by Dick Francis
There was a space of three or four feet between each machine where one was wholly exposed to the revolving accelerating rollers. When the presses were at rest the printers—the technicians—walked with safety into these spaces to fit the master sheets onto the cylinders and to check the state of the inking rollers. When the presses, switched on, ran even at minimum inch-by-inch speed, the danger began. An arm could be torn out, not in one jerking terror but worse, inch by excruciatingly inevitable inch.
I asked later why no guarding gates kept people away. The machines were old, built before safety standards skyrocketed, Samson Frazer said, but they did indeed now have gates. It was illegal in Britain to operate without them. These gates pulled across like trellises and locked into place, but they were fiddly, and an extra job. People who worked around these presses knew and respected the danger, and sometimes didn’t bother with the gates. He didn’t approve, but he’d had no tragedies. There were computerized programs and printers to be had, but the old technology worked perfectly, as it had for a hundred years, and he couldn’t afford to scrap the old and to install the new, which often went wrong anyway, and one couldn’t guard against maniacs like Usher Rudd. No one had to insure against lunatics.
I could have sold him a policy about that, but on that particular Sunday evening what we needed for Usher Rudd was a straitjacket, not a premium.
He was still swearing at the technician, who looked over Rudd’s shoulder and saw Samson Frazer’s arrival as deliverance.
Stopping the presses, I learned later, meant hitting one particular button on one of the control panels to be found on the end of each press that regulated the overall speed of the printing. The buttons weren’t things the size of doorbells, but scarlet three-inch-diameter flat knobs on springs. Neither the technician nor Samson Frazer pushed the overall stop control, and neither Rudd himself nor I knew which of several scarlet buttons ruled the roost. The presses went on roaring and Bobby Usher Rudd completely lost control.
He knew the terrible danger of the presses. He’d worked for the Hoopwestern Gazette. He’d been in and out of newspapers all his adult life.
He grabbed the technician by his overalls and swung him towards unimaginable agony.
The technician, half in and half out of one of the lethal spaces, screamed.
Samson Frazer screamed at Usher Rudd.
The second technician sprinted for refuge in the smaller print room next door.
I, from instinct, leapt at Usher Rudd and yanked him backwards. He too started screaming. Still clutched by the overalls, the technician stumbled out of the fearsome gap, ingrained awareness keeping his hands close to his body: better to fall on the floor than try to keep his balance by touching the death-dealing machinery.
Usher Rudd let go of the overalls and rerouted his uncontrolled frenzy onto me. He was no longer primarily trying to stop the print run, but to avenge himself for the cataclysms he had brought on himself.
The glare in his eyes was madness. I saw the intention there of pushing me instead of the technician onto the rollers, and had we been alone he might have managed it. But Samson Frazer jumped to grab him while the technician, saved from mutilation, gave a horror-struck final shout as he made his terrified stumbling run for the door, and by unplanned chance barged into Usher Rudd on the way, unbalancing him.
Rudd threw Samson off him like an irrelevance, but it gave me time to get space between me and the nearest press, and although Rudd grasped and lurched in an effort to get me back again into the danger zone, I was fighting more or less for my life and it was amazing how much strength ultimate fear generated.
Samson Frazer, to his supreme credit—and maybe calculating that any death on his premises would ruin him—helped me struggle with the demented kicking and punching and clutching red-haired tornado: and it was Samson who delivered a blow to Rudd’s head with a bunched fist that half dazed his target and knocked him to the ground face downwards. I sat on his squirming back while Samson found some of the wide brown sticky tape used for parcels and, with my active help, circled one of Usher Rudd’s wrists, and then the other, and fastened his arms behind his back in makeshift handcuffs. Samson tethered the wildly kicking legs in the same way and we rolled Rudd onto his back and stood over him, panting.
Then, with each of us looping an arm under Rudd’s armpits, we dragged him into the comparative quiet of the secondary print room next door and propped him in a chair.
All of the technicians were in that room, wide-eyed and upset. Samson told them unemotionally to go back to work, there was a paper to be got out, and slowly, hesitantly, they obeyed him.
In his chair, Rudd began shouting, “It’s all his fault. Wyvern did it. Wyvern’s the one you want, not me.”
“I don’t believe it,” I contradicted, though I did.
Usher Rudd tried to convince me. “Wyvern wanted your father out of the way. He wanted Orinda in Parliament. He wanted to get her promoted, like Dennis. He would have done anything to stop your father being elected.”
“Like sabotaging his car?”
“I didn’t want to do it. I would write what he wanted. I trailed Paul Bethune for weeks to find his bimbo, to please Wyvern, so that people would vote for Orinda, but messing up a Range Rover, cutting the brake lines like Wyvern wanted, that was too much. I didn’t do it.”
“Yes, you did,” I told him conclusively.
“No, I didn’t.”
“What did you do, then?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Your cousin, Basil, knows what you did.”
Usher Rudd cursed Basil with words I’d hardly ever heard even on a racecourse, and somewhere in the tirade came a description of how he’d wriggled under the Range Rover in the black tracksuit he’d worn to the meeting after the dinner in The Sleeping Dragon. The brilliant performance my father had given that evening had convinced Wyvern that he wouldn’t get rid of my father without at least injuring him badly. Wyvern had been furious with Usher Rudd that his sabotage had been so useless.
Usher Rudd’s rage slowly ran down and he began first to whine and then deny that he had ever said what Samson and I had both just heard.
Samson phoned the police. Joe Duke was not on duty, but Samson knew all the force individually and put down the receiver, reporting a promise of immediate action.
Usher Rudd shouted, “I want a lawyer.”
He got his lawyer, passed a night in the cells and on Monday morning collected a slap on the wrist from a busy magistrate (for causing a disturbance indoors at the Hoopwestern Gazette) who had no real conception of the speed and noise and danger involved.
No actual damage had been done. The newspaper had appeared as usual. Usher Rudd, meek and respectful, walked out free.
I talked to Joe Duke.
I said, “It was Usher Rudd who stuffed wax in the sump drain of the Range Rover, and Leonard Kitchens who started the fire. Both of them were put up to it by Alderney Wyvern.”
Joe Duke slowly nodded. “But they didn’t stop your father, did they? And as for you”—he gave a half smile—“I’ll never forget you that night of the fire, sitting there half-naked on the cobbles with that red blanket over your shoulders and no sign of pain, though you’d burns on your hands and feet and you’d smashed down into the square. Don’t you ever feel pain?”
“Of course, but there was so much happening ...”
“And you’re used to falling off horses?”
“Horses fall.... Anyway, I suppose so. I’ve hit the ground quite a lot.”
The smile broadened. “Then why do it?”
“Speed,” I told him. “Nothing like it.” I paused. “If you want something badly enough, you can risk your life for it and consider it normal behavior.”
He pondered. “If you want Orinda Nagle enough to be an MP, you’ll risk ...”
“Almost anything. I think it was Wyvern who shot at my father.”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong. He could have carried a rifle
in his golf bag, with one of those covers on it that they use for clubs.”
“Yes.”
“And he’d had to have had murder in his mind to do that.”
“Uh huh. And when he heard and saw my father’s success at that meeting, he judged he needed to get rid of him at once.”
“He was crazy.”
“He still is.”
Joe Duke knew my father was engaged in a serious power struggle but was dismayed when I explained about Hudson Hurst.
“You don’t think,” Joe said, horrified, “that Wyvern would try again to kill your father?”
“Wyvern’s stakes are higher now, and my father still stands in his way. If my father is chosen to lead his party, I’m sure he’ll be in appalling danger. It frightens me badly, to be honest.”
Joe said thoughtfully, “You know what?”
“What?”
“Just in case we’re doing Wyvern a great injustice, thinking it was he that shot at you ... I mean, so far we’ve only got theory to go on, really. Why don’t you and I do an unofficial walk through ... a reconstruction? I’ll use a walking stick for a gun. I’ll transport it in a golf bag. And I’ll carry it up into the little lounge, and aim it at you while you’re crossing the square, like you did that night, and I’ll see how difficult it will be to put the walking stick up in the gutter. What do you think?”
“Can’t do any harm.”
“We might come across something we haven’t thought of. It often works that way with reconstructions.”
“OK.”
“We’ll have to do it at night,” Joe said.
“It was after midnight.”
“After midnight, then. I’ll be off duty. It will be just the two of us.”
I agreed that we would meet that evening in The Sleeping Dragon, and that Joe would tell the manager what we were doing.
I went to see Orinda, who had finally returned from her weekend and answered the telephone.
Five years had been kind to her. She looked as striking as ever, the green eyes black-lashed, the greasepaint makeup smooth and blended. She was less brittle, less stressed, more fulfilled.
She called me darling with only two or three a’s. “Daaarling.”
“Orinda.” I hugged her.
“How you’ve grown,” she exclaimed. “I mean, not just upwards, but older.”
She had made us a salad lunch with Diet Coke and coffee after.
She knew about the power struggle going on in the party and mentioned that every time there was this sort of ballot, the politicians changed the rules.
“They invent whatever procedure they think will give a result that everyone thinks is fair, even if not everyone is happy with the eventual winner. I don’t think they’ve ever before done a vote like today’s. It’s now all up to the party’s MPs, the members of Parliament.”
I had forgotten how much Orinda knew about governments.
“I suppose Dennis told you how it all works.”
“No, it was Alderney Wyvern.” She frowned. “I never want to see that man again.”
I said neutrally, “Did you know that Wyvern now controls Hudson Hurst, like he used to control you and Dennis? Do you realize that if Hurst wins the ballot and becomes prime minister, it will be Alderney Wyvern who effectively governs this country?”
Orinda looked horrified but shook her head. “Your father’s more popular in the country.”
“Don’t forget schadenfreude.”
Orinda laughed. “You mean the malicious enjoyment of someone else’s misfortune?”
I nodded. “Half the Cabinet would like to see my father come a cropper after his spectacular way of fighting the fish war.”
“It will be marvelous for this constituency if he wins.” She smiled widely. “I never thought I would say that, but it’s true.”
I told Orinda about the reconstruction that Joe Duke and I had planned.
I asked, “Do you remember much about that evening?”
“Of course, I do. I was furious at not being chosen as candidate.”
“How much were you with Alderney Wyvern after the political meeting?”
“I wasn’t. I was angry and miserable and drove straight home.”
“Do you know if Alderney Wyvern had his golf clubs with him at the meeting in the hall?”
“What an extraordinary question! He always used to have them in the back of the car.”
Orinda might have hated my father that night, but not enough to do him harm. She had no wickedness in her nature.
I spent a comfortable hour or two longer with her and then drove to Polly’s house to wait for my father to telephone from London with the result of the ballot.
He gave me news from his car. “It was all indecisive,” he reported. “It was basically a three-way split. All that’s certain is that we have to vote again tomorrow.”
“Do explain,” I begged him.
He described a day that had been full of doubt and maneuvering, but it seemed that what had finally happened was that neither my father nor Hudson Hurst had received enough votes to secure victory outright. Jill Vinicheck, the third candidate, had received the fewest votes and had been eliminated. The next ballot would be a straight fight between Hurst and Juliard, and no one was predicting who would win.
My father sounded tired. He said he and Polly were on their way to join me at the house for a quiet night. He had done all he could behind the scenes to sway the vote his way: now it was up to his colleagues to choose whom they wanted.
I explained about Joe Duke and the reconstruction and, after a brief discussion with Polly by his side, he said they would meet me in The Sleeping Dragon and we would eat together.
Any thought that we might have had about a peaceful evening disappeared between the soup and the apple pie.
While neither Joe Duke nor I had made any particular secret about our plan for the reconstruction, we had not expected the manager of the hotel to broadcast the scenario. He appeared to have told the whole town. The hotel was buzzing, as it had on the night of the dinner, and people came up to my father in droves to shake his hand and wish him well.
Samson Frazer came from the Hoopwestern Gazette with his cameraman and gave my horrified father extra details of how Usher Rudd had spent his Sunday.
Usher Rudd himself came—free, unrepentant, bitter-eyed and steaming with malice, glaring at my father and talking into a mobile phone.
When Joe Duke came, he looked at first aghast at the bustle and movement, but my father resignedly told him, as he joined us for coffee, that the hotel had been packed on the night we were reproducing, and the present crowd would make everything seem more real.
Moreover, my father said he would walk with me across the square as he had done before, and although I didn’t like the idea, Joe Duke nodded enthusiastically.
Why wait for midnight? people asked. Everyone was ready now, and now was eleven-thirty.
Because, Joe explained, half of the streetlights in the square switched off automatically at twelve o’clock, and if the reconstruction was to mean anything, the conditions had to be as near as possible to what they had been before.
Joe Duke brought in a bag of golf clubs from his car and showed everyone the long walking stick with the tartan cover that disguised it.
The manager frowned in puzzlement, and I wanted to ask him if he had remembered something significant, but Joe and the crowd swept all before them, anxious to get started. I would ask him later, I thought.
Midnight came. Half the lights in the square faded to darkness. All that were left glowing threw shadows on the cobbles. Over at the far side of the square a few lights showed dimly in the party headquarters and the charity shop.
When my father and I walked out into the square, the only lights blazing brightly were those of The Sleeping Dragon at our back.
It was planned that my father and I would walk halfway across the square and wait while Joe aimed his walking stick out of the window and yelled, “BAN
G,” and then reached or climbed up to put the stick in the gutter. People would hurry from The Sleeping Dragon towards my father, as they had done before.
It all felt alarmingly real to me, but everyone was smiling.
Joe, surrounded by encouraging crowds, turned to go towards the staircase while I and my father walked out across the cobbles. I stopped after a while to look back at the hotel but my father walked on, calling over his shoulder, “Come on, Ben, we haven’t reached the spot yet.”
I looked up at the hotel. Joe’s walking stick was pointing out of one of the windows, half hidden by the seemingly perpetual geraniums.
Three thoughts jammed into my consciousness simultaneously.
First, Joe hadn’t had time to get up the stairs and walk along to the lounge and hide behind the curtain.
Second, the stick was pointing out of the wrong window.
Third, there was a gleam on the stick and a hole, a black round hole in the end of it.
It wasn’t a stick. It was a gun.
My father was ten yards ahead of me across the square. I sprinted as I had for Orinda and for the technician in the presses, without pause, without thought, with raw intuition, and I jumped in a flying football tackle to knock my father down.
The bang was real enough. The bullet was real enough, but the happy crowd which poured out of the hotel still thought it was a game.
The bullet hit me while I was still in the air, jumping and colliding with my father, and it would have gone into his back if I hadn’t been there.
It entered high on my right thigh and traveled down inside my leg to the knee, the kinetic energy bursting apart all muscles and soft tissue in its path.
The force of it whirled me around so that when I crashed to the cobbles I was facing The Sleeping Dragon, half-lying, propped on my left elbow, shuddering throughout all my body with my brain disoriented and protesting with universal outrage.
There was enough pain everywhere to satisfy Joe Duke. My eyes watered with it and my skin sweated. I’d been injured now and then in racing falls, and I’d felt shivery and sore the night of the fire, but nothing had even begun to warn me that there was an unimaginable dimension far beyond cuts and breaks.
