Dick Francis - Proof

The man who had been writing there came outside. I watched them talking. Watched them both look across to the stands. The man from the office pointed to the way he’d told me to go to find the caterers. Vernon seemed to be asking urgent questions but the office man shook his head and after a while went back indoors; and with clearly evident frustration Vernon began to hurry back the way he’d come.

The door at the bottom of the Owners and Trainers’ Bar steps proved to be bolted on the inside, top and bottom. I undid the bolts, fumbling. The door itself... the knob turned under my hand and the door opened inward towards me when I pulled, and I stepped out feeling that if Vernon or Paul Young jumped on me at that moment I would scream, literally scream with hysterics.

They weren’t there. I shut the door behind me and started walking with unsteady knees, and the man from the office came out of his door and said, i say, do you know the caterer’s store manager is looking for you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. It came out as a croak. I cleared my throat and said again, ‘Yes. I just met him along there.’ I pointed to the way Vernon had gone... and I feared he would come back.

‘Did you? Righto.’ He frowned at me, puzzled. ‘He wanted to know your name. Most odd, what? I said I didn’t know, but mentioned that it was hours since you’d asked the way to his door. I’d have thought he would have known.’

‘Most odd,’ I agreed. ‘Anyway, he knows now. I told him. Er... Peter Cash. Insurance.’

‘Ah.’

‘Not a bad day,’ I said, looking at the sky. ‘After yesterday.’

‘We needed the rain.’

‘Yes. Well... good day.’

He nodded benignly over the civility and returned to his lair, and I went shakily onwards past the parade ring, down the path, through the still open entrance gate and out to the Rover; and no one yelled behind me, no one ran to pounce and clutch and drag me back at the last moment. No one came.

The keys went tremblingly into the locks. The engine started. There were no flat tyres. I pushed the old gear level through the ancient gears, reverse and forward, and drove away over the cindery grass and through the main gates and away from Martineau Park with Pan at my shoulder fading slowly into the shadows on the journey.

When I went into the shop it was still only twenty-one minutes to four, although I felt as if I had lived several lifetimes. I headed straight through to the washroom and was sick in the washbasin and spent a long time wretchedly on the loo and felt my skin still clammy with shivers.

I splashed water on my face and dried it, and when I eventually emerged it was to worried enquiries from Mrs Palissey and open-mouthed concern from Brian.

‘Something I ate,’ I said weakly, and took a brandy miniature from the shelves, and despatched it.

Mrs Palissey and Brian had been too busy with customers to make even a start on the telephone orders. I looked at the pile of numbered lists carefully written in Mrs Palissey’s handwriting and felt absolutely incapable of the task of collecting each customer’s requirements into cartons for delivery.

‘Are any of these urgent?’ I asked helplessly.

‘Don’t you worry,’ Mrs Palissey said comfortingly. ‘Only one... and Brian and I will see to it.’

‘I’ll make it up to you.’

‘Yes, yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘I know that. I do really.’

I went and sat in the office and dialled Gerard’s number.

Tina answered. Gerard had left his office to go home but would still be on his way to the train. He would telephone, she said, when he came in; and could it wait until after a shower and a drink?

‘Preferably not.’

‘All right. I’ll tell him. He’ll be tired.’ It was more a warning than a plea, I thought.

‘I’ll be brief,’ I said, and she said, ‘Good,’ and put her receiver down decisively.

Mrs Palissey and Brian left at four-thirty and I locked the shop door behind them, retreating out of sight to my desk while I returned physically to normal and mentally to the accustomed morass of no self-respect.

Gerard, when he telephoned, sounded very tired indeed.

‘How did you get on?’ he said, stifling a yawn. ‘Tina said it wouldn’t wait.’

I told him what I’d heard of the conversation between Vernon and Paul Young and where I’d been when I heard it: everything in detail to that point but very little after.

‘Paul Young?’ he said aghast.

‘Yes.’

‘Good grief. Look, I’m sorry.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘I shouldn’t have sent you there.’

‘You couldn’t have known,’ I said, ‘but I’m afraid we’re no nearer discovering who Paul Young is or where he came from. Vernon didn’t call him by name from start to finish.’

‘We now know for sure he’s Larry Trent’s brother,’ Gerard pointed out. ‘And that’s not much help. Someone in our office traced Larry Trent’s birth certificate yesterday afternoon. He was illegitimate. His mother was a Jane Trent. Father unknown.’

‘What are you going to do?’ I asked. ‘Do you want me to tell the police?’

‘No, not yet. Let me think it over and call you back. Will you be in your shop all evening?’

‘Until nine, yes.’

‘Right.’

I opened my doors again at six, trying and failing to raise genuine interest in the customers’ needs. I felt limp and unsteady as if after illness and wondered how Gerard had survived a working lifetime of chasing villains with every nerve coolly intact.

He didn’t telephone again until almost closing time, and by then he sounded exhausted.

‘Look... Tony... can you meet me in the morning at nine at Martineau Park?’

‘Er...’ I said feebly. ‘Well... yes.’ Going back there, I thought, was so low on my priority list as to have dropped off the bottom.

‘Good,’ Gerard said, oblivious. ‘I’ve had a good deal of trouble running to ground the proprietor of the caterers at Martineau. Why does everyone go away at weekends? Anyway, he’s meeting us there tomorrow morning. We both agree it’s best to find out just what’s been going on there in the stores before we say anything to the police. I said I’d bring you because you’d know the scotch and the wine if you tasted them, and he agreed you were essential. He himself is no expert, he says.’

Gerard made the expedition sound perfectly regular. I said, ‘You won’t forget Paul Young’s going there tomorrow afternoon, will you?’

‘No. That’s why we must go early, before he removes anything.’

‘I meant... the police could arrest him and find out who he is.’

‘Once we’re sure the whisky is at Martineau, we’ll alert them.’ He spoke patiently but there were reservations in his voice. He would do the police’s work only when his own was completed.

‘Can I count on you?’ he said, after a pause.

‘Not to tell them anyway?’

‘Yes.’

‘I won’t,’ I said.

‘Good.’ He yawned. ‘Goodnight, then. See you in twelve hours.’

He was waiting in his Mercedes outside the main gates when I arrived, and sleep had clearly done a poor job on restoration. Grey shadows lay in his lean cheeks, with puffed bags under his eyes and lines of strain everywhere, aging him by years.

‘Don’t say it,’ he said as I approached. ‘Antibiotics make me feel lousy.’ He was still wearing his sling, I saw, for everything except actual driving. He yawned. ‘How do we get into this place?’

We went in the way I’d gone the day before, all the gates again standing open, and walked as far as the Clerk of the Course’s office before being challenged. At that point the same man as on the previous day came out with bushy eyebrows rising and asked civilly if he could help us.