Dick Francis - Proof

I watched Paul Young while he wrote the required information onto another billhead provided by the barman and wondered vaguely why he didn’t carry business cards to save himself that sort of bother. He had large hands, I noticed, full fleshed, with pale skin, and as he bent his head over the paper I saw the discreet pink hearing aid tucked behind his right ear, below the frame of his glasses. One could get hearing aids built-in with the earpieces of eyeglass frames, I thought, and wondered why he didn’t. What a mess, I thought, for a parent company to walk into unawares. And who, I wondered, had been on the fiddle — the manager, the wine waiter, or Larry Trent himself? Not that I wondered at all deeply. The culprit’s identity was to me less interesting than the crime, and the crime itself was hardly unique.

The six corks from the bottles of red were lying where I’d left them on the small table, the constables having sealed the open necks with wide wrappings of sticky tape instead of trying to ram back the original plugs, and I picked the corks up almost absentmindedly and put them in my pocket, tidy-minded out of habit.

Paul Young straightened from his writing and handed the sheet of paper to the assistant assistant, who handed it to me, who passed it on to Ridger, who glanced at it, folded it, and tucked it into some inner pocket below the raincoat.

‘And now, sir,’ he said, ‘dose the bar.’

The barman looked to Paul Young for instructions and got a shrug and an unwilling nod, and presently an ornamental grille unrolled from ceiling to bar-top, imprisoning the barman in his cage. He clicked a few locks into place and went out through the rear door, not returning to the saloon.

Ridger and Paul Young argued for a while about how soon the Silver Moondance could resume full business, each still covertly manoeuvring for domination. I reckoned it came out about quits because they finally backed off from each other inconclusively, both still in aggressive postures, more snarl than teeth.

Ridger removed his constables, the boxes and myself to the carpark leaving Paul Young to deal with his helpless helpers, and the last I saw of the man from head office, in a backward glance as I went through the western swing doors, was the businesslike glasses turning to survey his large empty-tabled discontinued asset in black and scarlet, the colours of roulette.

Ridger muttered under his breath several times as he drove me back to my shop and broke out into plain exasperation when I asked him for a receipt for the case of wines, which he was transporting in the boot.

‘Those twelve bottles do belong to me,’ I pointed out. ‘I paid for them, and I want them back. You said yourself that you’d got enough with the whisky to prosecute. The wines were my own idea.’

He grudgingly admitted it and gave me a receipt.

‘Where do I find you?’ I asked.

He told me the address of his station and without the least gratitude for the help he had solicited, drove brusquely away. Between him and Paul Young I thought, definitely not much to choose.

In the shop Mrs Palissey had had a veritable barrage of customers as sometimes happened on Monday mornings, and was showing signs of wear.

‘Go to lunch,’ I said, although it was early, and with gratitude she put on her coat, took Brian in tow, and departed to the local café for pie and chips and a gossip with her constant friend, the traffic warden.

The customers kept coming and I served them with automatic ease, smiling, always smiling, giving pleasure to the pleasure-seekers. For years, with Emma, I had positively enjoyed the selling, finding my own satisfaction in giving it to others. Without her the warmth I had felt had grown shallow, so that now I dispensed only a surface sympathy, nodding and smiling and hardly listening, hearing only sometimes, not always, the unsaid things in the shopping voices. The power I’d once had had drained away, and I didn’t really care.

During a short lull I wrote the list for the wholesaler, planning to go as soon as Mrs Palissey returned, and noticed that Brian, unasked by me, had swept and straightened the store room. The telephone rang three times with good substantial orders and the till, when consulted, showed a healthy profit margin on the morning’s trading. Ironic, the whole thing.

Two customers came in together, and I served the woman first, a middle-aged frightened lady who called every day for a bottle of the cheapest gin, tucking it away secretively in a large handbag while taking furtive glances out of the window for passing neighbours. Why didn’t she buy it by the case, I’d once long ago asked her teasingly, as it was cheaper by the case, but she’d been alarmed and said no, she enjoyed the walk; and the loneliness had looked out of her eyes along with the fear of being called an alcoholic, which she wasn’t quite, and I’d felt remorse for being heartless, because I’d known perfectly well why she bought one private bottle at a time.

‘Nice day, Mr Beach,’ she said breathlessly, her glance darting to the street.

‘Not too bad, Mrs Chance.’

She gave me the exact money, coins warmed by her palm, notes carefully counted, watching nervously while I wrapped her comfort in tissue.

‘Thank you, Mrs Chance.’

She nodded dumbly, gave me a half smile, pushed the bottle into her handbag and departed, pausing at the door to reconnoitre. I put the money in the till and looked enquiringly at the man waiting patiently to be served next, and found myself face to face with no customer but the investigator Wilson from the day before.

‘Mr Beach,’ he said.

‘Mr Wilson.’

Externally he wore exactly the same clothes, as if he had never been to bed or to shave, which he had. He looked rested and clean, and moved comfortably in his slow hunchbacked fashion with the knowing eyes and the non-communicating face.

‘Do you always know what your customers want without asking them?’ he said.

‘Quite often,’ I nodded, ‘but usually I wait for them to say.’

‘More polite?’

‘Infinitely.’

He paused. ‘I came to ask you one or two questions. Is there anywhere we can talk?’

‘Just talk,’ I said apologetically. ‘Would you like a chair?’

‘Are you alone here?’

‘Yes.’

I fetched the spare chair for him from the office and put it by the counter, and had no sooner done so than three people came in for Cinzano, beer and sherry. Wilson waited through the sales without doing much more than blink, and when the door closed for the third time he stirred without impatience and said, ‘Yesterday, during the party, were you at any time talking to the Sheik?’

I smiled involuntarily. ‘No, I wasn’t.’

‘Why does the idea amuse you?’

‘Well... the Sheik considers all this...’ I waved a hand around the bottle-lined walls, ‘... as being positively sinful. Forbidden. Pernicious. Much as we regard cocaine. To him I’m a pusher. In his own country I’d be in jail, or worse. I wouldn’t have introduced myself to him. Not unless I wanted to invite contempt.’

‘I see,’ he said, almost nodding, contemplating the Islamic view. Then he slightly pursed his lips, approaching, I guessed, the question he had really come to ask.

‘Think back,’ he said, ‘to when you were outside the tent, when the horsebox rolled.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why were you out there?’

I told him about fetching more champagne.

‘And when you went out, the horsebox was already rolling?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘When I went out I glanced up at the cars and everything was all right. I remember noting that no one had yet left... and hoped I’d taken enough champagne to last out.’

‘Was there anyone near the horsebox?’