Whip Hand

by Dick Francis

  It was a storage barn, not a stable. There was a stack of several tons of straw bales to my left, and on the right, a few yards away, a tractor. My feet were fastened to the trailer bar of a farm roller. The barn had a high roof, with beams; and one meagre electric light, which shone on Trevor Deansgate.

  ‘You’re too bloody clever for your own good,’ he said. ‘You know what they say? If Halley’s after you, watch out. He’ll sneak up on you when you think he doesn’t know you exist, and they’ll be slamming the cell doors on you before you’ve worked it out.’

  I didn’t say anything. What could one say? Especially sitting trussed up like a fool at the wrong end of a shotgun.

  ‘Well, I’m not waiting for you, do you see?’ he said. ‘I know how bloody close you are to getting me nicked. Just laying your snares, weren’t you? Just waiting for me to fall into your hands, like you’ve caught so many others.’ He stopped and reconsidered what he’d said. ‘Into your hand,’ he said, ‘and that fancy hook.’

  He had a way of speaking to me that acknowledged mutual origins, that we’d both come a long way from where we’d started. It was not a matter of accent, but of manner. There was no need for social pretence. The message was raw, and between equals, and would be understood.

  He was dressed, as before, in a City suit. Navy; chalk pinstripe this time; Gucci tie. The well-manicured hands held the shotgun with the expertise of many a weekend on country estates. What did it matter, I thought, if the finger that pulled the trigger was clean and cared for. What did it matter if his shoes were polished … I looked at the silly details because I didn’t want to think about death.

  He stood for a while without speaking: simply watching. I sat without moving, as best I could, and thought about a nice safe job in a stockbroker’s office.

  ‘No bloody nerves, have you?’ he said. ‘None at all.’

  I didn’t answer.

  The other two men were behind me to the right, out of my sight. I could hear their feet as they occasionally shuffled on the straw. Far too far away for me to reach.

  I was wearing what I had put on for lunch with Charles. Grey trousers, socks, dark brown shoes; rope extra. Shirt, tie, and a recently bought blazer, quite expensive. What did that matter? If he killed me, Jenny would get the rest. I hadn’t changed my will.

  Trevor Deansgate switched his attention to the men behind me.

  ‘Now listen,’ he said, ‘and don’t snarl it up. Get these two pieces of rope and tie one to his left arm and one to the right. And watch out for any tricks.’

  He lifted the gun a fraction until I could see down the barrels. If he shot from there, I thought, he would hit his chums. It didn’t after all look like straight execution. The chums were busy tying bits of rope to both of my wrists.

  ‘Not the left wrist, you stupid bugger,’ Trevor Deansgate said. ‘That one comes right off. Use your bloody head. Tie it high, above his elbow.’

  The chum in question did as he said and pulled the knots tight, and almost casually picked up a stout metal bar, like a crowbar, standing there gripping it as if he thought that somehow I could liberate myself like Superman and still attack him.

  Crowbar … Nasty shivers of apprehension suddenly crawled all over my scalp. There had been another villain, before, who had known where to hurt me most, the one who had hit my already useless left hand with a poker, and turned it from a ruin into a total loss. I had had regrets enough since, and all sorts of private agonies, but I hadn’t realized, until that sickening moment, how much I valued what remained. The muscles that worked the electrodes, they at least gave me the semblance of a working hand. If they were injured again I wouldn’t have even that. As for the elbow itself … if he wanted to put me out of effective action for a long time, he had only to use that crowbar.

  ‘You don’t like that, do you, Mr Halley?’ Trevor Deansgate said.

  I turned my head back to him. His voice and face were suddenly full of a mixture of triumph and satisfaction, and what seemed like relief.

  I said nothing.

  ‘You’re sweating,’ he said.

  He had another order for the chums. ‘Untie that rope round his chest. And do it carefully. Hold on to the ropes on his arms.’

  They untied the knot, and pulled the constricting rope away from round my chest. It didn’t make much difference to my chances of escape. They were wildly exaggerating my ability in a fight.

  ‘Lie down,’ he said to me; and when I didn’t at once comply, he said ‘Push him down,’ to the chums. One way or another, I ended on my back.

  ‘I don’t want to kill you,’ he said. ‘I could dump your body somewhere, but there would be too many questions. I can’t risk it. But if I don’t kill you, I’ve got to shut you up. Once and for all. Permanently.’

  Short of killing me I didn’t see how he could do it; and I was stupid.

  ‘Pull his arm sideways, away from his body,’ he said.

  The pull on my left arm had a man’s weight behind it and was stronger than I was. I rolled my head that way and tried not to beg, not to weep.

  ‘Not that one, you bloody fool,’ Trevor Deansgate said. ‘The other one. The right one. Pull it out, to this side.’

  The chum on my right used all his strength on the rope and hauled so that my arm finished straight out sideways, at right angles to my body, palm upwards.

  Trevor Deansgate stepped towards me and lowered the gun until the black holes of the barrel were pointing straight at my stretched right wrist. Then he carefully lowered the barrel another inch, making direct contact on my skin, pressing down against the straw-covered floor. I could feel the metal rims hard across the bones and nerves and sinews. Across the bridge to a healthy hand.

  I heard the click as he cocked the firing mechanism. One blast from a twelve bore would take off most of the arm.

  A dizzy wave of faintness drenched all my limbs with sweat.

  Whatever anyone said. I intimately knew about fear. Not fear of any horse, or of racing, or falling, or of ordinary physical pain. But of humiliation and rejection and helplessness and failure … all of those.

  All the fear I’d ever felt in all my life was as nothing compared with the liquefying, mind-shattering disintegration of that appalling minute. It broke me in pieces. Swamped me. Brought me down to a morass of terror, to a whimper in the soul. And instinctively, hopelessly, I tried not to let it show.

  He watched motionlessly through uncountable intensifying silent seconds. Making me wait Making it worse.

  At length he took a deep breath and said, ‘As you see, I could shoot off your hand. Nothing easier. But I’m probably not going to. Not today.’ He paused. ‘Are you listening?’

  I nodded the merest fraction. My eyes were full of gun.

  His voice came quietly, seriously, giving weight to every sentence. ‘You can give me your assurance that you’ll back off. You’ll do nothing more which is directed against me, in any way, ever. You’ll go to France tomorrow morning, and you’ll stay there until after the Guineas. After that, you can do what you like. But if you break your assurance … well, you’re easy to find. I’ll find you, and I’ll blow your right hand off. I mean it, and you’d better believe it. Some time or other. You’d never escape it. Do you understand?’

  I nodded, as before. I could feel the gun as if it were hot Don’t let him, I thought Dear God, don’t let him.

  ‘Give me your assurance. Say it.’

  I swallowed painfully. Dredged up a voice. Low and hoarse. ‘I give it.’

  ‘You’ll back off.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ll not come after me again, ever.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ll go to France and stay there until after the Guineas.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Another silence lengthened for what seemed a hundred years, while I stared beyond my undamaged wrist to the dark side of the moon.

  He took the gun away, in the end. Broke it open. Removed the cartridges. I felt physi
cally, almost uncontrollably, sick.

  He knelt on his pin-striped knees beside me and looked closely at whatever defence I could put into an unmoving face and expressionless eyes. I could feel the treacherous sweat trickling down my cheek. He nodded, with grim satisfaction.

  ‘I knew you couldn’t face that. Not the other one as well. No one could. There’s no need to kill you.’

  He stood up again and stretched his body, as if relaxing a wound-up inner tension. Then he put his hands into various pockets, and produced things.

  ‘Here are your keys. Your passport Your cheque book. Credit cards.’ He put them on a straw bale. To the chums, he said, ‘Untie him, and drive him to the airport. To Heathrow.’

  8

  I flew to Paris and stayed right there where I landed, in an airport hotel, with no impetus or heart to go further. I stayed for six days, not leaving my room, spending most of the time by the window, watching the aeroplanes come and go.

  I felt stunned. I felt ill. Disorientated and overthrown and severed from my own roots. Crushed into an abject state of mental misery, knowing that this time I really had run away.

  It was easy to convince myself that logically I had had no choice but to give Deansgate his assurance, when he asked for it. If I hadn’t, he would have killed me anyway. I could tell myself, as I continually did, that sticking to his instructions had been merely common sense: but the fact remained that when the chums decanted me at Heathrow they had driven off at once, and it had been of my own free will that I’d bought my ticket, waited in the departure lounge, and walked to the aircraft.

  There had been no one there with guns to make me do it. Only the fact that as Deansgate had truly said, I couldn’t face losing the other one. I couldn’t face even the risk of it. The thought of it, like a conditioned response, brought out the sweat.

  As the days passed, the feeling I had had of disintegration seemed not to fade but to deepen.

  The automatic part of me still went on working: walking: talking, ordering coffee, going to the bathroom. In the part that mattered there was turmoil and anguish and a feeling that my whole self had been literally smashed in those few cataclysmic minutes on the straw.

  Part of the trouble was that I knew my weaknesses too well. Knew that if I hadn’t had so much pride it wouldn’t have destroyed me so much to have lost it.

  To have been forced to realize that my basic view of myself had been an illusion was proving a psychic upheaval like an earthquake, and perhaps it wasn’t surprising that I felt I had, I really had, come to pieces.

  I didn’t know that I could face that, either.

  I wished I could sleep properly, and get some peace.

  When Wednesday came I thought of Newmarket and of all the brave hopes for the Guineas.

  Thought of George Caspar, taking Tri-Nitro to the test, producing him proudly in peak condition and swearing to himself that this time nothing could go wrong. Thought of Rosemary, jangling with nerves, willing the horse to win and knowing it wouldn’t. Thought of Trevor Deansgate, unsuspected, moving like a mole to vandalize, somehow, the best colt in the kingdom.

  I could have stopped him, if I’d tried.

  Wednesday for me was the worst day of all, the day I learned about despair and desolation and guilt.

  On the sixth day, Thursday morning, I went down to the lobby and bought an English newspaper.

  They had run the Two Thousand Guineas, as scheduled.

  Tri-Nitro had started hot favourite at even money: and he had finished last.

  I paid my bill and went to the airport. There were aeroplanes to everywhere, to escape in. The urge to escape was very strong. But wherever one went, one took oneself along. From oneself there was no escape. Wherever I went, in the end I would have to go back.

  If I went back in my split-apart state I’d have to live all the time on two levels. I’d have to behave in the old way, which everyone would expect. Have to think and drive and talk and get on with life. Going back meant all that. It also meant doing all that, and proving to myself that I could do it, when I wasn’t the same inside.

  I thought that what I had lost might be worse than a hand. For a hand there were substitutes which could grip and look passable. But if the core of oneself had crumbled, how could one manage at all?

  If I went back, I would have to try.

  If I couldn’t try, why go back?

  It took me a long, lonely time to buy a ticket to Heathrow.

  I landed at midday, made a brief telephone call to the Cavendish, to ask them to apologize to the Admiral because I couldn’t keep our date, and took a taxi home.

  Everything, in the lobby, on the stairs, and along the landing looking the same and yet completely different. It was I who was different. I put the key in the lock and turned it, and went into the flat.

  I had expected it to be empty but before I’d even shut the door I heard a rustle in the sitting room, and then Chico’s voice. ‘Is that you, Admiral?’

  I simply didn’t answer. In a brief moment his head appeared, questioning, and after that, his whole self.

  ‘About time too,’ he said. He looked, on the whole, relieved to see me.

  ‘I sent you a telegram.’

  ‘Oh sure. I’ve got it here, propped on the shelf. Leave Newmarket and go home stop shall be away for a few days will telephone. What sort of telegram’s that? Sent from Heathrow, early Friday. You been on holiday?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I walked past him, into the sitting room. In there, it didn’t look at all the same. There were files and papers everywhere, on every surface, with coffee-marked cups and saucers holding them down.

  ‘You went away without the charger,’ Chico said. ‘You never do that, even overnight. The spare batteries are all here. You haven’t been able to move that hand for six days.’

  ‘Let’s have some coffee.’

  ‘You didn’t take any clothes, or your razor.’

  ‘I stayed in a hotel. They had throwaway razors, if you asked. What’s all this mess?’

  ‘The polish letters.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know. The polish letters. Your wife’s spot of trouble.’

  ‘Oh …’

  I stared at it blankly.

  ‘Look,’ Chico said. ‘Cheese on toast? I’m starving.’

  ‘That would be nice.’ It was unreal. It was all unreal.

  He went into the kitchen and started banging about. I took the dead battery out of my arm and put in a charged one. The fingers opened and closed, like old times. I had missed them more than I would have imagined.

  Chico brought the cheese on toast. He ate his, and I looked at mine. I’d better eat it, I thought, and didn’t have the energy. There was the sound of the door of the flat being opened with a key, and after that, my father-in-law’s voice from the hall.

  ‘He didn’t turn up at the Cavendish, but he did at least leave a message.’ He came into the room from behind where I sat and saw Chico nodding his head in my direction.

  ‘He’s back,’ Chico said, ‘The boy himself.’

  ‘Hallo, Charles,’ I said.

  He took a long slow look. Very controlled, very civilized. ‘We have, you know, been worried.’ It was a reproach.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Where have you been?’ he said.

  I found I couldn’t tell him. If I told him where, I would have to tell him why, and I shrank from why. I just didn’t say anything at all.

  Chico gave him a cheerful grin. ‘Sid’s got a bad attack of the brick walls.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Seeing that you’re here, Admiral, I might, as well get along and teach the little bleeders at the Comprehensive how to throw their grannies over their shoulders. And, Sid, before I go, there’s about fifty messages on the phone pad. There’s two new insurance investigations waiting to be done, and a guard job. Lucas Wainwright wants you, he’s rung four times. And Rosemary Caspar has been screeching fit to blast the eardrums. It’s all there, written down.
See you, then. I’ll come back here later.’

  I almost asked him not to, but he’d gone.

  ‘You’ve lost weight,’ Charles said.

  It wasn’t surprising. I looked again at the toasted cheese and decided that coming back also had to include things like eating.

  ‘Want some?’ I said.

  He eyed the congealing square. ‘No thank you.’

  Nor did I. I pushed it away. Sat and stared into space.

  ‘What’s happened to you?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Last week you came into the Cavendish like a spring,’ he said. ‘Bursting with life. Eyes actually sparkling. And now look at you.’

  ‘Well, don’t,’ I said. ‘Don’t look at me. How are you doing with the letters?’

  ‘Sid …’

  ‘Admiral.’ I stood up restlessly, to escape his probing gaze. ‘Leave me alone.’

  He paused, considering, then said, ‘You’ve been speculating in commodities, recently. Have you lost your money, is that it?’

  I was surprised almost to the point of amusement.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He said, ‘You went dead like this before, when you lost your career and my daughter. So what have you lost this time, if it isn’t money? What could be as bad … or worse?’

  I knew the answer. I’d learned it in Paris, in torment and shame. My whole mind formed the word courage with such violent intensity that I was afraid it would leap out of its own accord from my brain to his.

  He showed no sign of receiving it. He was still waiting for a reply.

  I swallowed. ‘Six days,’ I said neutrally. ‘I’ve lost six days. Let’s get on with tracing Nicholas Ashe.’

  He shook his head in disapproval and frustration, but began to explain what he’d been doing.

  ‘This thick pile is from people with names beginning with M. I’ve put them into strictly alphabetical order, and typed out a list. It seemed to me that we might get results from one letter only … are you paying attention?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I took the list to Christie’s and Sotheby’s, as you suggested, and persuaded them to help. But the M section of their catalogue mailing list is not the same as this one. And. I found that there may be difficulties with this matching, as so many envelopes are addressed nowadays by computers.’