Dick Francis - Dead Heat

I rang him. He was relieved and delighted that I called, but I was hardly delighted with what he told me. “I need you back here,” he said urgently. “And now.” Things had clearly gone downhill quickly since we spoke on Saturday.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, concerned. It was not like Carl to be in a panic.

“I’ve had to fire Oscar,” he said. “Gary caught him in the office going through the papers on your desk, and some of the petty cash was missing too. Oscar denied it. But, then, he would, wouldn’t he? But that’s only the half of it. He was disruptive in the kitchen with Gary all last week. Then the two of them had a stand-up row on Saturday. I thought Oscar was going to stick Gary with a fish filleter at one point.” A fish filleter was a very sharp, very thin, eight-inch-bladed kitchen knife. Sticking anyone with a fish filleter was likely to prove very terminal, very quickly. I was very glad that Oscar had gone.

“But surely you and Gary can cope without him for a few days?” I said.

“We could if Gary was here,” he exclaimed. “He’s now got bloody chicken pox, and the doctor’s told him to stay at home for the next ten bloody days.”

“Can’t you get another chef from the agency?” I asked him.

“I’ve tried that,” he said. “They’ve got their back up over Oscar. They say we didn’t treat him right. I tell you, he was nothing but a bloody menace.”

“Apart from all that,” I said to him, “is everything else all right?”

“No, not really,” he replied. I wished I hadn’t asked. “Jean wants to know when we are going to replace Louisa. She claims she is being worked too hard in the dining room. I told her to shut up or get out, and now she has her back up too.”

I wasn’t surprised. Staff management had never been Carl’s strong point.

“OK,” I said. “Is everything else fine?”

“No it’s not,” he said. “Jacek says he wants more money. He says that the other kitchen porter gets more money than him and it’s not fair.” Jacek’s English must be getting better, I thought. “I also told him to shut up or get out,” Carl continued. “He’s still here today, so I presume he’s shut up. But when are you coming back?” Soon. I feared that if I didn’t get back there quickly, the whole business would be destroyed.

“I’ll call you again later to let you know,” I said.

“Please come back,” he was pleading. “I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this.” He sounded almost manic.

“I said I’ll call you,” I replied, and hung up.

“Problems?” asked Caroline, who had only been able to hear my end of the conversation.

“The ship is foundering on the rocks without the captain,” I said. “One of the chefs has been fired for threatening another with a knife, and now the threatened one has caught chicken pox. Carl, my number two, is basically on his own.” Julie, who prepared the cold dishes, wouldn’t be much use in the heat of the kitchen.

“Can he cope on his own?” she asked.

“Not really,” I said. “Not if the restaurant is more than half full.”

“And is it?” said Caroline.

“I didn’t ask,” I said. “But I hope so. And if it’s not tonight, it certainly will be towards the end of the week. But that’s not all. Carl has upset some of the other staff, and I can imagine the undercurrents running through the place. They will all be waiting for me to get back before the volcano explodes, and the longer I’m away, the worse will be the eruption when it finally happens.”

“Then you must go back there now,” said Caroline.

“I couldn’t be much help one-handed,” I said, holding up the cast.

“Even a one-handed Max Moreton would be better than most,” she said.

I smiled at her. “But is it safe?” I said. “Or is it precisely what someone wants?”

“Who?” she asked. “Komarov?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or Carl.”

“Carl? Don’t you trust your number two?”

“I don’t know who I can trust,” I said. I sat there, thinking, as I watched a boat chug upstream through the bridge with two pasty-white sunbathers lying on its roof. “Yes, I think I probably do trust Carl.”

“Right,” she said. “Then we go back to Newmarket and save your restaurant. But we don’t tell anyone we’re coming before we get there, not even Carl.”

CAROLINE TOOK Viola for a walk down the riverbank into the meadow below the pub while I sat and made the rest of my calls. I could hear the mellow tones of her playing as I rang first my mother, to ensure she was all right, and then the police-the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, to be precise.

“Can I speak to D.I. Turner, please?” I asked.

“Can you hold?” said a female voice. It wasn’t so much a question as an order. Eventually, she came back on the line. “D.I. Turner is off duty until two p.m.”

I left him a message, asking him to call me. I told him it was urgent. I was promised that he would get the message. I wondered if I should have spoken to someone else. But D.I. Turner knew who I was, and he was less likely to dismiss my information with a laugh.

Caroline continued walking the riverbank towpath and playing sweet music for about forty minutes before she returned, flushed, smiling and happy.

“Oh that’s great,” she sighed, sitting down. I looked enviously at Viola. I wished I could make Caroline feel like that in the middle of the day, and with jet lag.

“Don’t you need to read the music?” I asked her.

“No,” she said. “Not for this piece. I know it so well. I was just making sure my fingers knew it as well as my head does.”

“I thought orchestras always have music,” I said. “They have music stands. I’ve seen them.”

“Well, we do. But soloists usually don’t, and often the music is there just as an aide-mémoire rather than being absolutely necessary.” She slipped Viola lovingly back into her case. “Are we staying here for lunch?”

“No,” I said. “I’d rather go. It’s been over an hour since I first used my phone here and it’s time to move on.” And, I thought, the food wasn’t very inviting.

“Can someone really find out where you are from your cell?” she asked.

“I know the police can,” I said, “from your phone records. I’ve heard about it in trials. I’m just not taking any chances that Komarov has someone at the phone company on his payroll.”

“Do you want to go back to Newmarket?” Caroline asked.

“Yes and no,” I said. “Of course I want to go to the Hay Net and sort out the mess, but I have to admit that I’m wary.”

“We don’t have to go, you know,” she said.

“I can’t go on running forever,” I said. “I’ll have to go back there sometime. I’ve left a message for the policeman I spoke to at the Special Branch, and I’ll tell him what I think has been going on and ask him for some police protection. It’ll be fine.”

WE STOPPED just north of Oxford and enjoyed a leisurely lunch in a pub garden, sitting under a bright red sun umbrella that made our delicious stilton and broccoli soup appear pink when it should have been green. The closer we came to Newmarket, the more nervous I became, and, when we arrived in the town at about six o’clock, I felt lost, like a fish out of water. I had no home to go to, nothing but a pile of blackened stones and ash, which I drove slowly past, in each direction, as Caroline sat silently staring at the devastation.

“Oh, Max,” she said after our second pass. “I am so sorry.”

“I can always rebuild,” I said. But that little cottage was the only home I had ever owned, and I could remember clearly the excitement on that July day nearly six years ago when I had first moved in, the joy of discovery of unknown cupboards, and the sounds made by the structure as the hot summer day had cooled towards evening. It had been built from local stone in the last decade of the eighteenth century, and although I currently owned the freehold I had always considered myself a temporary tenant in its long and endless existence. But now its life had been burned away. Murder had been done here, not on a human being but on a member of my family nevertheless. What remained was dead, and silent. Would rebuilding ever bring it back its soul? Perhaps the time was right, after all, for me to grieve for my loss, and to move on.