by Дик Фрэнсис
Patsy organised things, which she was good at.
Patsy organised me into a private hospital that specialised in burns with an elderly woman doctor able to deal with anything on a Saturday evening.
'Dear me,' she said. 'Nasty. Very painful. But you're a healthy young man. You'll heal.'
She wrapped me in bio-synthetic burn-healing artificial skin and large bandages and in her grandmotherly way enquired, 'And a couple of cracked ribs, too, wouldn't you say?'
'I would.'
She smiled. 'I'll see that you sleep.'
She efficiently drugged me out until six in the morning, when I phoned Chris's bleeper and got his return call five minutes later.
'Where the hell are you?' he demanded aggrievedly.
I told him.
'That hospital's strictly for millionaires,' he objected.
'Then get me out. Bring some clothes.'
He brought my own clothes, the ones he'd borrowed for his departure from the wake at Park Crescent three days earlier, and he arrived to find me standing by the window watching the grey dawn return to the perilous earth.
'Hospital gowns,' he said, as I turned to greet him, 'shouldn't be visited even on the damned.'
'They cut my clothes off last night.'
'Sue them.'
'Mm.'
'To be frank,' he said, almost awkwardly, 'I didn't expect you to be on your feet.'
'More comfortable,' I said succinctly. "That bus, if I may say so, was brilliant.'
He grinned. 'Yes, it was, wasn't it?'
'Go on then, tell me all.'
He dumped the carrier bag with the clothes in and came over to join me by the window, the familiar face alight with enjoyment. High cheekbones, light brown hair, bright brown eyes, natural air of impishness. Solemnity sat unnaturally upon him, and he couldn't tell me what had happened without making light-hearted jokes about it.
'Those thugs that jumped out of the bushes at you, they were the real McCoy. Brutal bastards. There was no mistaking they were the ones I'd been looking for. And to be honest, Al, I couldn't handle four of them at once on my own, any more than you could.'
I nodded, understanding.
'So,' Chris said, 'I thought the best thing to do would be to find out how big a posse would be needed to round up the outlaws, so to speak, so I shunted round in the shelter of a sort of high wooden fence that's all round that garden, until I could see through the bushes. All those lights… and there they were, your four thugs, tying you up to that tree and bashing you about, and there were three other people there too, which made seven, and I couldn't manage seven…'
'No,' I said.
'There was that big fat slob, the lawyer from your stepfather's funeral.'
'Yes,' I said.
'And bloody Surtees…'
'Yes,' I said again.
'And his wife.'
I nodded.
'So,' Chris said again, 'I had to go for reinforcements, and I ran down the road to the pub and used their telephone and told the police there was a riot going on, and those bastards told me there were a dozen riots going on every Saturday evening, and they wanted to know where exactly, so I asked the barman in the pub if he knew whose house it was with all those lights in the garden, and he said it belongs to Mr Oliver Grantchester, a very well-known lawyer, so I told the police, but they didn't show up, or anything, and to tell you the truth, mate, I was jumping up and down a bit by that time.'
So would I have been, I thought.
'So then,' Chris said, 'this bloody big coachload of fervent psychos in orange scarves invaded the bar, and I thought then, "manna dropped from heaven", so I went outside where half of them were still in the bus, and I yelled at them that there was free beer down the road at a party, and I just got into the driver's seat and drove that damned jumbo straight through Grantchester's fence into the garden.'
'It did the trick,' I said, smiling.
'Yes, but… my God…!'
'Best forgotten,' I said.
'I'll never forget it,' he said, 'and nor will you.'
'You came, though.'
'So did the bloody police, in the end. Too many of them.'
'What exactly,' I asked him contentedly, 'did you do to Oliver Grantchester?'
'Kicked him a good many times in the goolies.' Chris had been wearing, I remembered, pointed black patent shoes, sharp enough even without heels. 'And I smashed him round the face a bit with the hard knuckles. I mean, there's villains, and there's villains. Boxing gloves is one thing, but burning people… that's diabolical. I could have killed him. Lucky I didn't.'
'The police asked me,' I said, 'if I knew who had tied him up. I said how could I possibly know anything. I was lying in the pond.'
Chris laughed. 'I'll work for you any time,' he said. 'Attending to Grantchester will be extra.'
Patsy arrived silently while I was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in trousers and shirt, head hanging, feeling rotten. Of all the people I would have preferred not to see me like that, she would have been tops.
'Go away,' I said, and she went, and the next person through the door was a nurse with a syringeful of relief.
Around mid-morning I had a visit from a Detective Inspector Vernon, whom I'd met, it transpired, in the garden.
'Mrs Benchmark said you were dressed,' he remarked, not shaking hands.
'Do you know her well?'
'She's a patron of local police charities.'
'Oh.'
He joined me by the window. There were scudding clouds in the sky. A good day for mountains.
'Mrs Benchmark says that Mr Grantchester, who is another of our patrons, was instructing four other men to ill-treat you.'
'You could put it like that,' I agreed.
He was a bulky short man, going grey: never, at that rank, at that age, going to climb high in police hierarchy, but maybe a more down-to-earth and dogged investigator because of it.
'Can you tell me why?' he said.
'You'll have to ask Mr Grantchester.'
'His lower jaw's badly broken. This morning he can't speak. He's badly bruised in the abdomen, too. Doubled over. Black and blue.'
Vernon asked me again if I knew who had attacked him. I'd been in the pond, I repeated. As he knew.
I said helpfully, however, that the same four thugs had battered me earlier in Scotland, and told him where I'd given a statement to the police there. I suggested that he might also talk to Chief Inspector Reynolds of the Leicestershire police about people being burned on barbecue grills on mown grass. Vernon wrote everything down methodically. If I had recovered enough, he said, he would appreciate it if I would attend his police station the following morning. They could send an unmarked car for me, he offered.
'See you down the nick,' Chris would have said, but all I raised was 'OK'.
The day passed somehow, and the night.
Bruises blackened. The cracked ribs were all on my right side: a south-paw puncher's doing.
The burns got inspected again. No sign of infection. Very lucky, I was told, considering the unsterile nature of goldfish ponds.
On Monday morning I discharged myself from the hospital against their advice. I had too much to do, I said.
A plain-clothes police car came to transport me to Vernon's official stamping ground, where I was instantly invited to look through a window into a brightly lit room, and to say if I'd seen any of eight men at any earlier time in my life.
'No problem. Numbers one, three, seven and eight.'
'They deny they touched you.'
I gave Vernon a glowering come-off-it glare. 'You saw them yourself in that garden. You arrested them there.'
'I didn't see them in the act of committing grievous bodily harm.'
I closed my eyes briefly, took a grip on my pain-driven temper, and said, on a deep breath, 'Number three wore boxing gloves and caused the damage you can see in my face. He is left-handed. The others watched. All four assisted in compelling me to lie on that
hot grill. All four also attacked me outside my home in Scotland. I don't know their names, but I do know their faces.'
It had seemed to me on other occasions that the great British police force not only never apologised, but also never saw the need for it: however, Inspector Vernon ushered me politely into a bare interview room and offered me coffee, which in his terms came into the category of tender loving care.
'Mrs Benchmark couldn't identify them for certain,' he observed.
I asked if he had talked to Sergeant Derrick in Scotland, and to Chief Inspector Reynolds in Leicestershire. They had been off duty, he said.
Bugger weekends.
Could I use a telephone, I asked.
Who did I want to talk to? Long-distance calls were not free.
'A doctor in London,' I said.
I reached, miraculously, Keith Robbiston; alert, in a hurry.
'Could I have a handful of your wipe-out pills?' I asked.
'What's happened?' he said.
'I got bashed again.'
'More thugs?'
'The same ones.'
'Oh… as bad as before?'
'Well, actually… worse.'
'How much worse?'
'Cracked ribs and some burns.'
'Burns?'
'Nothing to do with "Auld Lang Syne".'
He laughed, and talked to Inspector Vernon, and said my mother would kill him if he failed me, and pills would be motor-biked door to door within two hours.
If nothing else, Keith Robbiston's speed impressed the Inspector. He went off to telephone outside. When the coffee came, it was in a pot, on a tray.
I sat and waited for immeasurable time, thinking. When Vernon returned I told him that number seven in the line-up had been wearing what looked like my father's gold watch, stolen from me in Scotland.
'Also,' I said, 'number seven didn't relish the burning.'
That won't excuse him.'
'No… but if you could make it worth his while, he might tell you what happened to a Norman Quorn.'
The Inspector didn't say, 'Who?' He went quietly away. A uniformed constable brought me a sandwich lunch.
My pills arrived. Things got better.
After another couple of hours Inspector Vernon came into the room, sat down opposite me across the table and told me that the following conversation was not taking place. Positively not. It was his private thanks. Understood?
'OK,' I said.
'First of all, can you identify your father's gold watch?'
'It has an engraving on the back, "Alistair from Vivienne".'
Vernon faintly smiled. In all the time I spent with him it was the nearest he came to showing pleasure.
'Number seven in the line-up may be known as Bernie,' he said. 'Bernie, as you saw, is a worried man.' He paused. 'Can I totally trust you not to repeat this? Can I rely on you?'
I said dryly, 'To the hilt,' which he didn't understand beyond the simple words, but he took them as I meant them: utterly. 'But,' I added, 'why all this cloak-and-dagger stuff?'
He spent a moment thinking, then said, 'In Britain one isn't, as you may or may not know, allowed to make bargains with people accused of crimes. One can't promise a light sentence in return for information. That's a myth. You can persuade someone unofficially to plead guilty to a lesser charge, like in this case, actual bodily harm, rather than grievous bodily harm, GBH, which is a far more serious crime, and can carry a long jail sentence. But some authorities can be perverse, and if they suspect a deal has been struck, they're perfectly capable of upsetting it. Follow?'
'I follow.'
'Also the business of what is and what isn't admissible evidence is a minefield.'
'So I've heard.'
'If you hadn't told me to ask Bernie questions about Norman Quorn I wouldn't have thought of doing it. But Bernie split wide open, and now my superiors here are patting me on the back and thinking of going to the Crown Prosecution Service - who, of course, decide whether or not a trial should take place - not with a GBH involving you, but with a charge against Oliver Grantchester for manslaughter. The manslaughter of Norman Quorn.'
'Hell's teeth.'
'At this point in such proceedings everyone gets very touchy indeed about who knows what, in order not to jeopardise any useful testimony. It wouldn't do for you to have heard Bernie's confession. It could have compromised the case. So I'll tell you what he said… but I shouldn't.'
'You're safe.'
He nevertheless looked around cautiously, as if listeners had entered unseen.
'Bernie said,' he finally managed, 'that they - the four you call the thugs - all go to a gym in London, east of the City, which Oliver Grantchester has been visiting for fitness sessions for the past few years. Grantchester goes on the treadmill, lifts a few weights and so on, but isn't a boxer.'
'No.'
'So when he wanted a rough job done, he recruited your four thugs. Bernie was willing. The up-front money was good. So was the pay-off afterwards, though the job went wrong.'
'Quorn died.'
Vernon nodded.
'Grantchester,' he said, 'told them to turn up at his house in the country. He told them the name of the village and said they would know his house because it had Christmas lights all over the driveway, and he would turn them on, even though it would be daylight and not Christmas. Grantchester arrived at his house with an older man, who was Norman Quorn, and he took him through the gate in the fence into the garden. The four thugs tied the man - whose name they didn't yet know - to the same tree as they tied you, but they didn't belt him, like you. Grantchester lit the barbecue and told Quorn he would burn him if he didn't come across with some information.'
Vernon paused, then went on. 'Bernie didn't know what the information was, and still doesn't. Quorn was shitting himself, Bernie says, and Grantchester waited until the fire was very hot, and then he threw the grill onto the grass, and told Quorn he would lie on it until he told him - Grantchester - what he wanted to know. Quorn told him he would tell him at once, but Grantchester got the four thugs to throw Quorn onto the grill anyway, and hold him there, and although he was screaming and hollering that he would tell, Grantchester wouldn't let him up, and seemed to be enjoying it, and when he did let him up, Quorn dropped down dead.'
Vernon stopped. I listened in fascinated horror.
'Bernie,' Vernon said, 'was near to puking, describing it.'
'I'm not surprised.'
'Grantchester was furious. There was this dead body on the ground and he hadn't found out what he wanted to know. He got Bernie and the others to put Quorn into the boot of his car in the garage, and in the house he made them put their hands round empty glasses, so that he had all their fingerprints, and he threatened that if they ever spoke of what they'd seen they would be in mortal trouble. Then he paid them and told them to go away, which they did. Bernie doesn't know what Grantchester did with Quorn's body.'
After a while I said, 'Did you ask Bernie about Scotland?'
Vernon nodded. 'Grantchester paid them again to go to your house and beat you up a bit until you gave them something to give to him. He didn't tell them what it was. He just told them to say, "Where is it?" to you, and you would know what it was. Bernie said you didn't give them anything, and Grantchester was furious, and told them they should have made sure you were dead before they threw you down the mountain.'
'Well, well,' I said.
'Bernie says he complained that beating up people was one thing, but murder was another, and Grantchester threatened that Bernie would do as he was told, because of his fingerprints.'
'Bernie is simple,' I said.
Vernon nodded. 'Just as well, from our point of view. Anyway, the pay was good, so when Grantchester told them to turn up again at his house the day before yesterday, they did.'
'Yes.'
'Grantchester told them that you would be coming, and that they were to tie you to the same tree, like Quorn before, only this time there was no talk of burning.'
He paused. The one with the boxing gloves is known as Jazzo. He thought you got knocked out too soon in Scotland. He told Grantchester you wouldn't like another dose. He said he wouldn't knock you out and he would guarantee you would answer any question you were asked.'
I listened without comment.
'Of course, it didn't turn out that way,' Vernon said. 'So Grantchester brought out his barbecue again, because it had worked the first time, and that's when Bernie's bottle deserted him, he says.'
'It didn't stop him sitting on my legs,' I remarked with satire.
'He didn't mention sitting on your legs.'
'You don't say.'
'He said Mrs Benchmark was there, and she was screaming and screaming to Grantchester to stop, and he wouldn't. I asked Bernie if you were screaming too.'
'That's an unfair bloody question.'
Vernon gave me a sideways glance. 'He said the only noise you made was a sort of moan.'
Charming, I thought.
'And that's when the bus crashed into the garden.' Vernon paused and looked at me straight. 'Is Bernie's account of things accurate?'
'As far as I'm concerned, yes.'
Vernon stood up and walked around the room twice, as if disturbed.
'Mrs Benchmark,' he said, 'called you her brother, but you're not, are you?'
'Her father was married to my mother. He died a week ago.'
Vernon nodded. 'Mrs Benchmark is devastated by what happened in the garden. She doesn't understand it. The poor lady is very upset.'
I again made no comment.
'She said your girlfriend was there. We released all the football supporters yesterday, but half of them agreed that the bus was driven from the pub to the garden by a young woman. Was she your girlfriend?'
I said, 'She is a friend. She was walking a few steps behind me when the thugs hustled me into the garden. They didn't notice her. She told me yesterday that when she saw what was happening she ran down to the pub and called the police. Then, it seems, the busload of happy revellers arrived, so she drove the bus to the rescue, for which I'll always be grateful.'
'In other words,' Vernon said, 'you are not going to get her into trouble.'
'Quite right.'
He gave me a long slow look. 'And you're not going to give us her name and address.'