Dick Francis - Crossfire

"Yes, all the packages you've been collecting each week for the past seven months. Where's all that money?"

"I don't have it," she said.

"So who has?"

She still didn't want to tell me.

"Julie," I said. "You are leaving me no alternative but to give the picture of you in Newbury yesterday to the police."

"No," she wailed again.

"But I can only help you if you will help me," I said softly. "Otherwise, I will also have to send the other photos to Ewen." Both of us knew what the other photos showed. Set a thief to catch a thief, or, as in this case, set a blackmailer to catch a blackmailer.

"No, please." She was begging.

"Then tell me who has the money."

"Can't I pay you back in a different way?" she asked, pulling down the duvet and opening her housecoat to reveal her left breast.

"No," I said emphatically. "You cannot."

She covered herself up again.

"Julie," I said in my voice-of-command, "this is your last chance. Either you tell me now who's got the money or I will call the police." She wasn't to know that I had absolutely no intention of doing that.

"I can't tell you," she said forlornly.

"What are you frightened of?" I asked.

"Nothing."

"But you claimed it was only a game," I said."Was it him who told you that?" I paused. She gave no answer. "Did he just ask you to collect something for him from a mailbox each week?" I paused again. Again there was no answer, but she began to cry once more. "Did he tell you that you wouldn't get caught?" She nodded slightly."Only now you have been." She nodded again, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. "And you're not going to tell me who it was. That's not very clever, you know. You'll end up taking all the blame."

"I don't want to go to prison," she sobbed, echoing my mother.

"You don't have to," I said. "If you tell me who you give the money to, I am sure the courts won't send you to prison." Not for long anyway, I thought. Certainly not for the maximum fourteen years.

I could see that she still didn't want to say. Was it fear, I wondered, or some misguided sense of loyalty.

"Do you love him?" I asked her.

She looked up at me, still sobbing. But she nodded.

"Then why are you doing this?" I waved my arm at her, at the bed, and at the riding whip that still lay on the floor where she had thrown it. She had hardly acted as if she was deeply in love with someone.

"Habit, I suppose," she said quietly.

Some habit, I thought.

"Does he love you?" I asked.

"He says so," she said, but I detected some hesitancy in her voice.

"But you're not so sure?" I asked.

"No."

"Then why on earth are you protecting him?" She gave me no answer. "OK," I said at length. "Don't say that I haven't warned you." I took my cell phone from my pocket. "And I'm sure Ewen is going to find the photographs of you most interesting. Does he know about your secret blackmailing lover? Because he will soon."

I unfolded my phone and showed her as I pushed the number nine key three times in a row, the emergency number. The phone obligingly emitted a beep each time I pressed it. I then held the phone to my ear. She wasn't to know that I hadn't also pressed the connect button.

"Hello," I said into the dead phone. "Police, please." I smiled down at Julie. "This is your last chance," I said.

"All right," she shouted. "All right. I'll tell you."

"Sorry," I said again into the dead phone. "There's been a mistake. All is well now. Thank you." I folded my phone together.

"So who is it?" I asked.

She said nothing.

"Come on," I said, unfolding the phone again. "Tell me. Who do you give the blackmail money to?"

"Alex Reece," she said slowly.

"What?" I said, astounded. "The weasel accountant?"

"Alex is not a weasel," she said defensively. "He's lovely."

I thought back to the hours I had spent chained to a wall, and I couldn't agree with her. "So was it you and Alex Reece who chained me to a wall to die?" I was suddenly very angry, and it showed.

"No," she said. "Of course not. What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you leaving me to die of dehydration."

She was shocked. "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."

"Told you that he'd come back and let me go, did he?" I asked, my anger still very close to the surface.

"He didn't tell me anything of the sort," she said.

"But you did help him to kidnap me?" I shouted at her.

"Tom, stop it," she pleaded. "You're frightening me. And I really don't know what you are talking about. I have never kidnapped anyone in my life, and I've certainly never chained anyone to anything. I promise."

"Why should I believe you?" I asked. But I had seen the fear in her eyes, and I did believe her. But if she hadn't helped kidnap and chain me to a wall, who had?

Or could Alex Reece, my mother's blackmailer, really not be the same person as my would-be murderer?

There was very little else that Julie had to tell me. She collected the package from the mailbox shop in Newbury only when Alex Reece was unable to do so, and she didn't even know how much money was in it. When we finally went downstairs to her kitchen and she took the package from her handbag, she could hardly believe her eyes when I removed the two thousand pounds.

"It's no game," I told her. "Two thousand every week is no game."

"But she can afford it," Julie said, defiantly.

"No, she can't. And why would that make any difference, even if she could?"

"Alex says it's just redistributing the wealth," she said.

"And that makes it all right, does it?" She said nothing. "Suppose I just steal your brand-new BMW to 'redistribute the wealth.' Is that then OK with you? Or do you call the cops?"

"Alex says-" she started.

"I don't care what Alex says," I shouted, cutting her off. "Alex is nothing more than a common thief, and he clearly saw you coming. And the sooner you realize it, the better it will be for you. Or else you'll be in the dock with him, and then in prison."

And now, I thought, it was time for me to meet again with Mr. Alex Reece, and I had absolutely no intention of letting him see me coming.

"When and where are you meant to give this package to Reece?" I asked.

"He gets back tomorrow."

"From where?" I asked.

"Gibraltar," she said. "He went there with the Garraways on Tuesday."

So it couldn't have been him who unlocked the gates of Greystone Stables on Thursday evening.

"So when are you meant to give him the package?" I demanded.

She clearly didn't want to tell me, but I stood next to her, drumming my fingers noisily on the kitchen worktop. "He said to bring it to Newbury on Monday," she said eventually.

"Where in Newbury?"

"There's a coffee shop in Cheap Street," she said. "That's where we always meet on Friday mornings. Except this week, of course, when he was away."

Thank goodness for that, I thought.

"So are you meeting him at the coffee shop on Monday?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied. "At ten-thirty."

It was far too public a place for what I wanted to do to him.

"Change it," I said. "Get him to collect it from here."

"Oh no. He won't ever come here. He refuses to."

"So where else do you two get together?" I didn't think a cup of coffee or two in Newbury would be quite sufficient to satisfy her other cravings.

"At his place," she said, blushing slightly.

"Which is where?" I asked impatiently.

"Greenham," she said.

Greenham was a village that had almost been consumed by the ever-expanding sprawl of Newbury town. It was most famous for its common, and the U.S. cruise missiles that had been based there at the height of the Cold War. Everyone in these parts knew of Greenham Common, and remembered the peace camps erected by antinuclear protesters.