by Dick Francis
‘Hi,’ he said, seeing Roberta. A very gloomy greeting.
He sat down in the armchair and looked at Roberta standing balanced on the crutches with one knee bent. His thoughts were not where his eyes were.
‘What is it, then?’ I said. ‘Out with it.’
‘This letter… came yesterday,’ he said heavily.
‘It was obvious last night that something was the matter.’
‘I couldn’t show it to you then, not straight out of hospital. And I don’t know what to do, Kelly pal, sure enough I don’t.’
‘Let’s see, then.’
He handed me the paper worriedly. I opened it up. A brief letter from the racing authorities. Bang bang, both barrels.
‘Dear Sir,
It has been brought to our attention that a person warned off Newmarket Heath is living as a tenant in your stable yard. This is contrary to the regulations, and you should remedy the situation as soon as possible. It is perhaps not necessary to warn you that your own training licence might have to be reviewed if you should fail to take the steps suggested.’
‘Sods,’ Tony said forcefully. ‘Bloody sods.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Derek from the garage came while Roberta was clearing away the lunch she had stayed to cook. When he rang the door bell she went downstairs to let him in.
He walked hesitatingly across the sitting-room looking behind him to see if his shoes were leaving dirty marks and out of habit wiped his hands down his trousers before taking the one I held out to him.
‘Sit down,’ I suggested. He looked doubtfully at the khaki velvet armchair, but in the end lowered himself gingerly into it. He looked perfectly clean. No grease, no filthy overalls, just ordinary slacks and sports jacket. He wasn’t used to it.
‘You all right?’ he said.
‘Absolutely.’
‘If you’d been in that car…’ He looked sick at what he was thinking, and his vivid imagination was one of the things which made him a reliable mechanic. He didn’t want death on his conscience. Young, fair haired, diffident, he kept most of his brains in his fingertips and outside of cars used the upstairs lot sparingly.
‘You’ve never seen nothing like it,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t know it was a car, you wouldn’t straight. It’s all in little bits… I mean, like, bits of metal that don’t look as if they were ever part of anything. Honestly. It’s like twisted shreds of stuff.’ He swallowed. ‘They’ve got it collected up in tin baths.’
‘The engine too?’
‘Yeah. Smashed into fragments. Still, I had a look. Took me a long time, though, because everything is all jumbled up, and honest you can’t tell what anything used to be. I mean, I didn’t think it was a bit of exhaust manifold that I’d picked up, not at first, because it wasn’t any shape that you’d think of.’
‘You found something?’
‘Here.’ He fished in his trouser pocket. ‘This is what it was all like. This is a bit of the exhaust manifold. Cast iron, that is, you see, so of course it was brittle, sort of, and it had shattered into bits. I mean, it wasn’t sort of crumpled up like all the aluminium and so on. It wasn’t bent, see, it was just in bits.’
‘Yes, I do see,’ I said. The anxious lines on his forehead dissolved when he saw that he had managed to tell me what he meant. He came over and put the small black jagged edged lump into my hands. Heavy for its size. About three inches long. Asymmetrically curved. Part of the side wall of a huge tube.
‘As far as I can make out, see,’ Derek said, pointing, ‘It came from about where the manifold narrows down to the exhaust pipe, but really it might be anywhere. There were quite a few bits of manifold, when I looked, but I couldn’t see the bit that fits into this, and I dare say it’s still rusting away somewhere along the railway line. Anyway, see this bit here…’ He pointed a stubby finger at a round dent in part of one edge. ‘That’s one side of a hole that was bored in the manifold wall. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s quite a few holes might have been drilled through the wall. I mean, some people have exhaust gas temperature gauges stuck into the manifold… and other gauges too. Things like that. Only, see, there weren’t no gauges in your manifold, now were there?’
‘You tell me,’ I said.
‘There weren’t, then. Now you couldn’t really say what the hole was for, not for certain you couldn’t. But as far as I know, there weren’t any holes in your manifold last time I did the service.’
I fingered the little semi-circular dent. No more than a quarter of an inch across.
‘However did you spot something so small?’ I asked.
‘Dunno, really. Mind you, I was there a good couple of hours, picking through those tubs. Did it methodical, like. Since you were paying for it and all.’
‘Is it a big job… drilling a hole this size through an exhaust manifold. Would it take long?’
‘Half a minute, I should think.’
‘With an electric drill?’ I asked.
‘Oh yeah, sure. If you did it with a hand drill, then it would take five minutes. Say nearer eight or ten, to be on the safe side.’
‘How many people carry drills around in their tool kits?’
‘That, see, it depends on the chap. Now some of them carry all sorts of stuff in their cars. Proper work benches, some of them. And then others, the tool kit stays strapped up fresh from the factory until the car’s dropping to bits.’
‘People do carry drills, then?’
‘Oh yeah, sure. Quite a lot do. Hand drills, of course. You wouldn’t have much call for an electric drill, not in a tool kit, not unless you did a lot of repairs, like, say on racing cars.’
He went and sat down again. Carefully, as before.
‘If someone drilled a hole this size through the manifold, what would happen?’
‘Well, honestly, nothing much. You’d get exhaust gas out through the engine, and you’d hear a good lot of noise, and you might smell it in the car, but it would sort of blow away, see, it wouldn’t come in through the heater. To do that, like I said before, you’d have to put some tubing into the hole there and then stick the other end of the tubing into the heater. Mind you that would be pretty easy, you wouldn’t need a drill. Some heater tubes are really only cardboard.’
‘Rubber tubing from one end to the other?’ I suggested.
He shook his head. ‘No. Have to be metal. Exhaust gas, that’s very hot. It’d melt anything but metal.’
‘Do you think anyone could do all that on the spur of the moment?’
He put his head on one side, considering. ‘Oh sure, yeah. If he’d got a drill. Like, say the first other thing he needs is some tubing. Well, he’s only got to look around for that. Lots lying about, if you look. The other day, I used a bit of a kiddy’s old cycle frame, just the job it was. Right, you get the tube ready first and then you fit a drill nearest the right size, to match. And Bob’s your uncle.’
‘How long, from start to finish?’
‘Fixing the manifold to the heater? Say, from scratch, including maybe having to cast around for a bit of tube, well, at the outside half an hour. A quarter, if you had something all ready handy. Only the drilling would take any time, see? The rest would be like stealing candy from a baby.’
Roberta appeared in the doorway shrugging herself into the stripy coat. Derek stood up awkwardly and didn’t know where to put his hands. She smiled at him sweetly and unseeingly and said to me, ‘Is there anything else you want, Kelly?’
‘No. Thank you very much.’
‘Think nothing of it. I’ll see… I might come over again tomorrow.’
‘Fine,’ I said.
‘Right.’
She nodded, smiled temperately, and made her usual poised exit. Derek’s comment approached, ‘Cor.’
‘I suppose you didn’t see any likely pieces of tube in the wreckage?’ I asked.
‘Huh?’ He tore his eyes away with an effort from the direction Roberta had gone. ‘No, like, it was real bad. Lots of bits, you
couldn’t have told what they were. I never seen anything like it. Sure, I seen crashes, stands to reason. Different, this was.’ He shivered.
‘Did you have any difficulty with being allowed to search?’
‘No, none. They didn’t seem all that interested in what I did. Just said to help myself. ’Course, I told them it was my car, like. I mean, that I looked after it. Mind you, they were right casual about it anyway, because when I came away they were letting this other chap have a good look too.’
‘Which other chap?’
‘Some fellow. Said he was an insurance man, but he didn’t have a notebook.’
I felt like saying Huh? too. I said, ‘Notebook?’
‘Yeah, sure, insurance men, they’re always crawling round our place looking at wrecks and never one without a notebook. Write down every blessed detail, they do. But this other chap, looking at your car, he didn’t have any notebook.’
‘What did he look like?’
He thought.
‘That’s difficult, see. He didn’t look like anything, really. Medium, sort of. Not young and not old really either. A nobody sort of person, really.’
‘Did he wear sun glasses?’
‘No. He had a hat on, but I don’t know if he had ordinary glasses. I can’t actually remember. I didn’t notice that much.’
‘Was he looking through the wreckage as if he knew what he wanted?’
‘Uh… don’t know, really. Strikes me he was a bit flummoxed, like, finding it was all in such small bits.’
‘He didn’t have a girl with him?’
‘Nope.’ He brightened. ‘He came in a Volkswagen, an oldish grey one.’
‘Thousands of those about,’ I said.
‘Oh yeah, sure. Er… was this chap important?’
‘Only if he was looking for what you found.’
He worked it out.
‘Cripes,’ he said.
Lord Ferth arrived twenty minutes after he’d said, which meant that I’d been hopping round the flat on my crutches for half an hour, unable to keep still.
He stood in the doorway into the sitting-room holding a briefcase and bowler hat in one hand and unbuttoning his short fawn overcoat with the other.
‘Well, Hughes,’ he said. ‘Good afternoon.’
‘Good afternoon, my Lord.’
He came right in, shut the door behind him, and put his hat and case on the oak chest beside him.
‘How’s the leg?’
‘Stagnating,’ I said. ‘Can I get you some tea… coffee… or a drink?’
‘Nothing just now…’ He laid his coat on the chest and picked up the briefcase again, looking around him with the air of surprise I was used to in visitors. I offered him the green armchair with a small table beside it. He asked where I was going to sit.
‘I’ll stand,’ I said. ‘Sitting’s difficult.’
‘But you don’t stand all day!’
‘No. Lie on my bed, mostly.’
‘Then we’ll talk in your bedroom.’
We went through the door at the end of the sitting-room and this time he murmured aloud.
‘Whose flat is this?’ he asked.
‘Mine.’
He glanced at my face, hearing the dryness in my voice. ‘You resent surprise?’
‘It amuses me.’
‘Hughes… it’s a pity you didn’t join the Civil Service. You’d have gone all the way.’
I laughed. ‘There’s still time… Do they take in warned off jockeys at the Administrative Grade?’
‘So you can joke about it?’
‘It’s taken nine days. But yes, just about.’
He gave me a long straight assessing look, and there was a subtle shift somewhere in both his manner to me and in basic approach, and when I shortly understood what it was I was shaken, because he was taking me on level terms, level in power and understanding and experience: and I wasn’t level.
Few men in his position would have thought that this course was viable, let alone chosen it. I understood the compliment. He saw, too, that I did, and I knew later that had there not been this fundamental change of ground, this cancellation of the Steward-jockey relationship, he would not have said to me all that he did. It wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been in my flat.
He sat down in the khaki velvet armchair, putting the briefcase carefully on the floor beside him. I took the weight off my crutches and let the bed springs have a go.
‘I went to see Lord Gowery,’ he said neutrally. ‘And I can see no reason not to tell you straight away that you and Dexter Cranfield will have your warning off rescinded within the next few days.’
‘Do you mean it?’ I exclaimed. I tried to sit up. The plaster intervened.
Lord Ferth smiled. ‘As I see it, there is no alternative. There will be a quiet notice to that effect in next week’s Calendar.’
‘That is, of course,’ I said, ‘All you need to tell me.’
He looked at me levelly. ‘True. But not all you want to know.’
‘No.’
‘No one has a better right… and yet you will have to use your discretion about whether you tell Dexter Cranfield.’
‘All right.’
He sighed, reached down to open the briefcase, and pulled out a neat little tape recorder.
‘I did try to ignore your suggestion. Succeeded, too, for a while. However…’ He paused, his fingers hovering over the controls. ‘This conversation took place late on Monday afternoon, in the sitting-room of Lord Gowery’s flat near Sloane Square. We were alone… you will see that we were alone. He knew, though, that I was making a recording.’ He still hesitated. ‘Compassion. That’s what you need. I believe you have it.’
‘Don’t con me,’ I said.
He grimaced. ‘Very well.’
The recording began with the selfconscious platitudes customary in front of microphones, especially when no one wants to take the first dive into the deep end. Lord Ferth had leapt, eventually.
‘Norman, I explained why we must take a good look at this Enquiry.’
‘Hughes is being ridiculous. Not only ridiculous, but downright slanderous. I don’t understand why you should take him seriously.’ Gowery sounded impatient.
‘We have to, even if only to shut him up.’ Lord Ferth looked across the room, his hot eyes gleaming ironically. The recording ploughed on, his voice like honey. ‘You know perfectly well, Norman, that it will be better all round if we can show there is nothing whatever in these allegations he is spreading around. Then we can emphatically confirm the suspension and squash all the rumours.’
Subtle stuff. Lord Gowery’s voice grew easier, assured now that Ferth was still an ally. As perhaps he was. ‘I do assure you Wykeham, that if I had not sincerely believed that Hughes and Dexter Cranfield were guilty, I would not have warned them off.’
There was something odd about that. Both Ferth and Gowery had thought so too, as there were several seconds of silence on the tape.
‘But you do still believe it?’ Ferth said eventually.
‘Of course.’ He was emphatic. ‘Of course I do.’ Much too emphatic.
‘Then… er… taking one of Hughes’ questions first… How did it come about that Newtonnards was called to the Enquiry?’
‘I was informed that Cranfield had backed Cherry Pie with him.’
‘Yes… but who informed you?’
Gowery didn’t reply.
Ferth’s voice came next, with absolutely no pressure in it.
‘Um… Have you any idea how we managed to show the wrong film of Hughes racing at Reading?’
Gowery was on much surer ground. ‘My fault, I’m afraid. I asked the Secretaries to write off for the film of the last race. Didn’t realise there were seven races. Careless of me, I’ll admit. But of course, as it was the wrong film, it was irrelevant to the case.’
‘Er…’ said Lord Ferth. But he hadn’t yet been ready to argue. He cleared his throat and said, ‘I suppose you thought it would be relevant
to see how Hughes had ridden Squelch last time out.’
After another long pause, Gowery said, ‘Yes.’
‘But in the event we didn’t show it’
‘No.’
‘Would we have shown it if, after having sent for it, we found that the Reading race bore out entirely Hughes’ assertion that he rode Squelch in the Lemonftzz in exactly the same way as he always did?’
More silence. Then he said quietly, ‘Yes,’ and he sounded very troubled.
‘Hughes asked at the Enquiry that we should show the right film,’ Ferth said.
‘I’m sure he didn’t.’
‘I’ve been reading the transcript. Norman, I’ve been reading and re-reading that transcript all week-end and frankly, that is why I’m here. Hughes did in fact suggest that we should show the right film, presumably because he knew it would support his case…’
‘Hughes was guilty!’ Gowery broke in vehemently. ‘Hughes was guilty. I had no option but to warn him off.’
Lord Ferth pressed the stop button on the tape recorder.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘What you think of that last statement?’
‘I think,’ I said slowly, ‘That he did believe it. Both from that statement and from what I remember of the Enquiry. His certainty that day shook me. He believed me guilty so strongly that he was stone deaf to anything which looked even remotely likely to assault his opinion.’
‘That was your impression?’
‘Overpowering,’ I said.
Lord Ferth took his lower lip between his teeth and shook his head, but I gathered it was at the general situation, not at me. He pressed the start button again. His voice came through, precise, carefully without emotion, gentle as vaseline.
‘Norman, about the composition of the Enquiry… the members of the Disciplinary Committee who sat with you… What guided you to choose Andrew Tring and old Plimborne?’
‘What guided me?’ He sounded astonished at the question. ‘I haven’t any idea.’
‘I wish you’d cast back.’
‘I can’t see that it has any relevance… but let’s see… I suppose I had Tring in my mind anyway, as I’m in the middle of some business negotiations with him. And Plimborne… well, I just saw him snoozing away in the Club. I was talking to him later in the lobby, and I asked him just on the spur of the moment to sit with me. I don’t see the point of your asking.’