Proof by Dick Francis
After a pause Naylor said, ‘Hold him there, Denny. I’ll be straight back,’ and he turned and walked under the bridge and out of the bottling hall, and I thought about trying to jump onto Denny… who was too far away for it to be practicable. He would whirl when he heard me move and he would shoot while I was climbing the railings to launch myself far enough out to have a hope of reaching him in one jump… he would shoot either Gerard or me for sure before we could overpower and disarm him. I didn’t see what else to do and I was certain that that jump would be literally fatal perhaps for both of us, and I was worrying also and cringing inside with fear that the reason I didn’t move was fear… Not caution, just cowardice. One could fling one’s life away trying to prove to oneself one was brave… and maybe for some people it was worth it, but not to me.
Stewart Naylor came back carrying a small package which he zipped open as he walked.
The contents were wide white bandage.
I felt sick.
I should have jumped, I thought. I should have risked it while I had the chance. Why hadn’t I?
Commonsense, emotion, logic, bravado… they could whirl through the mind in a jumbled mess, and how could one tell which was right.
Naylor walked over to Gerard and with great speed tied the wrist of his injured arm to the rail with the bandage. A strong tremor ran visibly through Gerard’s body and he turned away from the crate, trying to tug himself free, trying to escape. The lines of his face were set rigid, the eyes hollowly dark.
He’s afraid too, I thought. He knows what that bandage is. He’s as human as I am… and he’s terrified.
He didn’t look up at the bridge.
Something, I thought. I must do something. I had no weapon. Nothing. Gerard. Plaster of Paris.
What did I have…
I had knowledge.
Naylor hit Gerard’s face a swiping blow with his fist and when he had him off balance he tied the second wrist to the railing, and although I could then see only his back the desperation in Gerard’s body was like a shout.
In my mind I was begging, ‘No, don’t do it, no, no…’ and Naylor wound the bandage once round Gerard’s neck.
Knowledge.
The bandage went round twice and three times. Naylor was intent on the work. So was Denny, his back to me, the barrel of the gun drooping.
Gerard was kicking backwards and not reaching Naylor’s legs, yelling to him, screaming that what he was doing was useless, useless, people knew he was there and would come looking.
Neither Naylor nor Denny believed him. They were intent… enjoying… the wrapping of a living head… to turn it to rock.
The weapon I had was knowledge.
I moved. My muscles felt stiff. I slid jerkily round the vat I’d tested for St Estèphe and climbed its ladder.
Go on yelling, Gerard, I thought. Go on filling the hearing aid of the deaf man. Go on kicking. Keep them looking your way.
My hands grasped the locking nut which connected the hose to the valve at the top of the feeder vat. Usually I could turn them easily without a wrench. My hands slipped with sweat. I’d got to unlock it. Only chance. Had to have the hose off the vat.
Had to have the hose free at that end.
On top of the vat I strained with almost fury and felt the locking nut turn and turn again and come loose. I lifted the hose off the vat and carried the end of it with me down the short ladder, trying to do it all silently, making small noises that sounded frightful to me but brought no dreaded shouts from the floor.
I was down the ladder. By the pump. From the pump the main long hose ran down to the ground and away into the distance, going to the great storage vat in the main hall. Long hose, holding a good deal of wine.
I switched on the pump. Begging. Praying. Sick.
The pump went smoothly about its business, efficient beyond dream. Wine gushed out of the hose I held like red force-driven water out of a fire hose. I directed it straight at Naylor, drenching Denny on the way. I propped the spurting nozzle between the railings. I climbed over the railings myself and made the flying leap that had been so illogical, so impossible, so deadly. I landed on Denny who couldn’t see for wine, and grabbed his shotgun from him and hit him hard with it on the head.
Naylor, totally surprised, tried to clutch me. I felt such anger for him that he would have needed twice his strength. I caught him by his clothes and pushed him until he was under the gushing wine, and I pulled his head back by the hair until the wine was running full onto his face, onto his glasses and up his nose and into his opening mouth until he was beginning to choke.
I was drowning him, I thought.
Perhaps I shouldn’t.
He was gagging for breath. Waving his arms about. Helpless.
I half pulled, half pushed him back to the crate Gerard was tied to and propped him chest forwards against it, holding him there by leaning on his back.
He really was choking. Not breathing.
I hit him very hard with my palm below the shoulder blades and the air trapped in his lungs rushed out through the wine blockage in his trachea, and he began to breathe again in whooping gasps like whooping cough, air fighting against wine in all his bronchial tubes.
He had dropped the plaster of Paris bandage at Gerard’s feet. I picked up the roll, wet and soggy and pink now with wine, and unwound the layers from Gerard’s throat.
Naylor hadn’t had any scissors. The bandage led from Gerard’s neck down to one wrist and from there to the other. Tight knots on his wrists beyond undoing.
Something to cut with, to free him.
Old blunt penknife. I felt in my pocket for it and with some astonishment came up with Flora’s new sharp silver present. Blessed Flora.
I out the roll of bandage off Gerard’s wrist and then cut the bandages tying his wrists to the crate. Even when his wrists were no longer fixed there he held onto the rail for a few moments, and in that time I’d wound the end of the bandage roll about eight times around one of Naylor’s wrists instead, and fastened it similarly to the crate.
Naylor leaned over the crate, retching, coughing, his glasses opaque with wine, his body jerking with the effort of drawing breath. He seemed hardly to notice, much less fight, when I fastened his other wrist to the rail.
Denny on the floor returned to life. I looked down from tying knots and watched fuzzy thoughts begin to straighten out in his eyes, and I took one of the empty bottles out of the crate and hit him again with it on the head.
The bottle broke. A claret bottle, I remotely noticed. The pieces fell into the wine that was still flooding out in a red lake all over the floor, curling round corners, making rivers, pulsating down from the open hose. The smell of it filled the senses; heavily sensuous, headily potent.
So much wine… The main valve on the huge storage vat must be open, I thought. The whole thing must be emptying through the pump. Fifteen hundred gallons…
Denny was lying face down in it. I hauled him over to the crate, turned him onto his back, pulled his arms up, and with soggy pink bandage tied each of his wrists separately to one of the sturdy lower slats.
Wine swirled through his hair. If there was blood there also, I couldn’t see.
Gerard watched, leaning against the crate.
When I’d finished the essential tying there was still some bandage left in the roll. I wound some more of it round each of Naylor’s wrists, joining them in more and more layers to the crate, and then used the last of it to do the same for Denny.
The gypsum in the bandage had been already released to some extent by the wine so that my fingers were covered with pale pink slime. I picked an empty bottle from the crate and held it under the spurting hose until it was half filled and then I carefully poured wine over each tied wrist until the bandages were soaked right through.
Gerard watched throughout, speechless.
Finally I went up the stairs and switched off the pump.
The gusher stopped. The only sound suddenly was the labour
I looked down for a moment at the scene below: at so much floor redly awash, at Denny lying on his back with his hands tied above his head, at Naylor heaving over the crate, at the shotgun lying in the wine, and the broken claret bottle… and the bottles in the crates.
The only thing that might cut through hardening plaster of Paris was broken glass.
I went down the stairs and carefully removed the broken bottle from anywhere near Denny, and took enough bottles out of the crate to make sure Naylor couldn’t reach any.
I pushed the shotgun well out of their reach with my foot.
What else?
Nothing else.
I was myself, like Naylor and Denny, soaked from head to foot with wine: jacket, trousers, shirt, socks, shoes, all dark red against dark red skin. Gerard alone, though copiously splashed, was relatively dry.
I said to him, ‘Could you fetch your car to the gate? I’ll drive from there, but I’m not quite sure that I’m what they’d expect in this neighbourhood.’
‘What about them?’ he said, looking at our captives.
‘We’ll send the posse. I’d like to get away from here first. Denny has a partner somewhere.’
‘Right. Yes, I’ll get the car.’ He sounded exhausted and very subdued, and looked anywhere but at my face.
Denny stirred and groaned. Naylor wheezed. In a very few minutes the bandages round their wrists would be pink rock, and it would take a saw to release them.
We left without locking anything. Gerard brought the car to the gates and I drove from there on, apologising as I got in for the stains I would be leaving on the upholstery. He said stains were secondary. He said little else.
We stopped again as in the morning at a nearby public telephone and this time I got through myself to the priority number, reversing the charges. I said to the answering voice that I wanted an urgent message to reach Detective Chief Superintendent Wilson from Tony Beach.
Hold on, he said. I held. A smooth well-known voice came on the line and said, *Mr Beach? Is that you?’
•Yes, Mr Wilson.’
‘And was it you earlier, who directed us to Martineau Park?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Mr McGregor, was it?’
‘Yes. How do you know?’
‘A man at the racecourse… the deputy clerk of the course who is present there on Saturdays and Sundays while the gates and doors are unlocked… he told our men that a Mr Beach had been to the caterer’s section yesterday and again today with a Mr McGregor.’
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘Paul Young hasn’t gone there, Mr Beach.’ He spoke partly regretfully, partly with faint reproof.
‘Has anyone?’ I asked.
‘A man called Lew Smith arrived a short while ago in a van from Vintners Incorporated. Our men surrounded him, accompanied by the deputy clerk of the course. Lew Smith could give no good reason for being there, but neither was he Paul Young. There seemed to be no grounds for detaining him on the basis of an anonymous telephone call, and our men let him go. And now Mr Beach, could you give me an explanation? Why did you expect Paul Young to go to Martineau Park?’
‘Mr Wilson,’ I said. ‘I do know where Paul Young is now. Do you want him?’
‘Don’t be facetious, Mr Beach.’
I told him exactly where to find his quarry. I said, ‘You’ll find a printing press if you go upstairs, complete with Bell’s labels and also the same fake wine labels found in the Silver Moondance. You’ll find stolen whisky in the vats… if you apply to Rannoch whisky distillers you’ll get a profile match. The scotch was stolen from tankers belonging to a firm called Charter Carriers… you’ll find another branch of the police investigating those thefts. You’ll find plaster of Paris in Paul Young’s office… and he’s Larry Trent’s half-brother and his name is Stewart Naylor.’
‘Mr Beach…’
‘Goodbye, Mr Wilson,’ I said. ‘Please don’t waste time. Lew Smith might drive there and free him. And oh, yes, you remember Gerard McGregor and I were shot at by the robbers outside my shop? You’ll find one of those thieves tied up with Naylor. Also his gun’s there. I think his name’s Denny. Lew Smith was probably his partner. Worth a try, anyway.’
I put the receiver down although I could hear him still talking and got back into the car with Gerard.
‘There will be endless questions,’ he said.
‘Can’t be helped.’
I restarted the engine and we angled our way sedately out of Ealing, crossed the hinterland, made it safely back to the high road home.
Neither of us talked again for a long way. There was none of the euphoria of the Sunday before with the pellets burning in our bodies and our spirits high with escape. Today had been grimmer, dark with real horror, dark as wine.
Gerard shifted in his seat and sighed and said eventually, ‘I’m glad you were with me.’
‘Mm.’
Five minutes later he said, ‘I was afraid.’
‘Yes, I know. Well, so was I.’
He turned his head, glanced finally at my face and then looked forward again through the windscreen.
‘That plaster…’ He shuddered. ‘I was screaming… I’ve never been so craven in my life.’
‘Fear in a fearful situation is normal. Absence of fear is not.’
He swallowed. ‘I also feared you wouldn’t rescue me.’
‘Wouldn’t? Do you mean couldn’t, or wouldn’t try?’
‘Couldn’t, of course.’ He seemed surprised at the question. ‘It would have been pointless to do anything useless like throwing your life away to make a gesture.’
‘Die in the attempt?’
‘Dying in the attempt,’ he said sombrely, ‘has always seemed to me the height of incompetence.’
‘Or plain bad luck.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll allow bad luck.’
Another silence lengthened. We turned off the motorway and would soon be back where we’d left my car.
‘Are you all right to drive home?’ I said.
‘Yes, perfectly.’
He looked no better than when we’d set off, but not worse either. Still grey, still strained, but still also with apparently endless reserves of stamina.
I had known him for two weeks. Fifteen days, to be accurate, since we had made tunnels under the tent at Flora’s party. With him and through him I had looked newly into many internal mirrors and was coming to understand what I saw there. I owed him a great deal and didn’t know how to tell him.
I stopped his car beside mine. We both got out. We stood looking at each other, almost awkwardly. After such intensity there seemed to be no suitable farewell.
‘I’m in your debt,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘Other way round.’
He smiled faintly, ruefully. ‘Call it quits.’
He stepped quietly into his wine-stained car, gave me the briefest of waves, drove away.
I watched him go until he was out of sight. Then in similar peace I unlocked my own door and motored ordinarily home.
The sun was breaking through clouds when I reached the cottage, shining with the heavy golden slant of a late October tea-time.
I went into the hall and looked into the real mirror there. My hair was spiky and sticky with wine. The stains all over my head and face had dried to purple, but in the sun’s rays they still seemed to glow red. My eyes shone pale grey in a burnished landscape.
I smiled. My teeth gleamed. I looked like a red devil, I thought. A bloody red devil from the far side of terror.
I was filled quite suddenly with a sort of restless exultation.
I went through my sun-filled house shouting aloud, ‘Emma… Emma… Emma… Emma…’ and my voice bounced off the walls, reverberating.
I didn’t shout for lack of her but from wanting to tell her… wanting to shout to her to make her hear… that for once I felt I had done what I should, that I hadn’t been for ever
TWENTY-TWO
Fragments of information floated my way for days like debris from a shipwreck.
Chief Superintendent Wilson came to tell me the police had had to saw through the crate and transport Naylor and Denny to a hospital to get their unorthodox handcuffs removed. He seemed deeply amused and also content, and took away a bottle of wine for dinner.
Sergeant Ridger returned with a cut forehead from his scuffle with the pickets and told me that the racecourse bars at Martineau Park had been on the police list of whisky complaints. He said we would have gone there on the next raceday and our pub crawl would have been successful: and I didn’t like to tell him that it already had been, thanks to Mrs Alexis.
Mrs Alexis asked me to lunch. I went, laughed a lot, and came away with a commission to choose and supply wine for her restaurant. Wilfred had survived the soot and the sweep got the sack.
Gerard fed me with constant news, mostly good.
The scotch in the big storage tanks had been profile-matched and had proved to be the third load stolen from the tanker. The Martineau Park and Silver Moondance scotch was all from the second load. The first load had presumably been sold and drunk.
Rannoch’s were refusing to collect or accept their scotch because of the tap water. Customs and Excise were pressing all and sundry for the duty. Kenneth Charter’s insurers were insisting that as the whisky was Rannoch’s, Rannoch’s should pay. Rannoch’s said Naylor should pay. Kenneth Charter’s suggestion that they run the stuff away down a drain and forget it was not being treated seriously.
The best news was that the insurers had agreed to reinstate Charter’s policies in full: the tanker fleet would stay in business.
Kenneth Junior’s part was so far unknown to the police and would with luck remain so. Kenneth Junior wrote to his father from Australia asking for more money, which Kenneth Senior sent him along with advice to stay far away until parental disgust had abated.