Дик Фрэнсис - Banker

‘ Instructions ,’ part of the underneath label said. ‘ Shake well. Be careful not to get the shampoo in the dog’s eyes. Rub well into the coat and leave for ten or fifteen minutes before rinsing .’

At the bottom, below the stuck-on label, were the words, in much smaller print, ‘ Manufactured by Eagle Inc., Michigan, U.S.A. List number 29931 .

When I’d finished shaving I unscrewed the cap and tilted the bottle gently over the basin.

A thick greenish liquid appeared, smelling powerfully of soap.

Shampoo: what else.

The bottle was to all intents full. I screwed on the cap again and put it on the shelf, and thought about it while I lay on the bed with my hands behind my head.

Shampoo for dogs.

After a while I got up and went down to the kitchen, and in a high cupboard found a small collection of empty, washed, screw-top glass jars, the sort of thing my mother had always saved for herbs and picnics. I took one which would hold perhaps a cupful of liquid and returned upstairs, and over the washbasin I shook the bottle well, unscrewed the cap and carefully poured more than half of the shampoo into the jar.

I screwed the caps onto both the bottle and the jar, copied what could be seen on the original label into the small engagement diary I carried with me everywhere, and stowed the now half full round glass container from Oliver’s kitchen inside my own sponge-bag: and when I went downstairs again I took the plastic bottle with me.

‘Ginnie had it?’ Oliver said dully, picking it up and squinting at it. ‘Whatever for?’

‘The nurse at the hospital said it was tucked into the waistband of her skirt.’

A smile flickered. ‘She always did that when she was little. Plimsols, books, bits of string, anything. To keep her hands free, she said. They all used to slip down into her little knickers, and there would be a whole shower of things sometimes when we undressed her.’ His face went hopelessly bleak at this memory, I can’t believe it, you know,’ he said. ‘I keep thinking she’ll walk through the door.’ He paused. ‘My wife is flying over. She says she’ll be here tomorrow morning.’ His voice gave no indication as to whether that was good news or bad. ‘Stay tonight, will you?’

‘If you want.’

‘Yes.’

Chief Inspector Wyfold turned up again at that point and we gave him the shampoo bottle, Oliver explaining about Ginnie’s habit of carrying things in her clothes.

‘Why didn’t you give this to me earlier?’ he asked me.

‘I forgot I had it. It seemed so paltry at the time, compared with Ginnie dying.’

The Chief Inspector picked up the bottle by its serrated cap and read what one could see of the label, and to Oliver he said, ‘Do you have a dog?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would this be what you usually use, to wash him?’

‘I really don’t know. I don’t wash him myself. One of the lads does.’

‘The lads being the grooms?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Which lad washed your dog?’ Wyfold asked.

‘Um... any. Whoever I ask.’

The Chief Inspector produced a thin white folded paper bag from one of his pockets and put the bottle inside it. ‘Who to your knowledge has handled this, besides yourselves?’ he asked.

‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘the nurse at the hospital... and Ginnie.’

‘And it spent from last night until now in your pocket?’ He shrugged. ‘Hopeless for prints, I should think, but we’ll try.’ He fastened the bag shut and wrote on a section of it with a ball pen. To Oliver, almost as an aside, he said, i came to ask you about your daughter’s relationship with men.’

Oliver said wearily, ‘She didn’t have any. She’s only just left school.’

Wyfold made small negative movements with head and hands as if amazed at the naiveté of fathers. ‘No sexual relationship to your knowledge?’

Oliver was too exhausted for anger. ‘No,’ he said.

‘And you sir?’ he turned to me. ‘What were your relations with Virginia Knowles?’

‘Friendship.’

‘Including sexual intercourse?’

‘No.’

Wyfold looked at Oliver who said tiredly, ‘Tim is a business friend of mine. A financial adviser, staying here for the weekend, that’s all.’

The policeman frowned at me with disillusion as if he didn’t believe it. I gave him no amplified answer because I simply couldn’t be bothered, and what could I have said? That with much affection I’d watched a child grow into an attractive young woman and yet not wanted to sleep with her? His mind ran on carnal rails, all else discounted.

He went away in the end taking the shampoo with him, and Oliver with immense fortitude said he had better go out into the yards to catch the tail end of evening stables. ‘Those mares,’ he said. ‘Those foals... they still need the best of care.’

‘I wish I could help,’ I said, feeling useless.

‘You do.’

I went with him on his rounds, and when we reached the foaling yard, Nigel, resurrected, was there.

His stocky figure leaned against the doorpost of an open box as if without its support he would collapse, and the face he slowly turned towards us had aged ten years. The bushy eyebrows stood out starkly over charcoal shadowed eyes, puffiness in his skin swelling the eyelids and sagging in deep bags on his cheeks. He was also unshaven, unkempt and feeling ill.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Heard about Ginnie. Very sorry.’ I wasn’t sure whether he was sympathizing with Oliver or apologising for the drunkenness. ‘A big noise of a policeman came asking if I’d killed her. As if I would.’ He put a shaky hand on his head, almost as if physically to support it on his shoulders. ‘I feel rotten. My own fault. Deserve it. This mare’s likely to foal tonight. That shit of a policeman wanted to know if I was sleeping with Ginnie. Thought I’d tell you... I wasn’t.’

Wyfold, I reflected, would ask each of the lads individually the same question. A matter of time, perhaps, before he asked Oliver himself; though Oliver and I, he had had to concede, gave each other a rock-solid alibi.

We walked on towards the stallions and I asked Oliver if Nigel often got drunk, since Oliver hadn’t shown much surprise.

‘Very seldom,’ Oliver said. ‘He’s once or twice turned out in that state but we’ve never lost a foal because of it. I don’t like it, but he’s so good with the mares.’ He shrugged. ‘I overlook it,’

He gave carrots to all four stallions but scarcely glanced at Sandcastle, as if he could no longer bear the sight.

‘I’ll try the Research people tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Forgot about it, today.’

From the stallions he went, unusually, in the direction of the lower gate, past Nigel’s bungalow and the hostel, to stand for a while at the place where Ginnie had lain in the dark on the night before.

The asphalt driveway showed no mark. Oliver looked to where the closed gate sixty feet away led to the road and in a drained voice said, ‘Do you think she could have talked to someone out there?’

‘She might have, I suppose.’

‘Yes.’ He turned to go back. ‘It’s all so senseless . And unreal. Nothing feels real.’

Exhaustion of mind and body finally overtook him after dinner and he went grey-faced to bed, but I in the first quiet of the long day went out again for restoration: for a look at the stars, as Ginnie had said.

Thinking only of her I walked slowly along some of the paths between the paddocks, the way lit by a half-moon with small clouds drifting, and stopped eventually at the place where on the previous morning I’d held her tight in her racking distress. The birth of the deformed foal seemed so long ago, yet it was only yesterday: the morning of the last day of Ginnie’s life.