Dick Francis - Straight

“Thanks, I’ll let you know.”

He stared at me. “Is it true Simms was shot?”

“Mm.”

“It could have been you.”

“Nearly was.”

“The police took statements here from Martha and Harley it seems.” He paused, looking toward them as they reached the door. “I’ll have to go. How’s the ankle?”

“Be back racing as scheduled.”

“Good.”

He bustled off and I went through the paperwork routines, but there was nothing wrong with me that a small application of time wouldn’t fix and I got myself discharged pretty fast as a patient and was invited instead to give a more detailed statement to the police. I couldn’t add much more than I’d told them in the first place, but some of their questions were in the end disturbing.

Could we have been shot at for any purpose?

I knew of no purpose.

How long had the car driven by the man with the gun been in front of us?

I couldn’t remember: hadn’t noticed.

Could anyone have known we would be on that road at that time?

I stared at the policeman. Anyone, perhaps, who had been in the restaurant for lunch. Anyone there could have followed us from there to Milo’s house, perhaps, and waited for us to leave, and passed us, allowing us then to pass again. But why ever should they?

Who else might know?

Perhaps the car company who employed Simms.

Who else?

Milo Shandy, and he’d have been as likely to shoot himself as the Ostermeyers.

Mr. Ostermeyer said the gun was pointing at you, sir.

With all due respect to Mr. Ostermeyer, he was looking through the car and both cars were moving, and at different speeds presumably, and I didn’t think one could be certain.

Could I think of any reason why anyone should want to kill me?

Me, personally? No... I couldn’t.

They pounced on the hesitation I could hear in my own voice, and I told them I’d been attacked and knocked out the previous evening. I explained about Greville’s death. I told them he had been dealing in precious stones as he was a gem merchant and I thought my attacker had been trying to find and steal part of the stock. But I had no idea why the would-be thief should want to shoot me today when he could easily have bashed my head in yesterday.

They wrote it down without comment. Had I any idea who had attacked me the previous evening?

No, I hadn’t.

They didn’t say they didn’t believe me, but something in their manner gave me the impression they thought anyone attacked twice in two days had to know who was after him.

I would have liked very much to be able to tell them. It had just occurred to me, if not to them, that there might be more to come.

I’d better find out soon, I thought.

I’d better not find out too late.

I didn’t go to Milo’s house nor to my own bed, but stayed in an anonymous hotel in Swindon where unknown enemies wouldn’t find me.

The urge simply to go home was strong, as if one could retreat to safety into one’s den, but I thought I would probably be alarmed and wakeful all night there, when what I most wanted was sleep. All in all it had been a rough ten days, and however easily my body usually shook off bumps and bangs, the accumulation was making an insistent demand for rest.

RICE, I thought wryly, RICE being the acronym of the best way to treat sports injuries: rest, ice, compression, elevation. I rarely seemed to be managing all of them at the same time, though all, in one way or another, separately. With elevation in place, I phoned Milo from the hotel to say I wouldn’t be coming and asked how Martha and Harley were doing.

“They’re quavery. It must have been some crash. Martha keeps crying. It seems a car ran into the back of the bus and two people in the car were terribly injured. She saw them, and it’s upsetting her almost as much as knowing Simms was shot. Can’t you come and comfort her?”

“You and Harley can do it better.”

“She thought you were dying too. She’s badly shocked. You’d better come.”

“They gave her a sedative at the hospital, didn’t they?”

“Yes,” he agreed grudgingly. “Harley too.”

“Look... persuade them to sleep. I’ll come in the morning and pick them up and take them back to their hotel in London. Will that do?”

He said unwillingly that he supposed so.

“Say goodnight to them from me,” I said. “Tell them I think they’re terrific.”

“Do you?” He sounded surprised.

“It does no harm to say it.”

“Cynic.”

“Seriously,” I said, “they’ll feel better if you tell them.”

“All right then. See you at breakfast.”

I put down the receiver and on reflection a few minutes later got through to Brad.

“Cor,” he said, “you were in that crash.”

“How did you hear about it?” I asked, surprised.

“Down the pub. Talk of Hungerford. Another madman. It’s shook everyone up. My mum won’t go out.”

It had shaken his tongue loose, I thought in amusement.

“Have you still got my car?” I said.

“Yerss.” He sounded anxious. “You said keep it here.”

“Yes. I meant keep it there.”

“I walked down your house earlier. There weren’t no one there then.”

“I’m not there now,” I said. “Do you still want to go on driving?”

“Yerss.” Very positive. “Now?”

“In the morning.” I said I would meet him at eight outside the hotel near the railway station at Swindon, and we would be going to London. “OK?”

“Yerss,” he said again, signing off, and it sounded like a cat purring over the resumption of milk.

Smiling and yawning, a jaw-cracking combination, I ran a bath, took off my clothes and the bandage and lay gratefully in hot water, letting it soak away the fatigue along with Simms’s blood. Then, my overnight bag having survived unharmed along with the crutches, I scrubbed my teeth, put on sleeping shorts, rewrapped the ankle, hung a “Do not disturb” card outside my door and was in bed by nine and slept and dreamed of crashes and fire and hovering unidentified threats.

Brad came on the dot in the morning and we went first to my place in a necessary quest for clean clothes. His mum, Brad agreed, would wash the things I’d worn in the crash.

My rooms were still quiet and unransacked and no dangers lurked outside in daylight. I changed uneventfully and repacked the traveling bag and we drove in good order to Lambourn, I sitting beside Brad and thinking I could have done the driving myself, except that I found his presence reassuring and I’d come to grief on both of the days he hadn’t been with me.

“If a car passes us and sits in front of us,” I said, “don’t pass it. Fall right back and turn up a side road.”

“Why?”

I told him that the police thought we’d been caught in a deliberate moving ambush. Neither the Ostermeyers nor I, I pointed out, would be happy to repeat the experience, and Brad wouldn’t be wanting to double for Simms. He grinned, an unnerving sight, and gave me to understand with a nod that he would follow the instruction.

The usual road to Lambourn turned out to be still blocked off, and I wondered briefly, as we detoured, whether it was because of the murder inquiry or simply technical difficulties in disentangling the omelette.

Martha and Harley were still shaking over breakfast, the coffee cups trembling against their lips. Milo with relief shifted the burden of their reliance smartly from himself to me, telling them that now Derek was here, they’d be safe. I wasn’t so sure about that, particularly if both Harley and the police were right about me personally being yesterday’s target. Neither Martha nor Harley seemed to suffer such qualms and gave me the instant status of surrogate son/nephew, the one to be naturally leaned on, psychologically if not physically, for succor and support.