Дик Фрэнсис: Reflex

‘You... you’re sure? ’

‘Sure.’

I produced a small notebook and a fibre-tipped pen, ‘Write now,’ I said. ‘Your supplier.’

‘Not now, ’ he said, wavering.

‘Why not?’ I said calmly. ‘May as well get it over. Sit down.’

He sat by one of his glass and chrome coffee tables, looking totally dazed. He wrote a name and address on the notepad.

‘And sign it,’ I said casually.

‘Sign...’

‘Of course. Just your name.’

He wrote: Lance Kinship. And then, underneath, with a flourish, added ‘ Film Director. ’

‘That’s great,’ I said, without emphasis. I picked up the pad, reading what he’d written. A foreign name. An address in London. One tentacle under the axe.

I stored away in a pocket the small document that would make him sweat next year... and the next, and the next. The document that I would photograph, and keep safe.

‘That’s... all?’ he said numbly.

I nodded. ‘All for now.’

He didn’t stand up when I left him. Just sat on his black lacquer chair in his T-shirt and white trousers, stunned into silence, staring at space.

He’d recover his bumptiousness, I thought. Pseuds always did.

I went out to where Clare and Jeremy were still waiting, and paused briefly in the winter air before getting into the car.

Most people’s lives, I thought, weren’t a matter of world affairs, but of the problems right beside them. Not concerned portentously with saving mankind, but with creating local order: in small checks and balances.

Neither my life nor George Millace’s would ever sway the fate of nations, but our actions could change the lives of individuals; and they had done that.

The dislike I’d felt for him alive was irrelevant to the intimacy I felt with him dead. I knew his mind, his intentions, his beliefs. I’d solved his puzzles. I’d fired his guns.

I got into the car.

‘Everything all right?’ Clare asked.

‘Yes,’ I said.