Decider - By Dick Francis Page 0,106

if sunburnt: a first-degree soreness, nothing worse. Dead lucky, I thought, that the shirt had been thick pure wool, not melting nylon.

When the boys were ready I marched them over to Mrs Gardner and begged her to give them hot sweet drinks and cake, if she had any.

‘My dears,’ she said, embracing them, ‘come on in.’

‘Don’t leave us, Dad,’ Edward said.

‘I have to talk to the Colonel, but I won’t be long.’

‘Can I come with you?’ Christopher asked.

I looked at his height, listened to the already deepening voice, saw the emerging man in the boy and his wish to leave childhood behind.

‘Hop in the car,’ I said and, deeply pleased, he sat beside me on the short return journey.

‘When you went up to the big top,’ I asked him, ‘what did Keith Stratton say to you?’

‘That man!’ Christopher shuddered. ‘It seemed all right at first. He told us to go into the big top. He said you would be coming.’

‘So then?’ I prompted, as he stopped.

‘So we went in, and he came in behind us. He told us to go on ahead, and we did.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then…’ he hesitated, ‘it got weird, Dad. I mean, he picked up a can that was lying there and took the cap off, and we could smell it was petrol. Then he put the can down again and picked up that rod thing, and flicked his lighter, and the end of the rod lit up like those torches in Ku Klux Klan films.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then he poured petrol onto the floor and trailed the torch into it and of course it went on fire, but just in one place.’ He paused, remembering. ‘We began to be scared, Dad. You’ve always told us never to put fire near petrol, and he had a big can of it in one hand and the torch in the other. He told us to go up further into the big top and he came along behind us and started another fire, and then another, and lots of them and we got really frightened, but all he said was that you would come soon. “Your father will come.” He gave us the creeps, Dad. He didn’t behave like a grown-up. He wasn’t sensible, Dad.’

‘No.’

‘He told us to go on further in, past that sort of stand thing that was there, and he put the torch into it so that it just burned there, and wasn’t swinging about, and that was better, but we still didn’t like it. But he put the petrol can down too, and then he just looked at us and smiled, and it was awful, I mean, I can’t describe it.’

‘You’re doing well.’

‘He frightened me rigid, Dad. We all wanted to be out of there. Then Alan darted past him suddenly and then Edward, and I did too, and he yelled at us and ran about to stop us and we dodged him and ran, I mean, pelted, Dad… and then Toby didn’t come out after us, and Neil started screaming… and that’s when you came.’

I stopped the car beside Roger’s jeep. Keith’s Jaguar stood beyond, and beyond that, a police car.

‘And he didn’t say anything else?’ I asked.

‘No, only something about not being blackmailed by you. I mean, it was silly, you wouldn’t blackmail anyone.’

I smiled inwardly at his faith. Blackmail wasn’t necessarily for money.

‘No,’ I said. ‘All the same, don’t repeat that bit, OK?’

‘No, Dad, OK.’

Feeling curiously lightheaded, I walked across to the office with Christopher and told the police, when they asked, that I had no idea why Keith Stratton had behaved as irrationally as he had.

It was Friday before I left Stratton Park.

All Wednesday afternoon I replied ‘I don’t know’ to relays of police questions, and agreed that I would return dutifully for an inquest.

I said nothing about rushing at Keith to overbalance him. It didn’t sound sensible. I said nothing about Neil.

When asked, I said I hadn’t used a fire extinguisher to try to save Keith’s life, because I couldn’t find one.

‘Four of them were lying out of sight in the bar area,’ Roger told me.

‘Who put them there?’ the police asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

Christopher told the law that Keith was a ‘nutter’. They listened politely enough and decided he was too young to be called as an inquest witness, as he had anyway not himself been present at the moment of the accident.

The Press came; took photographs; asked questions, got the same answers.

A policewoman, in my presence, asked the younger boys later, down at