Proof

Fourteen

Gerard followed me home in his mended Mercedes and came into the house bearing Sung Li’s fragrant parcels.

‘You call this a cottage?’ he said sceptically, looking at perspectives. ‘More like a palace.’

‘It was a cottage beside a barn, both of them falling to pieces. The barn was bigger than the cottage... hence the space.’

We had joyfully planned that house, Emma and I, shaping the rooms to fit what we’d expected to be our lives, making provision for children. A big kitchen for family meals; a sitting room, future playroom; a dining room for friends; many bedrooms; a large quiet drawing room, splendid for parties. The conversion, done in three stages as we could afford it, had taken nearly five years. Emma had contentedly waited, wanting the nest to be ready for the chicks, and almost the moment it was done she had become pregnant.

Gerard and I had come into the house through the kitchen, but I seldom ate there any more. When the food was re-heated and in dishes we transferred it to the sitting room, putting it on a coffee table between two comfortable chairs and eating with our plates balanced on our knees.

It was in that warm looking room with its bookshelves, soft lamplight, television, photographs and rugs that I mostly lived, when I was there at all. It was there that I now kept a wine rack and glasses lazily to hand and averted my mind from chores like gardening. It was there, I dare say, that my energy was chronically at its lowest ebb, yet it was to there also that I instinctively returned.

Gerard looked better for the food, settling deep into his chair when he’d finished with a sigh of relaxation. He put his arm back in its sling and accepted coffee and a second glass of Californian wine, a 1978 Napa Cabernet Sauvignon I’d been recently selling and liked very much myself.

‘It’s come a long way,’ Gerard observed, reading the label.

‘And going further,’ I said. ‘California’s growing grapes like crazy, and their best wine is world class.’

He drank a little and shook his head, it’s pleasant enough but I honestly couldn’t tell it from any old plonk. A terrible admission, but there you are.’

‘Just what the Silver Moondance ordered... customers like you.’

He smiled. ‘And I’d guess I’m in the majority.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Liking wine at all is the main thing.’

He said, ‘You were going to tell me why the substitute wines were equally as important as the substitute scotch at the Silver Moondance.’

I glanced at him, hearing the hardening tone in the sub-Scottish voice and seeing the same change in him as there had been in the car the previous Sunday: the shedding of the social shell, the emergence of the investigator. His eyes were steady and intent, his face concentrated, the mouth unsmiling: and I answered to this second man with recognition and relief, dealing in facts and guesses dispassionately.

‘People who steal scotch whisky,’ I said, ‘usually go for a shipment of bottles in cases. The proceeds are ready to sell... the receiver’s probably already lined up. There’s no difficulty. It’s all profit. But if you steal a tankerful of the liquid in bulk you have the trouble and expense in bottling it. Cost of bottles, cost of labour, all sorts of incidentals.’

‘Right,’ he said nodding.

‘There were six thousand gallons of scotch at roughly fifty-eight per cent alcohol content in each of Kenneth Charter’s three lost loads.’

‘Right.’

‘Each load was of a higher concentration than is ever sold for drinking. When they received the tankerload the Rannoch people would have added water to bring the scotch down to retail strength, around forty per cent alcohol by volume.’

Gerard listened and nodded.

‘At that point they’d have enough scotch to fill approximately fifty thousand bottles of standard size.’

Gerard’s mouth opened slightly with surprise. ‘Kenneth Charter never said that.’

‘He shifts the stuff, he doesn’t bottle it. He maybe never did the arithmetic. Anyway, with three tankersful we’re talking about one hundred and fifty thousand bottles in six months, and that’s not something you can mess about with in the back yard.’

He was silent for a while thinking about it, and then said merely, ‘Go on.’

‘On each occasion the whole load was pumped out of the tanker pretty fast, as the tanker was found empty on the following day.’

‘Right.’

‘So unless the point of the operation was simply to ruin Kenneth Charter, in which case it’s conceivable the loads were dumped in ditches like the drivers, the scotch was pumped from the tanker into some sort of storage.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘So the logical place for the tanker to be unloaded was at a bottling plant.’

‘Yes, but it never reached there.’

‘It never reached Rannoch’s bottling plant. There’s a difference.’

‘All right.’ His eyes smiled. ‘Go on.’

‘Fifty thousand bottles three times over isn’t going to keep any reasonable plant in operation for anything like six months. Small chateaux bottle that much themselves in a few weeks without blinking. So... um... what if in between times the whisky bottling changed over to wine... to Silver Moondance wine, to be precise.’

‘Ah.’ It was a deep note, an acknowledgement that we’d arrived at the centre of things. ‘Carry on.’

‘Well... with a bottling plant it would be easy to fill any shape of bottle from a single source of wine... and the shapes of the bottles at the Silver Moondance fitted the labels: claret bottles for claret labels, burgundy bottles for burgundy labels and so on. The very fact that there were both scotch and wine under false labels at the Silver Moondance... well, for the simplest explanation I’d bet you a pea to a case of Krug they were bottled in the same place.’

Gerard drank some of his wine absentmindedly.

‘Where?’ he said succinctly.

‘Mm... that’s the rub.’

‘Any ideas?’

‘It did occur to me that it might be in one of those plants that Kenneth Charter described, that got into difficulties or went bust when the French started bottling more of their own wines. I mean... suppose someone came to you if you were on the verge of bankruptcy and offered you work. Even if you knew it was crooked you might do it and keep quiet. Or suppose a bottling plant was for sale or lease at a ridiculous price, which they’re bound to have been... if the game looked worth it... if it was going to go on maybe for years...’

‘Yes,’ Gerard said. ‘It’s possible.’ He gave it about five seconds’ thought. ‘So provisionally we’re looking for a bottling plant. Now let’s shelve that for a moment.’ He paused again, considering, and then said, ‘In Deglet’s we often work in pairs, discussing a case, bouncing ideas off each other, coming up sometimes with things neither of us had considered on our own. It’s a way that I’m used to, that I like... but my usual partner’s in London, and frankly I’m too tired to go there... and you’re here on the doorstep loaded to the hairline with specialist knowledge... so do you mind letting me talk my ideas to you? And be sure to speak out if I start something in your thoughts. That’s where the value of these sessions lies. Bouncing ideas back. Do you mind?’

‘No, of course not. But I...’

‘Just listen,’ he said. ‘Stop me if you’ve a comment. That’s all there is to it.’

‘All right.’

‘And honestly... do you have any brandy?’

I smiled. ‘Yes, I do. What would you like?’

‘Anything.’

I gave him some Hine Antique, which he sighed over as if putting on friendly old shoes. I poured some for myself also on the grounds that people who said it had medicinal qualities weren’t joking. If queasy, drink brandy, if tired, drink brandy, if suffering from green shivers and cold shakes... drink brandy.

‘All right, then,’ he said, cradling his glass in the palm of one hand. ‘First, review the status quo. Under that heading we have the prime and never-to-be-forgotten fact that our number one aim is to save Kenneth Charter’s business without landing his son in jail. That’s what we’re being paid for. Justice and other considerations are secondary.’

He sipped his drink.

‘Fact number two,’ he went on, ‘Kenneth Charter’s son... whose name is also Kenneth, to be awkward, so we’ll call him Kenneth Junior... Kenneth Charter Junior made the theft of the scotch possible by telling Zarac of the Silver Moondance where to find the tanker.’ He paused. ‘We still have the unanswered question.’

‘How did Kenneth Junior know Zarac?’

‘Yes. Anyway, I’ve brought the photostats of the pages of Kenneth Junior’s notebook.’ He pulled a well-filled business-sized envelope from an inner pocket and laid it on the table. ‘I’ll leave these with you... see if you make anything from them that we haven’t.’

He saw the doubt in my face. ‘You’ll try?’ he said almost severely, and I without apology said, ‘Yes.’

‘Right, then. Fact three: Zarac passed on the message and wasn’t present when the tanker was stolen. Fact four: scotch was being sold under the wrong labels at the Silver Moon-dance, which Zarac as head waiter must have known. Supposition arising: the substitute scotch was part of an earlier load stolen from Charter’s tankers. Any comment?’

I shook my head.

‘Second supposition arising: Larry Trent knew his whisky and wines were cheating the customers.’

He stopped, waiting for an opinion. I said, i agree with that, yes. I’d say it was definite.’

‘Supposition three: Larry Trent organised the theft of the tankers.’

I frowned.

‘You don’t think so?

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I never talked to him... can’t make a first-hand guess. He certainly did have in his hands a great deal more cash than he would have made out of the Silver Moondance, but he said it was his brother’s.’ I told Gerard precisely what Orkney Swayle had told me at Martineau Park. ‘Larry Trent was buying horses and shipping them abroad to be sold. As sweet a way as one can imagine of turning illegal money pure white.’

Gerard drank some brandy.

‘Did you believe in the brother?’ he asked.

‘You mean, was it a case of the hypothetical friend? My friend has a problem, give me advice?’

He nodded.

‘I would have thought so,’ I said, ‘except for one thing which rang humanly true. Orkney said that Larry Trent said he, Larry, was buying the horses for his brother because his brother couldn’t tell good from bad. About the only thing his brother couldn’t do, he said. Orkney Swayle said Larry was envious. That sort of grudge sounds like a real brother to me. Or at any rate a real person. Partner, maybe.’

A small silence. We both thought about the partner who might or might not be a brother, and finally Gerard gave him his name. The name, anyway, that we knew him by.

‘Paul Young.’

I agreed.

‘Supposition four,’ Gerard said. ‘When Larry Trent was killed, Paul Young came to the Silver Moondance to take over, unaware that the police were investigating the drinks and unaware that Charter’s tanker thefts had been linked with Zarac’

‘Those are certainties, not suppositions. I saw him arrive myself... he had no idea he was walking into trouble.’

‘Right. And I’ll add in a few certainties of my own at this point. I’ve spent all day interviewing people from the Silver Moondance, especially the waitress and the wet little assistant who were both there with you in the bar. They say that soon after you left, Paul Young told them to go home, the waitress until told to return and the assistant until the following day. Paul Young said he would discuss with the police about a re-opening date, and run the place himself until the manager returned from holiday. After that, Head Office would appoint a replacement for poor Mr Trent. None of the staff saw anything odd in his manner or proposals. Very sensible, they thought him, considering how angry he was about the drinks. He then sent the kitchen staff home, telling them also to return when told. The waitress said Zarac arrived for work just as she was leaving, and Paul Young told him to go into Larry Trent’s office and wait for him.’

I was fascinated. ‘Did she remember exactly what they said to each other?’

Gerard smiled thinly. ‘She’s used to remembering orders. An excellent ear. She said they knew each other... Paul Young called him Zarac without being told.’

‘And the other way round?’

‘She said Paul Young said “I’m Paul Young” which she thought silly because Zarac looked as if he knew him perfectly well.’

‘Telling Zarac his alias.’

‘Exactly. The waitress said Paul Young looked very angry with Zarac, which she thought natural, and she thought Zarac was going to get a right ticking off, which she was sorry about because Zarac was all right with the waitresses and kept his hands to himself, unlike some others she could mention.’

I appreciated the verbatim reporting. ‘And who were those?’

‘The manager, mostly.’

‘Not Larry Trent?’

‘No. Always the perfect gent, she said,’ He paused. ‘She said the police sergeant had been round before me, asking the same questions. She said he asked her about Paul Young’s car.’

I was amused. ‘What else did she say?’

‘She said it was a Rolls.’

‘Really?’

‘Her exact words were “a black Roller with them tinted windows.” She said it had to be Paul Young’s because it was in the staff car park and it didn’t belong to the regular staff, and it hadn’t been there when she came to work an hour earlier.’

‘Observant girl.’

Gerard nodded. ‘I went to the wet assistant’s home after I left the waitress and asked him mostly the same questions. He said he didn’t know what car Paul Young had come in. He couldn’t even describe Paul Young. Useless.’

‘And the barman hoofed it.’ I relayed Ridger’s half-hearted search. ‘I guess he knew he wasn’t selling the right stuff, but you wouldn’t get him to admit it, even if you found him.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘So now we come to supposition... where are we? five?... supposition five: that Paul Young and Zarac spent the afternoon deciding what to do and organising the removal of all the wines and spirits to look like burglary.’

‘It would have taken them hours if they did it themselves.’

‘And they would have needed a van.’

‘Large,’ I said, nodding. ‘There were dozens of cases.’

He put his head on one side. ‘They had all day and all night, I suppose.’

‘Do we know when Zarac actually died?’ I asked.

Gerard shook his head. ‘There was an opening inquest last Friday, adjourned for a week. The police aren’t giving out much publicity on Zarac, but I’ve found a friend behind the forensic scenes and I’ll hear everything the police know about times and so on by this Friday.’

‘He suffocated...’ I said with revulsion.

‘It bothers you?’

‘Like bricking up someone alive.’

‘Much quicker,’ he said prosaically. ‘Supposition six: Paul Young and Zarac weren’t the greatest of buddy-buddies.’

‘A fair conclusion,’ I said dryly.

‘Supposition seven: Zarac was in some way a terrible threat to Paul Young.’

‘Who solved the problem permanently.’

‘Mm,’ he reflected. ‘So far, that seems reasonable. Any questions?’

‘Yes... How did Paul Young Happen to have plaster of Paris bandage with him on what he expected to be simply an organisational outing?’

‘You mean it might be significant?’

‘Something to add to what we know of him, anyway.’

‘And why use it? Why not smash in his head?’

‘Well, why?’ I said.

‘A warning to others, perhaps. Or genuine psychosis. Very nasty, in any case.’ He drank some brandy. A brain alive above a flagging body. ‘Our Mr Young is a middle-aged businessmen with a hearing aid, a black Rolls and a reason for carrying plaster of Paris. Pity we can’t, as they say, run that lot through the computer.’

‘Any self-respecting computer would come up with a consultant surgeon, ear, nose and throat.’

Gerard was startled. ‘You don’t suppose...? No, most unlikely.’

‘Computers only spit out what you feed in.’

‘Whereas you can feed countless facts into a human being and get no connections at all.’ He sighed resignedly. ‘All right, then. Work arising. Find out if Larry Trent had a brother. Search further to know how Kenneth Junior knew Zarac. Sort out bottling plants. And Rannoch, by the way, have posted to us profile analyses of the loads they sent in Charter’s tankers. If you can wheedle a sample from the Silver Moondance out of your pal Ridger, I can get the comparisons made. For proof rather than speculation.’ He paused. ‘Anything else?’

‘Well...’ I hesitated.

‘Go on.’

‘Ramekin, then. The horse Flora saw Larry Trent buy at Doncaster Sales a year ago. If Ramekin was snipped abroad, someone shipped it. There aren’t so very many shippers. They’d have Ramekin in their records... racehorses have passports, like people. Masses of export documents, besides. If we could find the shipper we’d know the destination. Larry Trent might always have used the same shipper and sold all the horses through one agent at the same destination... If you’ve set up a line, so to speak, you carry on using it. The agent at the far end might know... just might know... whose cash had bought the horses. The real owner, for whom Larry Trent was acting.’

He listened intently, but he said, ‘That’s stretching it.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘I’ll see how much is involved.’

‘Do you want me to do it?’

He shook his head. ‘We’ll do it in the office, if at all. We have country-wide ‘phone books and our staff are used to that sort of routine. They make it sound enormously official and get the most surprising results. They’ll do the bottling plant sales and leases first; a long job but more promising.’

‘I suppose it would be too simple...’ I began diffidently.

‘What would?’

‘I mean... you could try them first... there’s nothing to lose...’

‘Do get on,’ he said.

I felt foolish. I said, ‘The plants to which Kenneth Charter took red wine in his tankers.’

Gerard looked at me levelly for a while with unblinking eyes. ‘Right,’ he said eventually, without inflection. ‘We’ll start with those. As you say, nothing to lose.’ He looked at his watch and took the second-to-last mouthful of his brandy. ‘Tina will be locking me out.’

‘Come any time,’ I said.

I didn’t mean to sound lonely, but maybe that’s what he heard. He looked at the photograph of Emma and myself on our wedding day which stood on a table near him in a silver frame. We were laughing in a shower of bubbles from a shaken-up champagne bottle in the hands of my best man, and Emma had liked the picture for its informality. ‘Most brides and grooms look like waxworks,’ she’d said. ‘At least you can tell we were alive.’

‘You were a good-looking couple,’ Gerard said neutrally. ‘And happy.’

‘Yes.’

‘How did she die?’

He asked it straightforwardly, without emotion, and after a moment I answered him similarly, as I had learned to do, as if it happened to someone else.

‘She had a sub-arachnoid haemorrhage. Something called Berry’s aneurism. In effect a blood vessel split in her brain.’

‘But...’ His gaze slid to the photograph, ‘... how old was she?’

‘Twenty-seven.’

‘So young.’

‘Apparently it can happen at any age.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘She was pregnant,’ I said, and surprised myself. I normally didn’t say that. Normally I said the absolute minimum. But to Gerard, after months of silence, I found myself slowly telling it all, wanting to and not wanting to, trying to keep my voice steady and not cry... for God’s sake don’t cry.

‘She’d been having headaches on and off for ages. Then she had backaches. Nothing specific. Just aches in her spine. Everyone put it down to her being pregnant. And it passed off... until next time. Every week or so, for a day or two. One Sunday when she was nearly six months pregnant she woke up with one of those headaches, a fairly bad one. She took some aspirins but they never did much good. It got worse during the morning and when I went to do the midday stint in the shop she said she would go to bed and sleep it off. But when I got back she was crying... moaning... with pain. I tried to get a doctor... but it took ages... it was Sunday afternoon... Sunday... an ambulance finally came for her but by then she was begging me... begging me somehow to knock her out... but how could I? I couldn’t. We were both terrified... more than frightened... it was so implacable... she was in awful agony in the ambulance... hitting her head with her fists... nothing I could do... I couldn’t even hold her... she was yelling, rolling, jerking with pain. At the end of the journey she went slowly unconscious, and I was glad for her, even though by then I feared... well, I feared.’

‘My dear man.’

I sat for a while looking back to the past, and then swallowed and told him the rest of it coldly.

‘She was in a coma for four days, going deeper... I stayed with her. They let me stay. They said they couldn’t save the baby, it was too soon. In another month, perhaps... They told me the blood vessel must have been leaking for ages... it was the blood leaking into her brain and down her spinal nerves that had given her the headaches and backaches... but even if they’d diagnosed the trouble earlier they couldn’t have done much... it would have split open more one day, as it did... so perhaps it was better we didn’t know.’

I stopped. No tears. All I couldn’t have borne at that point was sympathy, and Gerard didn’t offer it.

‘Life’s most unfair,’ he said calmly.

‘Yes.’

He didn’t say I would get over it, or that time was a great healer. He didn’t say I would find another girl. Marry again... I approved of Gerard more and more.

‘Thank you for telling me,’ he said.

‘I don’t usually,’ I said apologetically.

‘No. Flora told me. You clam up, she said, if anyone asks.’

‘Flora chatters.’

‘Chattering does good, sometimes.’

I was silent. What I felt, having told him about Emma, was a sort of release. Chattering helped. Sometimes.

He finished his brandy and stood up to go. ‘If you have any more thoughts, telephone.’

‘O.K.’

He walked towards the door and stopped by a side table upon which stood three or four more photo frames among Emma’s collection of shells.

‘Your mother?’ he asked, picking up the lady on horseback with hounds. ‘Most handsome.’

‘Mother,’ I nodded.

He put her down. Picked up another. ‘Father?’

‘Father.’

He looked at the strong amused face above the colonel’s uniform with its double row of medal ribbons, at the light in the eyes and the tilt of the chin, at the firm half-smiling mouth.

‘You’re like him,’ Gerard said.

‘Only in looks.’ I turned away. ‘I loved him when I was small. Adored him. He died when I was eleven.’

He put the picture down and peered at the others. ‘No brothers or sisters?’

‘No.’ I grinned faintly. ‘My birth interfered with a whole season’s hunting. Once was enough, my mother said.’

Gerard glanced at me. ‘You don’t mind?’

‘No, I never did. I never minded being alone until I got used to something else.’ I shrugged abruptly. ‘I’m basically all right alone. I will be again, in the end.’

Gerard merely nodded and moved on out into the hall and from there to the kitchen and beyond to the rear door, where neither of us shook hands because of the slings.

‘A most productive and interesting evening,’ he said.

‘I enjoy your company.’

He seemed almost surprised. ‘Do you? Why?’

‘You don’t expect too much.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like... er... Chinese takeaway on your knees.’ It wasn’t what I truly meant, but it would do.

He made an untranslatable noise low in his throat, hearing the evasion and not agreeing with it. ‘I expect more than you think. You underestimate yourself.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘Good night.’

‘Good night.’

He drove away and I locked the doors and went back through the house to fetch the supper dishes, to stack them in the dishwasher. I thought of what I’d said to him about being all right alone, hearing in memory in the accumulated voices of years of customers the sighs and sadnesses of the bereaved. They talked of the common experience that was freshly awful for each individual. Two years, they said, was what it took. Two years before the sun shone. After two years the lost person became a memory, the loss itself bearable. I’d listened to them long before I thought of needing their wisdom, and I believed them still. Grief couldn’t be escaped, but it would pass.

I finished tidying downstairs and went up to bed, to the room where Emma and I had made love.

I still slept there. She often seemed extraordinarily near. I woke sometimes in the early hours and stretched out for her, forgetting. I heard the memory of her giggle in the dark.

We had been lucky in love; passionate and well matched, equal in satisfaction. I remembered chiefly her stomach flat, her breasts unswollen, remembered the years of utter fun, her gleeful orgasms, the sharp incredible ecstasy of ejaculation. It was better to remember that.

The room was quiet now. No unseen presence. No restless spirit hovering.

If I lived with ghosts, they were within me: Emma, my father and the titanic figure of my grandfather, impossibly brave. They lived in me not condemning but unconsoling. I struggled forever to come to terms with them, for if I didn’t I was sunk, but all three of their shadows fell long.

Pregnancy might recently have raised Emma’s blood pressure, they’d said. It was quite common. Higher blood pressure would have put too much strain on the slow leak, opening it wider... too wide.

Pregnancy itself, they’d said, had tipped the scales towards death. Although we had both wanted children, the seed that I’d planted had killed her.