Dick Francis - Under Orders

I opened the lid of the machine. It was on but in ‘hibernation’ mode. I woke it up and was busy sifting through the recent document list in Word when there was a noise from the front door. I froze. I racked my brains for a credible story to tell Juliet to explain why I was kneeling on her sitting room floor going through the private files on her computer.

The noise came again. A metallic clink. And again.

I quickly moved behind the sitting room door and looked through the crack by the hinges into the hallway. A letter came through the letter box in the front door and the cover closed with a metallic clink. The letter joined some magazines already on the mat. The postman! I heard him move away. I chanced a look out of the sitting room window and could see him going next door.

I started breathing again and my heart-rate began to return to normal.

I looked at my watch. My time was up.

I went back to Juliet’s computer. How I would have loved to have had all day to search through the digital maze inside it. No wonder a suspect’s computer is the first thing the police seize after an arrest. These days, personal computer records are the window on a person’s life. Try as we might to delete the stuff we don’t wish others to read, our computers still remember it and they can be coaxed and persuaded into giving up our most intimate secrets. In most circumstances, a wife cannot be forced to give evidence against her husband, or vice versa. There is no such protection for a defendant against his computer. Far from being a friend, the machine on the desk can be a villain’s worst enemy.

I sent Juliet’s laptop back into hibernation and returned it to its original spot on the floor.

Then I opened the front door wide and took a quick look either way down the road. The postman was a good hundred yards away by now and moving further away with every step. There was no one else visible so I quickly pulled the door closed behind me and walked steadily to my car. I had parked on the grass verge fifty yards further out of the village with the car facing away from Juliet’s cottage. I climbed in and sat in the driver’s seat. My hand was shaking. I was getting too old for this cloak and dagger stuff.

I checked for the umpteenth time that I had not left behind my camera or the bag containing the hairs. Satisfied that I had them both, I set off for London.

By the time I got back, I was tired. At six that morning, the journey from my flat to Lambourn had only taken about an hour, but the return had been a nightmare. Three hours of stop-start in heavy traffic due to major road-works on the approach to London. The M4 had been one long queue from well before Slough.

I changed out of my housebreaking clothes of black jeans, dark sweater and loafers into grey trousers, blue collared shirt and black leather slip-on shoes. I snapped a recharged battery into my arm and made myself a cup of strong coffee to recharge the rest of me.

Marina phoned. ‘Please come and get me out of here,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand daytime TV.’

‘I’ll be in later,’ I said, ‘and I’ll bring you a book.’

‘I want to come home.’

‘Bed-rest, that’s what the doctor said.’

How strange, I thought. All my riding life, it had been me who had tried to ignore well-intentioned doctors’ advice with Jenny sounding just as I had done now. I had been the one who had been caught working out on an exercise bike after being told by my surgeon to rest in bed after he had removed my spleen. And I had been the one who had once tried to chip away a plaster cast with a kitchen knife before my ankle bones had fully mended.

I told her to stay put for the moment and I would see what could be done.

At lunchtime I took the tube to Lincoln’s Inn Fields with my precious parcel to give to Rosie. I had phoned her at home and she had agreed to give up some of her Saturday afternoon to analyse the hairs.

While she went upstairs to her laboratory I took my camera round the corner into Kingsway to a photographic shop. They had one of those machines that will convert digital images into prints while you wait, so I made two sets of all the pictures stored on the camera memory card. There were some of the police search of Bill Burton’s house after his arrest and the ones through the window of the den on the day he died. There were several of poor Marina’s face being stitched up, six images of a wardrobe full of designer gear and, finally, a crisp close-up shot of a hairbrush with hairs amongst its bristles.

There was no sign of Rosie when I returned so I sat in the reception area under the gaze of the ever-present Institute Security and read leaflets about why it was so vital to give money for cancer research, and why early diagnosis of cancer was so important. By the time Rosie reappeared, I had not only emptied all the cash in my pockets into a Cancer Research UK collecting tin, but I was beginning to examine my body for lumps and bumps in intimate places.

‘Jackpot!’ she called, as she emerged from the lift. She was almost jumping up and down with excitement. ‘In fact, double jackpot.’

‘Why double?’ I asked.

‘I tested all the hairs in the bag separately,’ she said. ‘They’re from two different people. Most of them are from the woman who licked the envelope the other night.’

‘And?’ I said.

‘One of them is from the man who attacked Marina last week.’

‘You’re a bastard,’ said Chris Beecher. ‘You used me.’

He was right, on both counts.

It was Saturday afternoon and I had telephoned him while I watched the racing from Kempton on the television.

‘You didn’t have to run the piece,’ I said.

‘Wish now we hadn’t. Wasn’t so much of a scoop after all, was it?’

‘How do you know?’ I said.

‘Worked it out, didn’t I?’ He was a bright chap. ‘No bloody police reaction, was there? Bloody Paddy O’Fitch. Why do I ever listen to him?’

‘Can I come and see you?’ I asked.

‘What do you want me to write for you this time, you bastard?’

‘You can write what you like,’ I said. ‘However, I may have a real scoop for you after all.’

I despised the creep but he was the best man for what I had in mind.

‘On the level?’ he said.

‘On the level. But I might need your help to get it.’

‘OK, so fire away.’

‘Not on the telephone. And not until tomorrow.’

‘It may have disappeared by then or some other bloody paper may have it.’

‘Rest easy,’ I said. ‘This will be your exclusive, but all in good time.’

‘I don’t work on Sundays,’ he said.

I laughed. ‘Liar.’

In the end we agreed to meet in the Ebury Street Wine Bar at seven the following evening. I needed to do some thinking before I talked to him, and also I wanted to have the day free to bring Marina home.

I went to St Thomas’s about four. I could sense that all was not well in Marina’s world. I stood by the window looking out across the Thames.

‘At least you’ve got a nice view,’ I said, trying to lighten the mood.

‘I can’t see it,’ said Marina. ‘The bed is too low. All I can see is the sky. And the nurses won’t let me get up. Not even to go to the loo. I have to use a bedpan. It’s disgusting.’

‘Calm down, my darling,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t be pushing your blood pressure up at the moment. Give the artery in your leg a chance to heal.’

The sooner I got her home, the better. I was also sure that her security would be better there, too.

‘OK, OK, I’m calm,’ she said. She took a few deep breaths and laid her head back on the pillow. ‘And what have you been up to that has kept you from me until four in the afternoon.’