Дик Фрэнсис: Reflex

‘I can’t get used to the idea of Dad not being there,’ Steve said.

‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘I mean, you said he drove into a tree...’

‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘He went to sleep. At least, that’s what everyone reckons. There weren’t any other cars, nothing like that. There was a bend, or something, and he didn’t go round it. Just drove straight ahead. He must have had his foot on the accelerator... The front of the car was smashed right in.’ He shivered. ‘He was on his way home from Doncaster. Mum’s always warned him about driving on the motorway at night when he’s had a long day, but this wasn’t the motorway... he was much nearer home.’

He sounded tired and depressed, which no doubt he was, and in brief sideways glances I could see that for all my care the car’s motion was hurting his shoulder.

‘He’d stopped for half an hour at a friend’s house.’ Steve said. ‘And they’d had a couple of whiskies. It was all so stupid. Just going to sleep ‘

We drove for a long way in silence, he with his problems, and I with mine.

‘Only last Saturday,’ Steve said. ‘Only a week ago.’

Alive one minute, dead the next... the same as everybody.

‘Turn left here,’ Steve said.

We turned left and right and left a few times and came finally to a road bordered on one side by a hedge and on the other by neat detached houses in shadowy gardens.

In the middle distance along there things were happening. There were lights and people. An ambulance with its doors open, its blue turret flashing on top. A police car. Policemen. People coming and going from one of the houses, hurrying. Every window uncurtained, spilling out light.

‘My God, ’ Steve said. ‘That’s their house. Mum’s and Dad’s.’

I pulled up outside, and he sat unmoving, staring, stricken.

‘It’s Mum,’ he said. ‘It must be. It’s Mum.’

There was something near cracking point in his voice. His face was twisted with terrible anxiety and his eyes in the reflected light looked wide and very young.

‘Stay here,’ I said practically. ‘I’ll go and see.’

His mum lay on the sofa in the sitting room, quivering and coughing and bleeding. Someone had attacked his mum pretty nastily, splitting her nose and mouth and eyelid and leaving her with bright raw patches on cheek and jaw. Her clothes were torn here and there, her shoes were off, and her hair stuck out in straggly wisps.

I had seen Steve’s mother at the races from time to time: a pleasant well-dressed woman nearing fifty, secure and happy in her life, plainly proud of her husband and son. As the grief-stricken, burgled, beaten-up person on the sofa, she was unrecognisable.

There was a policeman sitting on a stool beside her, and a policewoman, standing, holding a bloodstained cloth. Two ambulance men hovered in the background, with a stretcher propped upright against one wall. A neighbourly looking woman stood around looking grave and worried. The room itself was a shambles, with papers and smashed furniture littering the floor. On the wall, the signs of jam and cakes, as Steve had said.

When I walked in the policeman turned his head. ‘Are you the doctor?’

‘No...’ I explained who I was.

‘Steve!’ His mother said. Her mouth trembled, and her hands. ‘Steve’s hurt.’ She could hardly speak, yet the fear for her son came across like a fresh torment, overshadowing anything she’d yet suffered.

‘It’s not bad, I promise you,’ I said hastily. ‘He’s here, outside. It’s just his collar bone. I’ll get him straight away.’

I went outside and told him, and helped him out of the car. He was hunched and stiff, but seemed not to feel it.

‘Why?’ he said, uselessly, going up the path. ‘Why did it happen? What for?’

The policeman indoors was asking the same question, and others as well.

‘You were just saying, when your son came home, that there were two of them, with stockings over their faces. Is that right?’

She nodded slightly. ‘Young,’ she said. The word came out distorted through her cut, swollen lips. She saw Steve and held her hand out to him, to hold his own hand tight. He himself, at the sight of her, grew still paler and even more gaunt.

‘White youths or black?’ the policeman said.

‘White.’

‘What were they wearing?’

‘Jeans.’

‘Gloves?’

She closed her eyes. The cut one looked puffed and angry. She whispered, ‘Yes.’

‘Mrs Millace, please try to answer,’ the policeman said. ‘What did they want.’

‘Safe,’ she said, mumbling.

‘What?’

‘Safe. We haven’t got a safe. I told them.’ A pair of tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Where’s the safe, they said. They hit me.’

‘There isn’t a safe here,’ Steve said furiously. ‘I’d like to kill them.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the policeman said. ‘Just keep quiet, sir, if you wouldn’t mind.’

‘One... smashed things,’ Mrs Millace said. ‘The other just hit me.’

‘Bloody animals, ’ Steve said.

‘Did they say what they wanted?’ the policeman asked.

‘Safe.’

‘Yes, but is that all? Did they say they wanted money? Jewellery? Silver? Gold coins? What exactly did they say they wanted, Mrs Millace?’

She frowned slightly, as if thinking. Then forming the words with difficulty, she said, ‘All they said was “where is the safe?”’

‘I suppose you do know,’ I said to the policeman, ‘that this house was also burgled yesterday?’

‘Yes, I do, sir. I was here yesterday myself.’ He looked at me assessingly for a few seconds and turned back to Steve’s mother.

‘Did these two young men in stocking masks say anything about being here yesterday? Try to remember, Mrs Millace.’

‘I don’t... think so.’

‘Take your time,’ he said. ‘Try to remember.’

She was silent for a long interval, and two more tears appeared. Poor lady, I thought. Too much pain, too much grief, too much outrage: and a good deal of courage.

At last she said, ‘They were... like bulls. They shouted. They were rough. Rough voices. They... shoved me. Pushed. I opened the front door. They shoved in. Pushed me... in here. Started... smashing things. Making this mess. Shouting... Where is the safe. Tell us, where is the safe... Hit me.’ She paused. ‘I don’t think... they said anything... about yesterday.’

‘I’d like to kill them,’ Steve said.

‘Third time,’ mumbled his mother.

‘What was that, Mrs Millace?’ the policeman said.

‘Third time burgled. Happened... two years ago.’

‘You can’t just let her lie here,’ Steve said violently. ‘Asking all these questions... Haven’t you got a doctor?’

‘It’s all right, Steve dear,’ the neighbourly woman said, moving forward as if to give comfort. ‘I’ve rung Dr Williams. He said he would come at once.’ Caring and bothered, she was nonetheless enjoying the drama, and I could envisage her looking forward to telling it all to the locals. ‘I was over here helping your mother earlier, Steve dear’ she said rushing on, ‘but of course I went home — next door, as you know, dear — to get tea for my family, and then I heard all this shouting and it seemed all wrong, dear, so I was just coming back to see, and calling out to your mother to ask if she was all right, and those two dreadful young men just burst out of the house, dear, just burst out, so of course I came in here... and well... your poor mother... so I rang for the police and for the ambulance, and Dr Williams... and everybody.’ She looked as if she would like at least a pat on the back for all this presence of mind, but Steve was beyond such responses.