Dick Francis - Shattered

“I should think it might be worth two gold coins,” he said.

“For two gold coins it had better be good.”

“See those sneakers?” he said. “Those up there at the back with green-and-white-striped laces? The man with that gas, those are his laces.”

I stared disbelievingly at the shoes. They were large with thick rubber-like soles, triangular white flashed canvas sections and, threaded in precision through two rows of eyeholes, the fat bunched laces of Daniel’s certainty.

He said again, “The man who gassed us wore those shoes.”

“Come into the shop, then,” I said, “and we’ll ask who bought some like them.”

He agreed, “OK,” and then added, “It might cost two more gold coins, to go into the shop.”

“You’re an extortionist.”

“What’s that?”

“Greedy. And I’ve no more coins.”

Daniel grinned and shrugged, accepting fate.

The shop had a doorbell that jingled when we went in, and contained a grandfatherly salesman who proved useless from our point of view, as he was standing in for his daughter whose baby was sick. She might be back some day next week, he vaguely thought, and he knew nothing about previous sales.

When we went back into the street, Bon-Bon, away up the hill, was beckoning Daniel to her car, to go home. Only the fact that she had already loaded Victor, having offered him another night’s computer hacking, persuaded her son to join her, and presently, when Marigold and “Darling Trubby” had gone their separate ways, only Catherine and my little team were left, and those three, as it was Saturday afternoon, were setting things straight as if for a normal winter Sunday of no action. They departed with my blessing at four-thirty, leaving only myself and Catherine to lock up; and I gave her too a bunch of keys for the future.

I also told police officer Dodd about the laces, which sent her on a brief reconnaissance only, as first of all she said she needed another officer with her if she were to question the shop owner, and second, the grandfather salesman had shut up shop and left it dark.

Catherine, like Martin before her, grew minute by minute more interested in the technical details and the chemical complexities of bright modern glass. Old glass could look gray or yellow, fine to my eyes but dingy on racecourses.

Catherine asked which I would make first, the horse or the ball, and I told her the horse. I asked her whether, even though they would not be on duty the next day, she could persuade her Pernickety Paul hobo partner to come and walk up and down Broadway with her a couple of times? She naturally asked why.

“To mind my back,” I joked, and she said she thought he might come if she asked him.

“He might be busy,” I said.

“I doubt it,” she replied. “He seems rather lonely since his wife left him.”

We rode her motorbike to a hotel deep in the country and ate there and slept there, and I avoided Blackmask Four and explained to my increasingly loved police officer, before I kissed her, that she and the hobo might find handcuffs a good idea on the morrow. “He always carries them,” Catherine said.

In the morning she said, “All this walking up and down Broadway... is it the tapes?”

“Sort of.” I nodded. I didn’t mention life or death. One couldn’t somehow.

All the same, I woke Tom Pigeon, who woke his dogs, who all growled (Tom included) that Sunday was a day of rest.

I phoned Jim. At my service all day, he said. His wife was going to church.

Worthington was already awake, he said, and had I noticed that Sundays weren’t always healthy for Gerard Logan?

“Mm. What’s Marigold doing today?”

“I’ve got the day free, if that’s what you’re asking. Where do you want me to turn up when? And most of all, why?”

I hesitated over the last answer but replied in order: “Wychwood Dragon lobby, soon as possible, on account of fear.”

“Whose fear?”

“Mine.”

“Oh yeah?” His laugh traveled with bass reverberation. “You’ll be alone in that workshop of yours, is that it? In that case, I’ll be with you soon.”

“I won’t exactly be alone. Catherine and her partner officer will probably be in the town, and in the workshop there will be Pamela Jane, who’s going to assist.”

“The girl? Why not that bright young man, what’s his name... Hickory?”

“Pamela Jane doesn’t argue.”

Worthington’s deep voice arrived as a chuckle. “I’m on my way.”

I made one more phone call, this time to the home of George Lawson-Young, apologizing for the eight-thirty wake-up.

“The hour doesn’t matter” — he yawned — “if you bring good news.”

“It depends,” I said, and told him what he might expect.

He said, “Well done.”

“More to do.”

“I wouldn’t miss it.” His smile came across the air. “I’ll see you later.”

Catherine and her motorcycle took me to Logan Glass, where local inhabitants could have seen a display of affection to wag tongues for a week. I unlocked the doors, being there intentionally before Pamela Jane, and again read the notes I’d made (and filed in the locked bookcase) last time I’d tried my hand at a rearing horse.

This one would take me about an hour to complete, if I made the whole trophy, including plinth and ball. At a little less than half a meter high, it would weigh roughly twenty kilos, heavy because solid glass itself weighed a good deal, let alone the added gold. Marigold had with wide-sweeping arms insisted on magnificence. It was to be Martin’s memorial, she proclaimed, and she had been exceedingly fond of her son-in-law. Both Bon-Bon and Worthington thought this much-to-be-publicized admiration a little retrospective, but “Darling Trubby” might think the trophy handsome in the sun.

I had filled the tank with clear crystal and put ready at hand the punty irons I’d need, also the small tools for shaping muscles, legs and head. Tweezers too, essential always. I set the furnace temperature to the necessary 1800 degrees Fahrenheit.

By then I “saw” the sculpture complete. A pity they hadn’t wanted Martin himself on the rearing horse’s back. I saw him there clearly now, at last. Perhaps I would repeat the horse with Martin riding. Perhaps one night... for Bon-Bon, and for the friend I’d lost and still trusted.

While I waited for Pamela Jane to arrive, I thought about the wandering videotape that had raised so many savage feelings, and like curtains parting, the deductive faculty Professor Lawson-Young had put his faith in continued to open vistas in my mind. I had at last added in his factor X, and the mask had dropped from Blackmask Four.

Out of doors it started raining.

I stood looking at the furnace and listening to its heart of flame. Looking at the raisable trapdoor that kept 1800 degrees Fahrenheit at bay. Irish, Hickory, Pamela Jane and myself were so accustomed to the danger of the extreme heat roaring within the firebricks that taking care was automatic, was second nature.

I knew at last the sequence of the roads in the cul-de-sacs. I listened in my mind to Catherine’s list of punishable crimes and their penalties, and reckoned that Rose and Adam Force should, if they had any sense at all, just leave the videotapes where they rested and save themselves the grief of prosecution.

Thieves never had any sense.

I’d surrounded myself with as many bodyguards as I could muster that Sunday simply because neither Rose nor Adam Force had shown any sense or restraint so far, and because the making of the trophy horse left me wide open to any mayhem they might invent. I could have filled the workroom with a crowd of onlookers and been safe... safe for how long?

I knew now where the danger lay. I couldn’t forever look over my shoulder fearfully, and, however rash it might seem, I saw a confrontation as the quickest path to resolution.