Dick Francis - Proof

Gerard and I had come into the house through the kitchen, but I seldom ate there any more. When the food was re-heated and in dishes we transferred it to the sitting room, putting it on a coffee table between two comfortable chairs and eating with our plates balanced on our knees.

It was in that warm looking room with its bookshelves, soft lamplight, television, photographs and rugs that I mostly lived, when I was there at all. It was there that I now kept a wine rack and glasses lazily to hand and averted my mind from chores like gardening. It was there, I dare say, that my energy was chronically at its lowest ebb, yet it was to there also that I instinctively returned.

Gerard looked better for the food, settling deep into his chair when he’d finished with a sigh of relaxation. He put his arm back in its sling and accepted coffee and a second glass of Californian wine, a 1978 Napa Cabernet Sauvignon I’d been recently selling and liked very much myself.

‘It’s come a long way,’ Gerard observed, reading the label.

‘And going further,’ I said. ‘California’s growing grapes like crazy, and their best wine is world class.’

He drank a little and shook his head, it’s pleasant enough but I honestly couldn’t tell it from any old plonk. A terrible admission, but there you are.’

‘Just what the Silver Moondance ordered... customers like you.’

He smiled. ‘And I’d guess I’m in the majority.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Liking wine at all is the main thing.’

He said, ‘You were going to tell me why the substitute wines were equally as important as the substitute scotch at the Silver Moondance.’

I glanced at him, hearing the hardening tone in the sub-Scottish voice and seeing the same change in him as there had been in the car the previous Sunday: the shedding of the social shell, the emergence of the investigator. His eyes were steady and intent, his face concentrated, the mouth unsmiling: and I answered to this second man with recognition and relief, dealing in facts and guesses dispassionately.

‘People who steal scotch whisky,’ I said, ‘usually go for a shipment of bottles in cases. The proceeds are ready to sell... the receiver’s probably already lined up. There’s no difficulty. It’s all profit. But if you steal a tankerful of the liquid in bulk you have the trouble and expense in bottling it. Cost of bottles, cost of labour, all sorts of incidentals.’

‘Right,’ he said nodding.

‘There were six thousand gallons of scotch at roughly fifty-eight per cent alcohol content in each of Kenneth Charter’s three lost loads.’

‘Right.’

‘Each load was of a higher concentration than is ever sold for drinking. When they received the tankerload the Rannoch people would have added water to bring the scotch down to retail strength, around forty per cent alcohol by volume.’

Gerard listened and nodded.

‘At that point they’d have enough scotch to fill approximately fifty thousand bottles of standard size.’

Gerard’s mouth opened slightly with surprise. ‘Kenneth Charter never said that.’

‘He shifts the stuff, he doesn’t bottle it. He maybe never did the arithmetic. Anyway, with three tankersful we’re talking about one hundred and fifty thousand bottles in six months, and that’s not something you can mess about with in the back yard.’

He was silent for a while thinking about it, and then said merely, ‘Go on.’

‘On each occasion the whole load was pumped out of the tanker pretty fast, as the tanker was found empty on the following day.’

‘Right.’

‘So unless the point of the operation was simply to ruin Kenneth Charter, in which case it’s conceivable the loads were dumped in ditches like the drivers, the scotch was pumped from the tanker into some sort of storage.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘So the logical place for the tanker to be unloaded was at a bottling plant.’

‘Yes, but it never reached there.’

‘It never reached Rannoch’s bottling plant. There’s a difference.’

‘All right.’ His eyes smiled. ‘Go on.’

‘Fifty thousand bottles three times over isn’t going to keep any reasonable plant in operation for anything like six months. Small chateaux bottle that much themselves in a few weeks without blinking. So... um... what if in between times the whisky bottling changed over to wine... to Silver Moondance wine, to be precise.’

‘Ah.’ It was a deep note, an acknowledgement that we’d arrived at the centre of things. ‘Carry on.’

‘Well... with a bottling plant it would be easy to fill any shape of bottle from a single source of wine... and the shapes of the bottles at the Silver Moondance fitted the labels: claret bottles for claret labels, burgundy bottles for burgundy labels and so on. The very fact that there were both scotch and wine under false labels at the Silver Moondance... well, for the simplest explanation I’d bet you a pea to a case of Krug they were bottled in the same place.’

Gerard drank some of his wine absentmindedly.

‘Where?’ he said succinctly.

‘Mm... that’s the rub.’

‘Any ideas?’

‘It did occur to me that it might be in one of those plants that Kenneth Charter described, that got into difficulties or went bust when the French started bottling more of their own wines. I mean... suppose someone came to you if you were on the verge of bankruptcy and offered you work. Even if you knew it was crooked you might do it and keep quiet. Or suppose a bottling plant was for sale or lease at a ridiculous price, which they’re bound to have been... if the game looked worth it... if it was going to go on maybe for years...’

‘Yes,’ Gerard said. ‘It’s possible.’ He gave it about five seconds’ thought. ‘So provisionally we’re looking for a bottling plant. Now let’s shelve that for a moment.’ He paused again, considering, and then said, ‘In Deglet’s we often work in pairs, discussing a case, bouncing ideas off each other, coming up sometimes with things neither of us had considered on our own. It’s a way that I’m used to, that I like... but my usual partner’s in London, and frankly I’m too tired to go there... and you’re here on the doorstep loaded to the hairline with specialist knowledge... so do you mind letting me talk my ideas to you? And be sure to speak out if I start something in your thoughts. That’s where the value of these sessions lies. Bouncing ideas back. Do you mind?’

‘No, of course not. But I...’

‘Just listen,’ he said. ‘Stop me if you’ve a comment. That’s all there is to it.’

‘All right.’

‘And honestly... do you have any brandy?’

I smiled. ‘Yes, I do. What would you like?’

‘Anything.’

I gave him some Hine Antique, which he sighed over as if putting on friendly old shoes. I poured some for myself also on the grounds that people who said it had medicinal qualities weren’t joking. If queasy, drink brandy, if tired, drink brandy, if suffering from green shivers and cold shakes... drink brandy.

‘All right, then,’ he said, cradling his glass in the palm of one hand. ‘First, review the status quo. Under that heading we have the prime and never-to-be-forgotten fact that our number one aim is to save Kenneth Charter’s business without landing his son in jail. That’s what we’re being paid for. Justice and other considerations are secondary.’

He sipped his drink.

‘Fact number two,’ he went on, ‘Kenneth Charter’s son... whose name is also Kenneth, to be awkward, so we’ll call him Kenneth Junior... Kenneth Charter Junior made the theft of the scotch possible by telling Zarac of the Silver Moondance where to find the tanker.’ He paused. ‘We still have the unanswered question.’