Proof

Seventeen

Flora came breathlessly into the shop soon after I’d opened it on the Saturday morning, saying she was on her way to fetch Jack home and wanted to thank me again for my help with Howard and Orkney Swayle.

‘There’s no need. I enjoyed it.’

‘All the same, Tony dear, I want you to have this.’ She put a gift-wrapped parcel on the counter, and when I opened my mouth to protest said, ‘Now don’t argue, Tony dear, it’s for you and it’s not enough, it’s very small and I expect you have one already, but I’ll have my hands full when Jack’s home so I thought I’d bring it for you now.’

She patted my hand in motherly fashion and I bent to kiss her cheek.

‘You’re very naughty,’ I said. ‘But thank you.’

‘That’s right dear. Where’s your sling?’

‘I forgot it this morning. It’s at home.’

‘Don’t tire yourself, dear, will you? And we’ll need some more drinks whenever you’ve time.’ She fished in her handbag and produced a list. ‘After Jack’s home the owners will start coming again and some of them drink like fish, though I shouldn’t say it, and Jack says he’s going to add it on their bills as medicine for the horses, which you can’t blame him for, can you, dear?’

‘Er... no.’

She put the list on the counter beside the present, and, saying she had a thousand things to see to on her way to the hospital, went lightfootedly away.

I unwrapped the parcel curiously and found that although it was small in size it couldn’t have been in price. The box inside the glazed white paper had come from a jeweller in Reading, and it contained, in a nest of red velvet, a silver penknife.

Not one that would necessarily gladden the hearts of Boy Scouts. Not knobbly with thirteen blades and a hook for taking stones out of horses’ hooves, like the one which had been the pride of my childhood. A slim elegantly tooled affair with a sharp steel cutting blade tucked into one side and a second blade on the other which turned out to be a screwdriver. I liked both the look and the feel, and although it was true I already had a knife, it was old and blunt. I took the old knife out of my pocket and replaced it with the new, and thought friendly thoughts of Flora all morning.

Ridger added to my pleasure by telephoning to say there would be no more pub crawls for a few days as he had been assigned to other duties, but we would resume on Wednesday and he would be along for me then at ten-fifteen.

I suppose I should have told him about Mrs Alexis and the mysterious Vernon with his telephone number, but I didn’t. It seemed odd to me to find that my allegiance was to Gerard rather than to the police. I had caught from him quite thoroughly, it seemed, the belief that the paying client’s interests came first, with public justice second.

I did actually half jokingly ask Ridger who I should tell if I came across the suspect scotch when I wasn’t in his own company, and he answered seriously, after earnest thought, that I’d probably better tell Chief Superintendent Wilson straight away, as Ridger himself along with many of the county’s police was having to go up north to help deal with some ugly picketing, which made a change, and he couldn’t tell who’d be on duty while he was away.

‘How would I reach the Chief Superintendent?’ I asked.

He told me to wait a moment and came back with a number which would reach the Zarac investigation room direct. Night or day, he said. Priority.

‘Would the Silver Moondance scotch be priority?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Anything would.’

‘O.K., Sergeant. See you on Wednesday.’

He said he hoped so, and goodbye.

Relieved at being let off the drinking I sold a lot of wine to a flood of customers, with Mrs Palissey busily beaming and Brian carrying the loads out to the cars, and it seemed as if it would be for once a normal day until Tina McGregor telephoned at eleven.

‘Gerard’s gone up to the office,’ she said. ‘I wish he wouldn’t on Saturdays and particularly as he’s not right yet from last Sunday, but it’s like arguing with a bulldozer... Anyway, he asked me to tell you they’ve traced the number you gave him yesterday and it doesn’t look too promising. It’s the number of the big caterers at Martineau Park racecourse. He says if you’d care to go along there you might ask them if Vernon — is that right? — still works for them. He says if you should see Vernon yourself he’ll leave it up to you to decide whether or not to ask him where he got the scotch and wines from. Is that all right?’

‘Yes, fine,’ I said. ‘How’s his shoulder?’

‘He’s being utterly tight-lipped about it and they’ve put him on antibiotics.’

‘It’s infected?’ I asked, alarmed.

‘He didn’t say. I just wish he’d slow down.’

She sounded neither anxious nor angry, but one could never tell Tina’s reactions from her voice. I said weakly, ‘I’m sorry,’ and she answered, ‘No need to be,’ in the same calm tone, and said Gerard would like me to telephone him at his home later to let him know how I got on at Martineau Park.

It was odd, I reflected, putting down the receiver, to think that I had been at Martineau Park races so long on Tuesday afternoon totally oblivious of the existence of Vernon among the caterers Orkney Swayle so much detested. Life, as Gerard said, was full of ironies.

Mrs Palissey, geared to my planned absence with Ridger, took my substitute trip to Martineau Park in her stride. ‘Of course, Mr Beach. No trouble at all.’

Grudge-and-spite might be the prevailing social climate but Mrs Palissey rose gloriously above it. Mrs Palissey was a non-interfering do-gooder, heaven reward her. I said I would make it up to her later, and she said, ‘Yes, Yes,’ as if it didn’t matter one way or the other.

I drove to Martineau Park wondering if in fact there would be anyone there. It wasn’t a race day. There would be no crowds. I hadn’t before been to a racecourse on a non-racing day and didn’t know what level of activity to expect in the way of managers, maintenance, groundsmen or cleaners. The whole catering department would very likely be locked. I would quite likely be turning round to drive straight back.

The gates into the members’ car park at least stood open, unguarded. I drove through them and across the unpopulated expanses of cindery grass, leaving the Rover at the end of a short row of cars near the entrance to the paddock. That gate too was open and unattended, where on race days watchful officials checked the admittance badges of the throng streaming through.

It was eerie, I thought, to see the place so deserted. Without people the bulky line of buildings seemed huge. Bustling human life somehow reduced their proportions, filled their spaces, made them friendlier, brought them to comfortable size. I hadn’t realised how big the place was in all the days I’d been there.

There was no one about around the weighing room area, though the doors there too were open. I went curiously inside, looking at the holies from where racegoers were normally barred, peering with interest at the scales themselves and at the flat pieces of lead used for packing weight-cloths. I went on into the jockeys’ changing rooms and looked at the rows of empty pegs, empty benches, empty racks for saddles: all echoingly bare with no scrap of personal life remaining. When the racing circus moved on, it took all with it but the dust.

Gerard might consider the detour a waste of time, but I would probably never get such an opportunity again. I peered for good measure into a room marked ‘Stewards’ which contained merely a table, six undistinguished chairs and two pictures ditto. No mementos, no records of the make-or-break enquiries held there.

Returning to fresh air and the allotted task I came to a door marked ‘Clerk of the Course’ which stood slightly ajar. I pushed it open tentatively and found a man sitting at a desk, writing. He raised a smooth head and bushy eyebrows and said in a civilised voice, ‘Can I help you?’

‘I’m looking for the caterers,’ I said.

‘Delivery entrance?’

‘Er... yes.’

‘You’ll want to go along the back of the stands to the far end. You’ll find the Tote building facing you. Turn right. You’ll see the Celebration Bar there alongside the Tote, but the door you want is to your right again before you get there. A green door. Not conspicuous. There are some empty beer crates just outside, unless they’ve moved them as I asked.’

‘Thank you.’

He nodded civilly and bent to his writing, and I walked to the far end of the stands and found the green door and the beer crates, as he’d said.

I found also that deliveries were at that moment taking place. A large dark van had been drawn up outside the closed front of the Celebration Bar, a van with its rear doors opened wide and two workmen in brown overalls unloading a shipment of gin from it onto a pallet on a fork-lift truck.

The green door itself stood open, propped that way by a crate. I walked through it behind the two men in overalls as they trundled inwards the make of gin which Orkney had refused to have in his box.

The door, I saw, represented the outward end of a very dimly lit passage about six feet wide which stretched away into the distance as far as one could see, and I realised that it must run under the whole length of the main bank of stands, an inner spinal thoroughfare, the gut life of the building, unseen from outside.

The gin-handlers walked onwards past three closed green painted doors marked Stores A, Stores B, and Stores C, and past an open one, Stores D, which revealed only a half dozen of the sort of deep trays used by bakers.

A few paces beyond that the gin turned abruptly to the left, and I, turning after it, found myself in a wider side passage aiming for an open but heavy and purposeful-looking door. Beyond the door were brighter lights and more people in what was clearly a larger area and I went in there wondering whether Vernon was a first name or surname, and whether there was the slightest chance of his being at work on a Saturday.

Immediately through the heavy door there was a large storeroom stacked head high with dense-packed beer crates like those outside, only these were full. To the left was a partitioned section, walls of wood to waist height, glass above, containing a desk, files, calendar, paperwork. To the right an inner door led into a still larger storeroom, a mini-warehouse where the ranks of cases of drink rose nearly to the ceiling and advanced into the central space in deep blocks. Martineau Park, I reflected, was due to hold its Autumn Carnival jump-racing meeting near the beginning of November and was stocking up accordingly. At the Cheltenham Festival in March, one wine merchant had told me, the jump-racing crowd had in three days, apart from beer by the lakeful, despatched six thousand bottles of champagne in addition to nine thousand bottles of other wines and four thousand bottles of spirits. At Martineau, by the look of things, at least double that was expected.

The gin went through into the inner warehouse to be added to a huge stack already growing there, and I again followed. One large man with a clipboard was checking off quantities and another with a black felt pen put a mark on each box as it was unloaded.

No one paid me any attention. I stood there as if invisible to all of them, and it slowly struck me that each set thought I belonged to the other. The two delivery men disengaged the fork-lift from the pallet they’d brought in, picked up an empty one from a low stack and began wheeling back to the door. The man with the pen heaved the cases into their new positions, putting his mark on each, and the man with the clipboard watched and counted.

I thought I’d better wait until they’d finished before I interrupted, and looking back it seems possible that that brief hesitation saved my life.

The telephone rang in the office section, raucously loud.

‘Go and answer that, Mervyn,’ the man with the clipboard said, and his henchman with the marker went off to obey. Then the clipboard man frowned as if remembering something, looked sharply at his watch, and called out,’Mervyn, I’ll answer it. You go and shift those beer cases like the man says. Put them in store D. Wait outside until I tell you to come back. And tell those men not to bring in the next load until I’m off the ‘phone, right?’ His gaze flicked over me, scarcely reaching my face. ‘Your job, of course,’ he said. ‘You tell them.’

He strode away fast in the direction of the office leaving me flat-footed in his wake, and presently I could hear his voice answering the telephone and could see a portion of his backview through the glass.

‘Yes, speaking. Yes, yes. Go on.’

Before I’d consciously decided whether to retire or eavesdrop another and different voice spoke loudly from the passage outside, a voice accompanied by firm approaching footsteps.

‘Vernon? Are you there?’

He came straight through the doorway and veered immediately to his left towards the office: and to my startled eyes he was unmistakable.

Paul Young.

‘Vernon!’

‘Yes, look, I’ll be with you...’ Vernon of the clipboard put the palm of his hand over the telephone and began to turn towards the newcomer, and while neither of them was looking my way I stepped backwards out of their line of sight.

Paul Young.

My mind seemed stuck; my body of lead.

To reach the outside world I would have to go past the office section and with all that glass around Paul Young would be sure to see me. He might not have taken particular note of me on that Monday morning in the Silver Moondance Saloon but he’d certainly thought of me a good deal since. The assistant assistant would have told him who I was. He’d sent the thieves to my shop with his list. He must know how that sortie had ended. He must also know it hadn’t achieved its main purpose. I thought that if he saw me now he would know me, and the idea of that filled me with numbing, muscle-paralysing fright.

Neither Vernon nor Paul Young at that exact moment seemed to be moving, but impelled no doubt by the atavistic burrowing instincts of the hunted and trapped I sought in that brightly-lit warehouse for a dark place to hide.

There were no soft nooks or crannies, just solid blocks and columns of cases of drink. There were narrow spaces between some of the blocks into which I could squeeze... and where anyone glancing in as they walked past would easily see me.

Down the far end, I thought in panicky fashion. They might not go right down there.

But I’d have to get there, and at any second, any second... It was too far. Something else... something fast...

I climbed.

I climbed the highest and most extensive stack, which happened to be of non-vintage champagne. I lay flat on my stomach along the top of it, at the back against the wall. The ceiling was eighteen inches above my head. The cases stretched beyond my feet at one end and beyond my head at the other. I co aid see nothing but cardboard. No floor. No people. My heart bounced around like a rubber ball and I wanted to shut my eyes on the ostrich principle that if I didn’t look I wouldn’t be seen.

Consultancy did not include getting too close to Paul Young.

What a hollow bloody laugh.

If he found me on top of the champagne it would be a crocodile job for sure. Did he take plaster of Paris with him always in his Rolls?

Why hadn’t I run for it? If I’d run, he might not have caught me. I ought simply to have sprinted. It would have been better. There were people around... I’d have been safe. And now here I was, marooned eight feet up on a liquid mountain and feeling more frightened than I’d ever been in my life.

They left the office and came into the main storeroom. I clenched my teeth and sweated.

If they searched for me... if they knew I was there... they would certainly find me.

‘I’m not satisfied. I want to see for myself.’

It was Paul Young’s own hard voice, full of aggressive determination and so close that he might have been speaking to me directly. I tried not to tremble... not to rustle against the cardboard... not to breathe.

‘But I’ve told you...’ the clipboard man said.

‘I don’t give a sod what you’ve told me. You’re a twisty bastard, Vernon. You’d lie as soon as spit. I’ve warned you twice and I don’t trust you. By my reckoning you should still have twenty-four cases of scotch left here and I’ve written down on this list how much you should have under each label. And I’m telling you, Vernon, you’d better show me just that much because if I find you’ve been selling any more on your own account and pocketing the proceeds, you’re out.’

Vernon said sullenly, ‘Your list won’t be up to date. I sold a lot to that wine bar in Oxford.’

‘How many labels?’ Paul Young asked sharply.

‘Two.’

That’d better be right. You can show me the invoices.’

Vernon said combatively, ‘You make selling them too difficult, not letting more than two go to each place. No one ever says they’re the same. How many complaints have we had, tell me that? Your brother’s been selling all six for years and no one’s ever said they aren’t what’s on the labels.’

Paul Young said heavily, ‘Someone must have complained, otherwise why was that snooping wine-merchant there tasting everything and telling the police? I’m not risking all six together any more, not for anyone. If you want to stay in business, Vernon, you’ll do what I tell you and don’t you forget it. Now let’s check on the stocks, and you’d better not have been cheating me, Vernon, you’d better not.’

‘It’s all down the far end,’ Vernon said glumly, and their voices faded and became less distinct as they moved away down the long room.

At the far end... and I’d have gone down there to hide, if I’d had time. Great God Almighty...

I wondered if they would see my feet. I thought of escape but knew my first movement would alert them. I thought that if the worst came to the worst I could defend myself by throwing champagne bottles. Champagne bottles were reinforced because if they broke they were like mini-grenades exploding with gas into cutting knives of glass. Flying glass was lethal, which people tended to forget because of actors crashing out harmlessly through windows in television sagas: but that fictional glass was made of sugar to safeguard the stuntmen... and little children had been killed by dropping fizzy-drink bottles... and I’d fight with champagne if I had to.

They were down at the far end for several minutes, their voices still muffled. When they came back, nothing between them had improved.

‘You had all the Silver Moondance scotch back here,’ Paul Young said furiously. ‘I brought it myself. What have you done with it?’

Silence from Vernon.

‘I put a red circle on every box from there when Zarac and I loaded it. You didn’t notice that, I suppose? I didn’t trust you, Vernon. I was sodding right not to trust you. You’ve been useful to me, I’m not saying different. But you’re not the only stores manager who can shuffle a bit of paper. You’re greedy and you’re not safe. The party’s over, Vernon. You’re short a total of twenty-eight cases by my reckoning and I won’t have people steal from me. You’ve had a fair cut. Very fair. But enough’s enough. We’re through. I’ll remove the rest of my stock tomorrow afternoon in one of the vans, and you’ll be here with the keys of this place to see to it.’

With defensive anger and no caution at all Vernon said explosively, ‘If you break with me I’ll see you regret it.’

There was a small intense silence, then in a deadly voice Paul Young said, ‘The last person who threatened me in that way was Zarac.’

Vernon made no reply. I felt my own hairs rising, my breath stifling, my skin chilling to cold.

I had heard too much.

If I’d been at risk before, it was now redoubled. And it wasn’t just the threat of death that terrified, but the manner of it... the nightmare of a soft white bandage over one’s nose and mouth, turning to rock, choking off breath... coming my way if Paul Young knew what I’d heard... or so it seemed to me, lying in fear, trying to prevent tremor or twitch from creaking through the unstable columns of boxes.

Vernon must have known what had become of Zarac. He made no reply at all, nor did Paul Young find it necessary to spell out his meaning at more length. I heard his strong gritty footsteps move away towards the doorway to the office, and after them, hesitant, shuffling, the footfalls of Vernon.

I heard Vernon’s voice saying loudly, angrily, ‘What are you doing? I told you not to bring that lot in until I was ready,’ and with the sublime disrespect for orders shown by a certain type of British workman the two men in brown overalls pushed their fork-lift truck resolutely past him into the warehouse.

I couldn’t see them, but I heard them plainly. One of them said truculently, ‘Time and a half or no time and a half, we knock off at twelve-thirty, and if this isn’t unloaded by then we’ll take it back with us. We can’t ponce about waiting for your private ‘phone calls.’

Vernon was flustered. I heard him outside calling, ‘Mervyn, Mervyn, get back here’; and when Mervyn returned it was with news that made my precarious position much worse.

‘Did you know Bakerton’s van’s here? They’ve brought fifty more cases of Pol Roger White Foil.’

Pol Roger White Foil was what I was lying on.

If they were busy with Pol Roger someone would be bound to see me. They could hardly avoid it. Delivery men wouldn’t exactly ignore a man lying on top of their boxes... they would for instance remark on it... who wouldn’t?

Vernon said disorganisedly, ‘Well if they’ve brought it... Go out and count what they unload, they left us short two cases last time... And you there with the gin, stack that lot separately, it’s not checked...’

Paul Young’s decisive voice cut through the hurrying orders. ‘Tomorrow afternoon, Vernon. Two o’clock sharp.’

Vernon’s reply was drowned as far as I was concerned by the gin handlers heating up an argument about football six paces from my toes. I could no longer hear Paul Young either. I heard too much about a questionable foul and the eyesight of the ref.

Staying on top of the champagne was hopeless, though the temptation to remain invisible was almost overwhelming. Discovery on my stomach, discovery on my feet... one or the other was inevitable.

There must be a safety of sorts, I thought, in the presence of all those delivery men.

On my feet, then.

I slithered backwards and dropped down into the narrow gap between the bulk of the Pol Roger and the smaller block of Krug beyond.

I was trembling. It wouldn’t do. I stepped from the champagne shelter numb with fright and went down to the men with the gin.

One of them broke off his denunciation of a deliberate kick at a knee cap and said/Blimey, where did you come from?’

‘Just checking,’ I said vaguely. ‘Have you finished?’

‘Near enough.’ They expertly off-loaded the last few cases. ‘That’s the lot. You want to sign our chit?’

One of them picked a yellow folded paper from his top overall pocket and held it out.

‘Er...’ I said, fishing for a pen. ‘Yes.’

I opened the yellow paper, leaned it against a case of gin, signed it illegibly in the space provided and gave it back to them.

‘Right. We’ll be off.’

They left the fork-lift truck where it was in the middle of the wide central aisle, and set off for the door. Almost without thought I grasped the truck’s handle and pushed it along in their wake, and it was in that way that I came face to face with Vernon.

There was sweat on his forehead. He looked harassed, small eyes anxious above a flourishing moustache, mouth open, breath hurried and heavy.

He gave me the smallest frown. He was accompanying an incoming load of white boxes. I let go of the truck I was pushing and walked past Vernon and the Pol Roger and was out into the passage with no sign of Paul Young, no shouts, no scalding pursuit.

I followed the brown-overalled gin men round the turn into the main passage with only a short way to go to the free open air... and there he was, Paul Young, outside the green entrance, lit by daylight, standing as if waiting, solid, shortish, unremarkable, a man without pity.

I glanced back the way I’d come. Vernon had peeled off from the champagne and was advancing after me, appearing undecided, enquiring, on the verge of suspicious.

‘You, there,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see you come in.’

‘Maintenance,’ I said briskly. ‘Just checking.’

Vernon’s frown deepened. Paul Young remained at the outer door motionless and in plain sight, watching something outside.

I turned towards the only alternative, the long passage leading deep under the stands. Vernon glanced to where I’d been looking and saw Paul Young, and his mouth tightened. I gave him no more time to crystallise his suspicions of me but set off down the long passage as if every step of the way was familiar. When I looked back after about fifteen paces Vernon was still there, still staring after me. I gave him a wave. Beyond him Paul Young still filled the way out. I continued to walk onwards, trying to control a terrible urge to run. At all costs, I told myself, don’t look back again. Vernon would begin to follow.

Don’t look back.

Don’t actually run.

I went faster and deeper to I didn’t know where.