by Dick Francis
“How did this creep get here?”
Gilbert either ignored the peacockery or indulged it. “Mrs. O’Rorke sent him,” he said.
Neither of them thought to ask the very awkward question of how I knew Mrs. O’Rorke. I’d have given few chances for my health if they’d worked it through. I reckoned that this was one exceptional occasion when ignorance was emphatically the safest path, and that in prudence I should be wholly ignorant of the life and death of Chris Norwood.
“How come he still has the tapes to sell,” Angelo said cunningly, “if he’s already sent them to me?”
Gilbert’s eyes narrowed and his neck stiffened, and I saw that his unprepossessing exterior was misleading: that it was indeed a tough bull Angelo was challenging, one who still ruled his territory.
“Well?” he said to me.
Angelo waited with calculation and triumph growing in his eyes and throughout his face like an intoxication, the scarifying lack of inhibition ballooning as fast as before. It was his utter recklessness, I thought, which was to be feared above all.
“I sent a copy,” I said. I pointed to the package in his hand. “Those are copies.”
“Copies?” It stopped Angelo for a moment. Then he said suspiciously, “Why did you send copies?”
“The originals belonged to Mrs. O’Rorke. They weren’t mine to give you. But I certainly didn’t want you and your friend coming back again waving your gun all over the place, so I did send some tapes. I had no idea I would ever see you again. I just wanted to be rid of you. I had no idea you were Mr. Gilbert’s son.”
“Gun?” Gilbert said sharply. “Gun?”
“His pistol.”
“Angelo!” There was no mistaking the anger in the father’s voice. “I’ve forbidden you—forbidden you, do you hear—to carry that gun. I sent you to ask for those tapes. To ask. To buy.”
“Threats are cheaper,” Angelo said. “And I’m not a child. The days when I took your orders are over.”
They faced each other in unleashed antagonism.
“That pistol is for protection,” Gilbert said intensely. “And it is mine. You are not to threaten people with it. You are not to take it out of this house. You still depend on me for a living, and while you work for me and live in this house you’ll do what I say. You’ll leave that gun strictly alone.”
God in Heaven, I thought: he doesn’t know about Chris Norwood.
“You taught me to shoot,” Angelo said defiantly.
“But as a sport,” Gilbert said, and didn’t understand that sport for his son was a living target.
I interrupted the filial battle and said to Gilbert, “You’ve got the tapes. Will you pay Mrs. O’Rorke?”
“Don’t be bloody stupid,” Angelo said.
I ignored him. To his father I said, “You were generous before. Be generous now.”
I didn’t expect him to be. I wanted only to distract him, to keep his mind on something trivial, not to let him think.
“Don’t listen to him,” Angelo said. “He’s only a mug.”
Gilbert’s face mirrored his son’s words. He looked me up and down with the same inner conviction of superiority, the belief that everyone was a mug except himself.
If Gilbert felt like that, I thought, it was easy to see why Angelo did. Parental example. I would often at school know the father by the behavior of the son.
I shrugged. I looked defeated. I let them get on with their ill will. I wanted above all to get out of that house before they started to put bits of knowledge together and came up with a picture of me as a real towering threat to Angelo’s liberty. I didn’t know if Gilbert would stop his son—or could stop him—if Angelo wanted me dead: and there was a lot of leafy Welwyn Garden City lying quietly in the back garden.
“Mrs. O’Rorke’s expecting me,” I said. “To know how I got on.”
“Tell her nothing doing,” Angelo said.
Gilbert nodded.
I edged past Angelo to the door, looking suitably meek under his scathing sneer.
“Well,” I said weakly, “I’ll be going.”
I walked jerkily through the hall, past the attendant golf clubs and out of the open front door, taking with me a last view of Gilbert locking psychological horns with the menace that would one day overthrow him.
I was sweating. I wiped the palms of my hands on my trousers, fumbled open the car door, put a faintly trembling hand on the ignition key and started the engine.
If they hadn’t been so busy fighting each other . . .
As I turned out of the drive into the cul-de-sac itself I had a glimpse of the two of them coming out onto the step to stare after me: and my mouth was uncomfortably dry until I was sure Angelo hadn’t leaped into his car to give chase.
I had never felt my heart flutter that way before. I had never, I supposed, felt real fear. I couldn’t get it to subside. I felt shaky, restless, short of breath, slightly sick.
Reaction, no doubt.
8
Somewhere between Welwyn and Twickenham I pulled into a parking space to work out where to go.
I could go home, collect my guns, and drive to Bisley. I looked down at my hands. On present form, I’d miss the target by a yard. No point in wasting money on the ammunition.
It should take a fair while for the Gilberts to discover that they had “Starstrike” instead of racing programs, but not as long as that to work out that while I had the original tapes, they had no exclusive control of Liam’s system. I needed somewhere they wouldn’t find me when they came looking. Pity, I thought, that Sarah and I had so few friends.
I walked across the road to a public telephone booth and telephoned to William’s farm.
“Well of course, Jonathan,” Mrs. Porter said. “Of course I’d have you. But William’s gone. He got fed up with no horses to ride here and he packed up and went off to Lambourn this morning. He’d a friend there, he said, and he’s going straight back to school from there tomorrow evening.”
“Was he all right?”
“So much energy!” she said. “But he won’t eat a thing. Says he wants to keep his weight down, to be a jockey.”
I sighed. “Thanks anyway.”
“It’s a pleasure to have him,” she said. “He makes me laugh.”
I rang off, counted the small stack of coins I had left, and public spiritedly spent them on the Newmarket police.
“Chief Superintendent Irestone isn’t here, sir,” they said. “Do you want to leave a message?”
I hesitated, but in the end all I said was, “Tell him Jonathan Derry called. I have a name for him. I’ll get in touch with him later.”
“Very good, sir.”
I got back into the car, consulted a slip of paper in my wallet and drove to Northolt to visit Ted Pitts, knowing that quite likely he wouldn’t be pleased to see me. When I had finally tracked down the school secretary he had parted with the requested information reluctantly, saying that the masters’ addresses were sacrosanct to save them from overzealous parents. Ted Pitts, he said, had particularly made him promise not to divulge.
“But I’m not a parent.”
“Well, no.”
I’d had to persuade, but I got it. And one could see, I thought, why Ted wanted to guard his privacy, because where he lived, I found, was in a mobile home on a caravan site. Neat enough, but not calculated to impress some of the social climbers in the PTA.
Ted’s wife, who opened the door to my knock, looked surprised but not unwelcoming. She was as earnest as Ted, small, bright-eyed, an occasional visitor to school football matches, where Ted tore up and down the sidelines refereeing. I sought for a name and thought “Jane,” but wasn’t sure. I smiled hopefully instead.
“How’s Ted?” I said.
“Much better. His voice is coming back.” She opened the door wider. “He’d like to see you, I’m sure, so do come in.” She gestured to the inside of the caravan, where I couldn’t yet see, and said, “It’s a bit of a mess. We didn’t expect
visitors.”
“If you’d rather I didn’t—”
“No. Ted will want you.”
I stepped up into the van and saw what she meant. In every direction spread an untidy jumble of books and newspapers and clothes and toys, all the normal clutter of a large family but condensed into a very small space.
Ted was in the minuscule sitting room with his three little girls, sitting on a sofa and watching while they played on the floor. When he saw me he jumped to his feet in astonishment and opened his mouth, but all that came out was a squeaky croak.
“Don’t talk,” I said. “I just came to see how you are.” Any thoughts I had about cadging a bed from him had vanished. It seemed silly, indeed, to mention it.
“I’m better.” The words were recognizable, but half a whisper, and he gestured for me to sit down. His wife offered coffee and I accepted. The children squabbled and he kicked them gently with his toe.
“Jane will take them out soon,” he said huskily.
“I’m being a nuisance.”
He shook his head vigorously. “Glad you came.” He pointed to a ledge running high along one wall and said, “I bought your new tapes. They’re up there, with your cassettes, out of reach. The children climb so. Haven’t done the copying yet, though. Sorry.” He rubbed his throat as if massage would help, and made a face of frustration.
“Don’t talk,” I said again, and passed on William’s information about form books. He seemed pleased enough but also subdued, as if the knowledge no longer interested him.
Jane returned with one mug of coffee and offered sugar. I shook my head and took a sip of the liquid, which looked dark brown but tasted weak.
I said, more to make conversation than anything else, “I don’t suppose either of you know where I could put up for a night or two? Somewhere not too expensive. I mean, not a hotel.” I smiled lopsidedly. “I’ve spent so much on petrol and other things this week that I’m a bit short.”
“End of the month,” Ted said, nodding. “Always the same.”
“But your house!” Jane said. “Ted says you’ve got a house.”
“Er, um, er, I haven’t been getting on too well with Sarah.” The convenient half-truth arrived just in time and they made small sad noises in sympathetic comprehension. Ted, all the same, shook his head, sorry not to be able to help.
“Don’t know of anywhere,” he said.
Jane, standing straight, tucking her elbows into her sides and clasping her hands tightly together, said, “You could stay here. On the sofa.”
Ted looked extremely surprised but his wife very tensely said, “Would you pay us?”
“Jane!” Ted said despairingly, but I nodded.
“In advance?” she said rigidly, and I agreed again. I gave her two of the notes I’d got from the bank a day earlier and asked if it was enough. She said yes looking flushed and bundled the three children out of the room, out of the caravan, and down toward the road. Ted, hopelessly awkward and embarrassed, stuttered a wheezy apology.
“We’ve had a bad month . . . they’ve put the land rent up here . . . and I had to pay for new tires, and for the car license. I must have the car and it’s falling to bits . . . and I’m overdrawn ...”
“Do stop, Ted,” I said. “I know all about being broke. Not starving broke. Just penniless.”
He smiled weakly. “I suppose we’ve never had the bailiffs . . . but this week we’ve been living on bread mostly. Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Positive.”
So I stayed with the Pitts. Watched television, built bright brick towers for the children, ate the egg supper my money had bought, took Ted for a pint.
The talking couldn’t have done his throat much good, but between the froth and the dregs I learned a good deal about the Pitts. He’d met Jane one summer in a youth hostel in the Lake District, and they’d married while he was still at college because the oldest of the little girls was imminent. They were happy, he said, but they’d never been able to save a deposit for a house. Lucky to have the mobile home. Mortgaged, of course. During the holidays he looked after the children while Jane took temporary secretarial jobs. Better for the family income. Better for Jane. He still went hiking on his own, though, one week every year. Backpacking. Sleeping in a tent, in hilly country: Scotland or Wales. He gave me a shy look through the black-framed glasses. “It sorts me out. Keeps me sane.” It wasn’t everyone, I thought, who was his own psychotherapist.
When we got back the caravan was tidy and the children asleep. One had to be quiet, Ted said, going in: they woke easily. The girls all slept, it appeared, in the larger of the two bedrooms, with their parents in the smaller. There were a pillow, a car traveling blanket and a clean sheet awaiting me, and although the sofa was a bit short for comfort it was envelopingly soft.
It was only on the point of sleep, far too late to bother, that I remembered that I hadn’t called back to talk to Irestone. Oh well, I thought, yawning, tomorrow would do.
In the morning I did call from a telephone booth near the public park where Ted and I took the children to play on the swings and seesaw.
Irestone, as usual, wasn’t in. Wasn’t he ever in? I asked. A repressive voice told me the chief superintendent was off duty at present, and would I please leave a message. I perversely said that no, I wouldn’t, I wanted to speak to the chief superintendent personally. If I would leave a number, they said, he would in due course call me. Impasse, I thought: Ted Pitts had no telephone.
“If I call you at nine tomorrow morning,” I said, “will Chief Superintendent Irestone be there? If I call at ten? At eleven? At midday?”
I was told to wait and could hear vague conversations going on in the background, and going on for so long that I had to feed more coins into the box, which scarcely improved my impatience. Finally, however, the stolid voice returned. “Detective Chief Superintendent Irestone will be in the Incident Room tomorrow morning from ten o’clock onward. You may call him at the following number.”
“Wait a minute.” I unclipped my pen and dug out the scrap of paper which held Ted’s address. “OK.”
He gave me the number, and I thanked him fairly coolly, and that was that.
Ted was pushing his tiniest girl carefully around on a sort of turntable, holding her close to him and laughing with her. I wished quite surprisingly fiercely that I could have had a child like that, that I could have taken her to a sunny park on Sunday mornings, and hugged her little body and watched her grow. Sarah, I thought. Sarah . . . this is the way you’ve ached, perhaps; and for the baby to cuddle, and the young woman to see married. This is the loss. This, that Ted Pitts has. I watched his delight in the child and I envied him with all my heart.
We sat on a bench a bit later while the girls played in a sandbox, and for something to say I asked him why he’d lost his first intense interest in the racing form books.
He shrugged, looked at his children, and said in the husky voice which was slowly returning to normal, “You can see how it is. I can’t risk the money. I can’t afford to buy the form books. I couldn’t even afford to buy a set of tapes for myself this week, to copy the programs onto. I bought some for you with the money you gave me, but I just didn’t have enough. I told you, we’ve been down to counting pennies for food, and, although next month’s pay will be in the bank tomorrow, I still haven’t paid the electricity . . .”
“It’s the Derby soon,” I said.
He nodded morosely. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of it. I look at those tapes sitting up on that shelf, and I think, shall I or shan’t I? But I’ve had to decide not to. I can’t risk it. How could I possibly explain to Jane if I lost? We need every pound, you know. You can see we do.”
It was ironic, I thought. On the one hand, there was Angelo Gilbert, who was prepared to kill to get those tapes, and on the other, Ted Pitts, who had them and set them lower than a dust-up with his wife.
“The programs belong to an old woman named O’Rorke,” I said. “
Mrs. Maureen O’Rorke. I went to see her this week.”
Ted showed only minor signs of interest.
“She said a few things I thought you’d find amusing.”
“What things?” Ted said.
I told him about the bookmakers’ closing the accounts of regular winners, and about the system the O’Rorkes had used with their gardener, Dan, going around betting shops to put their money on anonymously.
“Great heavens,” Ted said. “What a palaver.” He shook his head. “No, Jonathan, it’s best to forget it.”
“Mrs. O’Rorke said her husband could bet with an overall certainty of winning once every three times. How does that strike you statistically?”
He smiled. “I’d need a hundred percent certainty to bet on the Derby.”
One of the children threw sand in the eyes of another and he got up in a hurry to scold, to comfort, to dig around earnestly with the corner of his handkerchief.
“By the way,” I said, when order was restored. “I took some copies of your game ‘Starstrike.’ I hope you don’t mind.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Did you play it? You have to type in F or S at the first question mark. I haven’t written the instructions out yet, but I’ll let you have them when I do. The kids”—he looked pleased and a touch smug—“say it’s neat.”
“Is it your best?”
“My best?” He smiled a fraction and shrugged, and said, “I teach from it. I had to write it so that the kids could understand the program and how it worked. Sure, I could write a far more sophisticated one, but what would be the point?”
A pragmatist, Ted Pitts, not a dreamer. We collected the children together, with Ted brushing them down and emptying sand from their shoes, and drove back to the caravan to homemade hamburgers for lunch.
In the afternoon under Ted’s commiserating eyes I corrected the load of exercise books which I happened not to have carried into my house on Friday night. The boys had Irestone to thank for that. And on Monday morning, with Ted’s voice in good enough shape, he thought, to quell the monsters in the classroom, we both went back to school.
