Dick Francis - Under Orders

‘You’ll just have to do it yourself, then,’ said Marina.

‘Did you have a nice afternoon with Kate?’ I asked, changing the subject.

‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘Those children seem very resilient after what has happened. Except William. He’s a little quiet and moody.’

‘How about Kate?’

‘Poor girl. She blames herself. We had a good long chat over tea while the children watched television. She thinks everyone will blame her for Bill’s death.’

‘I expect they will,’ I said, ‘but I doubt that they’ll do it to her face.’

‘She said that she was seduced by Huw Walker, that she made no moves to get him.’

Huw almost certainly saw Kate as a challenge, I thought. ‘I expect she’s trying to shift some blame on to him for her own peace of mind.’

‘It had obviously been going on for a while,’ said Marina.

‘I can’t think how,’ I said. ‘Racehorse trainers are at home lots of the time and, when they are away, they’re at the races where Huw would have been.’

‘Well, clearly they did manage it, and often. Kate implied that Huw was great in bed.’

‘You two really did have a good chat.’

‘Yes, I like her. She also told me that recently Huw had been really worried about something. He wouldn’t tell her what exactly but he’d said that it was all about power and not about money. Does that make sense?’

‘Mmm. Perhaps it does,’ I said. ‘Maybe Huw was fixing races not because he enjoyed the financial rewards but because he felt it gave him even more power over Bill — screw his wife and his business.’

We drove down the Cromwell Road in silence.

‘So what are you going to do now?’ said Marina as we turned into Beauchamp Place.

‘About what?’

‘About the murders, of course.’

‘Take a bell, and go and stand on street corners and shout.’

‘Good boy.’

‘It’s dangerous.’

‘Then we’ll take precautions,’ said Marina. ‘You take me to work, as agreed, and collect me and I’ll be very careful not to talk to strangers.’ She laughed.

‘It’s not a laughing matter.’

‘Yes, it is. If you can’t laugh, you’d go mad.’

We carefully checked every dark shadow in the garage and chuckled nervously at each other as we continually looked round like Secret Service agents guarding a president. However, I was right. It was definitely not a laughing matter.

We made it safely to our flat and locked ourselves in for the night.

In the morning I drove Marina to work. She had woken feeling much better and the ugly bruises to her face were, at last, beginning to recede.

I parked the car outside the London Research Institute in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and we went inside and up to Marina’s lab to see the results of our DNA work on Friday night.

‘I have to bake the gel on to photographic paper to be able to see the results. I’ll need some help. Rosie, probably. She spends all her time doing DNA profiles but mostly of fruit flies.’

‘Fruit flies?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Parts of their DNA are not wildly different from that in humans. She’s in a team that is trying to find out how cancers develop. Fruit flies are quite good for that and they reproduce quickly. No one minds if you kill a few fruit flies in an experiment. Less controversial than rabbits or monkeys.’

We went down the corridor to find Rosie who was deeply disturbed by Marina’s two black eyes. Rosie stared at me and was clearly asking herself if I were the guilty party but Marina introduced me in glowing terms and trotted out the car accident story again. I wasn’t sure if Rosie was much reassured.

‘Rosie, darling, can you help me with a DNA profile?’ asked Marina.

‘Sure. Do you have the sample?’

‘I’ve already done the electrophoresis.’ Marina gave her the square of gel.

‘Right,’ said Rosie, turning to the bench behind her and fitting the gel matrix into a machine. ‘Ready in a few minutes.’

While she waited, she chased an escaped fruit fly around the lab. The fly was very small and difficult to see but she eventually trapped it in a clap between her hands.

‘How do you do experiments on things so small?’ I asked.

‘We use microscopes to look at them. There,’ she said pointing at a microscope on the bench, ‘have a look down that.’

I leant over and looked down the double eyepieces. Fruit flies in all their glory, big, easy to see, and very dead.

‘You see? They’re not really that small, not compared to cells,’ she said. ‘Cells are so small, we need to use an electron microscope to see them.’

I decided not to ask how an electron microscope worked. I was feeling inadequate enough already as I couldn’t have caught the fly between my two hands. I couldn’t even clap, with or without a fly.

The machine behind her emitted a small beep and Rosie removed what looked like an early Polaroid photograph from a small door in its side.

‘This isn’t from a fruit fly,’ she said. ‘Looks human to me. Anyone I know?’

‘I hope not,’ said Marina.

‘So it wasn’t a road accident?’ said Rosie.

Rosie was a smart cookie, I thought.

‘I’m going to have to go,’ I said, ‘or I’ll get a parking ticket on the car.’

‘Or it’ll be towed away,’ said Marina. ‘They’re dreadful round here.’

‘Be careful, my love.’ I gave her a kiss.

‘I’ll look after her,’ said Rosie.

‘Do that,’ I said.

I went down and retrieved my car from under the gaze of a traffic warden with just one minute remaining of my time. He didn’t look happy.

I drove round the corner and stopped to ring Frank Snow at Harrow.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ll be in the office on Thursday and you are welcome to come and see me. What is it about?’

‘A former pupil,’ I replied.

‘We don’t discuss former pupils with the media,’ he told me.

‘I’m not media,’ I said.

‘Who are you then?’

‘I’ll tell you on Thursday. See you about nine?’

‘Make it ten.’ He sounded unsure. ‘Come for coffee, if you must.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Coffee at ten on Thursday. Thanks. Bye.’

Instead of going back to the flat, I went to the races. I needed a street corner to ring my bell and shout from.

Towcester Racecourse is set in the beautiful surroundings of the Easton Neston Estate to the west of Northampton. My spirits were high, as was the sun, as I turned through the impressive arched and pillared entrance into the car park. I chose my parking space carefully, not only to avoid another confrontation with Andrew Woodward, but also to make a physical ambush between car and racecourse entrance more difficult. I had been caught out like that once before.

I went in search of my prey. As always, he was in the bar nearest to the weighing room in the ground floor of the Empress grandstand.

‘Hello, Paddy,’ I said.

‘Hello, Sid, what brings you all the way to Northamptonshire?’

‘Nothing much. How come you’re here?’

‘Oh, I lives just down the road. This is me local course.’

I knew, that’s why I had come. I was pretty sure he’d be here, and I was pretty sure he’d be in this bar before the first race.

‘Now what can I do for ya, Sid?’ he asked.

‘Nothing, Paddy.’

I looked around the bar which was filling up with those looking for a drink and a sandwich before the entertainment began.

‘Are ya going to buy me a drink?’ said Paddy.

‘Now why would I want to do that?’ I replied. ‘It’s high time you bought me one.’

‘Don’t ya want to ask me anything?’

‘No. What about?’

We stood for some time in silence and I could tell that I would die of thirst before Paddy put his hand in his pocket so I ordered myself the ubiquitous diet Coke and stood there drinking it.