Dick Francis - Enquiry

‘Yes, I do see,’ I said. The anxious lines on his forehead dissolved when he saw that he had managed to tell me what he meant. He came over and put the small black jagged edged lump into my hands. Heavy for its size. About three inches long. Asymmetrically curved. Part of the side wall of a huge tube.

‘As far as I can make out, see,’ Derek said, pointing, ‘It came from about where the manifold narrows down to the exhaust pipe, but really it might be anywhere. There were quite a few bits of manifold, when I looked, but I couldn’t see the bit that fits into this, and I dare say it’s still rusting away somewhere along the railway line. Anyway, see this bit here...’ He pointed a stubby finger at a round dent in part of one edge. ‘That’s one side of a hole that was bored in the manifold wall. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s quite a few holes might have been drilled through the wall. I mean, some people have exhaust gas temperature gauges stuck into the manifold... and other gauges too. Things like that. Only, see, there weren’t no gauges in your manifold, now were there?’

‘You tell me,’ I said.

‘There weren’t, then. Now you couldn’t really say what the hole was for, not for certain you couldn’t. But as far as I know, there weren’t any holes in your manifold last time I did the service.’

I fingered the little semi-circular dent. No more than a quarter of an inch across.

‘However did you spot something so small?’ I asked.

‘Dunno, really. Mind you, I was there a good couple of hours, picking through those tubs. Did it methodical, like. Since you were paying for it and all.’

‘Is it a big job... drilling a hole this size through an exhaust manifold. Would it take long?’

‘Half a minute, I should think.’

‘With an electric drill?’ I asked.

‘Oh yeah, sure. If you did it with a hand drill, then it would take five minutes. Say nearer eight or ten, to be on the safe side.’

‘How many people carry drills around in their tool kits?’

‘That, see, it depends on the chap. Now some of them carry all sorts of stuff in their cars. Proper work benches, some of them. And then others, the tool kit stays strapped up fresh from the factory until the car’s dropping to bits.’

‘People do carry drills, then?’

‘Oh yeah, sure. Quite a lot do. Hand drills, of course. You wouldn’t have much call for an electric drill, not in a tool kit, not unless you did a lot of repairs, like, say on racing cars.’

He went and sat down again. Carefully, as before.

‘If someone drilled a hole this size through the manifold, what would happen?’

‘Well, honestly, nothing much. You’d get exhaust gas out through the engine, and you’d hear a good lot of noise, and you might smell it in the car, but it would sort of blow away, see, it wouldn’t come in through the heater. To do that, like I said before, you’d have to put some tubing into the hole there and then stick the other end of the tubing into the heater. Mind you that would be pretty easy, you wouldn’t need a drill. Some heater tubes are really only cardboard.’

‘Rubber tubing from one end to the other?’ I suggested.

He shook his head. ‘No. Have to be metal. Exhaust gas, that’s very hot. It’d melt anything but metal.’

‘Do you think anyone could do all that on the spur of the moment?’

He put his head on one side, considering. ‘Oh sure, yeah. If he’d got a drill. Like, say the first other thing he needs is some tubing. Well, he’s only got to look around for that. Lots lying about, if you look. The other day, I used a bit of a kiddy’s old cycle frame, just the job it was. Right, you get the tube ready first and then you fit a drill nearest the right size, to match. And Bob’s your uncle.’

‘How long, from start to finish?’

‘Fixing the manifold to the heater? Say, from scratch, including maybe having to cast around for a bit of tube, well, at the outside half an hour. A quarter, if you had something all ready handy. Only the drilling would take any time, see? The rest would be like stealing candy from a baby.’

Roberta appeared in the doorway shrugging herself into the stripy coat. Derek stood up awkwardly and didn’t know where to put his hands. She smiled at him sweetly and unseeingly and said to me, ‘Is there anything else you want, Kelly?’

‘No. Thank you very much.’

‘Think nothing of it. I’ll see... I might come over again tomorrow.’

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘Right.’

She nodded, smiled temperately, and made her usual poised exit. Derek’s comment approached, ‘Cor.’

‘I suppose you didn’t see any likely pieces of tube in the wreckage?’ I asked.

‘Huh?’ He tore his eyes away with an effort from the direction Roberta had gone. ‘No, like, it was real bad. Lots of bits, you couldn’t have told what they were. I never seen anything like it. Sure, I seen crashes, stands to reason. Different, this was.’ He shivered.

‘Did you have any difficulty with being allowed to search?’

‘No, none. They didn’t seem all that interested in what I did. Just said to help myself. ’Course, I told them it was my car, like. I mean, that I looked after it. Mind you, they were right casual about it anyway, because when I came away they were letting this other chap have a good look too.’

‘Which other chap?’

‘Some fellow. Said he was an insurance man, but he didn’t have a notebook.’

I felt like saying Huh? too. I said, ‘Notebook?’

‘Yeah, sure, insurance men, they’re always crawling round our place looking at wrecks and never one without a notebook. Write down every blessed detail, they do. But this other chap, looking at your car, he didn’t have any notebook.’

‘What did he look like?’

He thought.

‘That’s difficult, see. He didn’t look like anything, really. Medium, sort of. Not young and not old really either. A nobody sort of person, really.’

‘Did he wear sun glasses?’

‘No. He had a hat on, but I don’t know if he had ordinary glasses. I can’t actually remember. I didn’t notice that much.’

‘Was he looking through the wreckage as if he knew what he wanted?’

‘Uh... don’t know, really. Strikes me he was a bit flummoxed, like, finding it was all in such small bits.’

‘He didn’t have a girl with him?’

‘Nope.’ He brightened. ‘He came in a Volkswagen, an oldish grey one.’

‘Thousands of those about,’ I said.

‘Oh yeah, sure. Er... was this chap important?’

‘Only if he was looking for what you found.’

He worked it out.

‘Cripes,’ he said.

Lord Ferth arrived twenty minutes after he’d said, which meant that I’d been hopping round the flat on my crutches for half an hour, unable to keep still.

He stood in the doorway into the sitting-room holding a briefcase and bowler hat in one hand and unbuttoning his short fawn overcoat with the other.

‘Well, Hughes,’ he said. ‘Good afternoon.’

‘Good afternoon, my Lord.’

He came right in, shut the door behind him, and put his hat and case on the oak chest beside him.

‘How’s the leg?’

‘Stagnating,’ I said. ‘Can I get you some tea... coffee... or a drink?’

‘Nothing just now...’ He laid his coat on the chest and picked up the briefcase again, looking around him with the air of surprise I was used to in visitors. I offered him the green armchair with a small table beside it. He asked where I was going to sit.

‘I’ll stand,’ I said. ‘Sitting’s difficult.’

‘But you don’t stand all day!’

‘No. Lie on my bed, mostly.’

‘Then we’ll talk in your bedroom.’

We went through the door at the end of the sitting-room and this time he murmured aloud.