Dick Francis's Damage

by Felix Francis

  I shivered at the memory. I’d been in that god-awful Afghan ditch for thirty-six hours, baking hot during the day and freezing cold at night.

  Thankfully, my thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of my cell.

  It was Crispin.

  “Howard has spoken to Ian Tulloch and he’s given us the OK for the drop.”

  “Did he consult any of the other Board members?” I asked.

  “It seems he called them last night to discuss paying. Howard is absolutely desperate to prevent any trouble at the Guineas meeting. He’s staking his whole reputation on that passing off without any problems and he seems positively keen to pay up in order to achieve it.”

  “He’s crazy,” I said, although I’d argued for it to happen. “We’ll just have to ensure that we catch our friend red-handed. That’s the only thing that will guarantee a stop to the disruption.”

  “How about if we were to confront him with what we already know?” Crispin said. “That would surely be just as good.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But not so satisfying as getting hard evidence that it was him collecting the loot at the drop.”

  He laughed. “It’s not a game, you know, dear boy.”

  “Isn’t it?” I laughed back.

  35

  By two o’clock in the afternoon we had eaten all the chocolate bars, Lydia had drunk most of the water and we had exhausted almost every single letter of the alphabet in a marathon game of I spy.

  Finally, at twenty past two, as I was trying desperately to spy something beginning with X, the wrought-iron gates opened and the target drove out in a black BMW, turning west.

  I started the rental Fiesta and pulled out behind him.

  “He’s on his own,” I said. “That’s good. He’s not being dropped off at the station.”

  I had feared he might take the train, which would have meant leaving Lydia alone with the rental car.

  At the end of the road, the target turned away from the railway station towards the M25, the London orbital freeway, which he joined traveling clockwise towards Heathrow Airport. I settled in behind him with two cars between us.

  He left the M25 at Exit 16, taking the entrance ramp to the M4 westbound. Was he going towards the previous drop spot near Pewsey? He had certainly turned in the right direction.

  We tailed him past Windsor and the three Slough exits, on towards Reading, where he pulled off the freeway into the service area. I followed.

  The BMW stopped close to the parking lot entrance, so I went past and into a space between two cars, from where I could see the target in the rearview mirror.

  “Get out and stretch,” I said to Lydia.

  “Why?”

  “Because people who arrive at service areas and then just sit in their cars are suspicious. Like the man in the BMW.”

  She did as I asked while I went on watching behind. However, the target clearly wasn’t interested in us. He had his head down as if looking at something in his lap. I twisted around between the seats and took another photo through the rear window.

  After about five minutes, he set off again, rejoining the freeway towards the west, driving conservatively within the speed limit, with Lydia and me three cars behind.

  Crispin called my phone and Lydia answered, which surprised him somewhat.

  “Put it on speaker,” I said.

  “I’ve just had a text on the Nokia phone,” Crispin said. “It says to go to Trafalgar Square just like last time.”

  “The text was sent from the Reading service area on the M4.”

  “Are you sure?” Crispin said.

  “Pretty much.”

  “So do I need to go to Trafalgar Square?”

  “No,” I said. “Don’t bother.”

  “You don’t think anyone will be watching out for me there?”

  “No,” I said. “I think Leonardo works alone, and he’s driving the car three in front of me westwards down the M4 as we speak.”

  “Right,” Crispin said. “I’ll get moving as we planned.”

  “If it’s like last time, you should have plenty of time. The train we caught before left Paddington at three minutes after seven.”

  “Do you think he’ll use the same train?”

  “I’ve no idea,” I said. “But everything else has been the same as before.”

  It was over a week since the last drop and, consequently, sunset was about fifteen minutes later. But the next train from Paddington on that line, after the 7:03 p.m., didn’t arrive at the drop site until well past half past eight, by which time it would be completely dark.

  “I reckon he’ll go for the same train,” I said, “unless he has a different drop point in mind. One nearer to London.”

  —

  THE TARGET turned off the freeway again and into the next service area at Exit 13 near Newbury. Again we followed. And, as before, he stopped the black BMW near the parking lot entrance.

  I drove around to a point where I could see him through the gap between two other parked cars.

  Once more he was looking down. Texting, I presumed.

  After a few minutes, he got out of his car and walked towards the service buildings while I snapped several more shots that clearly showed his face.

  “Wait here,” I said to Lydia, giving her the camera.

  Being careful to see that the target had gone through the doors into the building, I ran over to his BMW. Sure enough, there was a dent in the fender above the right front tire, together with a couple of scratches in the paintwork.

  I would bet my shirt that this was the car that had hit me last Friday.

  I leaned down and attached the magnetic tracker, which I had recovered from the old rugby ball, to the inside of the wheel well. Just in case we lost sight of him.

  I then hurried after the target and followed him past the newsstand and the burger bar into the gents. He went over to one bank of urinals while I went to another, keeping an eye on him via the mirror above the washbasins. As he turned to wash his hands, I moved away and waited for him on the general concourse.

  He went straight back out to his car and I rejoined Lydia.

  “Crispin called,” she said. “He received another text telling him to go to Victoria Station.”

  “Victoria?” I repeated in some alarm. “There are no trains from Victoria that go down the right line. I hope we haven’t got things wrong.”

  The target didn’t move. He just sat in his car and appeared to recline his seat and take a nap.

  “Why did you go over to his car before following him?” Lydia asked.

  “To see if there is a dent in the right front fender.”

  “And is there?”

  “Yes,” I said. “One consistent with hitting me in Spezia Road last Friday.”

  Lydia was angry on my behalf. It was almost all I could do to stop her from going over to the BMW to demand why the target had tried to kill me.

  “Can’t we call the police?” she asked. “Get them to arrest him for attempted murder.”

  “We know what the police think,” I said. “Much better to wait and catch him red-handed with the cash. I also took the opportunity to place a tracking device in his wheel well.”

  I lifted the receiver from the backseat and it made a reassuring beeping noise in the earpiece when the aerial loop faced towards the BMW.

  We went on watching and waiting. I swallowed another painkiller and I took a few more photos, but there was nothing new to see.

  After about half an hour, the target sat up and appeared to send another text.

  Crispin called almost immediately.

  “It says take the Circle Line to Paddington Station and wait.”

  I breathed a small sigh of relief. We hadn’t got it wrong.

  I looked at my watch—just coming up to five o
’clock.

  “OK,” I said. “Where are you now?”

  “In traffic on Cromwell Road,” Crispin said.

  “How about Nigel Green?”

  “He’s at Paddington waiting for my call. Anything to report your end?”

  “The target is simply sitting in his car at Chieveley Services off Exit 13. I’ll let you know if he moves.”

  The target had appeared to go back to his nap and Lydia and I went on waiting and watching.

  And we waited some more and still we watched.

  Time dragged.

  “Where do you want to get married?” I asked.

  Lydia turned sharply to look at me.

  “Is that a proposal?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  “You sound disappointed,” I said.

  “I was rather hoping for the down-on-one-knee treatment.”

  “Not my style,” I said.

  “But you do mean it?”

  “Yes,” I said, smiling at her, “I do.”

  She squealed with delight and I leaned over to kiss her.

  “Forget it, sunshine,” she said, pulling a face and turning her head away. “I’m not kissing you with all that stuff stuck on your face.”

  It was not a particularly romantic start to our engagement.

  —

  WE REMAINED in the Chieveley Service Area parking lot until after six o’clock, by which time the sunshine of earlier had been replaced by the gloom of low gray cloud and a persistent drizzle as a weather front moved in from the west.

  I had been worried that the target might notice that our rented Ford Fiesta had been sitting in the parking lot without moving for rather a long time, so just before five I’d driven it around to the BP filling station and parked in front of the payment kiosk.

  It meant that we couldn’t actually see the man anymore sitting in his BMW, but we would still see if the car moved. And the one-way traffic in the service area would bring him past us anyway, whichever way he went after that.

  Crispin called my phone again.

  “‘Buy a first-class ticket to Plymouth,’” he said. “The text arrived a couple of minutes ago.”

  “Have you told Nigel?”

  “I told him to buy a standard-class ticket to Taunton and wait to be told which train to catch.”

  Crispin had always been rather miserly with his departmental budget.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Just turning in to the service area now. Where are you parked?”

  “Near the filling station.”

  “Where’s the target?”

  “In the main parking lot next to the main service building,” I said. “You go into the motel lot near the entrance and wait there.”

  I didn’t want Crispin driving right past the target and being recognized. That would be sure to put a premature end to our plan.

  “Right you are,” he said. “Just turning in now.”

  “Good. It’s twenty-five miles from here to the drop point that he used last time. If he’s using the same place again, then it will take a good forty to forty-five minutes to get there from here. If he also uses the same train. And if it’s on time, then it should pass the spot at eight minutes after eight.”

  There were far too many ifs for my liking.

  “So he should leave here soon,” said Crispin. “He’ll surely want to be in position in good time.”

  “If he’s using exactly the same routine as before,” I said, “he will have to send the board-the-train text at seven o’clock. There’s good cell signal here but can he be sure of it en route?”

  “How about at the drop point?” Crispin said. “Is there a good signal there?”

  “Full signal,” I said. “There’s an aerial mast right there where the rails cross the bridge. He’d need to be sure of a good signal in order for the Nokia phones to send and receive the text, and quickly. He couldn’t afford a delay.”

  Lydia and I had sent each other several texts to find out how long they took to arrive. Three to four seconds was average. If the train was moving at a speed of a hundred miles per hour, I had calculated that it traveled almost one hundred and fifty feet every second.

  Services from Paddington to Plymouth used a standard Great Western InterCity train, eight cars long, with a diesel-electric engine on either end, a total length of seven hundred and fifty feet.

  Hence, the train took about five seconds to pass any given point.

  The first-class section was always at the back of the train on the journey away from London.

  If Leonardo sent the text exactly when the front of the train passed over the bridge, and allowing for transmission and response times, he might expect the loot to be thrown out a little over five seconds later, into the perfect spot on the treeless grassy bank of the railway embankment.

  “Does Nigel know he has to be at the back of the train when he throws out the bag?”

  “Yes,” replied Crispin, “I’ve given him a full briefing.”

  I looked at my watch. Six-thirty.

  “I think the target may be staying here to send the board-the-train text,” I said. “Crispin, I’ll drive round to the motel to pick you up. One car will be easier. You leave yours there. See you in a mo.”

  I hung up and started the car’s engine.

  It was a bit of a risk. I would lose sight of the BMW for the few minutes I would need to drive around to the motel and get back, but it was much less of a risk than Crispin walking through the main parking lot and being spotted by the target.

  “You stay here,” I said to Lydia. “Go into the filling station shop and keep watch. Call me immediately if the target moves. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

  “I’m sorry but I desperately need another pee,” she said. “I didn’t want to tell you but now I must. I’m really bursting.”

  Great, I thought, all that bloody water. I bit my tongue and said nothing. I didn’t want to have our first row as an engaged couple so soon after my proposal.

  I looked at my watch again. If the target was going to send the board-the-train text from here, we should have a good twenty minutes before he moved.

  “OK,” I said. “You go to the ladies while I fetch Crispin.”

  It was a risk, but we needed to be ready to move off as quickly as possible after the text.

  Lydia climbed out of the car and went running off towards the main building, holding her knees together in a classic I’m-trying-not-to-pee-in-my-pants mode.

  I smiled and drove off around to the motel parking lot to collect Crispin.

  “Come on!” I shouted at a slowpoke driver in a flat cap who dawdled at the traffic circle and then crawled along at ten miles per hour. “Come on, I’m in a hurry!” Not that he could hear me. And, of course, it made no difference to his speed or the lack of it.

  “Get in the back and lie flat,” I said to Crispin when I finally arrived.

  He did.

  “Where’s Lydia?” he asked without batting an eyelid about my appearance. He had seen me in disguise before.

  “She’s gone to the ladies room,” I said. “Stay down.”

  I drove quickly back towards the main parking lot.

  The black BMW had vanished.

  36

  Bugger!”

  “What?” said Crispin from his prone position on the backseat.

  “The target’s gone.”

  “He can’t have,” Crispin said, sitting up.

  “But he has,” I said. “He must have driven off as I was coming round for you. He can’t have been gone for more than a couple of minutes at most.”

  I screeched to a halt outside the main building and Lydia climbed back into the car.

  “He’s gone,” I said. “We m
issed him.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said, giving her a smile.

  No, it had been mine. Stupid, stupid.

  I swung the car sharply to the right out of the parking lot, putting the accelerator pedal to the floor, which brought a few stern glances from other motorists.

  I drove up to the traffic circle and braked sharply.

  “Which way?” I said, mostly to myself.

  There were two ways the target could have gone to get to the drop point, assuming it was the same as last time. Either west along the freeway to the next exit and then south or south first, down the A34, and then west. Both routes went via Hungerford and both were equidistant.

  I grabbed the tracker receiver and pointed it south down the A34. There was no beeping in the earpiece. I pointed it west. Still nothing.

  Panicking, I turned it through a full three hundred and sixty degrees, but there was no sound from it in any direction.

  Damn it, I thought.

  How I wished the tracker really did have a range of four miles, as my ex–army mate had claimed. The target was already out of range.

  But which way had he gone?

  I’d been careless—bloody careless.

  A car came up behind me and hooted. I was blocking the road.

  I took the freeway westwards, racing up the entrance ramp at breakneck speed and causing a large truck to take evasive action to avoid a collision.

  “Steady, tiger,” said Lydia. “Better to get there late than not at all.”

  “Sorry,” I said, but I still pulled sharply into the outside lane and put my foot down.

  Flat out, the Ford Fiesta would have been no match for the target’s high-powered BMW. But if he continued as before within the speed limit, I should be catching up to him soon. Provided, of course, that he was on this road.

  Lydia held the tracker receiver so that the loop aerial scanned the road ahead.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  She shook her head and I pressed even harder with my right foot.

  “Don’t get stopped, dear boy,” Crispin said from behind me. “It would be highly ironic if it were the police that prevented us getting to the drop and solving the case.”