Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,102

He smiled slightly. ‘By Friday afternoon we had concluded in the office that your idea of looking first at the plants to which Charter’s tankers took wine had been good but wrong. There were five of them. We screened them all first, and all of them were rock-solid businesses. Then some time during last night… you know how things float into your head while you’re half asleep… I remembered that one of them had had two links with Charter, not just one, and that maybe, just maybe, that second link is more important than we thought.’

‘Tell me,’ I said.

‘Mm. I don’t want to be too positive.’

‘For heaven’s sake…’

‘All right then. We established right at the beginning of our bottle-plant enquiries that one of the plants is owned by a man called Stewart Naylor. It was at the top of the list that Charter gave us, and the first we checked.’

‘Stewart Naylor?’ I thought. ‘He’s… he’s… um… isn’t he mentioned in Kenneth Junior’s notebook? Oh yes… the father who plays war games… David Naylor’s father.’

‘Top of the class. Stewart Naylor owns Bernard Naylor Bottling. Started by his grandfather. Old respectable firm. I woke up with that word Naylor fizzing like a sparkler in my head. I telephoned Kenneth Charter himself early this morning and asked him about his son’s friendship with David Naylor. He says he’s known the father, Stewart Naylor, for years: they’re not close friends but they know each other quite well because of their business connection and because their sons like each other’s company. Kenneth Charter says David Naylor is the only good thing in Kenneth Junior’s lazy life, he keeps Kenneth Junior off the streets. War games, Kenneth Charter thinks, are a waste of time, but better than glue-sniffing.’

‘His words?’ I asked amused.

‘Aye, laddie.’

‘Do you really think…’

‘Kenneth Charter doesn’t. Grasping at straws, he thinks it. He says Bernard Naylor Bottling is twenty-four carat. But we’ve found no other leads at all, and we’ve been checking bottling plants up and down the country until the entire staff are sick at the sound of the words. Three days’ concentrated work, fruitless. A lot of them have gone out of business. One’s a library now. Another’s a boot and shoe warehouse.’

‘Mm,’ I said. ‘Could Stewart Naylor have an illegitimate half-brother?’

‘Anyone can have an illegitimate half-brother. It happens to the best.’

‘I mean…’

‘I know what you mean. Kenneth Charter didn’t know of one.’ He shrugged. ‘Naylor’s plant’s a long shot. Either a bullseye or a case for apology. I’ll go and find out.’

‘Right now?’

‘Absolutely right now. If Stewart Naylor is by any chance also Paul Young, he should be going to or from Martineau Park this afternoon, not stalking about among his bottles.’

‘Did you ask Kenneth Charter what he looked like?’

‘Yes… ordinary, he said.’

All these ordinary men… ‘Is he deaf?’ 1 asked.

Gerald blinked. ‘I forgot about that.’

‘Ask him,’ I said. ‘Telephone now, before you go.’

‘And if Stewart Naylor is deaf… don’t go?’

‘Quite right. Don’t go.’

Gerard shook his head. ‘All the more reason to go.’

‘It’s flinging oneself into the Limpopo,’ I said.

‘Perhaps. Only perhaps. Nothing’s certain.’ He returned to the telephone, however, and dialled Kenneth Charter’s house and then his office, and to neither attempt was there a reply.

‘That’s it, then,’ he said calmly. ‘I’ll be off.’

‘Have you ever been in a bottling plant?’ I said despairingly. ‘I mean… do you know what to look for?’

‘No.’

I stared at him. He stared right back. In the end I said, ‘I spent a year in and out of bottling plants in Bordeaux.’

‘Did you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me, then, what to look for.’

I thought of pumps and machinery. I thought of vats and what might be in them. I said hopelessly, ‘You need me with you, don’t you?’

‘I’d like it,’ he said. ‘But I won’t ask. It’s on the very edge of consultancy… and maybe beyond.’

‘You wouldn’t know the wine if you fell into it, would you?’ I said. ‘Nor the scotch?’

‘Not a chance,’ he agreed placidly.

‘Bloody sodding hell,’ I said. ‘You’re a bugger.’

He smiled. ‘I thought you’d come, really, if I told you.’

TWENTY

I put a notice on my shop door saying,’Closed. Very sorry. Staff illness. Open Monday 9.30 a.m.’

I’m mad, I thought. Crazy.

If I didn’t go, he would go on his own.

My thoughts stopped there. I couldn’t let him go on his own when it was I who had the knowledge he needed. When he felt tired and ill and I was well and almost as strong as ever.

I sat at my desk and wrote a note to