Driving Force

by Dick Francis

  “No, they were casual, like. Brett never minded, if he got some of the dosh.”

  “What about the other drivers? Have they done the same?”

  “I’m not snitching on anyone,” he said virtuously.

  “Meaning that they have?”

  “No.” He physically squirmed.

  I left it. Instead I asked, “How long before you went to Newmarket was the stop at South Mimms arranged?”

  “The night before.”

  “Time?”

  “After I got back from Folkestone races.”

  “That means late.”

  He nodded. “My wife didn’t like it.”

  “Had the woman tried to reach you before you got back?”

  “My wife would have gone on about it if she had.”

  He seemed to be well under his wife’s thumb, and it didn’t seem to have occurred to him to ask how the woman on the telephone had known he wouldn’t be home until late, and had also known he could be going to Newmarket the next day. She had known, moreover, that he could be bribed to pick up a hitchhiker.

  She had known a good deal too much.

  Who, for God’s sake, had told her?

  10

  Dave and Aziz set off for Ireland, Dave looking only moderately chastened, apparently confident that I wouldn’t actually sack him. He was probably right, as he didn’t appear to have broken any laws except my own and could go off to an industrial tribunal muttering about wrongful dismissal if I gave him grounds and he had a mind to. There was nothing new in his irresponsibility. He was still very good and reliable with horses and an adequate driver. I hoped he would think twice in the future about taking money for lifts, but I wouldn’t bet he’d never do it. The main change, as far as I could see, was in my own attitude towards him, my indulgent liking having faded towards irritation.

  Out in the farmyard Lewis was showing photographs of his baby to Nina, who had arrived in her working persona and her working car.

  “He’s a right little raver,” Lewis said, looking adoringly at his offspring. “You know what, he likes soccer on the telly, he watches it all the time.”

  “How old is he?” Nina asked, dutifully admiring.

  “Eight months. Look at this one, in the bath, sucking his yellow duck.”

  “He’s lovely,” Nina said.

  Lewis beamed and said, “Nothing’s too good for him. We might send him to Eton, why not?” He tucked the photos away in an envelope. “Better be off to Lingfield, I guess,” he said. “Two for Benjy Usher. Last time I went to that yard,” he told Nina, “they led out the wrong horse, and not for the first time, either. I’d loaded up and was driving out of the gate when one of the grooms came tearing along yelling and screaming. I ask you! The wrong horse! And there’s Mr. Usher yelling out of his upstairs window as if it was my fault, not his head lad’s, the stupid git.”

  Nina listened, fascinated, and asked me, “Is it easy to pick up the wrong horse?”

  “We take the horses they give us,” I said. “If they’re the wrong ones, it’s not our fault. As you know, our drivers have work sheets with times, pickup points, destinations, and the names of the horses, but it’s not their job to check identities.”

  “We took two of Mr. Usher’s all the way to the wrong races, last year,” Lewis said, enjoying it.

  I enlarged. “We were taking one from Usher’s to Leicester and one to Plumpton, and although Lewis and the other driver each said clearly which van was going to which destination, the Usher head lad mixed them up. They didn’t find out until the first one arrived at the wrong place. There was quite a fracas.”

  “Frack-ass,” Lewis said, grinning. “I’ll say.”

  “Look in a newspaper and check you’ve got the right names of the Usher runners,” I told Lewis, “so we have no more mix-ups today.”

  “OK.”

  He walked off to the canteen where he could be seen consulting the racing programs, then with a wave took himself over to his super-six to set off on his journey.

  “When he came here first,” I told Nina, “Lewis had ringlets. Now he has the baby instead. He’s handy with his fists if you ever need defending. There won’t be many people messing with his boy.”

  “School bullies beware?”

  “And their dads.”

  “They’re all very different from each other when you get to know them,” Nina said.

  “The drivers, do you mean? Yes, they are.” She came with me into my office. “Tell me about Nigel.”

  She settled herself comfortably into the second chair while I perched on the edge of the desk.

  “He drove nearly all the way, there and back, regardless of hours, but we wrote up the logbooks as if we’d shared it more evenly.”

  “Tut.”

  She smiled. “He said I could look after the horse. He’s not too fond of horses, did you know? He said some drivers he talks to at race meetings are downright scared of them.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Nigel thinks you aren’t too bad to work for. A bit fussy, like, he said.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “He’s proud of his body. He gave me a rundown of the state of his muscles, practically each of them separately. He told me how to develop my pectorals.”

  I laughed in my throat. “How useful.”

  “I have a message for you from Patrick Venables.”

  Abrupt change of subject. “What is it?” I asked.

  “Those tubes you gave me for analysis. He says,” she frowned indecisively, “he says they held something called viral transport medium.”

  I made no immediate comment, so she went on. “It’s a liquid apparently made up of sterile water, sucrose—it sounds odd but that’s what he said—and bovine albumin, which is what keeps the virus going, and glutamic acid, that’s an amino acid or something, and an antibiotic called geranium . . . er, no . . . Gentamicin . . . which kills off invading bacteria, but won’t act on a virus. The whole stuff’s used for transporting a virus from place to place.”

  “Did they find a virus in it?”

  “No. They said a virus wouldn’t last very long out of a body. They apparently don’t use the word ‘live’ with viruses, as viruses can’t go on working or reproducing, or whatever it is they do, once they’re away from a living host cell. It’s all a bit complicated, it seems to me. Anyway, Patrick wants to know where the tubes came from.”

  “From Pontefract service station in Yorkshire. Before that, I don’t know.”

  I told her what I’d learned from Lynn Melissa Ogden, relict of Kevin Keith.

  “Poor woman,” I said. “They led a wretched existence.”

  “There are so many awful lives. And you never expect it when you’re starting.”

  I told her about my confrontation with Dave, earlier that morning.

  “So you were right!” she exclaimed. “You said he had to have arranged that hitchhiker in advance.”

  “Mm. But he didn’t react when I asked him what Kevin Keith was carrying. I’m sure he didn’t know.”

  “So it couldn’t have been him who came in the black balaclava to search the cab.”

  “I’m certain it wasn’t. He wouldn’t have needed to disguise himself. He could have come back openly. He was hoping for his pay to be left in the cab, but, not surprisingly, it wasn’t. The person who came disguised was searching, not leaving an envelope.”

  “So who was it?”

  “Good question.” I thought a bit. “There are two minds at work here. Two at least,” I said. “One is logical but destructive. The other’s as illogical as a poltergeist.”

  “Two at least? You mean, more than two?”

  “I think it was two men who dropped me into the Southampton Docks. One was male, certainly. And they carried me easily. But the person who arranged the transport of the virus medium was female.”

  “Or falsetto?”

  “What would be the point? And not easy to do.” I paused.

  “What w
e don’t know,” I said, “is whether Kevin Keith was supposed to take the virus medium with him when he got off at Chieveley, or whether he was supposed to leave it in the cab so that it would arrive in Pixhill. Arrive here at the farmyard, that is. Also we don’t know whether there was in fact any virus in the tubes on the way here, or whether someone in this general area had ordered the medium for future use.”

  “Oh Jeeze.”

  I fished in a pocket and gave her a folded piece of paper bearing the transcript of Jogger’s phone call.

  “Get Patrick Venables’s cockney friends to unscramble it,” I suggested.

  “What cockney friends?”

  “He’s bound to know the London brotherhood.”

  “Such faith. All right.” She read the words aloud. “ ‘Take a butcher’s at them nuns . . .’ Ye Gods.”

  “Does it mean anything to you?”

  “ ‘Poland had the same five on a horse last summer . . .’ It’s all rubbish.” She put the paper in her handbag. “No one came near us on the French trip,” she said. “No one anywhere showed the slightest interest in the underside of the horse van. Nigel said he didn’t like driving Phil’s super-six because it has heavier steering than his own. He approves of the one-man-one-box arrangement and he likes driving for some trainers more than others. He would like to drive for the Watermeads more often, but Lewis is jealous if he does. Lewis drives for Benjy Usher too, but Nigel doesn’t like Benjy Usher’s ways. He says Harve told him he’ll be driving for a new trainer, a Mrs. English, and he’s heard she’s a dragon.”

  “Mm.” I smiled. “She’ll get on well with Nigel, all the same. He’ll chat her up. She’s demanding, but he’s tireless. By the end of the summer she won’t want anyone else.”

  “You go in for quite a lot of applied psychology,” she observed, “pairing the drivers to the jobs.”

  “Happier drivers work better. It’s obvious. Happier trainers don’t employ my rivals.”

  “So it’s all for profit?”

  “And . . . um . . . no harm in all-round contentment, is there?”

  “I do see,” she said, half mocking, “why everyone likes you.”

  I sighed. “Not everyone, by a long shot.” I stood up off the desk, pleased to talk to her but with things to get on with. “You’re not on the driving chart today, are you? You could take a day off after the French trip.”

  “I don’t want to. I’ll spend the morning here, looking around in general and available if you get a last-minute driving job.”

  “Fine. Good. Well, Isobel’s arrived.” We’d both seen her car drive in. “Come and listen while I try to find out who knew that Dave would be going to Newmarket the day he picked up Kevin Keith.”

  Her eyes widened in comprehension. “Like I said before,” she said, “you don’t need me here.”

  “I like you here.”

  “As a witness, Patrick said. I’m the insurance you apparently wanted. Your vindicator. He said you were that subtle, and I didn’t really believe him.”

  “Devious, he probably meant.”

  “He approved of the idea, anyway. That’s why I’m here.”

  I thought her almost too frank and wondered what her boss would have said. We went along to Isobel’s office, where I said thank you for the visitors’ list, and Isobel brought it onto the screen. She gave me a flashing smile of thanks for my message at the end, but shook her head when I asked her if she could remember which actual day each of the people on the list had been to her office.

  “Can you remember,” I asked neutrally, “which of them were here the day before Brett and Dave picked up the hitchhiker? That would be nine days ago, on the Wednesday.”

  She shook her head. “I could call up the drivers’ list for that day.” She turned automatically to the computer and then looked stricken. “Oh . . . that day’s wiped out.”

  “It’s all right.” I’d pieced together various scraps of the pencil and paper chart that had been on the desk in my sitting room, and had written them down in a list.

  “Harve took the first load of Jericho Rich’s horses from Michael Watermead to Newmarket,” I said. “Was anyone from the Watermead yard here in the office that day? Was Jericho Rich here? Was anyone here from Newmarket? Anyone who could have had a sight of the Thursday schedule? You usually have the schedule on the screen a lot of the time. Who could have seen it?”

  She looked bewildered. I’d asked the questions too fast. I went back and asked them again slowly.

  “Oh, I see. Well, obviously all the drivers could see who was going where. I mean, they always come in for a look.”

  “And beside the drivers?”

  She shook her head. “It’s so long ago. People are in and out of here all the time.” She considered. “They didn’t need to come here themselves to know who was doing that trip. I told Betsy when she called here that it was down for Brett and she said both Mr. Rich and Mr. Watermead wouldn’t be thrilled about it because Brett was such a whiner, and I said . . . well, I said don’t tell them, but I expect she did.”

  I read the list on her screen. “What about Dr. Farway?”

  “Oh no, he came the day after, when that hitchhiker had died. He came on the Friday.”

  “And . . . er . . . John Tigwood?”

  “He’s such a bore with those collecting boxes. Sorry, I shouldn’t say that.”

  “Why not? He is. Which day did he come?”

  “That must have been Friday as well. Yes, Sandy Smith was here too. I remember them all talking about the dead man.”

  “OK. What about Tessa Watermead?”

  “She must have come before Friday because that was the day she wanted to go with Nigel to Newmarket and he wouldn’t take her.” Isobel frowned. “Tessa’s often in and out. I think she gets bored. She wants me to teach her how to do this job . . . do you mind if I show her?”

  “Not as long as she’s not a nuisance to you, or wastes your time.”

  “She does a bit,” Isobel said frankly. “I asked her why she didn’t go to a secretarial college and learn properly and she said she’d think about it.”

  “Well,” I said, “how about Mr. Rich?”

  “Friday. While you were doing the shuttle.”

  “Any other day?”

  “Um . . . yes, of course, he came in on the Tuesday, fussing about his transfer. I told you, do you remember?”

  “Yes, vaguely.”

  “I told him you’d arranged it for three consecutive days. I went through it all with him.”

  “Mm. How about Lorna Lipton, Mrs. Watermead’s sister?”

  “She walks her dog past here. Well, you know that. She . . . er . . . drops in to see you, now and then. She came in on that Friday when you were doing the shuttle.”

  “What about earlier in the week?”

  Isobel said doubtfully, “I can’t remember which days.” “Um,” I said, “do you remember if anyone asked for Dave the day before he went to Newmarket?”

  “What?”

  I repeated the question. “Did anyone want to speak to him?”

  Her forehead wrinkled. “I don’t remember anyone asking, but I couldn’t swear. I mean . . . oh yes! Mr. Rich wanted to know if Dave was going to Newmarket with his first lot of horses but I said no, we were short of drivers because of the flu and he’d have to take some runners to Folkestone. It was Folkestone, wasn’t it?” She looked despairingly at the computer, feeling lost without its memory but doing not too badly with her own. “I expect I did tell him Dave would be going with the nine two-year-olds on the Thursday, though.”

  I thanked her with a stroke down her arm and went on out into the yard, Nina following.

  “It’s a maze,” she said. “How do you keep it all in your head?”

  “I can’t. I keep losing bits.” And I still kept wanting to go to sleep, which didn’t help.

  The fleet was steadily leaving, the farmyard looking empty with most of its herd of monsters out on the trail. Only three vans remaine
d in separated slots, quiet, clean, gleaming in the sunshine and in their way majestic.

  “You’re proud of them,” Nina exclaimed, watching my face.

  “I’d better not be, or something will happen to them. I loved my Jag . . . oh, well, never mind.”

  Isobel came to the office door and looked relieved to see me still there. She had Benjy Usher’s secretary on the phone, she said: could we please send another van immediately as Mr. Usher had forgotten he was running a pair in the second division of the novice hurdle at Lingfield, the last race of the day?

  “She says he clean forgot they were declared,” Isobel reported. “Then just now he let out a yell and said they must be sent off at once. She says the blacksmith’s there now, putting racing plates on them and swearing blue murder. What shall I tell her? She’s waiting to know. Mr. Usher’s yelling at her elbow. I can hear him. Lewis has left there with the first two and Mr. Usher says there’s no time for him to go back. What do you think?”

  “Say we’ll send another van at once.”

  “But . . . will you drive it yourself? Everyone else has gone.”

  “I’ll do it,” Nina said.

  “Oh yes. Sorry . . . Yes, of course.” Isobel hurried inside and presently came out again to confirm the journey, pleasurably saying, “Mr. Usher’s frantically trying to reach his second jockey.”

  “Find a good map for Nina, will you?” I asked her. “Mark the racecourse.” To Nina I said, “I’ll lead you to Benjy’s stable. Can you manage from there?”

  “Sure. Which horse van?”

  We looked at the remnants. “Pat’s,” I said, pointing at a four-van, “the one you drove the first day. There’s a lone ranger under it, don’t forget, though I can’t see that mattering.”

  “I’ll keep a look out anyway.” She smiled. “What an incredible trainer, forgetting his runners!”

  “Not so incredible, really. Trainers make shattering mistakes, declaring the wrong horse sometimes, even in big races, and forgetting others altogether. Benjy’s eccentric, but he’s not the only last-minute merchant we deal with. Many trainers change their minds violently, some when the clock’s begun striking. Makes life more interesting.”