complete without the boasting afterwards.
Danielle had never seen Henri Nanterre and wouldn’t have known his general shape, weight, and way of moving. Conversely, nor would he have turned up in Chiswick when he had no reason to know she was in England, even if he knew of her actual existence.
‘You’re very quiet all of a sudden,’ Danielle said, sounding no longer frightened but consequently sleepy. ‘What are you thinking?’
I glanced at her softening face, seeing the taut lines of strain smoothing out. Three or four times we’d known what the other was thinking, in the sort of telepathic jump that sometimes occurred between people who knew each other well, but not on a regular basis, and not lately. I was glad at that moment that she couldn’t read my thoughts, not knowing if she would be more or less worried if she did.
‘Tomorrow evening,’ I said, ‘get Thomas to drive you to work. He’s not going to Devon now … and I’ll fetch you.’
‘But if you’re riding in Devon …’
‘I’ll go down and back on the train,’ I said. ‘I should be back in Eaton Square by nine.’
‘All right, I guess … thanks.’
I parked my car where hers stood usually, and took my bag from the boot, and with Danielle swathed in the rug like an oversized shawl, we walked round to the front door in Eaton Square.
‘I hope you have a key?’ she said, yawning. ‘We’ll look like gypsies if you don’t.’
‘Dawson lent me one.’
‘Good … I’m asleep on my feet.’
We went indoors and quietly up the stairs. When we reached her floor, I put my arms round her, rug and all, again holding her close, but there was no clinging relief-driven response this time, and when I bent to kiss her, it was her cheek she offered, not her mouth.
‘Goodnight,’ I said. ‘Will you be all right?’
‘Yes.’ She would hardly meet my eyes. ‘I truly thank you.’
‘You owe me nothing,’ I said.
‘Oh …’ She looked at me briefly, as if confused. Then she dropped the rug which she had been holding close round her like a defensive stockade, put her arms round my neck and gave me a quick kiss at least reminiscent of better times, even if it landed somewhere on my chin.
‘Goodnight,’ she said lightly, and walked away along the passage to her room without looking back, and I picked up my bag and the rug and went on upstairs feeling a good deal better than the day before. I opened the door of the bamboo room half expecting to find Beatrice snoring blissfully between my sheets,
but the linen was smooth and vacant, and I plummeted there into dreamland for a good two hours.
NINE
Around seven-fifteen in the morning, I knocked on Litsi’s groundfloor door until a sleepy voice said, ‘Who is it?’
‘Kit.’
A short silence, then, ‘Come in, then.’
The room was dark, Litsi leaning up on one elbow and stretching to switch on a bedside lamp. The light revealed a large oak-panelled room with a four-poster bed, brocade curtaining and ancestral paintings: very suitable, I thought, for Litsi.
‘I thought you weren’t here,’ he said, rubbing his eyes with his fingers. ‘What day is it?’
‘Tuesday. I came back here before five this morning, and that’s what I’ve come to tell you about.’
He went from leaning to sitting up straight while he listened.
‘Do you think it really was Nanterre?’ he said when I’d finished.
‘If it was, perhaps he wanted only to catch her and frighten her … tell her what could happen if her uncle didn’t give in. She must have surprised whoever it was by running so fast. She wears trainers to work … running shoes, really … and she’s always pretty fit. Maybe he simply couldn’t catch her.’
‘If he meant a warning he couldn’t deliver, we’ll hear from him.’
‘Yes. And about the horses, too.’
‘He’s unhinged,’ Litsi said, ‘if it was him.’
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I thought I’d better warn you.’
I told him about Danielle’s handbag being missing. ‘If it was an ordinary thief, it would be all right because there would be no connecting address, but if Nanterre took it, he now has a front door key to this house. Do you think you could explain to the princess, and get the lock changed? I’m off to Devon to ride a few races, and I’ll be here again this evening. I’m picking Danielle up when she finishes work, but if I miss the train back, will you make sure she gets home safely? If you need a car, you can borrow mine.’
‘Just don’t miss the train.’
‘No.’
His eyebrows rose and fell. ‘Give me the keys, then,’ he said.
I gave them to him. ‘See if you can find out,’ I said, ‘if Danielle told her Aunt Beatrice where she works and at what time she leaves.’