Dick Francis: In the Frame

‘Revert,’ I said.

‘Uh?’

‘He always was wild,’ I said, ‘Underneath.’

‘You’d know,’ he said. ‘I never saw the guy before.’ He nodded to Jik and Sarah and finally to me, and hurried away after his departing prisoner.

We looked at each other a little blankly. The hotel guests stared at us curiously and began to drift away. We sat down weakly on the nearest blue velvet seat, Sarah in the middle.

Jik took her hand and squeezed it. She put her fingers over mine.

It had taken nine days.

It had been a long haul.

‘Don’t know about you,’ Jik said. ‘But I could do with a beer.’

Todd,’ said Sarah, ‘Start talking.’

We were upstairs in a bedroom (mine) with both of them in a relaxed mood, and me in Jik’s dressing gown, and he and I in a cloud of Dettol.

I yawned. ‘About Hudson?’

‘Who else? And don’t go to sleep before you’ve told us.’

‘Well... I was looking for him, or someone like him, before I ever met him.’

‘But why?’

‘Because of the wine,’ I said. ‘Because of the wine which was stolen from Donald’s cellar. Whoever stole it not only knew it was there, down some stairs behind an inconspicuous cupboard-like door... and I’d stayed several times in the house and never knew the cellar existed... but according to Donald they would have had to come prepared with proper cases to pack it in. Wine is usually packed twelve bottles in a case... and Donald had two thousand or more bottles stolen. In bulk alone it would have taken a lot of shifting. A lot of time, too, and time for house-breakers is risky. But also it was special wine. A small fortune, Donald said. The sort of wine that’s bought and sold as an asset and ends up at a week’s wage a bottle, if it’s ever drunk at all. Anyway, it was the sort of wine that needed expert handling and marketing if it was to be worth the difficulty of stealing it in the first place... and as Donald’s business is wine, and the reason for his journey to Australia was wine, I started looking right away for someone who knew Donald, knew he’d bought a Munnings, and knew about good wine and how to sell it. And there, straightaway, was Hudson Taylor, who matched like a glove. But it seemed too easy... because he didn’t look right.’

‘Smooth and friendly,’ said Sarah, nodding.

‘And rich,’ Jik added.

‘Probably a moneyholic,’ I said, pulling open the bed and looking longingly at the cool white sheets.

‘A what?’

‘Moneyholic. A word I’ve just made up to describe someone with an uncontrollable addiction to money.’

‘The world’s full of them,’ Jik said, laughing.

I shook my head. ‘The world is full of drinkers, but alcoholics are obsessive. Moneyholics are obsessive. They never have enough. They cannot have enough. However much they have, they want more. And I’m not talking about the average hard-up man, but about real screwballs. Money, money, money. Like a drug. Moneyholics will do anything to get it... Kidnap, murder, cook the computer, rob banks, sell their grandmothers... You name it.’

I sat on the bed with my feet up, feeling less than fit. Sore from too many bruises, on fire from too many cuts. Jik too, I guessed. They had been wicked rocks.

‘Moneyholism,’ Jik said, like a lecturer to a dimmish class, ‘is a widespread disease easily understood by everyone who has ever felt a twinge of greed, which is everyone.’

‘Go on about Hudson,’ Sarah said.

‘Hudson had the organising ability... I didn’t know when I came that the organisation was so huge, but I did know it was organised , if you see what I mean. It was an overseas operation. It took some doing. Knowhow.’

Jik tugged the ring off a can of beer and passed it to me, wincing as he stretched.

‘But he convinced me I was wrong about him,’ I said, drinking through the triangular hole. ‘Because he was so careful. He pretended he had to look up the name of the gallery where Donald bought his picture. He didn’t think of me as a threat, of course, but just as Donald’s cousin. Not until he talked to Wexford down on the lawn.’

‘I remember,’ Sarah said. ‘When you said it had ripped the whole works apart.’

‘Mm... I thought it was only that he had told Wexford I was Donald’s cousin, but of course Wexford also told him that I’d met Greene in Maisie’s ruins in Sussex and then turned up in the gallery looking at the original of Maisie’s burnt painting.’

‘Jesus Almighty,’ Jik said. ‘No wonder we beat it to Alice Springs.’

‘Yes, but by then I didn’t think it could be Hudson I was looking for. I was looking for someone brutal, who passed on his violence through his employees. Hudson didn’t look or act brutal.’ I paused. ‘The only slightest crack was when his gamble went down the drain at the races. He gripped his binoculars so hard that his knuckles showed white. But you can’t think a man is a big-time thug just because he gets upset over losing a bet.’

Jik grinned. ‘I’d qualify.’

‘In spades, redoubled,’ Sarah said.

‘I was thinking about it in the Alice Springs hospital... There hadn’t been time for the musclemen to get to Alice from Melbourne between us buying Renbo’s picture and me diving off the balcony, but there had been time for them to come from Adelaide , and Hudson’s base was at Adelaide... but it was much too flimsy.’

‘They might have been in Alice to start with,’ Jik said reasonably.

‘They might, but what for?’ I yawned. ‘Then on the night of the Cup you said Hudson had made a point of asking you about me... and I wondered how he knew you.’

‘Do you know,’ Sarah said, ‘I did wonder too at the time, but it didn’t seem important. I mean, we’d seen him from the top of the stands, so it didn’t seem impossible that somewhere he’d seen you with us.’

‘The boy knew you,’ I said. ‘And he was at the races, because he followed you, with Greene, to the Hilton. The boy must have pointed you out to Greene.’

‘And Greene to Wexford, and Wexford to Hudson?’ Jik asked.

‘Quite likely.’

‘And by then,’ he said, ‘They all knew they wanted to silence you pretty badly, and they’d had a chance and muffed it... I’d love to have heard what happened when they found we’d robbed the gallery.’ He chuckled, tipping up his beer can to catch the last few drops.

‘On the morning after,’ I said, ‘a letter from Hudson was delivered by hand to the Hilton. How did he know we were there?’

They stared. ‘Greene must have told him,’ Jik said. ‘We certainly didn’t. We didn’t tell anybody. We were careful about it.’

‘So was I,’ I said. ‘That letter offered to show me round a vineyard. Well... if I hadn’t been so doubtful of him, I might have gone. He was a friend of Donald’s... and a vineyard would be interesting. From his point of view, anyway, it was worth a try.’

‘Jesus!’

‘On the night of the Cup, when we were in that motel near Box Hill, I telephoned the police in England and spoke to the man in charge of Donald’s case, Inspector Frost. I asked him to ask Donald some questions... and this morning outside Wellington I got the answers.’

‘This morning seems several light years away,’ Sarah said.

‘Mm...’

‘What questions and what answers?’ Jik said.

‘The questions were, did Donald tell Hudson all about the wine in his cellar, and did Donald tell Wexford about the wine in the cellar, and was it Hudson who had suggested to Donald that he and Regina should go and look at the Munnings in the Arts Centre. And the answers were “Yes, of course”, and “No, whyever should I?”, and “Yes”.’