Dead Heat

by Dick Francis

  “Where exactly are we going to sleep tonight?” Caroline asked after I had finally driven away from the disaster.

  “Do you remember when I first talked you into coming to Newmarket, I promised you a night at the Bedford Lodge Hotel?” I said. “And the best-laid plans were somewhat disrupted by a certain car crash. Well, tonight, my dear, you shall finally have your night in Newmarket’s finest hotel.”

  “I am honored,” she said.

  “Don’t get too used to it,” I said. “They have a room only for tonight. They’re full tomorrow.”

  “I have to be in London tomorrow night,” she said.

  I hadn’t forgotten.

  TO SAY Carl was pleased to see me would be rather an under-statement. He almost cried when I walked into the Hay Net kitchen at seven o’clock.

  “Thank God,” he said.

  “I won’t be much use,” I said, tapping the hard shell on my right arm.

  “What did you do?” he asked. His shoulders sagged. His joy was rapidly turning to disappointment.

  “Fell and broke my wrist,” I said. “Stupid. But I can still help a bit.”

  “Good.” A little of his joy returned.

  I didn’t bother to change. I just slipped one of my chef’s tunics over my shirt and set to work, assisted by Caroline, who did the two-handed jobs.

  I wouldn’t exactly claim that the kitchen service was back to normal, but we coped with the seventy-two covers. I decided not to go out to the dining room at any time as I really didn’t want to be seen by any of the customers. The staff saw me, of course, but I asked them to keep it to themselves. I held up the cast and told them my doctor had forbidden me to work, and I didn’t want him finding out that I had. They smiled at me knowingly and promised to keep the secret. But did I trust all of them to do so?

  Finally, the rush was over, and we had a chance to sit down. It had now been nearly two weeks since I had worked and I was out of shape. I slumped, exhausted, into my chair in the office.

  “I never realized it was so hot in a kitchen,” said Caroline. Throughout the evening, she had gradually removed articles of clothing until removing any more would have been indecent. Marguerite, my mother’s distant widowed cousin’s fiery cook, who had first nurtured my love for cooking, had regularly worn nothing but a pair of knickers under a white, lightweight cotton doctor’s coat.

  “You should try it on a blazing June day,” I said.

  Carl came into the office from the bar with beers for us all. “OK?” he said to Caroline, handing her one.

  “Lovely,” she said, taking it.

  “Do you want a job?” he asked her, smiling. He had the look of a prisoner reprieved from the gallows. Seventy-two dinners was more than he would have been able to do alone, at least to any decent standard.

  “I’ve already got one,” she said. “Although I might lose it if I don’t do some practice soon.”

  “Practice?” Carl asked. “What do you do?”

  In answer, Caroline reached down for the ever-present Viola and took her out of her case.

  “I know who you are,” said Carl suddenly. He looked at me. “She’s the bitch that’s suing us.” We laughed. Even Caroline, the bitch, laughed.

  “I’ll try and see about that,” she said. “Perhaps I’ve just been paid off.” She held up the beer and drank deeply, leaving a white mustache on her upper lip that she wiped away with her forearm. We laughed again.

  I tried calling D.I. Turner. This was the fourth time, and once again I was told he was not available. I again asked if I could leave a message, but I was beginning to think that he wasn’t receiving them. I told the person at the other end of the line that it was really urgent. “Can I help?” this person asked. I started to tell him that it was about the bombing at Newmarket races. He told me that I should contact the Suffolk police, not the Special Branch. I told him that I feared my life was in danger, but I don’t think he believed me. He repeated that I should contact my local police station. So I did, and I asked for the senior officer on duty, only to be told that the inspector was out at the moment and would I like to leave a message. I sighed and said I would try again later.

  Richard came into the office to say that most of the customers had gone and only one table remained, and they were having their coffee.

  “Mrs. Kealy was asking after you,” he said to me.

  “Were the Kealys here tonight?” I asked. “It’s not Saturday.”

  “Last night and tonight,” he said. “Mrs. Kealy said something about wanting to support the restaurant after the difficult times with the poisoned dinner and all.”

  How nice, I thought. I needed more customers like the Kealys.

  “Most of the staff can go home now,” I said. “And you, Carl, if you like. I’ll lock up.” I wanted to be the last to leave so as not to be followed. “Richard, can you finish up?” He would ensure that the last table paid their bill, and then he would see them off the premises.

  “No problem,” he said, and departed back to the dining room.

  “Where are you staying?” Carl asked.

  “We’re booked into a hotel,” I said.

  “Which one?” he asked.

  I wondered just how much I trusted Carl. “The Rutland Arms,” I lied.

  I hoped he didn’t check. Moreton would not be on the guest list for tonight at the Rutland Arms. But, then again, Moreton wasn’t on the guest list for the Bedford Lodge either. I had booked our room in the name of Butcher.

  “Well, I’m pooped,” said Carl, standing up. “I’m going home to bed.” The office usually doubled as a changing room, but, no doubt out of deference to Caroline, Carl took himself off to the gents’ to change out of his work clothes. I had always intended putting in a proper changing room, including a shower, but we had never quite got around to it.

  Caroline placed Viola on her shoulder and played softly. It was wonderful. I watched her, and she stopped playing. “Don’t stop,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”

  “I’m embarrassed,” she said.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “On Thursday night, hundreds of people will be watching you.”

  “That’s somehow different,” she said. “They won’t be just two feet from my nose.”

  I pushed my chair away until I was at least four feet away. “Better?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer but again placed Viola on her shoulder and played sweet music.

  Carl came back into the office, changed. Caroline stopped, and he smiled at her. “Someone’s left a cell phone in the gents’,” he said, placing it on my desk. “Silly bugger. I’ll deal with it in the morning. Good night.” He turned to leave.

  “’Night, Carl,” I said. “And thanks for holding down the fort.”

  “No problem,” he said, and departed. I couldn’t actually say to him tonight that he needed to work on his man-management skills. I would deal with that in the morning too.

  “Are we off?” said Caroline.

  “Soon,” I said. “We’ll wait until Richard has finished up and gone too.”

  The forgotten cell phone on my desk rang. Caroline and I looked at it.

  “Hello,” I said, answering it at the fourth ring.

  “Hello,” said a male voice at the other end. “I think that’s my phone.”

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  “George Kealy,” said the voice. “Is that you, Max?”

  “Yes, George,” I said. “You left your phone in the gents’.”

  “Thought so,” he said. “Stupid fool. Sorry. I’ll come and get it, if that’s OK.”

  “Sure,” I said. “But we’ll be locked, so knock on the front door.”

  “Will do,” he said, and he hung up.

  Richard came back in to report that all the customers had now gone, and he was going too. “Oh,” he said, turning back, “Jacek is still here. He wants a word with you. He’s waiting for you in the kitchen.”

  “Tell him to go home,” I said. “I’ll see
him in the morning.”

  “OK,” he said hesitatingly. “I’ve already told him that once, but he seemed very intent on waiting.”

  “Well, tell him again,” I said. “He’s to go home now.” I had no intention of going alone into the kitchen with Jacek there. I wasn’t at all sure I could trust him.

  “OK,” he said again. “I’ll tell him.”

  “Come back to tell me when he’s gone,” I said. “And, Richard, please make sure he leaves completely.” I knew that Jacek rode a bicycle to and from his digs in the town. “Check he leaves on his bike.”

  Richard looked at me somewhat strangely but nodded and went out.

  There was a loud knock on the front door.

  I went out into the entrance lobby between the bar and the dining room. I looked through the window into the parking lot. As expected, it was George Kealy. I had his phone in my hand.

  I unlocked the door, but it wasn’t George Kealy’s foot that crashed it open, sending me reeling backwards. It was another man, and he held an automatic pistol in his hand and he was pointing it right between my eyes. Mr. Komarov, I presumed.

  “George tells me that you’re a very difficult man to kill, Mr. Moreton,” he said, advancing through the door.

  20

  I retreated back from the door into the entrance lobby. Komarov and George Kealy followed.

  Richard came out of the dining room, carrying a tray of dirty glasses from the last table. Komarov and I saw him at the same instant, and before I had a chance to shout a warning Komarov swung the gun around and shot him. The noise of the retort in the enclosed space was startling, and I jumped. A crimson star appeared on the front of Richard’s white shirt, and there was a slight look of surprise on his face as he pitched forward. The bullet had caught him in the center of his chest, and I was convinced he was dead before he hit the floor. The metal tray he had been holding clattered noisily to the floor and all the glasses shattered, sending hundreds of fragments in all directions across the stone tiles.

  The gun came unerringly back to point at me, and I thought that this was it. He would surely kill me just as easily. Why shouldn’t he? He had tried twice before, why not a third time? The anger that I had channeled into my survival in my burning cottage rose again in me. I wasn’t going to just die without a fight.

  Komarov saw the anger in me and read my intentions. “Don’t even think about it,” he said in almost perfect English, with just a hint of his native Russian accent that made the “think” sound like “sink.”

  I stood my ground and looked at him. He was a thickset man in his mid-fifties, of about average height, with a full head of thick gray hair, well-coiffed. I realized I knew him from before. He had been George and Emma Kealy’s guest here at the Hay Net the first Saturday after the bombing. I remembered that George had called Emma to get going, “Peter and Tanya are waiting,” he had said. Peter and Tanya, George Kealy’s friends, were actually Pyotr and Tatiana Komarov, smugglers, bombers and murderers.

  I found it difficult to believe that George was not the friendly regular customer I knew so well. I looked at him, but he didn’t seem to be embarrassed one bit by my predicament. He didn’t even seem shocked by what his friend had done to my headwaiter. I continued to stare at him, but he refused to look me in the eye. He simply appeared determined, and resigned to the necessity of such actions.

  “I am going to kill you,” Komarov said to me. I didn’t doubt it. “But before I do,” he went on, “I want back what is mine that you have.”

  “And what is that?” I said, finding it quite difficult to talk. My tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of my mouth.

  “You know what I want,” he said. “You obtained it in Delafield.”

  Oh dear, I thought. He must have spoken to Mrs. Schumann, or perhaps it was Kurt and his polo mallet-wielding chum who had paid her a visit. I didn’t want to think about what they might have done to that dear, devastated lady.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. I had raised my voice a little. I was very conscious that Caroline was still in the office, and I was trying to somehow warn her of the danger, although she had to have heard the shot and then the crash of the tray and the glasses. I had no doubt whatsoever that Komarov would kill her as easily as he had killed Richard. Or worse, he would use her for leverage to get back the metal ball. I thought about that ball. I didn’t actually have it with me, so I couldn’t have given it back to Komarov even if I had wanted to. It probably was still on Toby’s desk where I had left it, for him to show to his vet. And I had no intention of putting my brother or his family in danger again.

  “George,” said Komarov, keeping his gun pointed straight at me, “go check that we are alone.”

  George Kealy produced another pistol from his own pocket and went into the dining room. I could hear him going into the kitchen beyond. After a while, he came back. “No one else here,” he said.

  “Check in there,” said Komarov, waving the gun towards the bar and the office beyond. The office actually sat between the bar and the kitchen, with a door at each end, and was more like a wide corridor than a proper room.

  I went on staring at Komarov but slightly bunched my muscles, ready to try to rush him if George cried out that he had found Caroline. But he didn’t call out. He just came back and reported that we were all alone.

  “Where’s your girlfriend?” said Komarov.

  “In London,” I said.

  “Where in London?” he asked.

  “With her sister,” I said. “In Finchley.”

  He seemed satisfied with the answer and waved his gun towards the dining room. “In there,” he said.

  I had to step around Richard’s body. I looked down at his back. There was no exit wound; the bullet was still in his body. Did it make things better or worse? Neither. It was horrible either way.

  I walked ahead of Komarov. Was he going to shoot me in the back? Unlikely. Not that I thought it would make any difference to him. Or, I suppose, to me.

  “Stop,” he said. I stopped. “Pull out the chair, the one with arms.” I reached to my left and pulled the armchair away from the table. I realized that it was the Kealys’ usual dining table. I wondered if George noticed. “Sit down facing away from me,” said Komarov. I did as he said.

  He and George moved around me so that they were again in front.

  I heard someone crunching across the broken glass in the lobby behind me. I thought it must be Caroline, but Komarov looked over my shoulder and he didn’t seem alarmed. The new arrival was obviously his ally, not mine.

  “Have you got the stuff?” he asked the newcomer.

  “Yeah,” said a male voice. There were more crunching steps as the man moved nearer to my back. “Shame you had to shoot Richard,” he said.

  I recognized that voice. Much suddenly became clear.

  “Tie him up,” said Komarov.

  The man who had been behind me walked around in front. He was carrying a dark blue canvas carryall.

  “Hello, Gary,” I said.

  “Hi, Chef,” he said in his usual casual style. There was not a chicken pox scab to be seen. But, then, there wouldn’t be. It had been so simple, and I had walked right into the trap. Gary didn’t have chicken pox, and, no doubt, Oscar hadn’t been going through my papers in the office and hadn’t stolen any of the petty cash. Komarov had needed me back at the Hay Net, and the best way to do that was to create a manpower crisis. Get Oscar fired through Gary’s false accusations, then simply get Gary to call in sick. Hey, presto, I came running. Like a lamb to the slaughter.

  “Why?” I said to Gary.

  “Why what?” he said.

  “Why this?” I asked, spreading my arms out.

  “Money, of course,” he said, and smiled. He seemed not to realize how deep he was in, or the danger.

  “But I pay you good money,” I said to him.

  “Not that good,” he said. “And you don’t provide the extras.”

 
; “Extras?” I asked.

  “Stuff,” he said. I looked at him quizzically. “Coke.”

  I hadn’t figured him as an addict. Drugs and kitchen heat don’t normally go together. I supposed that it did explain some of his mood swings, as well as his current actions. A drug habit can be very demanding; cravings and addiction usually dispel all logic and reason. Given certain circumstances, Gary undoubtedly would do anything for his next fix, and George must have had quite a hold over him.

  He took a roll of brown packing tape from the carryall and used some of it to bind my left wrist to the arm of the chair. Komarov moved off to the side, to make sure that Gary never came between me and the gun, but I had no doubt that Komarov would shoot Gary as easily as sneeze if he thought it was necessary to his plans.

  Gary moved to my right wrist.

  “Hey,” he said, “he’s got a plaster cast under this tunic.”

  “Kurt claimed that Walter must have broken his wrist,” said Komarov. He came close to me. “You broke Walter’s arm,” he said into my face. Good, I thought. I wish I’d broken his bloody neck. “You’ll pay for that,” he said. Then he stood up and smiled. “But Walter always was such an impetuous boy. He probably tried to bash your brains in with a polo mallet.” He smiled at me again. “You might wish he had.” I felt cold and clammy, but I smiled back at him nevertheless.

  Gary taped the cast to the other arm of the chair. Then he taped my ankles to the chair legs in the same manner. I was trussed up like a turkey waiting for the knife to cut my throat. Then Gary took some more stuff from his bag. It looked like putty-soft, white putty. It was in a long plastic bag and looked like a white salami. If possible, I felt even colder and more clammy. Gary had removed a couple of pounds of plastic explosive from his bag.