by Dick Francis
“I like you, Miss Visborough,” I said.
She gave me a straight look. “Stop the film, then.”
I thought of her feelings, and I thought of knives.
“I can't,” I said.
We completed the day's shooting schedule in time to hold the semi-planned good-public-relations final autographing session outside the weighing-room. Nash, Silva and Gibber scribbled there with maximum charm.
Many Huntingdon residents were already wearing their UNSTABLE AT ALL TIMES T-shirts. Good humour abounded all around. The envisaged orderly line of autograph hunters dissolved into a friendly scrum. O'Hara signed books and racecards presented to him by people who knew a producer when they saw one, and I, too, signed my share. Howard modestly wrote in proffered copies of his book.
The happy crowd roamed around. Nash's bodyguards were smiling. The lioness tried to stop him being kissed. My black-belt stood at my left hand so that I could sign with my right.
I felt a thud as if someone had cannoned into me, a knock hard enough to send me stumbling forward onto one knee and from there overbalancing to the ground. I fell onto my right side and felt the first pain, sharp and alarming, and I understood with searing clarity that I had a knife blade in my body and that I had fallen onto its hilt, and driven it in further.
CHAPTER TWELVE
O'Hara, laughing, stretched his hand down to help me up.
I took his hand in my right, and reflexly accepted his assistance, and he saw the strong wince round my eyes and stopped laughing.
“Did you hurt yourself?”
“No.” His pull had lifted me back to my knees. I said, “Lend me your jacket.” He wore an old flying type of jacket, army-coloured, zip fronts hanging open. “Jacket,” I repeated.
“What?” He leaned down towards me from his craggy height.
“Lend me your jacket.” I swallowed, making myself calm. “Lend me your jacket and get my driver to bring my car right up here to the weighing-room.”
“Thomas!” He was progressively concerned, bringing his head lower to hear me better. “What's the matter?”
Clear-headed beyound normal, I said distinctly, “There is a knife in my side. Drape your jacket over my right shoulder, to hide it. Don't make a fuss. Don't frighten the moguls. Not a word to the press. Don't tell the police. I am not dead, and the film will go on.”
He listened and understood but could hardly believe it. “Where's the knife?” he asked as if bewildered. “You look all right.”
“It's somewhere under my arm, above my elbow. Do lend me your jacket.”
“I’ll get our doctor.”
“No, O'Hara. No. Just the jacket.”
I put, I suppose, every scrap of the authority he'd given me into the words that were half plea, half order. In any case, without further objection, he took off his windproof jacket and draped it over my shoulder, revealing the heavy-knit army-coloured sweater he wore underneath.
Other eyes looked curiously our way. I put my left hand on O'Hara's arm, as he was facing me, and managed the endless inches to my feet. I concentrated on his eyes, at the same height as my own.
“The bastard,” I said carefully with obvious anger, “is not going to succeed.”
“Right,” O'Hara said.
I relaxed infinitesimally, but in fact bloody-mindedness was the best anaesthetic invented, and too much sympathy would defeat me quicker than any pain from invaded ribs.
O'Hara sent one of Ed's assistants to bring my car and reassuringly told a few enquirers that I'd fallen and wrenched my shoulder but that it was nothing to worry about.
I saw a jumbled panorama of familiar faces and couldn't remember any of them having been near enough for attack. But crowd movement had been nonstop. Anyone I knew in England, or anyone they had employed - and professionals were for hire and invisible everywhere - could have stood among the autograph hunters and seized the moment. I concentrated mostly on remaining upright while rather wildly wondering what vital organs lay inwards from just above one's right elbow, and realising that though my skin might feel clammy from the shock waves of an outraged organism, I was not visibly leaking blood in any large quantities.
“Your forehead's sweating,” O'Hara observed.
“Never mind.”
“Let me get the doctor.”
“You'll get Greg Compass and television coverage, if you do.”
He was silent.
“I know a different doctor,” I promised. “Where's the car?”
Ed returned with it pretty soon, though it seemed an age to me. I asked him to thank everyone and see to general security, and said we would complete the close-ups the next day.
He nodded merely and took over, and I edged gingerly into the rear seat of the car.
O'Hara climbed in on the other side. “You don't need to,” I said.
“Yes, I do.”
I was glad enough of his company, and I gave him a number to call on his telephone, taking the mobile from him after he'd pressed buttons.
“Robbie?” I said, grateful not to get his message service. “Thomas Lyon. Where are you?”
“Um ... could you come to the hotel in an hour? Fairly urgent.”
“What sort of urgent?”
“Can't say, right now.”
O'Hara looked surprised, but I nodded towards our driver, who might be economical with words, but was far from deaf.
O'Hara looked understanding, but also worried. “One of the moguls from LA has arrived at the hotel and will be waiting for us.”
“Oh.” I hesitated, then said, “Robbie, can you make it Dorothea's house instead? It's for a Dorothea sort of job, though not so radical.”
“You've got someone with you, listening, that you don't want to know what you're talking about? And it's a knife wound?”
“Right,” I said, grateful for his quickness.
“Who's the patient?”
“I am.”
“Dear God ... have you got a key to Dorothea's house?”
“I’m sure her friend Betty must have one. She lives nearly opposite.”
“I know her,” he said briefly. “One hour. Dorothea's house. How bad is it?”
“I don't know the internal geography well enough, but not too bad, I don't think.”
“Abdomen?” he asked worriedly.
“No. Higher, and to one side.”
“See you,” he said. “Don't cough.”
I gave the phone back to O'Hara, who stifled all his questions with worry and difficulty. I sat sideways, propping myself as firmly as possible against the motion of the car, but all the same it was a long thirty-eight miles that time from Huntingdon to Newmarket.
I gave the driver directions to Dorothea's house. Robbie Gill's car was there already, Robbie himself opening the front door from inside when we pulled up, and coming down the path to meet us. O'Hara arranged with the driver to return for us in half an hour while I uncurled out of the car and steadied myself unobtrusively by holding Robbie's arm.
I said, “We're not keen for publicity over this.”
“So I gathered. I haven't told anyone.”
He watched O'Hara get out of the car and give the driver a signal to depart, and I said briefly, “O'Hara ... Robbie Gill,” which seemed enough for them both.
We walked up the path slowly and into the empty but still ravaged house. Dorothea, Robbie said, had told him of my offer to start tidying up. We went into the kitchen where I sat on one of the chairs.
“Did you see the knife?” Robbie asked. “How long was the blade?”
“It's still in me.”
He looked shocked. O'Hara said, “This is some crazy boy.”
“O'Hara's producing the film,” I said. “He would like me stitched up and back on set tomorrow morning.”
Robbie took O'Hara's jacket off my shoulder and knelt on the floor to take a closer look at the problem.
“This is like no knife I ever saw,” he pronounced.
“Like the one o
n the Heath?” I asked.
“Pull it out,” I said. “It hurts.”
Instead he stood up and said something to O'Hara about anaesthetics.
“For Christ's sake,” I said impatiently, “just ... pull ... it... out.”
Robbie said, “Let's take an inside look at the damage, then.”
He unzipped my dark blue windcheater and cut open my sweater with Dorothea's kitchen scissors, and came to the body protectors underneath.
“What on earth - ?”
“We had death threats,” I explained, “so I thought ...” I closed my eyes briefly and opened them again. “I borrowed two of the jockeys' body protectors. In case of kicks.”
“Death threats?”
O'Hara explained, and asked me, “What made you think of these padded jackets?”
“Fear,” I said truthfully.
They almost laughed.
“Look,” I said reasonably, “this knife had to go through my windproof jacket, a thick sweater, two body protectors designed to minimise impact and also one shirt in order to reach my skin. It has cut into me a bit but I'm not coughing blood and I don't feel any worse than I did an hour ago, so ... Robbie ... a bit of your well-known toughness ... please ...”
“Yes, all right,” he said.
He spread open the front of the body protectors and found my white shirt wet and scarlet. He pulled the shirt apart until he could see the blade itself, and he raised his eyes to me in what could only be called horror.
“What is it?” I said.
“This blade ... it's inches wide. It's pinning all the layers into your side.”
“Go on then,” I said. “Get it out.”
He opened the bag he'd brought with him and picked out a pre-prepared disposable syringe which he described briefly, sticking the needle into me, as a painkiller. After that he sorted out a surgical dressing in a sterile wrapping. The same as for Dorothea, I thought. He checked his watch to give the injection time to work, then tore off the wrapping and positioned the dressing ready inside my shirt and with his left hand tugged on the protruding handle of the knife.
I didn't budge and in spite of the injection it felt terrible.
“I can't get enough leverage from this angle,” Robbie said. He looked at O'Hara. “You're strong,” he said. “You pull it out.”
O'Hara stared at him, and then at me.
“Think of moguls,” I said.
He smiled twistedly and said to Robbie, “Tell me when.”
“Now,” Robbie said, and O'Hara grasped the knife's handle and pulled until the blade came free.
Robbie quickly put the dressing in place and O'Hara stood as if stunned, holding in disbelief the object that had caused me such trouble.
“Sorry,” Robbie said to me.
I shook my head, dry mouthed.
O'Hara laid the knife on the kitchen table, on the discarded wrapping from the dressing, and we all spent a fairly long silence simply looking at it.
Overall it was about eight inches long, and half of that was handle. The flat blade was almost three inches wide at the handle end, tapering to a sharp point. One long side of the triangular blade was a plain sharp cutting edge: the other was wickedly serrated. At its wide end the blade extended smoothly into a handle which had a space through it big enough to accommodate a whole hand. The actual grip, with undulations for fingers to give a better purchase, was given substance by bolted-on, palm-width pieces of dark, richly-polished wood: the rest was shiny metal.
“It's heavy,” O'Hara said blankly. “It could rip you in half.”
A stud embellishing the wider end of the blade bore the one word, “Fury”.
I picked up the awful weapon for a closer look and found it was indeed heavy (more than half a pound, we soon found, when Robbie weighed it on Dorothea's kitchen scales) and, according to letters stamped into it, had been made of stainless steel in Japan.
“What we need,” I said, putting it down, “is a knife expert.”
“And what you need first,” Robbie said apologetically, “is a row of staples to stop the bleeding.”
We took off all my protective layers for him to see what he was doing and he presently told me consolingly that the point of the blade had hit one of my ribs and had slid along it, not slicing down into soft tissue and through into the lung. “The rib has been fractured by the blow but you are right, and lucky, because this injury should heal quite quickly.”
“Cheers,” I said flippantly, relieved all the same. “Maybe tomorrow I'll get me a bullet-proof vest.”
Robbie mopped a good deal of dried blood from my skin, damping one of Dorothea's tea towels for the purpose, then helped me into my one relatively unharmed garment, the windproof jacket.
“You look as good as new,” he assured me, fitting together the bottom ends of the zip and closing it upwards.
“The mogul won't notice a thing,” O'Hara agreed, nodding. “Are you fit enough to talk to him?”
I nodded. It was necessary to talk to him. Necessary to convince him that the company's money was safe in my hands. Necessary to confound all suggestion of 'jinx'.
I said, “We do, all the same, have to find out just who is so fanatical about stopping the film that he - or she - will murder to achieve it. It's possible, I suppose, that the knife was meant only to frighten us, like yesterday's dagger, but if I hadn't been wearing the protectors”
“No protection and an inch either way,” Robbie nodded, “and you would likely have been history.”
“So,” I said, “if we take it that my death was in fact intended, I absolutely must find out who and why. Find it out among ourselves, I mean, if we're not bringing in the police. Otherwise ...” I hesitated, then went on, “... if the reason for the attack on me still exists, which we have to assume is the case, they - he or she or they - may try again.”
I had the feeling that the thought had already occurred to both of them, but that to save my peace of mind they hadn't liked to say it aloud.
“No film is worth dying for,” O'Hara said.
“The film has stirred up mud that's been lying quiet for twenty-six years,” I said. “That's what's happened. No point in regretting it. So now we have the choice of either pulling the plug on the film and retiring in disarray - and where is my future if I do that? - or ... er ... sifting through the mud for the facts.”
“But,” Robbie said doubtfully, “could you really find any? I mean, when it all happened, when it was fresh, the police got nowhere.”
“The police are ordinary people,” I said. “Not infallible supermen. If we try, and get nowhere also, then so be it.”
“But how do you start?”
“Like I said, we look for someone who knows about knives.”
It had been growing dark while we spoke. As Robbie crossed to flip the light switch, we heard the front door open and close, and footsteps coming heavily along the passage towards us.
It was Paul who appeared in the kitchen doorway: Paul annoyed, Paul suspicious, Paul's attention latching with furious astonishment onto my face. The indecisiveness of our last meeting had vanished. The bluster was back.
“And what do you think you're doing here?” he demanded. “I've told you to stay away, you're not wanted.”
“I told Dorothea I would tidy up a bit.”
“I will tidy the house. I don't want you here. And as for you, Dr Gill, your services aren't needed. Clear out, all of you.”
It was O'Hara's first encounter with Paul Pannier; always a learning experience.
“And where did you get a key from?” he demanded aggrievedly. “Or did you break in?” He looked at O'Hara directly for the first time and said, “Who the hell are you? I want you all out of here at once.”
I said neutrally, “It's your mother's house and I'm here with her permission.”
Paul wasn't listening. Paul's gaze had fallen on the table, and he was staring at the knife.
There was barely a smear of blood on it as it had been mor
e or less wiped clean by its outward passage through many layers of polystyrene and cloth, so it seemed to be the knife itself, not its use, that was rendering Paul temporarily speechless.
He raised his eyes to meet my gaze, and there was no disguising his shock. His eyes looked as dark as his pudgy features were pale. His mouth had opened. He found nothing at all to say but turned on one foot and stamped away out of the kitchen down the hall and out through the front door, leaving it open behind him.
“Who was he?” O'Hara asked. “And what was that all about?”
“His mother,” Robbie explained, “was savagely cut with a knife in this house last Saturday. He may think that somehow we've found the weapon.”
“And have you?” O'Hara turned to me. “What was it you were trying to tell me yesterday? But this isn't the knife you found on the Heath, is it?”
He frowned. “I don't understand any of it.”
That made two of us; but somewhere there had to be an explanation. Nothing happened without cause.
I asked Robbie Gill, who was tidying and closing his medical case, “Do you know anyone called Bill Robinson who mends motorbikes?”
“Are you feeling all right?”
“Not a hundred per cent. Do you?”
“Bill Robinson who mends motorbikes? No.”
“You know the town. Who would know?”
“Are you serious?”
“He may have,” I explained briefly, “what this house was torn apart for.”
“And that's all you're telling me?”
I nodded.
Robbie pulled the telephone towards him, consulted a notebook from his pocket, and pressed some numbers. He was passed on, relay by relay, to four more numbers but eventually pushed the phone away in satisfaction and told me, “Bill Robinson works for Wrigley's garage, and lives somewhere in Exning Road. He tinkers with Harley Davidsons for a hobby.”
“Great,” I said.
“But,” O'Hara objected, “what has any of this to do with our film?”
“Knives,” I said, “and Valentine Clark knew Jackson Wells.”
“Good luck with the mud,” Robbie said.
The mogul proved to be a hard-nosed thin businessman in his forties with no desire even to look at the growing reels of printed film. He didn't like movies, he said. He despised film actors. He thought directors should be held in financial handcuffs. Venture capital was his field, he said, with every risk underwritten. Wrong field, I thought.
