Дик Фрэнсис - Knock Down

We reached it.

‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘It isn’t working.’

‘Go on.’

‘I can’t do it.’

‘Another... half inch.’

‘Oh, no...’ But she screwed herself up and went on trying.

The jolt and the audible scrunch when the bone started to go over the edge of the socket astounded her.

‘Now...’ I said. ‘Wrist up and over... not too fast.’

Two more horrible crunches, the sweetest sounds on earth. Hell went back into its box. I stood up. Smiled like the sun coming out.

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Thank you very much.’

She was bewildered. ‘Do you mean... the pain goes away... just like that.’

‘Just like that.’

She looked at the transformation she’d wrought in me.Her eyes filled with tears. I put my right arm round her and held her close.

‘Why don’t you get the bloody thing fixed?’ she said.

‘You won’t catch me having any more orthopaedic operations if I don’t absolutely have to.’

She sniffed the tears away. ‘You’re a coward.’

‘All the way.’

I walked with her to Vic’s-office. We stood in the doorway, looking in. He lay by the window, face down, the back of his purple shirt a glistening crimson obscenity.

Whatever he had done to me, I had done worse to him. Because of the pressure I’d put on him, he was dead. I supposed I would never outlive a grinding sense of responsibility and regret.

‘I half saw who killed him,’ I said.

‘Half?’

‘Enough.’

The indelible impression made sense. The pattern had become plain.

We turned away.

There was a sound of a car drawing up outside, doors slamming, two or three pairs of heavy feet.

‘The police,’ Sophie said in relief.

I nodded. ‘Keep it simple, though. If they start on Vic’s and my disagreements we’ll be here all night.’

‘You’re immoral.’

‘No... lazy.’

‘I’ve noticed.’

The police were their usual abrasive selves, saving their store of sympathy for worthier causes like old ladies and lost kids. They looked into the office, telephoned for reinforcements and invited us in a fairly hectoring manner to explain what we were doing there. I stifled an irritated impulse to point out that if we’d chosen we could have gone quietly away and left someone else to find Vic dead. Virtue’s own reward was seldom worth it.

Both then and later, when the higher ranks arrived, we gave minimum information and kept quiet in between. In essence I said, ‘There were no lights on in the front of the house when I arrived. I know the house slightly. I walked round to the side to see if Vic was in his office. I had a tentative arrangement to see him for five or six minutes at six o’clock. I was driving Miss Randolph home to Esher and called in at Vic’s on the way, parking outside on the road and walking up the drive. I saw him in his office. I saw him fall against the window, and then collapse. I hurried round to the front to try to get into the house to help him. A light-coloured Ford Cortina was starting up. It shot away in a hurry but I caught a glimpse of the driver. I recognised the driver.’

They listened to my identification impassively, neither pleased nor sceptical. Did I see a gun, they asked. There was no gun in Vic’s office.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing but the driver’s head.’

They grunted and turned to Sophie.

‘Jonah left me in his car,’ she said. ‘Then this other car came crashing out of the drive at a reckless speed. I decided to see if everything was all right. I walked up here and found Jonah in front of the house. The house door was open, so we went inside. We found Mr Vincent lying in his office. We telephoned immediately to you.’

We sat for nearly three hours in Vic’s beautiful dining-room while the end of his life was dissected by the prosaic professionals for whom murder was all in the day’s work. They switched on every light and brought more of their own, and the glare further dehumanised their host.

Maybe it was necessary for them to think of him as a thing, not a person. I still couldn’t.

I was finally allowed to take Sophie home. I parked outside and we went up to her flat, subdued and depressed. She made coffee, which we drank in the kitchen.

‘Hungry?’ she said. ‘There’s some cheese, I think.’

We ate chunks of cheese in our fingers, absent-mindedly.

‘What are you going to do?’ she said.

‘Wait for them to catch him, I suppose.’

‘He won’t run... he doesn’t know you saw him.’

‘No.’

She said anxiously, ‘He doesn’t... does he?’

‘If he’d seen me he’d have come back and shot us both.’

‘You think the nicest thoughts.’

The evening had left smudgy circles round her eyes. She looked more than tired: over-stretched, over-strained. I yawned and said I ought to be going home, and she couldn’t disguise her flooding relief.

I smiled. ‘You’ll be all right alone?’

‘Oh yes.’ Absolute certainty in her voice. Solitude offered her refuge, healing, and rest. I didn’t. I had brought her a car crash, a man with a pitchfork, a bone-setting and a murder. I’d offered an alcoholic brother, a half-burnt home and a snap engagement. None of it designed for the well-being of someone who needed the order and peace of an ivory control tower.

She came with me down to the car.

‘You’ll come again?’ she said.

‘When you’re ready.’

‘A dose of Dereham every week...’

‘Would be enough to frighten any woman?’

‘Well, no.’ She smiled. ‘It might be bad for the nerves, but at least I’d know I was alive.’

I laughed and gave her an undemanding brotherly kiss. ‘It would suit me fine.’

‘Really?’

‘And truly.’

‘I don’t ask for that,’ she said.

‘Then you damn well should.’

She grinned. I slid into the driving seat. Her eyes looked calmer in her exhausted face.

‘Sleep well,’ I said. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

It seemed a long way home. My shoulder ached: a faint echo, but persistent. I thought with longing of a stiff brandy and stifled a sigh at the less reviving prospect of coke.

When I got back the house was dark.

No lights, no Crispin.

Hell, I thought. He had no car any more; no transport but his feet. The one place his feet could be trusted to take him was straight to the source of gin.

I parked outside the kitchen as usual, opened the unlocked back door, went in, switched on the lights, and shouted through the house.

‘Crispin?’ No answer. ‘Crispin.’

Total silence.

Swearing under my breath I went along to the office, intending to telephone the pub to ask what state he was in. If he were too far gone, I’d drive up and fetch him. I had picked up the receiver and begun to dial when I heard the door behind me squeak on its hinges.

So he hadn’t gone after all. I turned with the beginnings of a congratulatory smile.

It wasn’t Crispin who had come in. I looked at the heavy pistol with its elongated silencer, and like Vic the urgent words which shaped in my mind were no and my God and wait.

‘Put the telephone down,’ he said.

I looked at the receiver in my hand. I’d dialled only half the number. Pity. I did as he said.

‘I saw you at Vic’s,’ I said. ‘I told the police.’

The gun merely wavered a fraction. The round black hole still faced my heart. I’d seen what it had made of Vic, and I had no illusions.

‘I guessed you were there,’ he said.

‘How?’

‘A car parked by the hedge... Saw it when I left. About twelve miles on I realised it was yours. I went back... the place was crawling with police.’