Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,106

the way we had come in. ‘Especially old ones like this, built in the age of innocence.’

We were in a big concreted yard with a high brick building running the whole length of it on our right: small square barred windows pierced the walls in two long rows, one up, one down. At the far end of the yard, facing us, was a one-storey modern office building of panel-like construction, and on our immediate left was a gate-house which on busy days would have contained a man to check people and vehicles in and out.

No gatekeeper. His door was shut. Gerard twisted the knob, but to no avail.

Alongside the door was a window reminiscent of a ticket office, and I supposed that on working days that was where the gate-house keeper actually stood. Gerard peered through it for some time at all angles, and then readdressed himself to the door.

‘Mortice lock,’ he said, inspecting a keyhole. ‘Pity.’

‘Does it matter?’ I said. ‘I mean, there wouldn’t be much of interest in a gate-house.’

Gerard glanced at me forgivingly. ‘In old factories like this it’s quite common to find the keys to all the buildings hanging on a board in the gate-house. The gatekeeper issues keys as needed when employees arrive.’

Silenced, I watched with a parched mouth while he put a steel probe into the keyhole and concentrated on feeling his way through the tumblers, his eyes unfocussed and unseeing, all the consciousness in his fingers.

The place was deserted. No one came running across the yard demanding impossible explanations. There was a heavy click from the gate-house door and Gerard with a sigh of satisfaction put his steel probe away and again twisted the doorknob.

‘That’s better,’ he said calmly, as the door opened without protest. ‘Now let’s see.’

We stepped into a wooden floored room which contained a chair, a time-punch clock with barely six cards in a slot-holder designed for a hundred, a new-looking fire extinguisher, a poster announcing Factory Act regulations and a shallow unlocked wall-cupboard. Gerard opened the cupboard and it was just as he’d said: inside there were four rows of labelled hooks, and upon all the hooks, labelled keys.

‘All there,’ Gerard said with immense satisfaction. ‘There really is no one here. We have the place to ourselves.’ He looked along the labels, reading. ‘We’ll start with the offices. I know more about those. Then… what?’

I read the labels also. ‘Main plant. Bottle store. Label room. Vats. Dispatch. How long have we got?’

‘If Stewart Naylor is Paul Young and does what he said, he’ll be on his way now to Martineau Park. If the police detain him there we’ve at least two or three hours.’

‘It doesn’t feel like that,’ I said.

‘No. Always scary, the first few times.’

He left me again speechless. He took the keys he wanted from the hooks and indicated that I should do the same. Then we left the gate-house, closing the door (unnecessarily, I thought) behind us and walked on into the main part of the yard.

Another large brick building was revealed to the left; and any residual hopes I might have had of our establishing Stewart Naylor’s innocence and retreating in prudence were cancelled at that point. Tucked into the left hand corner of the yard stood a grey Bedford van, brown lines down the sides, devoid of number plates. I went across and looked through its windows but it held nothing: no wine, no fuzzy wigs, no shotgun.

‘God in heaven,’ Gerard said. ‘That’s the very one, isn’t it?’

‘Identical, if not.’

He sighed deeply and glanced round the yard. ‘There’s no big delivery van here marked Vintners Incorporated. It’s probably on its way to Martineau. Let’s take the offices, then, and… er… try not to leave any trace of our having been here.’

‘No,’ I said weakly.

We walked across the concrete, our shoes scrunching it seemed to me with alarming noise, and Gerard unlocked the door of the office building as if he were the manager arriving in pinstripes.

As revealed by the time-punch cards, the plant for its size was almost unstaffed. There were six small offices in the office block, four of them empty but for desk and chair, two of them showing slight paperwork activity: beyond those a locked suite of rooms marked ‘Managing Director’ on the outer door said in smaller letters underneath, ‘Knock and Enter’.

We entered without knocking, using the appropriate key from the gate-house. Inside, first of all, was a pleasasnt looking office, walls lined with calendars, charts, and posters of wine