Come to Grief

by Dick Francis

  I nodded again.

  “Then you scurry right back to Topline and tell them no check, no cutting. And that means no campaign. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right. Bugger off.”

  I meekly removed myself but, seeing no urgent reason to leave altogether, I turned the wrong way out of his office and walked as if I belonged there down a passage between increasingly technical departments.

  I came to an open door through which one could see a screen showing startlingly familiar pieces of an ad campaign currently collecting critical acclaim as well as phenomenally boosting sales. There were bursts of pictures as short as three seconds followed by longer intervals of black. Three seconds of fast action. Ten of black.

  I stopped, watching, and a man walked into my sight and saw me standing there.

  “Yes?” he said. “Do you want something?”

  “Is that,” I said, nodding towards the screen, “one of the mountain bike ads?”

  “It will be when I cut it together.”

  “Marvelous,” I said. I took half a step unthreaten ingly over his threshold. “Can I watch you for a bit?”

  “Who are you, exactly?”

  “From Topline Foods. I came to see Nick Gross.”

  “Ah.” There was a world of comprehension in the monosyllable: comprehension that I immediately aimed to transfer from his brain to mine.

  He was younger than Nick Gross and not so mock-rock-star in dress. His certainty shouted from the zany speed of his three-second flashes and the wit crackling in their juxtaposition: he had no need for earrings.

  I said, quoting the bike campaign’s slogan, “Every kid under fifty wants a mountain bike for Christmas.”

  He fiddled with reels of film and said cheerfully, “There’ll be hell to pay if they don’t.”

  “Did you work on the Topline ads?” I asked neutrally.

  “No, thank Christ. A colleague did. Eight months of award-worthy brilliant work sitting idle in cans on the shelves. No prizes for us, and your top man’s shitting himself, isn’t he? All that cabbage spent and bugger all back. And all because some twisted little pipsqueak gets the star attraction arrested for something he didn’t do.”

  I held my breath, but he had no flicker of an idea what the pipsqueak looked like. I said I’d better be going and he nodded vaguely without looking up from his problems.

  I persevered past his domain until I came to two big doors, one saying Sound Stage Keep Out and one, opening outward with a push-bar, marked Backlot. I pushed that door half-open and saw outside in the open air a huge yellow crane dangling a red sports car by a rear axle. Film cameras and crews were busy around it. Work in progress.

  I retreated. No one paid me any attention on the way out. This was not, after all, a bank vault, but a dream factory. No one could steal dreams.

  The reception lobby, as I hadn’t noticed on my way in, bore posters around the walls of past and current purse-openers, all prestigious prize-winning campaigns. Ad campaigns, I’d heard, were now considered an OK step on the career ladder for both directors and actors. Sell cornflakes one day, play Hamlet the next. Intramind Imaging could speed you on your way.

  I drove into the center of Manchester and anonymously booked into a spacious restful room in the Crown Plaza Hotel. Davis Tatum might have a fit over the expense but if necessary I would pay for it myself. I wanted a shower, room service and cosseting, and hang the price.

  I phoned Tatum’s home number and got an answering machine. I asked him to call back to my mobile number and repeated it, and then sat in an armchair watching racing on television—flat racing at Ascot.

  There was no sight of Ellis on the course. The commentator mentioned that his “ludicrous” trial was due to resume in three days’ time, on Monday. Sid Halley, he said, was sensibly keeping his head down as half Ellis’s fan club was baying for his blood.

  This little tid-bit came from a commentator who’d called me a wizard and a force for good not long ago. Times changed: did they ever. There were smiling close-ups of Ellis’s face, and of mine, both helmetless but in racing colors, side by side. “They used to be the closest of friends,” said the commentator sadly. “Now they slash and gore each other like bulls.”

  Sod him, I thought.

  I also hoped that none of Mrs. Green Jumper, Marsha Rowse, Mrs. Dove, Willy Parrott, the Intramind van driver, Nick Gross and the film cutter had switched on to watch racing at Ascot. I didn’t think Owen Yorkshire’s sliding glance across my overalls would have left an imprint, but the others would remember me for a day or two. It was a familiar risk, sometimes lucky, sometimes not.

  When the racing ended I phoned Intramind Imaging and asked a few general questions that I hadn’t thought of in my brief career on the spot as a Topline Foods employee.

  Were advertising campaigns originally recorded on film or on disks or on tape, I wanted to know, and could the public buy copies. I was answered helpfully: Intramind usually used film, especially for high-budget location-based ads. and no, the public could not buy copies. The finished film would eventually be transferred onto broadcast-quality videotape, known as Betacam. These tapes then belonged to the clients, who paid television companies for airtime. Intramind did not act as an agent.

  “Thanks very much,” I said politely, grateful always for knowledge.

  Davis Tatum phoned soon after.

  “Sid,” he said, “where are you?”

  “Manchester, city of rain.”

  It was sunny that day.

  “Er ... ,” Davis said. “Any progress?”

  “Some,” I said.

  “And, er ...” He hesitated again. “Did you read India Cathcart this morning?”

  “She didn’t write that she’d seen us at Le Meridien,” I said.

  “No. She took your excellent advice. But as to the rest ... !”

  I said, “Kevin Mills phoned especially to tell me that she didn’t write the rest. He did it himself. Policy. Pressure from above. Same old thing.”

  “But wicked.”

  “He apologized. Big advance.”

  “You take it so lightly,” Davis said.

  I didn’t disillusion him. I said, “Tomorrow evening—would you be able to go to Archie Kirk’s house?”

  “I should think so, if it’s important. What time?”

  “Could you arrange that with him? About six o‘clock, I should think. I’ll arrive there sometime myself. Don’t know when.”

  With a touch of complaint he said, “It sounds a bit vague.”

  I thought I’d better not tell him that with burglary, times tended to be approximate.

  12

  I phoned The Pump, asking for India Cathcart. Silly me.

  Number one, she was never in the office on Fridays. Number two, The Pump never gave private numbers to unknown callers.

  “Tell her Sid Halley would like to talk to her,” I said, and gave the switchboard operator my mobile number, asking him to repeat it so I could make sure he had written it down right.

  No promises, he said.

  I sat for a good while thinking about what I’d seen and learned, and planning what I would do the next day. Such plans got altered by events as often as not, but I’d found that no plan at all invited nil results. If all else failed, try Plan B. Plan B, in my battle strategy, was to escape with skin intact. Plan B had let me down a couple of times, but disasters were like falls in racing; you never thought they’d happen until you were nose down to the turf.

  I had some food sent up and thought some more, and at ten-fifteen my mobile buzzed.

  “Sid?” India said nervously.

  “Hello.”

  “Don’t say anything! I’ll cry if you say anything.” After a pause she said, “Sid! Are you there?”

  “Yes. But I don’t want you to cry so I’m not saying anything.”

  “Oh, God.” It was half a choke, half a laugh. “How can you be so ... so civilized?”

  “With enormous diffic
ulty,” I said. “Are you busy on Sunday evening? Your restaurant or mine?”

  She said disbelievingly, “Are you asking me out to dinner?”

  “Well,” I said, “it’s not a proposal of marriage. And no knife through the ribs. Just food.”

  “How can you laugh?”

  “Why are you called India?” I asked.

  “I was conceived there. What has that got to do with anything?”

  “I just wondered,” I said.

  “Are you drunk?”

  “Unfortunately not. I’m sitting soberly in an armchair contemplating the state of the universe, which is C minus, or thereabouts.”

  “Where? I mean, where is the armchair?”

  “On the floor,” I said.

  “You don’t trust me!”

  “No,” I sighed, “I don’t. But I do want to have dinner with you.”

  “Sid,” she was almost pleading, “be sensible.”

  Rotten advice, I’d always thought. But then if I’d been sensible I would have two hands and fewer scars, and I reckoned one had to be born sensible, which didn’t seem to have happened in my case.

  I said, “Your proprietor—Lord Tilepit—have you met him?”

  “Yes.” She sounded a bit bewildered. “He comes to the office party at Christmas. He shakes everyone’s hand.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Do you mean to look at?”

  “For a start.”

  “He’s fairly tall. Light-brown hair.”

  “That’s not much,” I said when she stopped.

  “He’s not part of my day-to-day life.”

  “Except that he burns saints,” I said.

  A brief silence, then, “Your restaurant, this time.”

  I smiled. Her quick mind could reel in a tarpon where her red mouth couldn’t. “Does Lord Tilepit,” I asked, “wear an obvious cloak of power? Are you aware of his power when you’re in a room with him?”

  “Actually ... no.”

  “Is anyone ... Could anyone be physically in awe of him?”

  “No.” It was clear from her voice that she thought the idea laughable.

  “So his leverage,” I said, “is all economic?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Is there anyone that he is in awe of?”

  “I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

  “That man,” I said, “has spent four months directing his newspaper to ... well ... ruin me. You must allow, I have an interest.”

  “But you aren’t ruined. You don’t sound in the least ruined. And anyway, your ex-wife said it was impossible.”

  “She said what was impossible?”

  “To ... to ...”

  “Say it.”

  “To reduce you to rubble. To make you beg.”

  She silenced me.

  She said, “Your ex-wife’s still in love with you.”

  “No, not anymore.”

  “I’m an expert on ex-wives,” India said. “Wronged wives, dumped mistresses, women curdled with spite, women angling for money. Women wanting revenge, women breaking their hearts. I know the scenery. Your Jenny said she couldn’t live in your purgatory, but when I suggested you were a selfish brute she defended you like a tigress.”

  Oh God, I thought. After nearly six years apart the same old dagger could pierce us both.

  “Sid?”

  “Mm.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  I found a calm voice. “We can’t go back, and we don’t want to,” I said. “I regret a lot, but it’s now finally over. She has a better husband, and she’s happy.”

  “I met her new man,” India said. “He’s sweet.”

  “Yes.” I paused. “What about your own ex?”

  “I fell for his looks. It turned out he wanted an admiration machine in an apron. End of story.”

  “Is his name Cathcart?”

  “No,” she said. “Patterson.”

  Smiling to myself, I said, “Will you give me your phone number?”

  She said, “Yes,” and did so.

  “Kensington Place restaurant. Eight o‘clock.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  When I was alone, which was usual nowadays, since Louise McInnes and I had parted, I took off my false arm at bedtime and replaced it after a shower in the morning. I couldn’t wear it in showers, as water wrecked the works. Taking it off after a long day was often a pest, as it fitted tightly and tended to cling to my skin. Putting it on was a matter of talcum powder, getting the angle right and pushing hard.

  The arm might be worth its weight in gold, as I’d told Trish Huxford, but even after three years, whatever lighthearted front I might now achieve in public, in private the management of amputation still took me a positive effort of the “get on with it” ethos. I didn’t know why I continued to feel vulnerable and sensitive. Too much pride, no doubt.

  I’d charged up the two batteries in the charger overnight, so I started the new day, Saturday, with a fresh battery in the arm and a spare in my pocket.

  It was by then five days since Gordon Quint had cracked my ulna, and the twinges had become less acute and less frequent. Partly it was because one naturally found the least painful way of performing any action, and partly because the ends of bone were beginning to knit. Soft tissue grew on the site of the break, and on the eighth day it would normally begin hardening, the whole healing process being complete within the next week. Only splintered, displaced ends caused serious trouble, which hadn’t occurred in this case.

  When I’d been a jockey the feel of a simple fracture had been an almost twice-yearly familiarity. One tended in jump racing to fall on one’s shoulder, quite often at thirty miles an hour, and in my time I’d cracked my collarbones six times each side: only once had it been distinctly bad.

  Some jockeys had stronger bones than others, but I didn’t know anyone who’d completed a top career unscathed. Anyway, by Saturday morning, Monday’s crack was no real problem.

  Into my overnight bag I packed the battery charger, washing things, pajamas, spare shirt, business suit and shoes. I wore both pieces of the tracksuit, white shirt, no tie and the dark sneakers. In my belt I carried money and a credit card, and in my pocket a bunch of six keys on a single ring, which bore also a miniature flashlight. Three of the keys were variously for my car and the entry doors of my flat. The other three, looking mis leadingly simple, would between them open any ordinary lock, regardless of the wishes of the owners.

  My old teacher had had me practice until I was quick at it. He’d shown me also how to open the simple combination locks on suitcases; the method used by airport thieves.

  I checked out of the hotel and found the way back to Frodsham, parking by the curb within sight of Topline Foods’ wire-mesh gates.

  As before, the gates were wide open and, as before, no one going in and out was challenged by the gatekeeper. No one, in fact, seemed to have urgent business in either direction and there were far fewer cars in the central area than on the day before. It wasn’t until nearly eleven o‘clock that the promised film crews arrived in force.

  When getting on for twenty assorted vans and private cars had come to a ragged halt all over the place, disgorging film cameras (Intramind Imaging), a television camera (local station) and dozens of people looking purposeful with heavy equipment and chest-hugged clipboards, I got out of my car and put on the ill-fitting brown overalls, complete with identity badge. Into the trunk I locked my bag and also the mobile phone, first taking the SIM card out of it and stowing it in my belt. “Get into the habit of removing the SIM card,” my supplier had advised. “Then if someone steals your phone, too bad, they won’t be able to use it.”

  “Great,” I’d said.

  I started the car, drove unhesitatingly through the gates, steered a course around the assorted vans and stopped just beyond them, nearest to the unloading bays. Saturday or not, a few other brown overall hands were busy on the rollers and the shelf escalator, and I simply walked strai
ght in past them, saying “Morning” as if I belonged.

  They didn’t answer, didn’t look up, took me for granted.

  Inside, I walked up the stairs I’d come down with Willy Parrott and, when I reached the right level, ambled along the gallery until I came to his office.

  The sliding glass door was closed and locked and there was no one inside.

  The paddles were silent in the vats. None of the day before’s hum and activity remained, and almost none of the smells. Instead, there were cameras being positioned below, with Owen Yorkshire himself directing the director, his authoritative voice telling the experts their job.

  He was too busy to look up. I went on along the gallery, coming to the fire door up the flight of metal stairs. The fire doors were locked at night, Willy had said By day, they were open. Thankful, I reached in the end the plush carpet of the offices.

  There was a bunch of three media people in there, measuring angles and moving potted plants. Office work, I gathered, was due for immortality on Monday. Cursing internally at their presence, I walked on towards the elevator, passing the open door of Customer Relations. No Marsha Rowse.

  To the right of the elevator there was a door announcing Office Manager, A. Dove, fastened with businesslike locks.

  Looking back, I saw the measuring group taking their damned time. I needed them out of there and they infuriatingly dawdled.

  I didn’t like to hover. I returned to the elevator and, to fill in time, opened a nearby door which proved to enclose fire stairs, as I’d hoped.

  Down a floor, and through the fire door there, I found an expanse of open space, unfurnished and undecorated, the same in area as the office suite above. Up two stories, above the offices, there was similar quiet, undivided, clean-swept space. Owen Yorkshire had already built for expansion, I gathered.

  Cautiously, I went on upward to the fifth floor, lair of the boss.

  Trusting that he was still down among the vats, I opened the fire door enough to put my head through.

  More camera people moved around. Veritable banks of potted plants blazed red and gold. To the left, open, opulently gleaming double doors led into an entertaining and boardroom area impressive enough for a major industry of self-importance. On the right, more double doors led to Yorkshire’s own new office; not, from what I could see, a place of paperwork. Polished wood gleamed. Plants galore. A tray of bottles and glasses.