Banker

by Dick Francis

  The shampoo in question is our ‘Bannitch’ which is formulated especially for dogs suffering from various skin troubles, including eczema. It is distributed to shops selling goods to dog owners and offering cosmetic canine services, but would not normally be used except on the advice of a veterinarian.

  We enclose the list of active ingredients and excipients, as requested.

  ‘What are excipients?’ I asked, looking up.

  ‘The things you put in with the active drug for various reasons,’ she said. ‘Like for instance chalk for bulk in pills.’

  I turned the top page over and read the list on the second.

  BANNITCH

  EXCIPIENTS

  Bentonite

  Ethylene glycol monostearate

  Citric acid

  Sodium phosphate

  Glyceryl monoricinoleate

  Perfume

  ACTIVE INGREDIENTS

  Captan

  Amphoteric

  Selenium

  ‘Terrific,’ I said blankly. ‘What do they all mean?’

  Pen, sitting beside me on the sofa, explained.

  ‘From the top… Bentonite is a thickening agent so that everything stays together and doesn’t separate out. Ethylene glycol monostearate is a sort of wax, probably there to add bulk. Citric acid is to make the whole mixture acid, not alkaline, and the next one, sodium phosphate, is to keep the acidity level more or less constant. Glyceryl monoricinoleate is a soap, to make lather, and perfume is there so that the dog smells nice to the owner when she’s washing him.’

  ‘How do you know so much?’ Gordon asked, marvelling.

  ‘I looked some of them up,’ said Pen frankly, with a smile. She turned back to me and pointed to the short lower column of active ingredients. ‘Captan and Amphoteric are both drugs for killing fungi on the skin, and Selenium is also anti-fungal and is used in shampoos to cure dandruff.’ She stopped and looked at me doubtfully. ‘I did tell you not to hope too much. There’s nothing there of any consequence.’

  ‘And nothing in the sample that isn’t on the manufacturer’s list?’

  She shook her head. ‘The analysis from the British lab came yesterday, and the shampoo in Ginnie’s bottle contained exactly what it should.’

  ‘What did you expect, Tim?’ Gordon asked.

  ‘It wasn’t so much expect, as hope,’ I said regretfully. ‘Hardly hope, really. Just a faint outside chance.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Well… the police thought – think – that the purpose of killing Ginnie was sexual assault, because of those other poor girls in the neighbourhood.’

  They all nodded.

  ‘But it doesn’t feel right, does it? Not when you know she wasn’t walking home from anywhere, like the others, and not when she wasn’t actually, well, interfered with. And then she had the shampoo… and the farm was in such trouble, and it seemed to me possible, just slightly possible, that she had somehow discovered that something in that bottle was significant…’ I paused, and then said slowly to Pen, ‘I suppose what I was looking for was something that could have been put into Sandcastle’s food or water that affected his reproductive organs. I don’t know if that’s possible. I don’t know anything about drugs… I just wondered.’

  They sat in silence with round eyes, and then Gordon, stirring, said with an inflection of hope, ‘Is that possible, Pen? Could it be something like that?’

  ‘Could it possibly?’ Judith said.

  ‘My loves,’ Pen said. ‘I don’t know.’ She looked also as if whatever she said would disappoint us. ‘I’ve never heard of anything like that, I simply haven’t.’

  ‘That’s why I took the shampoo and gave it to you,’ I said. ‘I know it’s a wild and horrible idea, but I told Oliver I’d try everything, however unlikely.’

  ‘What you’re suggesting,’ Judith said plainly, ‘Is that someone might deliberately have given something to Sandcastle to make him produce deformed foals, and that Ginnie found out… and was killed for it.’

  There was silence.

  ‘I’ll go and get a book or two,’ Pen said. ‘We’ll look up the ingredients, just in case. But honestly, don’t hope.’

  She went home leaving the three of us feeling subdued. For me this had been the last possibility, although since I’d heard from Oliver that the police check had revealed only the expected shampoo in the bottle, it had become more and more remote.

  Pen came back in half an hour with a thick tome, a piece of paper, and worried creases across her forehead. ‘I’ve been reading,’ she said. ‘Sorry to be so long. I’ve been checking up on sperm deformities, and it seems the most likely cause is ‘radiation.’

  I said instantly, ‘Let’s ring Oliver.’

  They nodded and I got through to him with Pen’s suggestion.

  ‘Tim!’ he said. ‘I’ll see if I can get anyone in Newmarket… even though it’s Sunday… I’ll ring you back.’

  ‘Though how a stallion could get anywhere near a radioactive source,’ Pen said while we were waiting, ‘would be a first-class mystery in itself.’ She looked down at the paper she carried. ‘This is the analysis report from the British lab, bill attached, I’m afraid. Same ingredients, though written in the opposite order, practically, with selenium put at the top, which means that that’s the predominant drug, I should think.’

  Oliver telephoned again in a remarkably short time. ‘I got the chief researcher at home. He says they did think of radiation but discounted it because it would be more likely to result in total sterility, and there’s also the improbability of a horse being near any radio-active isotopes.’ He sighed. ‘Sand-castle has never even been X-rayed.’

  ‘See if you can check,’ I said. ‘If he ever was irradiated in any way it would come into the category of accidental or even malicious damage, and we’d be back into the insurance policy.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll try.’

  I put down the receiver to find Pen turning the pages of her large pharmacological book with concentration.

  ‘What’s that?’ Judith asked, pointing.

  ‘Toxicity of minerals,’ Pen answered absentmindedly. ‘Ethylene glycol…’ she turned pages, searching. ‘Here we are.’ She read down the column, shaking her head. ‘Not that, anyway.’ She again consulted the index, read the columns, shook her head. ‘Selenium… selenium…’ She turned the pages, read the columns, pursed her lips. ‘It says that selenium is poisonous if taken internally, though it can be beneficial on the skin.’ She read some more. ‘It says that if animals eat plants which grow in soil which has much selenium in it, they can die.’

  ‘What is selenium?’ Judith asked.

  ‘It’s an element,’ Pen said. ‘Like potassium and sodium.’ She read on, ‘It says here that it is mostly found in rocks of the Cretaceous Age – such useful information – and that it’s among the most poisonous of elements but also an essential nutrient in trace quantities for both animals and plants.’ She looked up. ‘It says it’s useful for flower-growers because it kills insects, and that it accumulates mostly in plants which flourish where there’s a low annual rainfall.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Gordon asked, sounding disappointed.

  ‘No, there’s pages of it. I’m just translating the gist into understandable English.’

  She read on for a while, and then it seemed to me that she totally stopped breathing. She raised her head and looked at me, her eyes wide and dark.

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  ‘Read it.’ She gave me the heavy book, pointing to the open page.

  I read:

  Selenium is absorbed easily from the intestines and affects every part of the body, more lodging in the liver, spleen, and kidneys than in brain and muscle. Selenium is teratogenic.

  ‘What does teratogenic mean?’ I asked.

  ‘It means,’ Pen said, ‘that it produces deformed offspring.’

  ‘What’ I exclaimed. ‘You don’t mean…’

  Pen was shak
ing her head. ‘It couldn’t affect Sandcastle. It’s impossible. It would simply poison his system. Teratogens have nothing to do with males.’

  ‘Then what…?’

  ‘They act on the developing embryo,’ she said. Her face crumpled almost as if the knowledge was too much and would make her cry. ‘You could get deformed foals if you fed selenium to the mares.’

  I went on the following morning to see Detective Chief Inspector Wyfold, both Gordon and Harry concurring that the errand warranted time off from the bank. The forceful policeman shook my hand, gestured me to a chair and said briskly that he could give me fifteen minutes at the outside, as did I know that yet another young girl had been murdered and sexually assaulted the evening before, which was now a total of six, and that his superiors, the press and the whole flaming country were baying for an arrest? ‘And we are no nearer now,’ he added with anger, ‘than we were five months ago, when it started.’

  He listened all the same to what I said about selenium, but in conclusion shook his head.

  ‘We looked it up ourselves. Did you know it’s the main mgredient in an anti-dandruff shampoo sold off open shelves all over America in the drug stores? It used to be on sale here too, or something like it, but it’s been discontinued. There’s no mystery about it. It’s not rare, nor illegal. Just ordinary.’

  ‘But the deformities…’

  ‘Look,’ he said restively, ‘I’ll bear it in mind. But it’s a big jump to decide from one bottle of ordinary dog shampoo that that’s what’s the matter with those foals. I mean, is there any way of proving it?’

  With regret I said, ‘No, there isn’t.’ No animal, Pen’s book had inferred, would retain selenium in its system for longer than a day or two if it was eaten only once or twice and in non-fatal amounts.

  ‘And how, anyway,’ Wyfold said, ‘would you get a whole lot of horses to drink anything as nasty as shampoo?’ He shook his head. ‘I know you’re very anxious to catch Virginia Knowles’ killer, and don’t think we don’t appreciate your coming here, but we’ve been into the shampoo question thoroughly, I assure you.’

  His telephone buzzed and he picked up the receiver, his eyes still turned in my direction but his mind already elsewhere. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Yes, all right. Straightaway.’ He put down the receiver. ‘I’ll have to go.’

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘Isn’t it possible that one of the lads was giving selenium to the mares this year also, and that Ginnie somehow found out…’

  He interrupted. ‘We tried to fit that killing onto one of those lads, don’t think we didn’t, but there was no evidence, absolutely none at all.’ He stood up and came round from behind his desk, already leaving me in mind as well as body. ‘If you think of anything else Mr Ekaterin, by all means let us know. But for now – I’m sorry, but there’s a bestial man out there we’ve got to catch – and I’m still of the opinion he tried for Virginia Knowles too, and was interrupted.’

  He gave me a dismissing but not impatient nod, holding open the door and waiting for me to leave his office ahead of him. I obliged him by going, knowing that realistically he couldn’t be expected to listen to any further unsubstantiated theories from me while another victim lay more horribly and recently dead.

  Before I went back to him, I thought, I had better dig further and come up with connected, believable facts, and also a basis, at least, for proof.

  Henry and Gordon heard with gloom in the bank before lunch that at present we were ‘insufficient data’ in a Wyfold pigeonhole.

  ‘But you still believe, do you, Tim…?’ Henry said enquiringly.

  ‘We have to,’ I answered. ‘And yes, I do.’

  ‘Hm.’ He pondered. ‘If you need more time off from the office, you’d better take it. If there’s the slightest chance that there’s nothing wrong with Sandcastle after all, we must do our absolute best not only to prove it to our own satisfaction but also to the world in general. Confidence would have to be restored to breeders, otherwise they wouldn’t send their mares. It’s a tall order altogether.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well… I’ll do all I can’; and after lunch and some thought I telephoned to Oliver, whose hopes no one had so far raised.

  ‘Sit down,’ I said.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ He sounded immediately anxious. What’s happened?’

  ‘Do you know what teratogenic means?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, of course. With mares one always has to be careful.’

  ‘Mm… Well, there was a teratogenic drug in the bottle of dog shampoo that Ginnie had.’

  ‘What?’ His voice rose an octave on the word, vibrating with instinctive unthinking anger.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Now calm down. The police say it proves nothing either way, but Gordon and Henry, our chairman, agree that it’s the only hope we have left.’

  ‘But Tim…’ The realisation hit him, ‘That would mean… that would mean…’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It would mean that Sandcastle was always breeding good and true and could return to gold-mine status.’

  I could hear Oliver’s heavily disturbed breathing and could only guess at his pulse rate.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. If shampoo had got into a batch of feed, all the mares who ate it would have been affected, not just those covered by Sandcastle.’

  ‘If the shampoo got into the feed accidentally, yes. If it was given deliberately, no.’

  I can’t… I can’t…’

  ‘I did tell you to sit down,’ I said reasonably.

  ‘Yes, so you did.’ There was a pause. ‘I’m sitting,’ he said.

  ‘It’s at least possible,’ I said, ‘That the Equine Research people could find nothing wrong with Sandcastle because there actually isn’t anything wrong with him.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed faintly.

  ‘It is possible to give teratogenic substances to mares.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But horses wouldn’t drink shampoo.’

  ‘No, thoroughbreds especially are very choosy.’

  ‘So how would you give them shampoo, and when?’

  After a pause he said, still breathlessly, ‘I don’t know how. They’d spit it out. But when is easier, and that could probably be no more than three or four days after conception. That’s when the body tube is forming in the embryo… that’s when a small amount of teratogenic substance could do a lot of damage.’

  ‘Do you mean,’ I said, ‘that giving a mare selenium just once would ensure a deformed foal?’

  ‘Giving a mare what?’

  ‘Sorry. Selenium. A drug for treating dandruff.’

  ‘Good… heavens.’ He rallied towards his normal self. ‘I suppose it would depend on the strength of the dose, and its timing. Perhaps three or four doses… No one could really know, because no one would have tried… I mean, there wouldn’t have been any research.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘But supposing that in this instance someone got the dosage and the timing right, and also found a way of making the shampoo palatable, then who was it?’

  There was a long quietness during which even his breathing abated.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said finally. ‘Theoretically it could have been me, Ginnie, Nigel, the Watcherleys or any of the lads who were here last year. No one else was on the place often enough.

  ‘Really no one? How about the vet or the blacksmith or just a visiting friend?’

  ‘But there were eighteen deformed foals,’ he said. ‘I would think it would have to have been someone who could come and go here all the time.’

  ‘And someone who knew which mares to pick,’ I said. ‘Would that knowledge be easy to come by?’

  ‘Easy!’ he said explosively. ‘It is positively thrust at everyone on the place. There are lists in all the feed rooms and in the breeding pen itself saying which mares are to be bred to which stallion. Nigel has one, there’s one in my office, one at the Watcherleys – all over. Everyone is supposed to double-check the lists all the time, so that mis
takes aren’t made.’

  ‘And all the horses,’ I said slowly, ‘Wear head-collars with their names on.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. An essential precaution.’

  All made easy, I thought, for someone intending mischief towards particular mares and not to any others.

  ‘Your own Sandcastle foal,’ I said, ‘he’s perfect… and it may be because on the lists your mare was down for Diarist.’

  ‘Tim!’

  ‘Look after him,’ I said. ‘And look after Sandcastle.’

  ‘I will,’ he said fervently.

  ‘And Oliver… is that lad called Shane still with you?’

  ‘No, he’s gone. So have Dave and Sammy, who found Ginnie.’

  ‘Then could you send me at the bank a list of the names and addresses of all the people who were working for you last year, and also this year? And I mean everyone, even your house-keeper and anyone working for Nigel or cleaning the lads’ hostel, things like that.’

  ‘Even my part-time secretary girl?’

  ‘Even her.’

  ‘She only comes three mornings a week.’

  ‘That might be enough.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it straight away.’

  ‘I went to see Chief Inspector Wyfold this morning,’ I said. ‘But he thinks it’s just a coincidence that Ginnie had shampoo with a foal-deforming drug in it. We’ll have to come up with a whole lot more, to convince him. So anything you can think of…’

  ‘I’ll think of nothing else.’

  ‘If Dissdale Smith should telephone you, pressing for an answer,’ I said, ‘just say the bank are deliberating and keeping you waiting. Don’t tell him anything about this new possibility. It might be best to keep it to ourselves until we can prove whether or not it’s true.’

  ‘Dear God,’ he said fearfully, ‘I hope it is.’

  In the evening I talked to Pen, asking her if she knew of any way of getting the selenium out of the shampoo.

  ‘The trouble seems to be,’ I said, ‘That you simply couldn’t get the stuff into a horse as it is.’

  ‘I’ll work on it,’ she said, ‘But of course the manufacturer’s chemists will have gone to a good deal of trouble to make sure the selenium stays suspended throughout the mixture and doesn’t all fall to the bottom.’