Straight

20

It was a long dreary evening, but not without humor. M I sat quietly apart most of the time in Greville’s chair, largely ignored while relays of people came and efficiently measured, photographed, took fingerprints and dug bullets out of walls.

There had been a barrage of preliminary questions in my direction which had ended with Rollway groaning his way back to consciousness.

Although the police didn’t like advice from a civilian, they did, at mild suggestion, handcuff him before he was fully awake, which was just as well, as the bullish violence was the first part of his personality to surface. He was on his feet, trashing about, mumbling, before he knew where he was.

While a policeman on each side of him held his arms, he stared at me, his eyes slowly focusing. I was still at that time on the floor, thankful to have his weight off me. He looked as if he couldn’t believe what was happening, and in the same flat uninflected voice as before, called me a bastard, among other things not as innocuous.

“I knew you were trouble,” he said. He was still too groggy to keep a rein on his tongue. “You won’t live to see evidence, I’ll see to that.”

The police phlegmatically arrested him formally, told him his rights and said he would get medical attention at the police station. I watched him stumble away, thinking of the irony of the decision I’d made earlier not to accuse him of anything at all, much less, as now, of shooting people. I hadn’t known he’d shot Simms. I hadn’t feared him at all. It didn’t seem to have occurred to him that I might not act against him on the matter of cocaine. He’d been ready to kill to prevent it. Yet I hadn’t suspected him even of being a large-scale dealer until he’d boasted of it.

While the investigating activity went on around me, I wondered if it were because drug runners cared so little for the lives of others that they came so easily to murder.

Like Vaccaro, I thought, gunning down his renegade pilots from a moving car. Perhaps that was a habitual mode of cleanup among drug kings. Copycat murder, everyone had thought about Simms, and everyone had been right.

People like Rollway and Vaccaro held other people’s lives cheap because they aimed anyway at destroying them. They made addiction and corruption their business, willfully intended to profit from the collapse and unhappiness of countless lives, deliberately enticed young people onto a one-way misery trail. I’d read that people could snort cocaine for two or three years before the physical damage hit. The drug growers, shippers, wholesalers knew that. It gave them time for steady selling. Their greed had filthy feet.

The underlying immorality, the aggressive callousness had themselves to be corrupting; addictive. Rollway had self-destructed, like his victims.

I wondered how people grew to be like him. I might condemn them, but I didn’t understand them. They weren’t happy-go-lucky dishonest, like Pross. They were uncaring and cold. As Elliot Trelawney had said, the logic of criminals tended to be weird. If I ever added to Greville’s notebook, I thought, it would be something like “The ways of the crooked are mysterious to the straight,” or even “What makes the crooked crooked and the straight straight?” One couldn’t trust the sociologists’ easy answers.

I remembered an old story I’d heard sometime. A scorpion asked a horse for a ride across a raging torrent. Why not? said the horse, and obligingly started to swim with the scorpion on his back. Halfway across, the scorpion stung the horse. The horse, fatally poisoned, said, “We will both drown now. Why did you do that?” And the scorpion said, “Because it’s my nature.”

Nicholas Loder wasn’t going to worry or wonder about anything anymore; and his morality, under stress, had risen up unblemished and caused his death. Injustice and irony everywhere, I thought, and felt regret for the man who couldn’t acquiesce in my murder.

He had taken cocaine himself, that much was clear. He’d become perhaps dependent on Rollway, had perhaps been more or less blackmailed by him into allowing his horses to be tampered with. He’d been frightened I would find him out: but in the end he hadn’t been evil, and Rollway had seen it, had seen he couldn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut after all.

Through Loder, Rollway had known where to find me on Sunday afternoon, and through him he’d known where to find me this Wednesday evening. Yet Nicholas Loder hadn’t knowingly set me up. He’d been used by his supposed friend; and I hadn’t seen any danger in reporting on Sunday morning that I’d be lunching with Milo and the Ostermeyers or saying I would be in Greville’s house ready for Gemstones’ bids.

I hadn’t specifically been keeping myself safe from Rollway, whatever he might believe, but from an unidentified enemy, someone there and dangerous, but unrecognized.

Irony everywhere...

I thought about Martha and Harley and the cocaine in Dozen Roses. I would ask them to keep the horse and race him, and I’d promise that if he never did any good I would give them their money back and send him to auction. What the Jockey Club and the racing press would have to say about the whole mess boggled the mind. We might still lose the York race: would have to, I guessed.

I thought of Clarissa in the Selfridge Hotel struggling to behave normally with a mind filled with visions of violence. I hoped she would ring up her Henry, reach back to solid ground, mourn Greville peacefully, be glad she’d saved his brother. I would leave the Wizard’s alarm set to 4:20 P.M., and remember them both when I heard it: and one could say it was sentimental, that their whole affair had been packed with sentimental behavior, but who cared, they’d enjoyed it, and I would endorse it.

At some point in the evening’s proceedings a highly senior plainclothes policeman arrived whom everyone else deferred to and called sir.

He introduced himself as Superintendent Ingold and invited a detailed statement from me, which a minion wrote down. The superintendent was short, piercing, businesslike, and considered what I said with pauses before his next question, as if internally computing my answers. He was also, usefully, a man who liked racing: who sorrowed over Nicholas Loder and knew of my existence.

I told him pretty plainly most of what had happened, omitting only a few things: the precise way Rollway had asked for his tube, and Clarissa’s presence, and the dire desperation of the minutes before she’d arrived. I made that hopeless fight a lot shorter, a lot easier, a rapid knockout.

“The crutches?” he inquired. “What are they for?”

“A spot of trouble with an ankle at Cheltenham.”

“When was that?”

“Nearly two weeks ago.”

He merely nodded. The crutch handles were quite heavy enough for clobbering villains, and he sought no other explanation.

It all took a fair while, with the pauses and the writing. I told him about the car crash near Hungerford. I said I thought it possible that it had been Rollway who shot Simms. I said that of course they would compare the bullets the Hungerford police had taken from the Daimler with those just now dug out of Greville’s walls, and those no doubt to be retrieved from Nicholas Loder’s silent form. I wondered innocently what sort of car Rollway drove. The Hungerford police, I told the superintendent, were looking for a gray Volvo.

After a pause a policeman was dispatched to search the street. He came back wide-eyed with his news and was told to put a cordon round the car and keep the public off.

It was by then well past dark. Every time the police or officials came into the house, the mechanical dog started barking and the lights repeatedly blazed on. I thought it amusing which says something for my lightheaded state of mind but it wore the police nerves to irritation.

“The switches are beside the front door,” I said to one of them eventually. “Why don’t you flip them all up?”

They did, and got peace.

“Who threw the flowerpot into the television?” the superintendent wanted to know.

“Burglars. Last Saturday. Two of your men came round.”

“Are you ill?” he said abruptly.

“No. Shaken.”

He nodded. Anyone would be, I thought.

One of the policemen mentioned Rollway’s threat that I wouldn’t live to give evidence. To be taken seriously, perhaps.

Ingold looked at me speculatively. “Does it worry you?”

“I’ll try to be careful.”

He smiled faintly. “Like on those horses?” The smile disappeared. “You could do worse than hire someone to mind your back for a while.”

I nodded my thanks. Brad, I thought dryly, would be ecstatic.

They took poor Nicholas Loder away. I would emphasize his bravery, I thought, and save what could be saved of his reputation. He had given me, after all, a chance of life.

Eventually the police wanted to seal the sitting room, although the superintendent said it was a precaution only: the events of the evening seemed crystal clear.

He handed me the crutches and asked where I would be going.

“Upstairs to bed,” I said.

“Here?” He was surprised. “In this house?”

“This house,” I said, “is a fortress. Until one lowers the drawbridge, that is.”

They sealed the sitting room, let themselves out, and left me alone in the newly quiet hallway.

I sat on the stairs and felt awful. Cold. Shivery. Old and gray. What I needed was a hot drink to get warm from inside, and there was no way I was going down to the kitchen. Hot water from the bathroom tap upstairs would do fine, I thought.

As happened in many sorts of battle, it wasn’t the moment of injury that was worst, but the time a couple of hours later when the body’s immediate natural anesthetic properties subsided and let pain take over: nature’s marvelous system for allowing a wild animal to flee to safety before hiding to lick its wounds with healing saliva. The human animal was no different. One needed the time to escape, and one needed the pain afterward to say something was wrong.

At the moment of maximum adrenaline, fight-or-flight, I’d believed I could run on that ankle. It had been mechanics that had defeated me, not instinct, not willingness. Two hours later, the idea of even standing on it was impossible. Movement alone became breathtaking. I’d sat in Greville’s chair for another two long hours after that, concentrating on policemen, blanking out feeling.

With them gone, there was no more pretending. However much I might protest in my mind, however much rage I might feel, I knew the damage to bones and ligaments was about as bad as before. Rollway had cracked them apart again. Back to square one... and the Hennessy only four and a half weeks away... and I was bloody well going to ride Datepalm in it, and I wasn’t going to tell anyone about tonight’s little stamping-ground, no one knew except Rollway and he wouldn’t boast about that.

If I stayed away from Lambourn for two weeks, Milo wouldn’t find out; not that he would himself care all that much. If he didn’t know, though, he couldn’t mention it to anyone else. No one expected me to be racing again for another four weeks. If I simply stayed in London for two of those and ran Greville’s business, no one would comment. Then once I could walk I’d go down to Lambourn and ride every day, get physiotherapy, borrow the Electrovet... it could be done... piece of cake.

Meanwhile there were the stairs.

Up in Greville’s bathroom, in a zipped bag with my washing things, I would find the envelope the orthopedic surgeon had given me, which I’d tucked into a waterproof pocket and traveled around with ever since. In the envelope, three small white tablets not as big as aspirins, more or less with my initials on: DF 118s. Only as a last resort, the orthopedist had said.

Wednesday evening, I reckoned, qualified.

I went up the stairs slowly, backward, sitting down, hooking the crutches up with me. If I dropped them, I thought, they would slither down to the bottom again. I wouldn’t drop them.

It was pretty fair hell. I reminded myself astringently that people had been known to crawl down mountains with much worse broken bones: they wouldn’t have made a fuss over one little flight upward. Anyway, there had to be an end to everything, and eventually I sat on the top step, with the crutches beside me, and thought that the DF 118s weren’t going to fly along magically to my tongue. I still had to get them.

I shut my eyes and put both hands round my ankle on top of the bandage. I could feel the heat and it was swelling again already, and there was a pulse hammering somewhere.

Damn it, I thought. God bloody damn it. I was used to this sort of pain, but it never made it any better. I hoped Rollway’s head was banging like crazy.

I made it to the bathroom, ran the hot water, opened the door of the medicine cabinet, pulled out and unzipped my bag.

One tablet, no pain, I thought. Two tablets, spaced out. Three tablets, unconscious.

Three tablets had definite attractions but I feared I might wake in the morning needing them again and wishing I’d been wiser. I swallowed one with a glassful of hot water and waited for miracles.

The miracle that actually happened was extraordinary but had nothing to do with the pills.

I started at my gray face in the mirror over the basin. Improvement, I thought after a while, was a long time coming. Perhaps the damned things didn’t work.

Be patient.

Take another...

No. Be patient.

I looked vaguely at the objects in the medicine cupboard. Talc. Deodorant. Shaving cream. Shaving cream. Most of one can of shaving cream had been squirted all over the mirror by Jason. A pale blue and gray can: “Unscented,” it said.

Greville had an electric razor as well, I thought inconsequentially. It was on the dressing chest. I’d borrowed it that morning. Quicker than a wet shave, though not so long lasting.

The damn pill wasn’t working.

I looked at the second one longingly.

Wait a bit.

Think about something else.

I picked up the second can of shaving cream which was scarlet and orange and said “Regular Fragrance.” I shook the can and took off the cover and tried to squirt foam onto the mirror.

Nothing happened. I shook it. Tried again. Nothing at all.

Guile and misdirection, I thought. Hollow books and green stone boxes with keyholes but no keys. Safes in concrete, secret drawers in desks... Take nothing at face value. Greville’s mind was a maze... and he wouldn’t have used scented shaving cream.

I twisted the shaving cream can this way and that and the bottom ring moved and began to turn in my hand. I caught my breath. Didn’t really believe it. I went on turning... unscrewing.

It would be another empty hiding place, I told myself. Get a grip on hope. I unscrewed the whole bottom of the can, and from a nest of cotton wool a chamois leather pouch fell out into my hand.

Well, all right, I thought, but it wouldn’t be diamonds.

With the help of the crutches I took the pouch into the bedroom and sat on Greville’s bed, and poured onto the bedspread a little stream of dullish-looking pea-sized lumps of carbon.

I almost stopped breathing. Time stood still. I couldn’t believe it. Not after everything...

With shaking fingers I counted them, setting them in small clumps of five.

Ten... fifteen... twenty... twenty-five.

Twenty-five meant I’d got fifty percent. Half of what Greville had bought. With half, Saxony Franklin would be safe. I offered heartbursting thanks to the fates. I came dangerously near to crying.

Then, with a sense of revelation, I knew where the rest were. Where they had to be. Greville really had taken them with him to Ipswich, as he’d told Pross. I guessed he’d taken them thinking he might give them to the Maarten-Pagnier partner to take back to Antwerp for cutting.

I’d searched through the things in his car and had found nothing, and I’d held his diamonds in my hand and not known it.

They were... they had to be... in that other scarlet and orange can, in the apparent can of shaving cream in his overnight bag, safe as Fort Knox now under the stairs of Brad’s mum’s house in Hungerford. She’d taken all Greville’s things in off the street, out of my car, to keep them safe in a dodgy neighborhood. In memory I could hear Brad’s pride in her.

“Smart, our mum...”

The DF 118 was at last taking the edge off the worst.

I rolled the twenty-five precious pebbles around under my fingers with indescribable joy and thought how relieved Greville would have been. Sleep easy, pal, I told him, uncontrollably smiling. I’ve finally found them.

He’d left me his business, his desk, his gadgets, his enemies, his horses, his mistress. Left me Saxony Franklin, the Wizard, the shaving cream cans, Prospero Jenks and Nicholas Loder, Dozen Roses, Clarissa.

I’d inherited his life and laid him to rest; and at that moment, though I might hurt and I might throb, I didn’t think I had ever been happier.