Дик Фрэнсис - Banker

‘No, it isn’t.’ I leaned out of the open window and called to him ‘Ricky... over here.’

He crossed the road and stopped beside the car.

‘Hop in,’ I said.

‘You been in an accident?’ he said disbelievingly.

‘Sort of.’

He climbed into the back of the car. He hadn’t been too keen to have his photograph taken for the purpose I’d outlined, but he was in no great position to refuse; and I’d made my blackmailing pressure sound like honey, which I wasn’t too bad at, in my way. He still wasn’t pleased however, which had its own virtues, as the last thing I wanted was forty prints of him grinning.

Oliver drove off and stopped where I asked at a suitably neutral background — a grey-painted factory wall — and he said he would take the photographs if I explained what I wanted.

‘Ricky looks like Shane,’ I said. ‘So take pictures of Ricky in the way he most looks like Shane. Get him to turn his head slowly like he did when he came out of work, and tell him to hold it where it’s best.’

‘All right.’

Ricky got out of the car and stood in front of the wall, with Oliver focusing at head-and-shoulder distance. He took the first picture and we waited for it to develop.

Oliver looked at it, grunted, adjusted the light meter, and tried again.

‘This one’s all right,’ he said, watching the colours emerge. ‘Looks like Shane. Quite amazing.’

With a faint shade of sullenness Ricky held his pose for as long as it took to shoot four boxes of film. Oliver passed each print to me as it came out of the camera, and I laid them in rows along the seat beside me while they developed.

‘That’s fine,’ I said, when the films were finished. ‘Thank you, Ricky.’

He came over to the car window and I asked him without any great emphasis, ‘Do you remember, when Indian Silk got so ill with debility, which vet was treating him?’

‘Yeah, sure, that fellow that was murdered. Him and his partners. The best, Dad said.’

I nodded non-committally. ‘Do you want a ride to Newmarket?’

‘Got my motor-bike, thanks.’

We took him back to his engineering works where I finally cheered him up with payment for his time and trouble, and watched while he roared off with a flourish of self-conscious bravado.

‘What’s now?’ Oliver said. ‘Did you say Newmarket?’

I nodded. ‘I’ve arranged to meet Ursula Young.’

He gave me a glance of bewilderment and drove without protest, pulling duly into the mid-town car park where Ursula had said to come.

We arrived there first, the photography not having taken as long as I’d expected, and Oliver finally gave voice to a long-restrained question.

‘Just what,’ he said. ‘Are the photographs for?

‘For finding Shane.’

‘But why?’

‘Don’t explode.’

‘No.’

‘Because I think he gave the selenium to your mares.’

Oliver sat very still. ‘You asked about him before,’ he said. ‘I did wonder... if you thought... he killed Ginnie.’

It was my own turn for quiet.

‘I don’t know if he did,’ I said at last. ‘I don’t know.’

Ursula arrived in her car with a rush, checking her watch and apologising all the same, although she was on time. She, like Oliver and Ricky, looked taken aback at my unorthodox attire, but rallied in her usual no-nonsense fashion and shuffled into the back seat of Oliver’s car, leaning forward to bring her face on a level with ours.

I passed her thirty of the forty pictures of Ricky Barnet, who of course she knew immediately.

‘Yes, but,’ I explained, ‘Ricky looks like a lad who worked for Oliver, and it’s that lad we want to find.

‘Well, all right. How important is it?’

Oliver answered her before I could. ‘Ursula, if you find him, we might be able to prove there’s nothing wrong with Sand-castle. And don’t ask me how, just believe it.’

Her mouth had opened.

‘And Ursula,’ Oliver said, ‘if you find him — Shane, that lad — I’ll put business your way for the rest of my life.’

I could see that to her, a middle-rank bloodstock agent, it was no mean promise.

‘All right,’ she said briskly. ‘You’re on. I’ll start spreading the pictures about at once, tonight, and call you with results.’

‘Ursula,’ I said. ‘If you find where he is now, make sure he isn’t frightened off. We don’t want to lose him.’

She looked at me shrewdly. ‘This is roughly police work?’

I nodded. ‘Also, if you find anyone who employed him in the past, ask if by any chance a horse he looked after fell ill. Or any horse in the yard, for that matter. And don’t give him a name... he isn’t always called Shane.’

‘Is he dangerous?’ she said straightly.

‘We don’t want him challenged,’ I said. ‘Just found.’

‘All right. I trust you both, so I’ll do my best. And I suppose one day you’ll explain what it’s all about?’

‘If he’s done what we think,’ I said, ‘we’ll make sure the whole world knows. You can count on it.’

She smiled briefly and patted my unplastered shoulder. ‘You look grey,’ she said, and to Oliver, ‘Tim told me a horse kicked him and broke his arm. Is that right?’

‘He told me that, too.’

‘And what else?’ she asked me astringently. ‘How did you get in this state?’

‘The horse didn’t know its own strength.’ I smiled at her. ‘Clumsy brute.’

She knew I was dodging in some way, but she lived in a world where the danger of horse kicks was ever present and always to be avoided, and she made no more demur. Stowing the photographs in her capacious handbag she wriggled her way out of the car, and with assurances of action drove off in her own.

‘What now?’ Oliver said.

‘A bottle of scotch.’

He gave me an austere look which then swept over my general state and softened to understanding.

‘Can you wait until we get home?’ he said.

That evening, bit by bit, I told Oliver about Pen’s analysis of the treasures from Calder’s surgery and of Calder’s patients’ drug-induced illnesses. I told him that Calder had killed Ian Pargetter, and why, and I explained again how the idea of first discrediting, then buying and re-building Sandcastle had followed the pattern of Indian Silk.

‘There may be others besides Indian Silk that we haven’t heard of,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Show jumpers, eventers, even prize ponies. You never know. Dissdale might have gone along more than twice with his offer to buy the no-hoper.’

‘He withdrew his offer for Sandcastle the same night Calder died.’

‘What exactly did he say?’ I asked.

‘He was very upset. Said he’d lost his closest friend, and that without Calder to work his miracles there was no point in buying Sandcastle.’

I frowned. ‘Do you think it was genuine?’

‘His distress? Yes, certainly.’

‘And the belief in miracles?’

‘He did sound as if he believed.’

I wondered if it was in the least possible that Dissdale was an innocent and duped accomplice and hadn’t known that his bargains had been first made ill. His pride in knowing the Great Man had been obvious at Ascot, and perhaps he had been flattered and foolish but not wicked after all.

Oliver asked in the end how I’d found out about the drug-induced illnesses and Ian Pargetter’s murder, and I told him that too, as flatly as possible.

He sat staring at me, his gaze on the plaster.

‘You’re very lucky to be in a wheel-chair, and not a coffin,’ he said. ‘Damn lucky.’

‘Yes.’

He poured more of the brandy we had progressed to after dinner. Anesthesia was coming along nicely.