by Dick Francis
He looked at us to see if we appreciated such simple matters, and seemingly reassured, went on. ‘The manufacturer exports the barrels separately. This, he says, ensures that if either shipment is diverted – which is a euphemism for stolen – in passage, the goods will be useless. Only when both shipments have reached their destination safely can the pistols be assembled. Right?’
‘Right,’ we both said.
‘The manufacturer does all the correct paperwork. Each shipment is exported accompanied by customs dockets, each shipment is what it purports to be, everything is legal. The next step depends on how badly the customer wants the guns.’
‘How do you mean?’ Litsi said.
‘Suppose,’ Mohammed answered, enjoying himself, ‘the customer’s need is great and pressing. The manufacturer sends the guns without the barrels. The customer pays. The manufacturer sends the barrels. Good?’
We nodded.
‘The manufacturer tells the customer he must pay the price on the invoices to the manufacturing company, but he must also pay a sum into a different bank account – number and country supplied – and when that payment is safely in the manufacturer’s secret possession, then he will despatch the barrels.’
‘Simple,’ I said.
‘Of course. A widespread practice. The sort of thing which goes on the whole world over. Money up front, above board settlement, offshore funds sub rosa.’
‘Kick backs,’ I said.
‘Of course. In many countries, it is the accepted system. Trade cannot continue without it. A little commission, here and there …’ He shrugged. ‘Your manufacturer with an all-plastic reliable cheaply made handgun could pass an adequate profit through his company’s books and pocket a fortune for himself out of sight.’
He reassembled the gun dexterously and held it out to me.
‘Feel it,’ he said. ‘An all-plastic gun would be much lighter even than this.’
I took the gun, looking at its matt black surface of purposeful shape, the metal rim of the barrel showing at the business end. It certainly was remarkably light to handle, even with metal parts. All-plastic, it could be a plaything for babies.
With an inward shiver I gave it to Litsi. It was the second time in four days I’d been instructed in the use of handguns, and although I’d handled one before, I wasn’t a good shot, nor ever likely to practise. Litsi weighed the gun thoughtfully in his palm and returned it to its owner.
‘Are we talking of any manufacturer in particular?’ Mohammed asked.
‘About one who wants to be granted a licence to manufacture and export plastic guns,’ I said, ‘but who hasn’t been in the arms business before.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘In France?’
‘Yes,’ Litsi said without surprise, and I realised that Mohammed must have known the enquiry had come to him through French channels, even if it hadn’t been he who’d spoken to Litsi on the telephone.
Mohammed pursed his lips under the big moustache. ‘To get a licence, your manufacturer would have to be a person of particularly good standing. These licences, you understand, are never thrown about like confetti. He must certainly have the capability, the factory, that is to say, also the prototype, also probably definite orders, but above all he must have the good name.’
‘You’ve been extremely helpful,’ Litsi said.
Mohammed radiated bonhomie.
‘How would the manufacturer set about selling his guns? Would he advertise?’ I said.
‘Certainly. In firearms’ and trade magazines the world over. He might also engage an agent, such as myself.’ He smiled. ‘I work on commission. I am well known. People who want guns come to me and say, “What will suit us best? How much is it? How soon can you get it?”’ He spread his palms. ‘I’m a middleman. We are indispensable.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Anything else?’
I said on impulse, ‘If someone wanted a humane killer, could you supply it? A captive bolt?’
‘Obsolete,’ he said promptly. ‘In England, made by Accles and Shelvoke in Birmingham. Do you mean those? Point 405 calibre, perhaps? One point two-five grain caps?’
‘I dare say,’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I don’t deal in humane killers. They’re too specialised. It wouldn’t be worth your while to pay me to find you one. There are many around, all out of date. I would ask older veterinarians, they might be pleased to sell. You’d need a licence to own one, of course.’ He paused. ‘To be frank, gentlemen, I find it most profitable to deal with customers to whom personal licences are irrelevant.’
‘Is there anyone,’ I asked, ‘and please don’t take this as an insult, because it’s not meant that way, but is there anyone to whom you would refuse to sell guns?’
He took no offence. He said, ‘Only if I thought they couldn’t or wouldn’t pay. On moral grounds, no. I don’t ask what they want them for. If I cared, I’d be in the wrong trade. I sell the hardware, I don’t agonise over its use.’
Both Litsi and I seemed to have run out of questions. Mohammed put the pistol back into its box, where it sat neatly above its prim little rows of bullets. He replaced the lid on the box and returned the whole to the suitcase.
‘Never forget,’ he said, still smiling, ‘that attack and defence are as old as the human race. Once upon a time, I would have been selling nicely sharpened spearhead flints.’
‘Mr Mohammed,’ I said, ‘thank you very much.’
He nodded affably. Litsi stood up and shook hands again with the diamond ring, as did I, and Mohammed said if we saw his friend loitering in the passage not to worry and not to speak to him, he would return to the room when we had gone.
We paid no attention to the friend waiting by the lifts and rode down without incident to the ground floor. It wasn’t until we were in a taxi on the way back to Eaton Square that either of us spoke.
‘He was justifying himself,’ Litsi said.
‘Everyone does. It’s healthy.’
He turned his head. ‘How do you mean?’
‘The alternative is guilty despair. Self-justification may be an illusion, but it keeps you from suicide.’
‘You could self-justify suicide.’
I smiled at him sideways. ‘So you could.’
‘Nanterre,’ he said, ‘has a powerful urge to sharpen flints.’
‘Mm. Lighter, cheaper, razor-like flints.’
‘Bearing the de Brescou cachet.’
‘I had a powerful vision,’ I said, ‘of Roland shaking hands on a deal with Mohammed.’
Litsi laughed. ‘We must save him from the justification.’
‘How did you get hold of Mohammed?’ I asked.
‘One of the useful things about being a prince,’ Litsi said, ‘is that if one seriously asks, one is seldom refused. Another is that one knows and has met a great many people in useful positions. I simply set a few wheels in motion, much as you did yesterday, incidentally, with Lord Vaughnley.’ He paused. Why is a man you defeated so anxious to please you?’
‘Well … in defeating him I also saved him. Maynard Allardeck was out to take over his newspaper by fair means and definitely foul, and I gave him the means of stopping him permanently, which was a copy of that film.’
‘I do see,’ Litsi said ironically, ‘that he owes you a favour or two.’
‘Also,’ I said, ‘the boy who gambled half his inheritance away under Maynard’s influence was Hugh Vaughnley, Lord Vaughnley’s son. By threatening to publish the film, Lord Vaughnley made Maynard give the inheritance back. The inheritance, actually, was shares in the Towncrier newspaper.’
‘A spot of poetic blackmail. Your idea?’
‘Well … sort of.’
He chuckled, ‘I suppose I should disapprove. It was surely against the law.’
‘The law doesn’t always deliver justice. The victim mostly loses. Too often the law can only punish, it can’t put things right.’
‘And you think righting the victims’ wrongs is more important than anythi
ng else?’
‘Where it’s possible, the highest priority.’
‘And you’d break the law to do it?’
‘It’s too late at night for being tied into knots,’ I said, ‘and we’re back at Eaton Square.’
We went upstairs to the sitting room and, the princess and Beatrice having gone to bed, drank a brandy nightcap in relaxation. I liked Litsi more and more as a person, and wished him permanently on the other side of the globe; and looking at him looking at me, I wondered if he were possibly thinking the same thing.
‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ he said.
‘Racing at Bradbury.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Half way to Devon.’
‘I don’t know where you get the energy.’ He yawned. ‘I spent a gentle afternoon walking round Ascot racecourse, and I’m whacked.’
Large and polished, he drank his brandy, and in time we unplugged the recording telephone, carried it down to the basement, and replugged it in the hallway there. Then we went up to the ground floor and paused for a moment outside Litsi’s door.
‘Goodnight,’ I said.
‘Goodnight.’ He hesitated, and then held out his hand. I shook it. ‘Such a silly habit,’ he said with irony, ‘but what else can one do?’ He gave me a sketchy wave and went into his room, and I continued on up to see if I were still to sleep among the bamboo shoots, which it seemed I was.
I dozed on top of the bedclothes for an hour or so and then went down, out, and round the back to get the car to fetch Danielle.
I thought, as I walked quietly into the dark, deserted alley, that it really was a perfect place for an ambush.
TWELVE
The alley was a cobbled cul de sac about twenty feet wide and a hundred yards long, with a wider place at the far end for turning, the backs of tall buildings closing it all in like a canyon. Its sides were lined with garage doors, the wide garages themselves running in under the backs of the buildings, and unlike many other mews where the garages had originally been built as housing for coaches and horses, Falmouth Mews, as it was called, had no residential entrances.
By day, the mews was alive and busy, as a firm of motor mechanics occupied several of the garages, doing repairs for the surrounding neighbourhood. At night, when they’d gone home, the place was a shadowy lane of big closed doors, lit only from the windows of the buildings above.
The garage where Thomas kept the Rolls was further than halfway in. Next, beyond, was a garage belonging to the mechanics, which Thomas had persuaded them to rent temporarily to the princess, to accommodate Danielle’s car (now recovered from the menders by Thomas). My Mercedes, unhoused, was parked along outside Danielle’s garage doors, and other cars, here and there along the mews, were similarly placed. In a two-car family, one typically was in the generous sized lock-up, the second lengthways outside.
Around and behind these second cars there were a myriad hiding places.
I ought to have brought a torch, I thought. Tomorrow I would buy one. The mews could shelter a host of monsters … and Beatrice knew what time I set off each night to Chiswick.
I walked down the centre of the alley feeling my heart thud, yet I’d gone down there the night before without a tremor. The power of imagination, I thought wryly: and nothing rustled in the undergrowth, nothing pounced, the tiger wasn’t around for the goat.
The car looked exactly as I’d left it, but I checked the wiring under the bonnet and under the dashboard before switching on the ignition. I checked there was no oil leaking from under the engine, and that all the tyres were hard, and I tested the brakes with a sudden stop before turning out into the road.
Satisfied, I drove without trouble to Chiswick, collecting Danielle at two o’clock. She was tired from the long day and talked little, telling me only that they’d spent all evening on a story about snow and ice houses which she thought was a waste of time.
‘What snow and ice houses?’ I asked, more just to talk to her than from wanting to know.
‘Sculptures for a competition. Some of the guys had been out filming them in an exhibition. Like sandcastles, only made of snow and ice. Some of them were quite pretty and even had lights inside them. The guys said the place they were in was like filming in an igloo without a blanket. All good fun, I guess, but not world news.’
She yawned and fell silent, and in a short while we were back in the mews: it was always a quick journey at night, with no traffic.
‘You can’t keep coming to pick me up,’ she said, as we walked round into Eaton Square.
‘I like to.’
‘Litsi told me that the man in the hood was Henri Nanterre.’ She shivered. ‘I don’t know if it makes it better or worse. Anyway, I’m not working Friday nights right now, or Saturdays or Sundays, of course. You can sleep, Friday night.’
We let ourselves into the house with the new keys and said goodnight again on her landing. We never had slept in the same bed in that house, so there were no such memories or regrets to deal with, but I fiercely wished as I walked up one more flight that she would come up there with me: yet it had been no use suggesting it, because her goodnight kiss had again been a defence, not a promise, and had landed again any way but squarely.
Give her time … Time was an aching anxiety with no certainty ahead.
Breakfast, warmth and newspapers were to be found each day down in the morning room, whose door was across the hall from Litsi’s. I was in there about nine on that Thursday morning, drinking orange juice and checking on the day’s runners at Bradbury, when the intercom buzzed, and Dawson’s voice told me there was a call from Mr Harlow.
I picked up the outside receiver fearfully.
‘Wykeham?’
‘Oh, Kit. Look, I thought I’d better tell you, but don’t alarm the princess. We had a prowler last night.’
‘Are the horses all right? Kinley?’
‘Yes, yes. Nothing much happened. The man with the dog said his dog was restless, as if someone was moving about. He says his dog was very alert and whining softly for a good half hour, and that they patrolled the courtyards twice. They didn’t see anyone, though, and after a while the dog relaxed again. So … what do you think?’
‘I think it’s a bloody good job you’ve got the dog.’
‘Yes … it’s very worrying.’
‘What time was all this?’
‘About midnight. I’d gone to bed, of course, and the guard didn’t wake me, as nothing had happened. There’s no sign that anyone was here.’
‘Just keep on with the patrols,’ I said, ‘and make sure you don’t get the man that slept in the hay barn.’
‘No. I told them not to send him. They’ve all been very sharp, since that first night.’
We discussed the two horses he was sending to Bradbury, neither of them the princess’s. He sometimes sent his slowest horses to Bradbury in the belief that if they didn’t win there, they wouldn’t win anywhere, but he avoided it most of the time. It was a small country course, with a flat circuit of little more than a mile, easy to ride on if one stuck to the inside.
‘Give Mélisande a nice ride, now.’
‘Yes, Wykeham,’ I said. Mélisande had been before my time. ‘Do you mean Pinkeye?’
‘Well … of course.’ He cleared his throat. ‘How long are you staying in Eaton Square?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll tell you, though, when I leave.’
We disconnected and I put a slice of wholemeal bread in the toaster and thought about prowlers.
Litsi came in and poured himself some coffee. ‘I thought,’ he said conversationally, assembling a bowl of muesli and cream, ‘that I might go to the races today.’
‘To Bradbury?’ I was surprised. ‘It’s not like Ascot. It’s the bare bones of the industry. Not much comfort.’
‘Are you saying you don’t want to take me?’
‘No. Just warning you.’
He sat down at the table and watched me eat toast without butter or marmalade
.
‘Your diet’s disgusting.’
‘I’m used to it.’
He watched me swallow a pill with black coffee. ‘What are those for?’ he asked.
‘Vitamins.’
He shook his head resignedly and dug into his own hopelessly fattening concoction, and Danielle came in looking fresh and clear-eyed in a baggy white sweater.
‘Hi!’ she said to neither of us in particular. ‘I wondered if you’d be here. What are you doing today?’
‘Going to the races,’ Litsi said.
‘Are you?’ She looked at him directly, in surprise. ‘With Kit?’
‘Certainly, with Kit.’
‘Oh. Then … er … can I come?’
She looked from one of us to the other, undoubtedly seeing double pleasure.
‘In half an hour,’ I said, smiling.
‘Easy.’
So all three of us went to Bradbury races, parting in the hall from the princess who had come down to go through some secretarial work with Mrs Jenkins and who looked wistfully at our outdoor clothes, and also from Beatrice, who had come down out of nosiness.
Her sharp round gaze fastened on me. ‘Are you coming back?’ she demanded.
‘Yes, he is,’ the princess said smoothly. ‘And tomorrow we can all go to see my two runners at Sandown, isn’t that nice?’
Beatrice looked not quite sure how the one followed on the other and, in the moment of uncertainty, Litsi, Danielle and I departed.
Bradbury racecourse, we found when we arrived, was undergoing an ambitious upgrading. There were notices everywhere apologising for the inconvenience of heaps of builders’ materials and machines. A whole new grandstand was going up inside scaffolding in the cheaper ring, and most of the top tier of the members’ stand was being turned into a glassed-in viewing room with tables, chairs and refreshments. They had made provision up there also for a backward-facing viewing gallery, from which one could see the horses walk round in the parade ring.
There was a small model on a table outside the weighing room, showing what it would all be like when finished, and the racecourse executive were going around with pleased smiles accepting compliments.