by Dick Francis
‘Yes, he did,’ I said, surprised. ‘A long box with a padded top for a seat. He kept his tennis things in it, when he used to play.’
‘Then I’d think that would be where the explosion occurred. Or under your father’s bed. But if there was a box at the foot, I’d bet on that.’ Smith borrowed the pen again for some further calculations and looked finally undecided.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘Mm… well, because of your tree roots, I was thinking of an explosive that farmers and landowners use sometimes which is safer than cordite. They blow up tree trunks, clear blocked ditches, that sort of thing. You can buy the ingredients anywhere without restrictions and mix it yourself.’
‘That sounds extraordinary,’ I said.
He smiled slightly, it’s not so easy to get the detonators to set it off.’
‘What is it, then?’ I asked.
Yale, too, was listening with great interest.
‘Fertiliser and diesel oil,’ Smith said.
‘What?’ I sounded disappointed and Smith’s smile expanded.
‘Ammonium nitrate,’ he said. ‘You can buy it in fine granules from seed merchants and garden centres, places like that. Mix it with fuel oil. Dead simple. As far as I remember, but I’d have to look it up to be sure, it would be sixteen parts fertiliser to one part oil. The only problem is,’ he scratched his nose, i think you’d need a good deal of it to do the sort of damage we have here. I mean, again I’d have to look it up, but I seem to remember it’ll be volume in cubic metres over three, answer in kilos.’
‘What volume?’ I asked.
‘The volume of the space you want cleared by the explosion.’
He looked at the mixed emotions I could feel on my face and dealt at least with the ignorance.
‘Say you want effective destruction of everything within a space three metres by three metres by three metres. Twenty-seven cubic metres, OK? Volume of your bedroom, near enough. Divide by three, equals nine. Nine kilos of explosive needed.’
‘Is that,’ I said slowly, ‘why reports of terrorist attacks are often so definite about the weight of the bomb used?’
‘Absolutely. The area cleared directly relates to the size of the… er… bomb. If you can analyse the type of explosive and measure the area affected, you can tell how much explosive was needed.’
Superintendent Yale was nodding as if he knew all that.
‘But you don’t think this bomb went off in my bedroom,’ I said.
‘No, I don’t. Nine kilos of ammonium nitrate in your bedroom would have annihilated it and made a nasty hole all round, but I wouldn’t have thought it would bring half a house down. So if we locate the device in that foot-of-the-bed box, we are looking at something in the region of…’ he did some more calculations ‘… say at least seventy-five cubic metres for your father’s bedroom … that’s twenty-five kilos of explosive.’
‘That’s heavy,’ I said blankly.
‘Yes. A large suitcaseful. But then you’d need a suitcaseful also if you were using cordite. For demolishing this whole house, you’d have needed four times that amount, placed in about four places on the ground floor right against the thickest walls. People often think a small amount of explosive will do a tremendous lot of damage, but it doesn’t.’
‘What sets it off, then?’ I asked.
‘Ah.’ He smiled the professional smile that wasn’t about to give away its secrets. ‘Let’s just say fulminate of mercury, plus, I should say, an electrical circuit.’
‘Please do explain,’ I said.
He hesitated, then shrugged. ‘ANFO won’t explode on its own, it’s very stable.’
‘What’s ANFO?’ I interrupted.
‘Ammonium nitrate fuel oil. The first letters. ANFO for short.’
‘Oh yes. Sorry.’
‘So you stick into it a package of something that explodes fast: the detonator, in fact. Then you arrange to heat the detonating substance, either with a burning fuse, or by an electrical circuit which can be achieved by ordinary batteries. The heat sets off the detonator, the detonator detonates the ANFO. And bingo …’
‘Bang, you’re dead.’
‘Quite right.’
‘At four-thirty in the morning,’ I said, ‘it would probably be a time-bomb, wouldn’t it?’
Mr Smith nodded happily. ‘That’s what we’re looking for. If it was an alarm clock, for instance, we’ll probably find the pieces. We usually do if we look hard enough. They don’t vaporise in the explosion, they scatter.’
Thirteen
I drove unhurriedly to Epsom but as soon as I let myself into my flat, I knew I wouldn’t stay there. It was too negative, too empty, too boring. I wouldn’t live there much longer, I thought.
There were a few letters, a few bills, a few messages on the answering machine, but nothing of great interest. If I’d been blown up at Quantum along with Malcolm, it wouldn’t have made any vital difference to anybody, and I didn’t like that thought very much.
I went into the bedroom to see what I’d got left in the way of clothes and came to the white lace negligee. Well, maybe she would have been sorry for a while. I wished I could phone her, but it was forbidden: her husband would answer as he had once before when I’d tried, and too many‘sorry, I’ve got the wrong number’s would raise the suspicions of the dimmest of men, which he reputedly wasn’t.
Apart from her, I thought, making a mental inventory, I mostly knew a lot of racing people on the borderline between acquaintance and friend. Enough to be asked to parties, enough for contentment at work. I knew I wasn’t in general unpopular. It was enough, I guessed. Or it had seemed enough, up to now.
I had enjoyed being with Malcolm more than I’d realised. I missed him already, and in the twelve days I’d spent with him, I’d developed a taste for spontaneity which made sitting around in my flat impossible. I packed a pair of breeches and a sweater, added some limp old shirts to the new ones in the Simpson’s suitcase, closed up the flat and went down to the car-park.
My own car stood there, but I took the hired one again, meaning to turn it in some time and return for my own by train. First stop was at the bank to drop through the letter box an envelope containing Malcolm’s cheque, with a paying-in slip to lodge it in my account.After that, I set off again in the overall direction of Quantum, but without really knowing where I was going.
I felt an awful aversion to the task of searching the psyches of the family, but I ended up in a place from where visiting them all would be easy, taking by impulse a turn onto the road to the village of Cookham and booking a room there in an old inn friendly with dark oak beams and log fires.
Norman West was out. I phoned him on the hour at four and five and reached him at six. He said apologetically that he had stopped working on the Pembroke case, there was nothing else he could do. He was sorry he hadn’t been able to solve the… er… problem, and should he send his account to Mr Pembroke at the Savoy, or at Quantum House?
‘Neither,’ I said. ‘We’d like you to carry on working.’ And I told him what had happened to Quantum and very nearly to ourselves.
‘Dear me,’ he said.
I laughed internally, but I supposed‘dear me’ was as apt a comment as any.
‘So would you mind traipsing all the way round again to ask what everyone was doing the day before yesterday between three p.m. and midnight?’
He was silent for an appreciable interval. Then he said, ‘I don’t know that it would be useful, you know. Your family were unhelpful before. They would be doubly unhelpful again. Surely this time the police will make exhaustive enquiries? I think I must leave it to them.’
I was more dismayed than I expected. ‘Please do reconsider,’ I said. ‘If the police go asking the family their movements, and then you do also, I agree they won’t like it. But if after that I too go and ask, they may be upset enough or angry enough to let out things that could tell us… one way or another.’ I paused. ‘I suppose I’m not making
much sense.’
‘Do you remember what you said to me about stepping on a rattlesnake?’ he said.
‘Well, yes.’
‘You’re proposing to stir up one with a stick.’
‘We absolutely have to know who the rattlesnake is.’
I heard him sigh and could feel his disinclination.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘could you just meet me somewhere? You gave my father and me summaries of what all the family were doing on thosetwo days we asked about, but there must be much more you could tell me. If you don’t want to visit them again, could you just… help me?’
‘I don’t mind doing that,’ he said. ‘When?’
‘Tonight? Tomorrow?’
Tonight he was already working. Tomorrow he was taking his wife to visit their grandchildren all day as it was Sunday, but his evening would be free. He knew the pub I was staying in, he would come there, he said; he would meet me in the bar at seven.
I thanked him for that anyway, and next telephoned two stables along on the Downs to ask the trainers if I could ride exercise on their horses for several mornings, if it would be useful to them. The first said no, the second said yes, he was a couple of lads short and he’d be glad of the free help. Start Monday, first lot, pull out at seven-thirty, could I be there by seven-fifteen?
‘Yes,’ I said appreciatively.
‘Stay to breakfast.’
Sanity lay in racing stables, I thought, thanking him. Their brand of insanity was my sort of health. I couldn’t stay away for long. I felt unfit, not riding.
I spent the evening in the bar in the pub, mostly listening to a lonely man who felt guilty because his wife was in hospital having her guts rearranged. I never did discover the reason for the guilt but while he grew slowly drunk, I learned a lot about their financial troubles and about his anxieties over her illness. Not a riotously amusing evening for me, though he said he felt better himself from being able to tell a perfect stranger all the things he’d been bottling up. Was there anyone at all, I wondered, going to bed, who went through life feeling happy?
I dawdled Sunday away pleasurably enough, and Norman West, true to his word, appeared at seven.
His age was again very apparent from the grey-white hair downwards, and when I remarked that he looked tired, he said he’d been up most of the previous night but not to worry, he was used to it. Had he been to see his grandchildren? Yes, he had: lively bunch. He accepted a double scotch with water and, under its reviving influence, opened the large envelope he was carrying and pulled out some papers.
‘Your photographs of the family are in here,’ he said, patting the envelope, ‘and I’ve also brought these copies of all my notes.’ He laidthe notes on the small table between us. ‘You can have them to keep. The originals are in my files. Funny thing,’ he smiled fleetingly, ‘I used to think that one day I’d write a book about all my cases, but there they are, all those years of work, sitting in their files, and there they’ll stay.’
‘Why don’t you write it?’ I asked.
‘I’m better at following people.’
I reflected that following people was what he’d been good at when Joyce had first employed him, and that probably we’d expeaed too much of him, setting him to unravel attempted murders.
He said, ‘You’ll find there’s a definite pattern about the movements of your family, and at the same time an absence of pattern. The murder of Mrs Moira and the gassing of Mr Pembroke both took place at about five in the evening, and at five almost all your family are habitually on the move. Mind you, so is most of the working population. It’s a time of day when it’s easy to lose an hour or so without anyone noticing. Traffic jams, left work late, stopped for a drink, watched television in shop windows… I’ve heard all those from erring husbands. The list is limitless of things people think up as excuses for getting home late. With a family like yours, where practically no one has a set time for leaving a place of work, it’s even easier. That’s why it’s been almost hopeless establishing alibis, and I’m pretty sure the police found the same thing over Mrs Moira. When there’s no expectation of anyone arriving at a regular time, no one looks at the dock.’
‘I do understand,’ I said thoughtfully.
‘Newmarket was a bit different,’ he said, ‘because it meant someone being away from their normal environment for a whole day, assuming that Mr Pembroke was followed from his hotel when he left at lunchtime for Newmarket. And one has to assume that a follower would be in position much earlier than that, because he wouldn’t know when Mr Pembroke would leave, or where he would go.’ He cleared his throat and sipped his whisky. ‘I thought it would be simple in those circumstances to discover which family member had been away all of that Tuesday, but in fact it wasn’t, as you’ll read. Now, if the explosive device was planted in Quantum House between four when the gardener usually left and six, when you might have returned from the races, we’re back to the… er …’
‘Five o’clock shadow,’ I said.
He looked mildly shocked. It wasn’t a laughing matter. ‘I’ve nodoubt the same pattern will be found,’ he said. ‘No one will be able, or willing, to say exactly where they were or where anyone else was during that period.’
‘We may be lucky,’ I said.
He said maybe, and looked unconvinced.
‘Couldn’t you please tell me,’ I said, ‘which Mrs Pembroke got you to find Malcolm? I know all about your ethics, but after this bomb… can’t you? Whose name was on the cheque?’
He considered, staring at his drink as if to find wisdom in the depths. He sighed heavily, and shrugged.
‘I didn’t get paid,’ he said. ‘The cheque never came. I’m not sure, but I think… I think it was the voice of Mrs Alicia Pembroke.’ He shook his head. ‘I asked her if it was her, when I interviewed her. She said it wasn’t but I think she was lying. But two other people found out on their own account, don’t forget, by doing exactly as I did, telephoning around.’
‘I won’t forget.’
He looked at me sombrely. ‘I hope Mr Pembroke can’t be found as easily at this moment.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said.
‘Can I give you some advice?’
‘Please do.’
‘Carry a weapon with you.’
‘Mr West!’
‘Even if it’s only a pot of pepper,’ he said, ‘or a can of spray paint. There’s a good deal of enmity towards you in your family because of your favoured status with Mr Pembroke. You were supposed to die with him in the house, I should imagine. So don’t go unprepared.’
I swallowed and thanked him. He nodded and prosaically produced a smaller envelope from an inner pocket, which contained his account. I wrote him his cheque. He took it, inspected it, and put it away.
He rose wearily to his feet and shook my hand. ‘Any time you want to,’ he said, ‘phone me. I don’t mind talking, if it will help.’
I thanked him again and he went greyly away, leaving me on my own with his notes and a feeling of nakedness.
I began reading the notes. It so happened that he had reversed his original working order, or perhaps the order had become reversed during the copying: in any event, the eldest-to-youngest progression had been transposed, and it was Serena’s notes which came first.
Norman West had written all his notes in longhand with aide-memoires to himself, and I could almost hear his radio-announcer voice in my head as I read.
Miss Serena Pembroke (26) unmarried, lives at 14 Mossborough Court, Bracknell, a block of flats just off the Easthatnpstead Road, turn left by the pub. Flats built during Bracknell’s new-town expansion, middle-income, business people tenants, keep themselves to themselves. Pretty girl, one of the neighbours said (No 12) but don’t know her name. Miss S. has lived there three months. One bedroom, one sitting-room, kit, bath, all small.
Miss S. works at Deanna’s Dance and Aerobics Studio, High Street, Bracknell, teaching aerobics. Private business, sloppily run (my opinion), owned by M
rs Deanna Richmond (45?) whose mind is on a younger gent with a hairy chest, gold chain showing, rubbish.
Miss S. works mornings Monday to Friday 8.00 to 1.30 pm, taking classes, first office workers, then housewives. Miss S. and another girl (Sammy Higgs) work in rotation, half hour on, half off. Miss S’s times are 8-8.30, 9-9.30, 10- 10.30,11-11.30, 12-12.30, 1-1.30 most days.
Miss S. and Sammy H. are both good workers. Trie clients I spoke to said classes v. good. Continuous, therefore popular. A girl can drop in on way to office, on way home after taking children to school, etc. Sign in, pay on way out. Clients come from all over — large clientele.
Evening classes, Monday to Friday, 7 pm-8.30 only. Miss S. does these alone. (S. Higgs does afternoons 1—30—4 pm.) Evenings quite social — rests for clients’ drinks etc. Well attended.
Miss S. has bad menstrual cramps every month. Can’t dance or exercise. Always two days off. The Tuesday of Newmarket Sales was one of these days - the second. Miss S. called in Monday morning in pain, didn’t work, no one expected her Tuesday, she returned Wednesday. Mrs Deanna Richmond’s daughter stands in on these occasions and also if either girl especially asks for time off otherwise. No records kept of these times.
Miss S. leads sober, hard-working, regulated life.
Likes pretty clothes, a bit immature (my opinion), has few friends. Goes to her brother’s house (Mr Ferdinand) a good deal at weekends, or to her mother’s (Mrs Alicia).
No ascertainable iove life.
Miss S. likes shopping and window-shopping. On the Friday of attack on Mr Pembroke she says she bought food and frilly white blouse at Marks and Spencers, she thinks. (Not sure of die day.) She buys something to wear about four times a week probably -tights, leotards, sweaters, etc. ‘Has to look nice for her clients.’
Miss S. owns two-year-old grey/silver Ford Escort, but usually jogs one mile to work to warm up. Drives only if cold or wet. Car clean from automatic car-wash: Miss S. goes through same car-wash approx every two weeks. Car-wash people corroborate, but can’t remember exact dates.
