Dick Francis - Dead Heat

“Tell him to go home,” I said. “I’ll see him in the morning.”

“OK,” he said hesitatingly. “I’ve already told him that once, but he seemed very intent on waiting.”

“Well, tell him again,” I said. “He’s to go home now.” I had no intention of going alone into the kitchen with Jacek there. I wasn’t at all sure I could trust him.

“OK,” he said again. “I’ll tell him.”

“Come back to tell me when he’s gone,” I said. “And, Richard, please make sure he leaves completely.” I knew that Jacek rode a bicycle to and from his digs in the town. “Check he leaves on his bike.”

Richard looked at me somewhat strangely but nodded and went out.

There was a loud knock on the front door.

I went out into the entrance lobby between the bar and the dining room. I looked through the window into the parking lot. As expected, it was George Kealy. I had his phone in my hand.

I unlocked the door, but it wasn’t George Kealy’s foot that crashed it open, sending me reeling backwards. It was another man, and he held an automatic pistol in his hand and he was pointing it right between my eyes. Mr. Komarov, I presumed.

“George tells me that you’re a very difficult man to kill, Mr. Moreton,” he said, advancing through the door.

I retreated back from the door into the entrance lobby. Komarov and George Kealy followed.

Richard came out of the dining room, carrying a tray of dirty glasses from the last table. Komarov and I saw him at the same instant, and before I had a chance to shout a warning Komarov swung the gun around and shot him. The noise of the retort in the enclosed space was startling, and I jumped. A crimson star appeared on the front of Richard’s white shirt, and there was a slight look of surprise on his face as he pitched forward. The bullet had caught him in the center of his chest, and I was convinced he was dead before he hit the floor. The metal tray he had been holding clattered noisily to the floor and all the glasses shattered, sending hundreds of fragments in all directions across the stone tiles.

The gun came unerringly back to point at me, and I thought that this was it. He would surely kill me just as easily. Why shouldn’t he? He had tried twice before, why not a third time? The anger that I had channeled into my survival in my burning cottage rose again in me. I wasn’t going to just die without a fight.

Komarov saw the anger in me and read my intentions. “Don’t even think about it,” he said in almost perfect English, with just a hint of his native Russian accent that made the “think” sound like “sink.”

I stood my ground and looked at him. He was a thickset man in his mid-fifties, of about average height, with a full head of thick gray hair, well-coiffed. I realized I knew him from before. He had been George and Emma Kealy’s guest here at the Hay Net the first Saturday after the bombing. I remembered that George had called Emma to get going, “Peter and Tanya are waiting,” he had said. Peter and Tanya, George Kealy’s friends, were actually Pyotr and Tatiana Komarov, smugglers, bombers and murderers.

I found it difficult to believe that George was not the friendly regular customer I knew so well. I looked at him, but he didn’t seem to be embarrassed one bit by my predicament. He didn’t even seem shocked by what his friend had done to my headwaiter. I continued to stare at him, but he refused to look me in the eye. He simply appeared determined, and resigned to the necessity of such actions.

“I am going to kill you,” Komarov said to me. I didn’t doubt it. “But before I do,” he went on, “I want back what is mine that you have.”

“And what is that?” I said, finding it quite difficult to talk. My tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of my mouth.

“You know what I want,” he said. “You obtained it in Delafield.”

Oh dear, I thought. He must have spoken to Mrs. Schumann, or perhaps it was Kurt and his polo mallet-wielding chum who had paid her a visit. I didn’t want to think about what they might have done to that dear, devastated lady.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. I had raised my voice a little. I was very conscious that Caroline was still in the office, and I was trying to somehow warn her of the danger, although she had to have heard the shot and then the crash of the tray and the glasses. I had no doubt whatsoever that Komarov would kill her as easily as he had killed Richard. Or worse, he would use her for leverage to get back the metal ball. I thought about that ball. I didn’t actually have it with me, so I couldn’t have given it back to Komarov even if I had wanted to. It probably was still on Toby’s desk where I had left it, for him to show to his vet. And I had no intention of putting my brother or his family in danger again.

“George,” said Komarov, keeping his gun pointed straight at me, “go check that we are alone.”

George Kealy produced another pistol from his own pocket and went into the dining room. I could hear him going into the kitchen beyond. After a while, he came back. “No one else here,” he said.

“Check in there,” said Komarov, waving the gun towards the bar and the office beyond. The office actually sat between the bar and the kitchen, with a door at each end, and was more like a wide corridor than a proper room.

I went on staring at Komarov but slightly bunched my muscles, ready to try to rush him if George cried out that he had found Caroline. But he didn’t call out. He just came back and reported that we were all alone.

“Where’s your girlfriend?” said Komarov.

“In London,” I said.

“Where in London?” he asked.

“With her sister,” I said. “In Finchley.”

He seemed satisfied with the answer and waved his gun towards the dining room. “In there,” he said.

I had to step around Richard’s body. I looked down at his back. There was no exit wound; the bullet was still in his body. Did it make things better or worse? Neither. It was horrible either way.

I walked ahead of Komarov. Was he going to shoot me in the back? Unlikely. Not that I thought it would make any difference to him. Or, I suppose, to me.

“Stop,” he said. I stopped. “Pull out the chair, the one with arms.” I reached to my left and pulled the armchair away from the table. I realized that it was the Kealys’ usual dining table. I wondered if George noticed. “Sit down facing away from me,” said Komarov. I did as he said.

He and George moved around me so that they were again in front.

I heard someone crunching across the broken glass in the lobby behind me. I thought it must be Caroline, but Komarov looked over my shoulder and he didn’t seem alarmed. The new arrival was obviously his ally, not mine.

“Have you got the stuff?” he asked the newcomer.

“Yeah,” said a male voice. There were more crunching steps as the man moved nearer to my back. “Shame you had to shoot Richard,” he said.

I recognized that voice. Much suddenly became clear.

“Tie him up,” said Komarov.

The man who had been behind me walked around in front. He was carrying a dark blue canvas carryall.

“Hello, Gary,” I said.

“Hi, Chef,” he said in his usual casual style. There was not a chicken pox scab to be seen. But, then, there wouldn’t be. It had been so simple, and I had walked right into the trap. Gary didn’t have chicken pox, and, no doubt, Oscar hadn’t been going through my papers in the office and hadn’t stolen any of the petty cash. Komarov had needed me back at the Hay Net, and the best way to do that was to create a manpower crisis. Get Oscar fired through Gary’s false accusations, then simply get Gary to call in sick. Hey, presto, I came running. Like a lamb to the slaughter.