by Dick Francis
‘Each hole? Some of the walls were brick, some were composition, like breeze-block, all of them plastered and painted. Thick and load bearing, but soft, really. You’d hardly need a hammer-drill, even. The holes would probably have to be five inches deep, about an inch in diameter – given a wide drill bit and electricity, I could do perhaps two a minute if I was in a hurry.’ I paused. ‘Threading the holes with det cord and packing them with explosives obviously takes longer. I’ve been told you need to compress and tamp it all in very carefully with something wooden, no sparks, like a broom handle.’
‘Who told you?’
‘Demolitions people.’
The chief inspector asked, ‘How are you so sure the walls were made of brick and breeze-block? How could you possibly tell, if they were plastered and painted?’
I thought back. ‘On the floor beneath each charge there was a small pile of dust caused by drilling the hole. Some piles were pink brick dust, others were grey.’
‘You had time to see that?’
‘I remember it. At the time, it just made it certain that there was a good deal of explosive rammed into those walls.’
The expert said, ‘Did you look to see where the circuit began or ended?’
I shook my head. ‘I was trying to find my son.’
‘And did you see anyone else at all in the vicinity of the stands near that time?’
‘No. No one.’
They asked me and Roger to walk with them as far as the safety cordon, so that we could explain to the expert where the staircase and walls had been before the explosion. The expert, it seemed, would then put on a protective suit and a hard hat and go in wherever he could to take a look from the inside.
‘Rather you than me,’ I commented.
They watched the best I could do at walking with them. When we reached the point of maximum visual bad news, the bomb-defusing expert looked upwards to the fingers of the Stewards’ box and down to my walking frame. He put on his large head-sheltering hat and gave me a twisting self-mocking smile.
‘I’m old in my profession,’ he said.
‘How old?’
‘Twenty-eight.’
I said, ‘All of a sudden, I can’t feel a thing.’
His smile broadened. ‘People sometimes get lucky.’
‘Good luck, then,’ I said.
CHAPTER 8
‘You know what?’ Roger said to me.
‘What?’
We were standing on the tarmac a little apart from the policemen but still looking at the rubble.
‘I’d think our demolitionist got more bang for his bucks than he intended.’
‘How do you mean?’
He said, ‘High explosives are funny things. Unpredictable, often. They weren’t my speciality in the army, but of course most soldiers learn about them. There’s always a tendency to use too much explosive for the job in hand, just to make sure of effective results.’ He smiled briefly. ‘A colleague of mine had to blow up a bridge, once. Just to blow a hole in it, to put it out of action. He over-estimated how much explosive it would take, and the whole thing totally disintegrated into invisible dust which was carried away in the river below. Not a thing left. Everyone thought he’d done a brilliant job, but he was laughing about it in private. I wouldn’t have known how much to use to cause this much damage here in the grandstands. And I’ve been thinking that whoever did it probably meant only to put the stairway out of action. I mean… setting all those careful charges rounds its walls… if he’d meant to destroy the whole stand, why not use one single large bomb? Much easier. Less chance of being spotted setting it up. See what I mean?’
‘Yes, I do.’
He glanced directly at my face. ‘Look,’ he said awkwardly, ‘I know it’s not my business, but wouldn’t you be better lying down in your bus?’
‘I’ll go if I have to.’
He nodded.
‘Otherwise,’ I said, ‘it’s better to have other things to think about.’
He was happy with that. ‘Just say, then.’
‘Yes. Thanks.’
The Strattons were suddenly all round us. Dart said in my car, ‘Conrad’s architect has come. Now for some fireworks!’ I looked at his impish enjoyment. ‘Did Keith really kick you?’ he asked. ‘Ivan says I missed a real pretty sight by a few seconds.’
‘Too bad. Where’s the architect?’
‘That man beside Conrad.’
‘And is he a blackmailer?’
‘God knows. Ask Keith.’
He knew as well as I did that I wouldn’t ask Keith anything.
‘I reckon Keith made that up,’ Dart said. ‘He’s a terrible bar. He can’t tell the truth.’
‘And Conrad? Does he lie?’
‘My father?’ Dart showed no anger at the possible slur. ‘My father tells the truth on principle. Or else from lack of imagination. Take your pick.’
‘The twins at the fork in the road,’ I said.
‘What the heck are you talking about?’
‘Tell you later.’
Marjorie was saying formidably, ‘We do not need an architect.’
‘Face facts,’ Conrad pleaded. ‘Look at this radical destruction. It’s a heaven-sent opportunity to build something meaningful.’
Build something meaningful. The words vibrated in memory. Build something meaningful had been one of the precepts repeated ad nauseam by a lecturer at college.
I looked carefully at Conrad’s architect, turning the inward eye back more than sixteen years. Conrad’s architect, I slowly realised, had been a student like myself at the Architectural Association School of Architecture: senior to me, one of the élite, a disciple of the future. I remembered his face and his glittering prospects, and I’d forgotten his name.
Roger left my side and went across to put in a presence at the Marjorie–Conrad conflict, a hopeless position for a manager. Conrad’s architect nodded to him coolly, seeing Roger as critic, not ally.
Dart, waving a hand towards the rubble, asked me, ‘What do you think they should do?’
‘I, personally?’
‘Yes.’
‘They don’t care what I think.’
‘But I’m curious.’
‘I think they should spend their time finding out who did it, and why.’
‘But the police will do that.’
‘Are you saying that the family doesn’t want to find out?’
Dart said, alarmed, ‘Can you see through brick?’
‘Why don’t they want to know? I wouldn’t think it safe not to.’
‘Marjorie will do anything to keep family affairs private,’ Dart said. ‘She’s worse than Grandfather, and he would pay the earth to keep the Stratton name clean.’
Keith must have cost them a packet, I thought, from my own mother onwards; and I wondered fleetingly again what Forsyth could have done to cause them such angst.
Dart looked at his watch. ‘Twenty to twelve,’ he said. ‘I’m fed up with all this. What do you say to the Mayflower?’
On reflection I said yes to the Mayflower, and without fanfare retreated with him to the green six-year-old Granada with rusted near wings. Harold Quest, it seemed, never interfered with exits. We made an unhindered passage to imitation AD 1620, where Dart accepted a half-pint and I also ordered fifteen fat rounds of cheese, tomato, ham and lettuce home-made sandwiches and a quart tub of ice cream.
‘You can’t be that hungry!’ Dart exclaimed.
‘I’ve five beaks to fill.’
‘Good God! I’d forgotten.’
We drank the beer while waiting for the sandwiches, and then he good-naturedly drove us down through the back entrance to park outside Roger’s house, near the bus.
Beside the main door into the bus, in a small outside compartment, I’d long ago installed a chuck-wagon-type bell. Dart watched in amusement when I extended it on its arm outwards, and set it clanging with vigour.
The cowboys came in from the prairie, hungry, dry and virtuous, an
d sat around on boxes and logs for their open-air lunch. I stood with the walking frame. Getting used to it, the boys took it for granted.
They had built a stockade from sticks, they said. Inside the fort were the United States cavalry (Christopher and Toby) and outside were the Indians (the rest). The Indians were (of course) the Good Guys, who hoped to overrun the stockade and take a few scalps. Sneaky tactics were needed, Chief Edward said. Alan Redfeather was his trusty spy.
Dart, eating a sandwich, said he thought Neil’s lurid warpaint (Mrs Gardner’s lipstick) a triumph for political correctness.
None of them knew what he meant. I saw Neil storing the words away, mouthing them silently, ready to ask later.
Locust-like, they mopped up the Mayflower’s food and, as it seemed a good time for it, I said to them, ‘Ask Dart the riddle of the pilgrim. He’ll find it interesting.’
Christopher obligingly began, ‘A pilgrim came to a fork in the road. One road led to safety, and the other to death. In each fork stood a guardian.’
‘They were twins,’ Edward said.
Christopher, nodding, went on, ‘One twin always spoke the truth and the other always lied.’
Dart turned his head and stared at me.
‘It’s a very old riddle,’ Edward said apologetically.
‘The pilgrim was allowed only one question,’ Toby said. ‘Only one. And to save his life he had to find out which road led to safety. So what did he ask?’
‘He asked which way was safe,’ Dart said reasonably.
Christopher said, ‘Which twin did he ask?’
‘The one who spoke the truth.’
‘But how did he know which one spoke the truth? They both looked the same. They were twins.’
‘Conrad and Keith aren’t identical,’ Dart said.
The children, not understanding, pressed on. Toby asked again, ‘What question did the pilgrim ask?’
‘Haven’t the foggiest.’
‘Think,’ Edward commanded.
Dart turned my way. ‘Save me!’ he said.
‘That’s not what the pilgrim said,’ Neil informed him with relish.
‘Do you all know?’
Five heads nodded. ‘Dad told us.’
‘Then Dad had better tell me.’
It was Christopher, however, who explained. ‘The pilgrim could only ask one question, so he went to one of the twins and he asked, “If I ask your brother which way leads to safety, which way will he tell me to go?” ’
Christopher stopped. Dart looked flummoxed, is that all?’ he asked.
‘That’s all. So what did the pilgrim do?’
‘Well… he… I give in. What did he do?’
They wouldn’t tell him the answer.
‘You’re devils,’ Dart said.
‘One of the twins was a devil,’ Edward said, ‘and the other was an angel.’
‘You just made that up,’ Toby accused him.
‘So what? It makes it more interesting.’
They all tired abruptly of the riddle and trooped off, as was their habit, back to their make-believe game.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ Dart exclaimed. ‘That’s not bloody fair.’
I laughed in my throat.
‘So what did the pilgrim do?’
‘Work it out.’
‘You’re as bad as your children.’
Dart and I got back into his car. He put the walking frame onto the back seat and observed, ‘Keith really hurt you, didn’t he?’
‘No, it was the explosion. Bits of roof fell in.’
‘Fell in on you. Yes, I heard.’
‘From the shoulder blades down,’ I agreed. ‘Could have been worse.’
‘Oh, sure.’ He started the engine and drove up the private inner road. ‘What did the pilgrim do, then?’
I smiled. ‘Whichever road either twin told him was safe, he went down the other one. Both twins would have pointed to the road leading to death.’
He thought very briefly. ‘How come?’
‘If the pilgrim asked the truthful twin which way his brother would send him to safety, the truthful twin, knowing his brother would lie, would point to the road to death.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
I explained over again. ‘And,’ I said, ‘if the pilgrim happened co ask the lying twin which way his brother would send someone to safety, the lying twin, though knowing his brother would speak the truth, lied about what he would say. So the lying twin also would point to the road to death.’
Dart relapsed into silence. When he spoke he said, ‘Do your boys understand it?’
‘Yes. They acted it out.’
‘Don’t they ever quarrel?’
‘Of course, they do. But they’ve been moved around so much that they’ve made few outside friendships. They rely on each other.’ I sighed. ‘They’ll grow out of it, shortly. Christopher’s already too old for half their games.’
‘A pity.’
‘Life goes on.’
Dart braked his rusty car gently to a halt in the impromptu car park outside Roger’s office.
I said diffidently, ‘Did you, in fact, drive here yesterday morning in this car, as Harold Quest said?’
‘No, I didn’t.’ Dart took no offence. ‘And what’s more, I was in my bathroom from eight to eight-thirty, and don’t bloody laugh, I’m not telling anyone else, but I’ve got a new scalp vibrator thing that’s supposed to stop hair falling out.’
‘Snake oil,’ I said.
‘Bugger you, I said don’t laugh.’
‘I’m not laughing.’
‘Your face muscles are twitching.’
‘I do believe, anyway,’ I said, ‘that because of your hair you didn’t arrive at the racecourse at eight-twenty yesterday morning with your old jalopy bulging with detonating cord and plastic explosive.’
‘Thanks a bunch.’
‘The thing is, could anyone have borrowed your car without you knowing? And would you mind very much if the bomb expert or the police tested this car for the presence of nitrates?’
He looked aghast. ‘You can’t mean it!’
‘Someone,’ I pointed out, ‘brought explosives to the stairs in the grandstands yesterday. It’s probably fair to say it was plugged into the walls after the night watchman went home at seven. It was fully light by then. There was no one else about because of its being Good Friday. There was only Harold Quest and his pals at the gate, and I don’t know how much one can trust him.’
‘The lying twins,’ Dart said.
‘Maybe.’
I tried to imagine easy-going Dart, with his thickening frame and his thinning hair, his ironic cast of mind and his core of idleness, ever caring enough about anything to blow up a grandstand. Impossible. But to lend his car? To lend his car casually for an unspecified purpose, yes, certainly. To lend it knowing it would be used for a crime? I hoped not. Yet he would have let me open the locked cupboard in his father’s study. Had taken me there and given me every illegal chance. Hadn’t cared a jot when I’d backed off.
A sloppy sense of right and wrong, or a deep alienation that he habitually hid?
I liked Dart; he lifted one’s spirits. Among the Strattons, he was the nearest to normal. The nearest, one should perhaps say, to a rose among nettles.
I said neutrally, ‘Where’s your sister Rebecca today? I’d have thought she’d have been here, practically purring.’
‘She’s racing at Towcester,’ he said briefly. ‘I looked in the newspaper. No doubt she’s thrilled the stands have had it, but I haven’t spoken to her since Wednesday. She’s talked to Father, I think. She’s riding one of his horses here on Monday. It’s got a good chance of winning, so no way would she have put the meeting in jeopardy, with dynamite shenanigans, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘Where does she live?’ I asked.
‘Lambourn. Ten miles away, roughly.’
‘Horse country.’
‘She lives and breathes horses. Quite mad.’
>
I lived and breathed building. I got fulfilment from putting brick on brick, stone on stone: from bringing a dead thing to life. I understood a single-minded encompassing drive. Not much in the world, for good or for evil, gets done without it.
The rest of the Strattons came round from the racecourse side of the grandstands, bringing Conrad’s architect with them. The police and the bomb expert seemed to be sifting carefully through the edges of the rubble. The moustached local authority was scratching his head.
Roger came over to Dart’s car and asked where we’d been.
‘Feeding the children,’ I said.
‘Oh! Well, the Honourable Marjorie wants to demolish you. Er…’ He went on more prudently in the presence of Dart, ‘Mrs Binsham wants to see you in my office.’
I clambered stiffly onto the tarmac and plodded that way. Roger came along beside me.
‘Don’t let her eat you,’ he said.
‘No. Don’t worry. Do you happen to know that architect’s name?’
‘What?’
‘Conrad’s architect.’
‘It’s Wilson Yarrow. Conrad calls him Yarrow.’
‘Thanks.’
I stopped walking abruptly.
Roger said, ‘What’s the matter? Is it worse?’
‘No.’ I looked at him vaguely, to his visible alarm. I asked, ‘Did you tell any of the Strattons that I’m an architect?’
He was perplexed. ‘Only Dart. You told him yourself, remember? Why? Why does it matter?’
‘Don’t tell them,’ I said. I did a one-eighty back towards Dart, who got out of his car and came to meet us.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said.
‘Nothing much. Look… did you happen to mention to any of your family that I’m a qualified architect?’
He thought back, frowning. Roger, reaching us, looked thoroughly mystified. ‘What does it matter?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Dart echoed, ‘what does it matter?’
‘I don’t want Conrad to know.’
Roger protested. ‘But Lee, why ever not?’
‘That man he’s brought here, Wilson Yarrow, he and I were trained at the same school. There’s something about him…’ I dried up, thinking hard.
‘What’s odd about him?’ Roger demanded.
