Dick Francis - Proof

‘Why did he do it?’ Charter said from over my shoulder, and I shook my head, not knowing.

‘He was always jealous as a little boy, but we thought he’d grow out of it.’ He sighed. ‘The older he got the more bad tempered he was, and sullen, and dead lazy. I tried to speak kindly to him but he’d be bloody rude back and I’d have to go out of the room so as not to hit him sometimes.’ He paused, seeking no doubt for the thousandth time for guilt in himself, where there was none. ‘He wouldn’t work. He seemed to think the world owed him a living. He’d go out and refuse to say where he’d been, and he wouldn’t lift a finger to help his mother in the house. He sneered all the time at his brother and sister, who are bonny kids. I offered him his fare to Australia and some money to spend there, and he said he’d go. I hoped, you know, that they’d knock some sense into him over there.’ His tall body moved in a sort of shudder. ‘I’d no idea he’d done anything criminal. He was a pain in the arse... Didn’t he know he would ruin me in this business? Did he care? Did he mean to?’

The son sounded irredeemable to me and for the sake of the rest of the Charter family I hoped he’d never come home, but life was seldom so tidy.

‘Mr McGregor may save your business,’ I said, and he laughed aloud in one of his mercurial changes of mood and clapped me on the shoulder. ‘A politician, Mr McGregor, that’s what you’ve brought me here. Aye, laddie, so he may, so he may for the healthy fee I’m paying him.’

Gerard smiled indulgently and we walked on through the length of the maintenance area and out through the door at the far end. Outside, as Charter had said, there was a tall commercial-sized car wash, but he turned away from that and led us round to the side of the building to where the fleet of tankers nestled in line.

‘We’ve some out on the road,’ Charter said. ‘And I’m having to arrange huge insurance for every one separately, which is wiping out our profit. I’ve drivers sitting at home watching television and customers going elsewhere. We can’t carry alcohol, the Customs won’t let us. It’s illegal for this company to operate if it can’t pay its workforce and other debts; and I reckon we can keep running on reserves for perhaps two weeks from now, if we’re lucky. We could be shut down in five minutes then if the bank foreclosed on the tankers, which they will. Half of these tankers at any one time are being bought on loans, and if we can’t service the loans, we’re out.’ He smoothed a loving hand over one of the gleaming monsters. ‘I’ll be bloody sorry, and that’s a fact.’

The three of us walked soberly along the imposing row until we were back at the entrance, and Gerard’s car.

‘Two weeks, Mr McGregor,’ Kenneth Charter said. He shook our hands vigorously. ‘Hardly a sporting chance, would you say?’

‘We’ll try for results,’ Gerard assured him in a stockbroker voice, and we climbed into his car and drove away.

‘Any thoughts?’ he asked me immediately, before we’d even left the industrial estate.

‘Chiefly,’ I said, ‘why you need me at all.’

‘For your knowledge, as I told you. And because people talk to you.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Kenneth Charter told you far more about his son than he told me. Flora says she talks to you because you listen. She says you hear things that aren’t said. I was most struck by that. It’s a most useful ability in a detective.’

‘I’m not...’

‘No. Any other thoughts?’

‘Well...’ I said. ‘Did you see the rest of the son’s notebook, when you were there before?’

‘Yes, I did. Charter didn’t want me to take it for some reason, so I used his photocopier to reproduce every page that was written on. As he said, there were just some telephone numbers and a few memos about things to do. We’ve checked on all the telephone numbers these last few days but they seem to be harmless. Friends’ houses, a local cinema, a snooker club and a barber. No lead to how the son knew Zarac, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Mm. I’ll show you the photostats presently. See if you can suggest anything we’ve missed.’

Unlikely, I thought.

‘Is he actually in Australia?’ I asked.

‘The son? Yes, he is. He stayed in a motet in Sydney the night he arrived. His father made the reservation, and the son did stay there. We checked. Beyond that, we’ve lost him, except that we know he hasn’t used his return ticket. Quite possibly he doesn’t know Zarac’s dead. If he does know, he’s likely to drop even further out of sight. In any case, Kenneth Charter’s instructed us not to look for him, and we’ll comply with that. We’re having to work from the Silver Moondance end, and frankly, since Zarac’s murder, that’s far from easy.’

I reflected for a while and then said, ‘Can you pick the police brains at all?’

‘Sometimes. It depends.’

‘They’ll be looking for Paul Young,’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘Did Flora mention him? A man who came to the Silver Moondance from what he said was head office. He arrived while I was there with Detective Sergeant Ridger, who took me there to taste the Laphroaig.’

Gerard frowned as he drove. ‘Flora said one of the managers had come in when you were tasting the whisky and wine, and was furious.’

I shook my head. ‘Not a manager.’ I told Gerard in detail about Paul Young’s visit, and he drove more and more slowly as he listened.

‘That makes a difference,’ he said almost absently when I’d finished. ‘What else do you know that Flora didn’t tell me?’

‘The barman’s homosexual,’ I said flippantly. Gerard didn’t smile. ‘Well,’ I sighed, ‘Larry Trent bought a horse for thirty thousand pounds, did she tell you that?’

‘No... Is that important?’

I related the saga of the disappearing Ramekin. ‘Maybe the Silver Moondance made that sort of money, but I doubt it,’ I said. ‘Larry Trent kept five horses in training, which takes some financing, and he gambled in thousands. Gamblers don’t win, bookmakers do.’

‘When did Larry Trent buy this horse?’ Gerard asked.

‘At Doncaster Sales a year ago.’

‘Before the whisky thefts,’ he said regretfully.

‘Before those particular whisky thefts. Not necessarily before all the red wines in his cellar began to taste the same.’

‘Do you want a full-time job?’ he said.

‘No thanks.’

‘What happened to Ramekin, do you think?’

‘I would think,’ I said, ‘that at a guess he was shipped abroad and sold.’

At the rear of the row where my shop was located there was a service road with several small yards opening from it, leading to back doors, so that goods could be loaded and unloaded without one having to carry everything in and out through the front. It was into one of these yards that the bolted door next to my storeroom led, and it was in that yard that we commonly parked the van and the car.

Mrs Palissey, that Sunday, had the van. The Rover estate was standing in the yard where I’d left it when Gerard picked me up. Despite my protestations, when we returned at six he insisted on turning into the service road to save me walking the scant hundred yards from the end.

‘Don’t bother,’ I said.

‘No trouble.’

He drove along slowly, saying he’d be in touch with me the following day as we still had things to discuss, turning into the third yard on the left, at my direction.

Besides my car there was a medium-sized van in the yard, its rear doors wide open. I looked at it in vague surprise, as the two other shops who shared the yard with me were my immediate neighbour, a hairdresser, and next to that a dress shop, both of them firmly closed all day on Sundays.