Dick Francis - Twice Shy

'Of course, I will,' I said, 'but you might be able to see these men themselves, if you're lucky.'

'How do you mean?'

'I did send them some tapes, but not until yesterday. They were going to pick them up from Cambridge main post office, and I should think there's a chance they'll be there tomorrow.'

That's helpful.' He sounded unexcited, but wrote it all down. 'Anything else?'

'They aren't the tapes they wanted. I still haven't got those back. I sent them some other tapes with a computer game on.'

He pursed his lips. 'That wasn't very wise.'

'But the real ones morally belong to Mrs O'Rorke. And those gunmen won't come stampeding back here while they think they've got the goods.'

'And how long before they find out?'

'I don't know. But if they're the same two people who threatened Peter, it might be a while. He said they didn't seem to know much about computers.'

Irestone thought aloud. 'Peter Keithly told you that two men visited him on the Wednesday evening, is that right?' I nodded. 'Christopher Norwood was killed last Friday morning. Eight and a half days later.' He rubbed his chin. 'It might be unwise to suppose it will take them another eight and a half days to discover what you've done.'

'I could always swear those were the tapes Peter Keithly gave me.'

'And I don't think,' he said flatly, 'that this time they'd believe you.' He paused. 'The inquest on Peter Keithly was being held today, wasn't it?'

I nodded.

'We consulted with the Norwich police. There's no room to doubt your friend's death was an accident. I dare say you've wondered?'

'Yes, I have.'

'You don't need to. The insurance inspector's report says the explosion was typical. There were no arson devices. No dynamite or plastics. Just absence of mind and rotten bad luck.'

I looked at the floor.

'Your gunmen didn't do it,' he said.

I thought that maybe he was trying to defuse any hatred I might be brewing, so that my testimony might be more impartial, but in fact what he was giving me was a kind of comfort, and I was grateful.

'If Peter hadn't died,' I said, looking up, 'they might have gone back to him when they found what they'd got from him was useless.'

'Exactly,' Irestone said dryly. 'Do you have friends you could stay with for awhile?'

On Saturday morning, impelled, I fear, by Mrs O'Rorke's ten-percent promise, I drove to Welwyn Garden City to offer her tapes to Mr Harry Gilbert.

Not that I exactly had the tapes with me as they were still locked up with Ted Pitts's laryngitis, but at least I had the knowledge of their existence and contents, and that should be enough, I hoped, for openers.

From Twickenham to Welwyn was twenty miles in a direct line but far more in practice and tedious besides, round the North Circular Road and narrow shopping streets. In contrast, the architects' dream city, when I got there, was green and orderly, and I found the Gilbert residence in an opulent cul-de-sac. Bingo, it seemed, had kept poverty a long long way from his doorstep, which was reproduction Georgian, flanked with two pillars and surrounded by a regular regiment of windows. A house of red, white and sparkle on a carpet of green. I pressed the shiny brass doorbell thinking it would be a bore if the inhabitants of this bijou mansion were out.

Mr Gilbert, however, was in.

Just.

He opened his front door to my ring and said whatever I wanted I would have to come back later, as he was just off to play golf. Clubs and a cart for transporting them stood just inside the door, and Mr Gilbert's heavy frame was clad appropriately in check trousers, open-necked shirt and blazer.

'It's about Liam O'Rorke's betting system,' I said.

'What?' he said sharply.

'Mrs O'Rorke asked me to come. She says she might be able to sell it to you after all.'

He looked at his watch; a man of about fifty, in appearance unimpressive, more like a minor official than a peddlar of pinchbeck dreams.

'Come in,' he said. 'This way.'

His voice was no-nonsense middle-of-the-road, nearer the bingo hall than Eton. He led me into an unexpectedly functional room furnished with a desk, typewriter, wall maps with coloured drawing pins dotted over them, two swivel chairs, one tray of drinks and five telephones.

'Fifteen minutes,' he said. 'So come to the point.' He made no move to sit down or offer me a seat, but he was not so much rude as indifferent. I saw what Mrs O'Rorke had meant about him being a cold man. He didn't try to clothe the bones of his thoughts with social top-dressing. He'd have made a lousy schoolmaster, I thought.

'Liam O'Rorke's notes were stolen,' I began.

'I know that,' he said impatiently. 'Have they turned up?'

'Not his notes, no. But computer programs made from them, yes.'

He frowned. 'Mrs O'Rorke has these programs?'

'No. I have. On her behalf. To offer to you.'

'And your name?'

I shrugged. 'Jonathan Derry. You can check with her, if you like.' I gestured to the rank of telephones. 'She'll vouch for me.'

'Did you bring these… programs with you?'

'No,' I said. 'I thought we should make a deal first.'

'Humph.'

Behind his impassive face, a fierce amount of consideration seemed to be taking place, and at length I had a powerful feeling that he couldn't make up his mind.

I said, 'I wouldn't expect you to buy them without a demonstration. But I assure you they're the real thing.'

It produced no discernible effect. The interior debate continued; and it was resolved not by Gilbert or myself but by the arrival of someone else.

A car door slammed outside and there were footsteps on the polished parquet in the hall. Gilbert's head lifted to listen, and a voice outside the open door called 'Dad?'

'In here,' Gilbert said.

Gilbert's son came in. Gilbert's son, who had come to my house with his pistol.

I must have looked as frozen with shock as I felt: but then so did he. I glanced at his father, and it came to me too late that this was the man Sarah had described – middle-aged, ordinary, plump – who had gone to Peter's house asking for the tapes. The one to whom she had said, 'My husband's got them.'

I seemed to have stopped breathing. It was as if life itself had been punched out of me. To know what not to do…

For all my instinct that ignorance was dangerous, I had not learned enough. I hadn't learned the simple fact that would have stopped me from walking into that house: that Mr Bingo Gilbert had a marauding Italian-looking son.

It was never a good idea to pursue Moses across the Red Sea…

'My son, Angelo,' Gilbert said.

Angelo made an instinctive movement with his right hand towards his left armpit as if reaching for his gun, but he wore a bloused suede jerkin over his jeans, and was unarmed. Thank the Lord, I thought, for small mercies.

In his left hand he carried the package I had sent to Cambridge. It had been opened, and he was holding it carefully upright to save the cassettes from falling out.

He recovered his voice faster than I did. His voice and his arrogance and his sneer.

'What's this mug doing here?' he said.

'He came to sell me the computer tapes.'

Angelo laughed derisively. 'I told you we'd get them for nothing. This mug sent them. I told you he would.' He lifted the package jeeringly. 'I told you you were an old fool to offer that Irish witch any cash. You'd have done better to let me shake the goods out of her the minute her old man died. You've no clue, Dad. You should have cut me in months ago, not tell me when it's already a mess.'

His manner, I thought, was advanced son-parent rebellion: the young bull attacking the old. And part of it, I suspected, was for my benefit. He was showing off. Proving that even if I'd got the better of him the last time we'd met, it was he, Angelo, who was the superior being.