Dick Francis - Twice Shy

'She was too old,' he said coldly.

I stared at him. 'Are you implying that her age was a reason for not paying her?'

He didn't answer.

'If I stole your car from you,' I said, 'would you consider me justified on the grounds that you were too ill to drive it?'

'You prattle,' he said. 'You are nothing.'

'Mug,' Eddy said, nodding.

Harry Gilbert said wearily, 'Eddy, you are good at pushing wheelchairs and cooking meals. On all other subjects, shut up.'

Eddy gave him a look which was half-defiant, half-scared, and I saw that he too was dependent on Harry for his food and shelter, that it couldn't be all that easy out in the big cynical world for murderers' assistants to earn a cushy living, that looking after Harry wasn't a job to be lightly lost.

To Harry Gilbert I said, 'Why don't you do what you once intended? Why don't you buy Angelo a betting shop and let the system win for him there?'

I got another stretch of silent unmoving stare. Then he said, 'Business is a talent. I have it. It is, however, uncommon.'

I nodded. It was all the answer he would bring himself to make. Certainly he wouldn't admit to me of all people that he thought Angelo would bankrupt any sensible business in a matter of weeks.

'Keep your son away from me,' I said. 'I've done more for you in getting you that system than you deserve. You've no rights to it. You've no right to demand that it makes you a fortune in five minutes. You've no right to blame me if it doesn't. You keep your son away from me. I can play as rough as he does. For your own sake, and for his, you keep him off me.'

I turned away from him without waiting for any sort of answer, and walked unhurriedly out of the room and across the hall.

Footsteps pattered after me on the polished wood.

Eddy.

I didn't look round. He caught up with me as I opened the front doors and stepped outside, and he put his hand on my arm to make me pause. He looked back guiltily over his shoulder to where his uncle sat mutely by his splendid window, knowing the old man wouldn't approve of what he was doing. Then as he saw Harry was looking out again steadfastly to the golf, he turned on me a nasty self-satisfied smirk.

'Mug,' he said, speaking with prudent quietness, 'Angelo won't like you coming here.'

'Too bad.' I shook his hand off my sleeve. He sneered back in a poisonous mixture of slyness and malice and triumph, and half-whispered his final enjoyable words.

'Angelo's bought a pistol,' he said.

'Why are you so thoughtful?' Cassie asked.

'Uneasy.'

We were sitting as so often at a table in Bananas' dining room with him moving about light-footedly in his sneakers seeming never to hurry yet keeping everyone fed. The plants grew with shining healthy leaves in the opulent gloom of his designedly intimate lighting, glasses and silverware gleaming in candlelight and mould spreading slowly in the dark.

'It's not like you,' Cassie said.

I smiled at her thin sun-tanned uncomplicated face and said that I didn't want above all things a return visit from Angelo.

'Do you really think he'd come?'

'I don't know.'

'We'd never get any more corn dollies,' she said. 'It's too late now for decent straw.'

Her arm in its plaster lay awkwardly on the table. I touched the bunched fingertips peeping out. 'Would you consider leaving me for a while?' I asked.

'No, I wouldn't.'

'Suppose I said I was tired of you?'

'You're not.'

'Are you so sure?'

'Positive,' she said contentedly. 'And anyway, for how long?'

I drank some wine. For how long was an absolute puzzle. 'Until I get Angelo stabilised,' I said. 'And don't ask me how long, because I don't know. But the first thing to do, I think, is persuade Luke he needs a computer right here in Britain.'

'Would that be difficult?'

'It might be. He has one in California… he might say he didn't need two.'

'What do you want it for, the betting system?'

I nodded. 'I think,' I said,'that I'll try to rent one. Or some time on one. I want to find out what the winners should be according to O'Rorke, and what Angelo's doing wrong. And if I can put him right, perhaps that will keep him quiet.'

'You'd have thought just giving him the tapes would be enough.'

'Yes, you would.'

'He's like a thistle,' she said. 'You're sure you've got rid of him and he grows right back.'

Thistles, I thought, didn't go out to buy guns.

Bananas reverently bore his eponymous souffle to the people at the next table, the airy peaks shining light and luscious and pale brown. The old cow, whose skill had produced it, must have stopped working to rule: Bananas himself, joining us later for coffee, gloomily admitted it. 'She took an hour to shred carrots. Did them by hand. Ten seconds in the processor. She said processors were dangerous machinery and she'd have to negotiate a new rate for all jobs with machinery.'

Bananas' new beard had grown curly which was unforseen in view of the lank straight locks further up but seemed to me to be in accord with the doubleness of his nature.

'Historically,' he said, 'it's seldom a good idea to appease a tyrant.'

The old cow?'

'No. Angelo Gilbert.'

'What do you suggest, then?' I asked. 'Full-scale war?'

'You have to be sure you'll win. Historically, full scale war's a toss up.'

'The old cow might leave,' Cassie said, smiling.

Bananas nodded. 'Tyrants always want more next time. I dare say next year she'll turn to motor racing.'

'I suppose you don't know anyone who has a computer you can feed any language into?' I said.

'Turkish? Indo-Chinese? That sort of stuff?'

'Yeah. Gibberish, double-speak, jargonese and gobble-de-gook.'

'Try the sociologists.'

I tried, however, Ted Pitts, early the following morning, and reached Jane instead.

'Ted isn't here,' she said, 'I'm afraid he's still in Switzerland. Can I help?'

I explained I wanted to borrow a good computer to run a check on the racing programs and she said sadly that she couldn't really lend me Ted's, not without him being there; she knew he was working on a special program for his classes and if anyone touched the computer at present his work could be lost, and she couldn't risk that.

'No,' I agreed. Did she know of anyone else whose computer I could use?

She thought it over. There's Ruth,' she said doubtfully. 'Ruth Quigley.'

'Who?'

'She was a pupil of Ted's. Actually he says there's nothing he can teach her now, and when she comes here I can't understand a word they say to each other, it's like listening to creatures from outer space.'

'Would she have a computer of her own?'

'She's got everything,' Jane said without envy. 'Born rich. Only child. Only has to ask, and it's hers. And on top of that, she's brainy. Doesn't seem fair, does it?'

'Beautiful as well?'

'Oh.' She hesitated. 'Not bad. I don't really know. It's not the sort of thing you notice about Ruth.'

'Well, um, where could I find her?'

'In Cambridge. That's why I thought of her, because she lives over your way. She writes programs for teaching-machines. Would you like me to ring her? When do you want to go?'

I said 'Today', and half an hour later I'd had my answer and was on my way, seeking out a flat in a modern block on the outskirts of the town.

Ruth Quigley proved to be young: very early twenties, I guessed. I could see also what Jane meant about not noticing her looks, because the first, overpowering and lasting impression she gave was of the speed of her mind. There were light eyes, light brown extra-curly hair and long slender neck, but mostly there was an impatient jerk of the head and a stumblingly rapid diction as if to her utter disgust her tongue couldn't speak her thoughts fast enough.