Dick Francis: Under Orders

‘Well, Sid, what shall we do now?’ he said through the door. ‘Perhaps I’ll wait here until your girlfriend comes home. Then you’ll come out.’

I wasn’t sure whether it dawned on me or Peter first that Marina was not coming home.

I had been in the bathroom for well over an hour. I wasn’t coming out and Peter hadn’t been able to get in. He’d tried a few times. At first, he had attempted to kick the door down. I had leaned against it and I could feel the blows through the wood. Thankfully, the corridor outside was so narrow that he couldn’t get a run at it and the lock had held easily. Next, he had tried to hack his way through with the carving knife. I know because he’d told me so, but wood doesn’t cut very easily with a knife, even a sharp knife, and I reckoned it would take him all night to get through that way. I was glad I didn’t have a fire axe in the flat.

The phone had rung several times. I could hear my new answering machine picking up each time after seven rings, just as I’d told it to.

I’d worked out that the police must be somewhere outside and it was probably them on the phone. They must surely have stopped Marina from coming back. By now they must have also intercepted the real Charles Rowland.

I wondered how long they would wait.

A long time. They would have no desire to walk in on a loaded gun.

The phone rang again.

‘Answer the phone, Peter,’ I called to him through the door.

There was no sound. He had been quiet for a long time now.

‘Peter,’ I shouted, ‘answer the bloody phone.’

But the machine did it for him, again.

I wished I had my mobile. It was on its charging cradle in the sitting room and I had heard it ringing, too.

I sat on the edge of the bath in darkness. The light switch was outside in the corridor and Peter had turned it out long ago. The only light came from the narrow gap under the door. I had several times lain down and tried to look under, but without much success. Occasionally I had seen a shadow as Peter had walked past or stood outside the door. But not for a while now.

What was he doing?

Was he still there?

I stood up and put my ear to the door. Nothing.

The floor was wet. I could feel it on my right foot, the one without the sock.

What was he up to?

Was he pouring something flammable under the door? Was he going to burn me out?

I went down quickly on my knees and put a finger in the liquid. I put it to my nose. It didn’t smell of petrol. I tasted it.

I knew that taste. When one was accustomed to eating grass at half a mile a minute it was seemingly always mixed with blood from one’s mouth or nose. And blood is what I could taste now. I found I was paddling in the stuff and it was coming under the door. It had to be Peter’s but the wound I had inflicted on his hand would not have produced so much.

Gingerly I opened the bathroom door and peered out. Peter was seated on the floor a little to the left, leaning up against the magnolia-painted wall.

His eyes swivelled round and looked at me.

I was surprised he was still conscious. His blood was all down the wooden-floored corridor and there were splashes of it on the paintwork where surges of it had landed.

He had used the carving knife with its finely honed edge.

He had sliced through his left wrist so deeply I could see the bones. I had seen something like that before.

I stepped towards him and used my foot to pull the knife away, just to be on the safe side.

He was trying to say something.

I went down and put my ear close to his mouth. His voice was so weak I could barely hear him.

‘Go back in the bathroom,’ he whispered. ‘Let me die.’

Three weeks later Marina and I went to Huw Walker’s funeral outside a rainy Brecon.

The service took place in a small grey stone chapel with a grey slate roof, and every seat was filled. Evan Walker was there in a starched white shirt and stiff collar under his best Sunday suit. Chief Inspector Carlisle represented the police and Edward, the managing director, was there on behalf of Cheltenham Racecourse.

Jonny Enstone had sensibly stayed away. The turbulent relationship between father and son had been much reported and dissected by the media with little credit falling at his feet. I wondered if he still worked the dining room at the House of Lords.

However, it was the turnout from the rest of the racing world that would have pleased Huw most. Chris Beecher had unashamedly been using his column in The Pump to restore Huw’s reputation and to cast him as another victim of the Enstone conspiracy. It was the least he could do.

I wasn’t entirely sure whether so many had made the long journey to South Wales out of genuine fondness for the man or, like Chris, due to their guilty feelings for having initially condemned him so easily as an out-and-out villain.

It didn’t matter. In his father’s eyes, it was a vindication of his son.

We stood under umbrellas in the muddy graveyard as Huw’s simple oak coffin was lowered into the ground next to his mother and his brother, and then we retired to the pub across the road for a drink and to warm up.

‘What news?’ I asked Carlisle.

‘We caught the child killer,’ he said. ‘So my job is safe for a while longer.’

‘Great,’ I said, ‘but what news on this front?’

‘Juliet Burns has been charged with aiding and abetting a felon, and with being an accessory after the fact.’

‘And what does that mean?’ I asked.

‘About eighteen months, I suspect,’ he said. ‘Less if she plays her cards right. It will be up to Thames Valley and the Crown Prosecution Service.’

‘I thought that plea bargains didn’t happen in this country,’ I said.

‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘Like euthanasia? It’s just called something different. How about you?’

He pointed at my left arm, which I had in a sling.

‘I split the end of my ulna when I punched Peter Enstone,’ I said. ‘I haven’t been able to wear my false arm since. But it’s mending.’

In truth, I had been much more comfortable with my left arm these last three weeks than I had for ten years, since my racing disaster. I was aware that, in spite of its truncation, it was a part of me as a whole. It had saved my life. It was my friend again.

‘And your girlfriend?’ he asked, nodding towards Marina who was talking to Evan Walker.

‘My wife,’ I said smiling, ‘is just fine, thank you.’

Marina had found that she had thought about an engagement for long enough while she had waited outside the flat with the police. She had told both Charles and Jenny that if I came out alive she would marry me at once. ‘At once’ had actually been two weeks because her parents had been away on a safari through the African bush. They had remained blissfully unaware of their daughter’s fight for life until after the drama was over. We had waited for them to return and then had done the deed in a West Oxfordshire registry office followed by a small reception at Aynsford. Jenny had been there all smiles, her guilt forever purged.

‘Congratulations,’ said Carlisle. ‘So what’s next for you?’

‘I’m still working on the internet gambling investigation,’ I said.

As I’d predicted, make-a-wager.com had taken a nose-dive. The Jockey Club had initiated an enquiry into the running of the exchange and Chris Beecher had publicised the fact at full volume in the paper. George Lochs had so far avoided being charged with any actual crime but in the meantime he had been declared persona non grata on any racecourse. It was rumoured that all his assets had been held in his company’s name and he was now going down the tubes quicker than Enron.