Dick Francis - In the Frame

I spent a good deal of the night studying the list of Overseas Customers, mostly because I still found it difficult to lie comfortably to sleep, and partly because I had nothing else to read.

It became more and more obvious that I hadn’t really pinched enough . The list I’d taken was fine in its way, but would have been doubly useful with a stock list to match the letters and numbers in the right hand column.

On the other hand, all stock numbers were a form of code, and if I looked at them long enough, maybe some sort of recognisable pattern might emerge.

By far the majority began with the letter M, particularly in the first and much larger section. In the smaller section, which I had found at the back of the file, the M prefixes were few, and S, A, W and B were much commoner.

Donald’s number began with M. Maisie’s began with S.

Suppose, I thought, that the M simply stood for Melbourne, and the S for Sydney, the cities where each had bought their pictures.

Then A, W and B were where? Adelaide, Wagga Wagga and Brisbane?

Alice?

In the first section the letters and numbers following the initial M seemed to have no clear pattern. In the second section, though, the third letter was always C, the last letter always R, and the numbers, divided though they were between several different countries, progressed more or less consecutively. The highest number of all was 54, which had been sold to a Mr. Norman Updike, living in Auckland, New Zealand. The stock number against his name was WHC54R. The date in the left hand column was only a week old, and Mr. Updike had not been crossed out.

All the pictures in the shorter section had been sold within the past three years. The first dates in the long first section were five and a half years old.

I wondered which had come first, five and a half years ago: the gallery or the idea. Had Wexford originally been a full-time crook deliberately setting up an imposing front, or a formerly honest art dealer struck by criminal possibilities? Judging from the respectable air of the gallery and what little I’d seen of Wexford himself, I would have guessed the latter. But the violence lying just below the surface didn’t match.

I sighed, put down the lists, and switched off the light. Lay in the dark, thinking of the telephone call I’d made after Jik had gone back to Sarah.

It had been harder to arrange from the motel than it would have been from the Hilton, but the line had been loud and clear.

‘You got my cable?’ I said.

‘I’ve been waiting for your call for half an hour.’

‘Sorry.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I’ve sent you a letter,’ I said. ‘I want to tell you what’s in it.’

‘But...’

‘Just listen,’ I said. ‘And talk after.’ I spoke for quite a long time to a response of grunts from the far end.

‘Are you sure of all this?’

‘Positive about most,’ I said. ‘Some of it’s a guess.’

‘Repeat it.’

‘Very well.’ I did so, at much the same length.

‘I have recorded all that.’

‘Good.’

‘Hm... What do you intend doing now?’

‘I’m going home soon. Before that, I think I’ll keep looking into things that aren’t my business.’

‘I don’t approve of that.’

I grinned at the telephone. ‘I don’t suppose you do, but if I’d stayed in England we wouldn’t have got this far. There’s one other thing... Can I reach you by telex if I want to get a message to you in a hurry?’

‘Telex? Wait a minute.’

I waited.

‘Yes, here you are.’ A number followed. I wrote it down. ‘Address any message to me personally and head it urgent.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘And could you get answers to three questions for me?’ He listened, and said he could. ‘Thank you very much,’ I said. ‘And goodnight.’

Sarah and Jik both looked heavy-eyed and languorous in the morning. A successful night, I judged.

We checked out of the motel, packed my suitcase into the boot of the car, and sat in the passenger seats to plan the day.

‘Can’t we please get our clothes from the Hilton?’ Sarah said, sounding depressed.

Jik and I said ‘No’ together.

‘I’ll ring them now,’ Jik said. ‘I’ll get them to pack all our things and keep them safe for us, and I’ll tell them I’ll send a cheque for the bill.’ He levered himself out of the car again and went off on the errand.

‘Buy what you need out of my winnings,’ I said to Sarah.

She shook her head. ‘I’ve got some money. It’s not that. It’s just... I wish all this was over.’

‘It will be, soon,’ I said neutrally. She sighed heavily. ‘What’s your idea of a perfect life?’ I asked.

‘Oh...’ she seemed surprised. ‘I suppose right now I just want to be with Jik on the boat and have fun, like before you came.’

‘And for ever?’

She looked at me broodingly. ‘You may think, Todd, that I don’t know Jik is a complicated character, but you’ve only got to look at his paintings... They make me shudder. They’re a side of Jik I don’t know because he hasn’t painted anything since we met. You may think that this world will be worse off if Jik is happy for a bit, but I’m no fool, I know that in the end whatever it is that drives him to paint like that will come back again... I think these first few months together are frantically precious... and it isn’t just the physical dangers you’ve dragged us into that I hate, but the feeling that I’ve lost the rest of that golden time... that you remind him of his painting, and that after you’ve gone he’ll go straight back to it... weeks and weeks before he might have done.’

‘Get him to go sailing,’ I said. ‘He’s always happy at sea.’

‘You don’t care, do you?’

I looked straight into her clouded brown eyes. ‘I care for you both, very much.’

‘Then God help the people you hate.’

And God help me, I thought, if I became any fonder of my oldest friend’s wife. I looked away from her, out of the window. Affection wouldn’t matter. Anything else would be a mess.

Jik came back with a satisfied air. ‘That’s all fixed. They said there’s a letter for you, Todd, delivered by hand a few minutes ago. They asked me for a forwarding address.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said you’d call them yourself.’

‘Right... Well, let’s get going.’

‘Where to?’

‘New Zealand, don’t you think?’

‘That should be far enough,’ Jik said dryly.

He drove us to the airport, which was packed with people going home from the Cup.

‘If Wexford and Greene are looking for us,’ Sarah said, ‘They will surely be watching at the airport.’

If they weren’t, I thought, we’d have to lay a trail: but Jik, who knew that, didn’t tell her.

‘They can’t do much in public,’ he said comfortingly.

We bought tickets and found we could either fly to Auckland direct at lunchtime, or via Sydney leaving within half an hour.

‘Sydney,’ said Sarah positively, clearly drawing strength from the chance of putting her feet down on her own safe doorstep.

I shook my head. ‘Auckland direct. Let’s see if the restaurant’s still open for breakfast.’

We squeezed in under the waitresses’ pointed consultation of clocks and watches and ordered bacon and eggs lavishly.

‘Why are we going to New Zealand?’ Sarah said.

‘To see a man about a painting and advise him to take out extra insurance.’

‘Are you actually making sense?’

‘Actually,’ I said, ‘yes.’

‘I don’t see why we have to go so far, when Jik said you found enough in the gallery to blow the whole thing wide open.’