Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,107

districts in France. There were two desks, one managerial, one secretarial, both clearly in everyday use. In-trays bore letters, receipts were spiked, an african violet bloomed next to a pot of pens.

I left Gerard reading invoices with concentration and went through into the next room which was furnished with an expensive leather-topped desk, green leather armchairs, carpet, brass pot with six foot high evergreen, cocktail cabinet, framed drawings of Bernard Naylor and his bottling plant fifty years earlier and a door into a luxurious washroom.

On the far side of the plushy office another door led into what had probably been designed as a boardroom, but in there, with daylight pouring through the skylights, the whole centre space was taken up by a table larger than a billiard table upon which someone appeared to have been modelling a miniature terrain of hills, valleys, plains and plateaux, all of it green and brown like the earth, with a winding ribbon of pale blue stuck on in a valley as a river.

I looked at it in awe. Gerard poked his head round the door, glanced at the table, frowned and said ‘What’s that?’

‘War games,’ I said.

‘Really?’ He came closer for a look. ‘A battlefield. So it is. Where are the soldiers?’

We found the soldiers in a cupboard against one wall, tidily stacked in trays, hundreds of them in different uniforms, many hand-painted. There were also ranks of miniature tanks and gun carriages of all historical ages and fierce looking missiles in pits. There were troop-carrying helicopters and First-World-War biplanes, baby rolls of barbed wire, ambulances and small buildings of all sorts, some of them bombed-looking, some.painted red as if on fire.

‘Incredible,’ Gerard said. ‘Just as well wars aren’t fought on the throw of dice. I’ve thrown a six, I’ll wipe out your bridgehead.’

We closed the cupboard and in giving the table a last interested look I brushed my hand lightly over the contours of the nearest range of mountains.

They moved.

Slightly horrified I picked them up to put them back into place and stood looking at the hollowed out interior in absolute surprise. I picked up another hill or two. Same thing.

‘What is it?’ Gerard said.

‘The mountains are white inside.’

‘What of it?’

‘See what they’re made of?’

I held the mountains hollow side up so that he could see the hard white interior. ‘Its plaster of Paris,’ I said. ‘Look at the edges… like bandage. I should think he’s modelled that whole countryside in it.’

‘Good grief.’

‘Not an ear nose and throat surgeon. A war games fanatic. Simple material… easily moulded, easily coloured, sets hard as rock.’

I put the hills and the mountains carefully back in position. ‘There must be a fair few rolls of the stuff on this table. And if you don’t mind… let’s get out of here.’

‘Yes,’ Gerard agreed. ‘I suppose he’d just bought some more, the day he went to the Silver Moondance. Just happened to have it in his Rolls.’

People didn’t just happen to wrap people’s heads in it. To do that, people had to have seriously vengeful thoughts and psychotic malice. Paul Young had gone a long way from where Stewart Naylor set out.

We closed the war games room door, crossed the green leather office, returned to the business sector.

‘There’s just enough legitimate trade going on to give an appearance of tottering a fraction this side of bankruptcy,’ Gerard said. ‘I can’t find anything out of place. There were deliveries via Charter Carriers up to a month ago. Nothing since. No invoices as from Vintners Incorporated, no delivery notes, nothing. This office is for accountants and inspectors. Depressingly clean except for many samples of the Young-Naylor handwriting. Let’s try the plant itself.’

He locked our way out of the office block and raised his eyebrows for a decision from me.

‘Let’s try over there,’ I said, pointing to the building by the Bedford van. ‘See what’s in there first.’

‘Right.’

There were two sets of double doors set into the long blank wall, and having tried ‘bottle store’ and ‘vats’ I found the key marked ‘dispatch’ opened one of them.

The hinges creaked as I pulled the door open. My body had almost given up on separate nervous reactions: how could one sweat in some places while one’s mouth was in drought? We went into the building and found it was the store for goods already bottled and boxed ready for sending out.

There was a great deal more space than merchandise. There were three lonely pallets laden with cases marked ‘House Wine – Red’, addressed to