Dick Francis - In the Frame

By the time Jik and Sarah came back I’d been given a bed, climbed into it, and felt absolutely rotten. Shivering. Cold deep inside. Gripped by the system’s aggrieved reaction to injury, or in other words, shock.

‘They did take the painting,’ Jik said. ‘And your wallet as well.’

‘And the gallery’s shut,’ Sarah said. ‘The girl in the boutique opposite said she saw Harley close early today, but she didn’t see him actually leave. He goes out the back way, because he parks his car there.’

‘The police’ve been to the motel,’ Jik said. ‘We told them about the picture being missing, but I don’t think they’ ll do much more about it unless you tell them the whole story.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ I said.

‘So what do we do now?’ Sarah asked.

‘Well... there’s no point in staying here any more. Tomorrow we’ll go back to Melbourne.’

‘Thank God,’ she said, smiling widely. ‘I thought you were going to want us to miss the Cup.’

In spite of a battery of pills and various ministering angels I spent a viciously uncomfortable and wideawake night. Unable to lie flat. Feverishly hot on the pendulum from shock. Throbbing in fifteen places. Every little movement screechingly sticky, like an engine without oil. No wonder the hospital had told me it would be better to stay.

I counted my blessings until daybreak. It could have been so very much worse.

What was most alarming was not the murderous nature of the attackers, but the speed with which they’d found us. I’d known ever since I’d seen Regina’s head that the directing mind was ruthlessly violent. The acts of the team always reflected the nature of the boss. A less savage attitude would have left Regina gagged and bound, not brutally dead.

I had to conclude that it was chiefly this pervading callousness which had led to my being thrown over the balcony. As a positive means of murder, it was too chancy. It was quite possible to survive a fall from such a height, even without a cushioning tree. The two men had not as far as I could remember bothered to see whether I was alive or dead, and they had not, while I lay half-unconscious and immobile, come along to finish the job.

So it had either been simply a shattering way of getting rid of me while they robbed my room, or they’d had the deliberate intention of injuring me so badly that I would have to stop poking my nose into their affairs.

Or both.

And how had they found us?

I puzzled over it for some time but could arrive at no definite answer. It seemed most likely that Wexford or Greene had telephoned from Melbourne and told Harley Renbo to be on his guard in case I turned up. Even the panic which would have followed the realisation that I’d seen the Munnings and the fresh Millais copy, and actually carried away a specimen of Renbo’s work, could not have transported two toughs from Melbourne to Alice Springs in the time available.

There had only been about four hours between purchase and attack, and some of that would have had to be spent on finding out which motel we were in, and which rooms, and waiting for me to go upstairs from the pool.

Perhaps we had after all been followed all the way from Flemington racecourse, or traced from the aeroplane passenger lists. But if that were the case, surely Renbo would have been warned we were on our way, and would never have let us see what we had.

I gave it up. I didn’t even know if I would recognise my attackers again if I saw them. Certainly not the one who had been behind me, because I hadn’t had a single straight look at him.

They could, though, reasonably believe they had done a good job of putting me out of action: and indeed, if I had any sense, they had.

If they wanted time, what for?

To tighten up their security, and cover their tracks, so that any investigation I might persuade the police to make into a paintings-robbery link would come up against the most respectable of brick walls.

Even if they knew I’d survived, they would not expect any action from me in the immediate future: therefore the immediate future was the best time to act.

Right.

Easy enough to convince my brain. From the neck down, a different story.

Jik and Sarah didn’t turn up until eleven, and I was still in bed. Sitting up, but not exactly perky.

‘God,’ Sarah said, ‘You look much worse than yesterday.’

‘So kind.’

‘You’re never going to make it to Melbourne.’ She sounded despondent. ‘So goodbye Cup.’

‘Nothing to stop you going,’ I said.

She stood beside the bed. ‘Do you expect us just to leave you here... like this... and go and enjoy ourselves?’

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t be so bloody stupid.’

Jik sprawled in a visitor’s chair. ‘It isn’t our responsibility if he gets himself thrown from heights,’ he said.

Sarah whirled on him. ‘How can you say such a thing?’

‘We don’t want to be involved,’ Jik said.

I grinned. Sarah heard the sardonic echo of what she’d said so passionately herself only three days ago. She flung out her arms in exasperated realisation.

‘You absolutely bloody beast,’ she said.

Jik smiled like a cream-fed cat. ‘We went round to the gallery,’ he said. ‘It’s still shut. We also found our way round into the back garden, and looked in through the glass door, and you can guess what we saw.’

‘Nothing.’

‘Dead right. No easel with imitation Millais. Everything dodgy carefully hidden out of sight. Everything else, respectable and normal.’

I shifted a bit to relieve one lot of aches, and set up protests from another. ‘Even if you’d got in, I doubt if you’d’ve found anything dodgy. I’ll bet everything the least bit incriminating disappeared yesterday afternoon.’

Jik nodded. ‘Sure to.’

Sarah said, ‘We asked the girl in the reception desk at the motel if anyone had been asking for us.’

‘And they had?’

She nodded. ‘A man telephoned. She thought it was soon after ten o’ clock. He asked if a Mr Charles Todd was staying there with two friends, and when she said yes, he asked for your room number. He said he had something to deliver to you.’

‘Christ.’ Some delivery. Express. Downwards.

‘She told him the room number but said if he left the package at the desk, she would see you got it.’

‘He must have laughed.’

‘He wouldn’t have that much sense of humour,’ Jik said.

‘Soon after ten?’ said, considering.

‘While we were out,’ Sarah said, nodding. ‘It must have been fairly soon after we’d left the gallery... and while we were buying the swimming things.’

‘Why didn’t the girl tell us someone had been enquiring for us?’

‘She went off for a coffee break, and didn’t see us when we came back. And after that, she forgot. She hadn’t anyway thought it of any importance.’

‘There aren’t all that many motels in Alice,’ Jik said. ‘It wouldn’t have taken long to find us, once they knew we were in the town. I suppose the Melbourne lot telephoned Renbo, and that set the bomb ticking.’

‘They must have been apoplectic when they heard you’d bought that picture.’

‘I wish I’d hidden it,’ I said. The words reminded me briefly of Maisie, who had hidden her picture, and had her house burnt.

Sarah sighed. ‘Well... what are we going to do?’

‘Last chance to go home,’ I said.

‘Are you going?’ she demanded.

I listened briefly to the fierce plea from my battered shell, and I thought too of Donald in his cold house. I didn’t actually answer her at all.

She listened to my silence. ‘Quite,’ she said. ‘So what do we do next?’

‘Well...’ I said. ‘First of all, tell the girl in the reception desk at the motel that I’m in a pretty poor state and likely to be in hospital for at least a week.’