Dick Francis - Shattered

I said to the racecourse trophy chairman, with a lightness I wasn’t altogether feeling, “Could you tell me what you mean?”

With disillusion, he did. “As I understand it, on the day he died, Martin had possession of a videotape on which were recorded medical secrets of practically unlimited value. Medical secrets stolen by a Doctor Force, who had been known to Martin Stukely for some time. You yourself were to keep that tape hidden.”

I took a steadying breath and asked who had told him all that. “Private investigators working for the laboratory from where the secrets were stolen interviewed all sorts of people at Cheltenham.” He looked at me curiously. “I also heard from Marigold that you had been attacked by a pack of thugs outside your shop. The bookmakers had all heard it was the doing of Rose Payne, the racecourse valet’s daughter, and she has a bit of a reputation for being violent. One of the bookmakers, a man called Norman Osprey, who looks a bit like Elvis Presley, he was boasting about the hammering they gave you. But it seems you didn’t give them any tapes anyway.”

He waited for me to comment, but I didn’t have much to say.

He smiled. “Apparently, the valet thought that what he’d given you was a tape you yourself had filmed, explaining how to make a striking necklace, a copy of an antique. It seems that all the jockeys, and Ed Payne as well, had seen both the necklace and its how-to-make-it instruction tape in the changing room. Ed Payne told his daughter Rose that he had given you a tape and so she tried to find it by stealing every tape she could lay her hands on, including by attacking Martin Stukely’s family with knock-out gas.”

“Rose herself?” I asked.

Kenneth Trubshaw didn’t know. That was also the end of his up-to-dateness, except that, in the Cheltenham Stewards’ opinion, Martin Stukely had very likely known that the scientific knowledge he’d promised to hide had been stolen from a research lab.

“And at present,” I said with regret, “all those tapes are still missing. Whoever has them isn’t telling.”

“I’m told you yourself are looking for them.”

“Who tells you all these things?” I really wanted to hear, but it seemed to be a matter of general supposition and logic.

“I’ll tell you something myself,” I said, and I gave him Victor’s latest purple home-life news.

“Doctor Force and Rose deserve each other.” He laughed in his throat. “That will do nicely for tomorrow morning’s committee.” He walked with me to Jim’s car. “Give my warmest regards to Marigold. I’ll be in touch.”

He shook my hand with sincerity.

He said, “Find those tapes and clear Stukely’s name.”

So simple, I thought.

When I disembarked at Bon-Bon’s house, she herself with Daniel by her side came out to meet us.

“There’s a message from Catherine Dodd for you,” Bon-Bon said to me. “She has the evening free. She wants you to go to your house, if you can.”

I thanked her, but she, like me and also Tom, was watching with fascination the flash of understanding between Victor, fifteen, and the four-years-younger Daniel. Alienation seemed more normal for that age bracket, but those two discovered immediately that they spoke computer language with a depth that none of the rest of us could reach. Victor climbed out of Jim’s car and went indoors with Daniel as if the two of them were twins. Cyber twins, perhaps.

Bon-Bon would keep Victor for the night, instead of Tom, she said, amused, following the boys into the house, and Jim drove Tom, the dogs and myself back to Tom’s house first, and then on to mine.

“I never thought we’d come back in one piece.” Tom left me with that bright thought and a positively jaunty wave, and I would have cast him as Blackmask Four if I hadn’t twice owed him a rescue from crippling injury, and perhaps my life.

Catherine’s motorcycle graced its customary spot outside the kitchen door, and she herself came out when she heard Jim’s car arrive. There was no difficulty in interpreting her reaction to my return, and Jim drove away with a vast smile (and double cash), promising his service again, “day or night.”

Coming home to Catherine had become an event to look forward to. I’d never asked her to take me to see her own living space, and when I did, that evening, she laughed and said, “I’ll take you there tomorrow. It’s better by daylight.”

She asked me how my day had been, and I asked about hers. She frowned over Victor’s troubles and was encouraging about a glass trophy horse. It was all very married, I thought, and we’d only known each other for three weeks.

“Tell me about the police,” I said, as we squashed companionably into one of the oversize chairs.

“What about them?” She was slightly defensive always about her job, but this time I especially wanted to know.

“The priorities,” I said. “For instance, on that New Year’s Day, you in your plainish clothes and the hobo lying on the doorstep, you were both there to frighten thieves off, weren’t you, not to arrest them?”

She shifted in my arms. “Not really,” she replied. “We like to get our man.”

I knew better than to tease her. “Tell me about your partner, the hobo.”

“He’s not really a hobo,” she replied, smiling. “His name is Paul Cratchet. He’s a big guy but misleadingly gentle. Paul’s a good detective. Many a villain has been surprised by his hand on their collar. He’s known as Pernickety Paul at the station because he is so fussy over his reports.”

Smiling, I inquired plainly, “What events get most police attention?”

“Accidental deaths, and murder, of course. Especially murder of a police officer. The murder of a fellow police officer, I’d say, gets people going most.”

“But after that?”

“Any physical assault.”

“Especially of a police officer?”

She twisted her neck and searched my purposefully straight face for levity. Satisfied, she nodded. “Especially of a police officer.”

“And next?”

“Aggravated theft. That’s when a weapon is used, or a severe physical threat, or violence as a means to achieve theft. It’s called robbery.”

“And then?”

“Actually, and in general,” Catherine said, “if someone’s bleeding, then police officers will come at once. If goods are stolen, but no one’s hurt, the officers will probably come in the morning after the nine-one-one call. If cars are stolen, the police will take the registration number and promise to inform the owner if the car is found.”

“And that’s that? That’s all for cars?”

“More or less. It depends. They’re usually found burnt out.”

“And who,” I asked mildly, “would I go to if I found some stolen property?”

“Are you talking about those old videotapes again?”

“Yup. Those old tapes.”

“Well...” She let a good few seconds pass, then said, “I did inquire about this...”

“It sounds bad news,” I said.

Catherine sighed. “The tapes themselves are worth practically nothing. You said they hadn’t even any covers. The information recorded on them, on both of them, even if they’re totally different from each other, is called intellectual property. It has very little priority in police thinking. How to make a copy of an antique necklace? You must be joking! Industrial secrets, even medical secrets? Too bad. No one is going to waste much police time looking for them. There would be slightly more interest in your bag of cash, if you could identify a single note of it for sure. It would be much more likely, after three weeks, that it’s been spent and dispersed. It was a fair amount to you personally, but not much in world terms, do you see?” She stopped as an entirely opposite thought struck her, then said, “Does this dreadful Rose still believe you know where to find the tapes?”