Dick Francis - Proof

‘No.’

‘You want some food?’

I hesitated. I’d eaten nothing all day but felt no hunger.

‘It’s best to eat,’ he said. ‘Lemon chicken, your favourite. I made it fresh.’ He gave me a brief bow. I bowed courteously in return and went in with him: between us there was the same sort of formality as between myself and Mrs Palissey, and Sung Li, also, seemed to prefer it. I ate the lemon chicken seated at a table in the small restaurant section and after that fried shrimp and felt a good deal less lightheaded. I hadn’t known I was lightheaded until then, rather like not knowing how ill one had been until after one felt well again, but, looking back, I imagined I hadn’t been entirely ground-based since I’d looked into the business end of a shotgun and found my legs didn’t reliably belong to my body. The euphoria of escape, I now saw, accounted for Gerard’s and my unconcerned conversation in the yard and for my methodical checking of my losses. It was really odd how the mind strove to pretend things were normal... and there were good chemical reasons why that happened after injury. I’d read an article about it, somewhere.

I stood up, making a stiff attempt to pick my wallet out of my pocket, and Sung Li was at my side instantly, telling me to pay him in the morning. I asked if I could go out to my car in the yard through his kitchen door instead of walking all the way round and he was too polite to tell me I wasn’t fit to drive. We bowed to each other again outside in the darkness, and I’d managed to grasp my keys pretty firmly by the time I reached the Rover.

I drove home. I hit nothing. The anaesthetic wore off my arm and the whole thing started burning. I swore aloud, most obscenely, half surprised that I should say such things, even alone. Half surprised I could think them.

I let myself into the cottage. The second Sunday in a row, I thought, that I had gone back there with blood on my clothes and my mind full of horrors.

Emma, I thought, for God’s sake help me. I walked through the empty rooms, not really looking for her, knowing perfectly well she wasn’t there, but desperately in need all the same of someone to talk to, someone to hold me and love me as she had done.

With the lights all brightly shining I swallowed some aspirin and sat in my accustomed chair in the sitting room and told myself to shut up and be sensible. I’d been robbed... so what? Fought... and lost... so what? Been shot in the arm... so what? So Emma... my darling love... help me.

Get a bloody grip on things, I told myself.

Switch off the lights. Go to bed. Go to sleep.

My arm throbbed unmercifully all night.

The new day, Monday, crept into the world at about the level of my perception of it: dull, overcast, lifeless. Stiffly I dressed and shaved and made coffee, averting my mind from the temptation to go back to bed and abdicate. Mondays were hard at the best of times. The shambles ahead beckoned with all the appeal of a cold swamp.

I put the aspirin bottle in my pocket. The eleven separate punctures, announcing themselves as unready to be overlooked, seemed to be competing against each other for my attention, and various bruises were developing gingerly almost everywhere else. Bugger the lot of you, I thought: to little avail.

I drove to the shop and parked in the yard. Gerard’s car stood exactly in the same place where he’d stalled it askew, stamping on the footbrake when he caught sight of the gun swinging round to his face. The keys weren’t in the ignition and I couldn’t remember who had them. One more problem to shelve indefinitely.

There was a police car already outside my door when I walked round to the front. Inside it, Detective Sergeant Ridger. He emerged from the driver’s side at my approach, every button and hair regimentally aligned as before. He stood waiting for me and I stopped when I reached him.

‘How are you?’ he said. He cleared his throat. ‘I’m... er... sorry.’

I smiled at least a fraction. Sergeant Ridger was becoming quite human. I unlocked the door, let us in and locked it again; then I sat in the tiny office slowly opening the mail while he walked round the place with a notebook, writing painstakingly.

He came to a halt finally and said, ‘You weren’t trying to be funny, were you, with the list of missing property you dictated to the constable yesterday evening before you went off to the hospital?’

‘No.’

‘You do realise it was almost identical with the red wines stolen from the Silver Moondance.’

‘I do indeed,’ I said. ‘And I hope you’ve got my Silver Moondance bottles tucked away safely in your police station. Twelve bottles of wine, all opened. My own property.’

‘I haven’t forgotten,’ he said with a touch of starch. ‘You’ll get them back in due course.’

‘I’d like one of them now,’ I said reflectively.

‘Which one?’

‘The St Estèphe.’

‘Why that one particularly?’ He wasn’t exactly suspicious; just naturally vigilant.

‘Not that one particularly. It was the first that came to mind. Any would do.’

‘What do you want it for?’

‘Just to look at it again. Smell it... taste it again. You never know... it might just be helpful. To you, I mean.’

He shrugged, slightly puzzled but not antagonistic. ‘All right. I’ll get you one if I can, but I might not be able to. They’re evidence.’ He looked around the tiny office. ‘Did they touch anything in here?’

I shook my head, grateful for that at least. ‘They were definitely looking for the wine from the Silver Moondance. The bottles they loaded first and succeeded in taking away with them in the van were all opened and re-corked.’ I explained about the bottles missing from on and beneath the tasting table, and he went to have a further look.

‘Anything you can add to the description you gave of the thieves?’ he asked, coming back.

I shook my head.

‘Could one of them have been the barman from the Silver Moondance?’

‘No,’ I said definitely. ‘Not his sort at all.’

‘You said they wore wigs,’ Ridger said. ‘So how can you be sure?’

‘The barman has acne. The robbers didn’t.’

Ridger wrote it down in his notebook.

‘The barman knew exactly what you bought,’ he observed. ‘He spelled them out item by item on your receipt.’

‘Have you asked him about it?’ I said neutrally.

Ridger gave me another of the uncertain looks which showed him undecided still about my status: member of the not-to-be-informed public or helpful-consultant-expert.

‘We haven’t been able to find him,’ he said eventually.

I refrained from impolite surprise. I said, ‘Since when?’

‘Since...’ he cleared his throat. ‘Not actually since you yourself last saw him leaving the bar last Monday after he’d locked the grille. Apparently he drove off immediately in his car, packed his clothes, and left the district entirely.’

‘Where did he live?’

‘With... um... a friend.’

‘Male friend?’

Ridger nodded. ‘Temporary arrangement. No roots. At the first sign of trouble, he was off. We’ll look out for him, of course, but he’d gone by early afternoon that Monday.’

‘Not suspected of killing Zarac,’ I suggested.

‘That’s right.’

‘The assistant assistant and the waitress both knew what I bought,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘But...’

‘Too wet,’ Ridger said.

‘Mm. Which leaves Paul Young.’

‘I suppose he wasn’t one of the thieves.’ Hardly a question, more a statement.

‘No,’ I said. ‘They were both younger and taller, for a start.’

‘You would obviously have said.’

‘Yes. Have you... er... found him? Paul Young?’