Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,26

working room, I thought: more a sanctuary.

I wrote what I could remember of bins and quantities of wines and then said I could perhaps add to the list if I went into the cellars and visualised what I’d seen before. We transferred therefore into the first of the rooms, where the bulk of the wines had been kept, and I looked at the empty racks and partitioned shelving and added a couple more names to my list.

From there we went through the sliding inner door into the second cellar, which had contained stocks of spirits, liqueurs, canned beer and mixers. The beer and mixers remained: brandy, gin, vodka, whisky, rum and liqueurs were absent.

‘They did a thorough job,’ I remarked, writing.

Ridger grunted. ‘They cleared the trolley in the dining room besides.’

‘And the bar?’

‘That too.’

‘Highly methodical,’ I said. ‘Head office must be fuming. What did your friend Paul Young have to say?’

Ridger looked at me broodingly and then glanced at the list which I still held. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said unwillingly, ‘the telephone number he gave me is unobtainable. I’m having it checked.’

I blinked. ‘He wrote it down himself,’ I said.

‘Yes, I know that.’ He slightly pursed his lips. ‘People sometimes make mistakes.’

What ever comment I might have made was forestalled by the arrival at the open door of the lobby of a young man in an afghan jacket who turned out to be a detective constable in plain(ish) clothes. He reported briefly that he’d finished peering into outhouses with the assistant manager, and that there seemed to be nothing missing from those. The assistant manager, he added, would be in the manager’s office, if required.

‘Where’s that?’ Ridger asked.

‘Near to the front door. Behind the door marked “Staff only” in the entrance hall, so the assistant manager said.’

‘Did you search in there?’ Ridger asked.

‘No, Sergeant, not yet.’

‘Get on with it, then,’ Ridger said brusquely, and without expression the constable turned and went away.

The radio inside Ridger’s coat crackled to life, and Ridger pulled it out and extended its aerial. The metallic voice which came from it reached me clearly in the quiet cellar. It said, ‘Further to your enquiry timed ten-fourteen, the telephone number as given does not exist and never has existed. Furthermore the address as given does not exist. There is no such street. This message timed ten-forty-eight. Please acknowledge. Over.’

‘Acknowledged,’ Ridger said grimly. ‘Out.’ He pushed the aerial down and said, ‘I suppose you heard that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Shit,’ he said forcefully.

‘Quite so,’ I agreed sympathetically, for which I received an absentminded glare. I handed him the completed list of what had all at once become not just the simple tally of an opportunist break-in but the evidence of a more thorough and purposeful operation. His job, however, not mine. ‘I’ll be in my shop if you want me again,’ I said. ‘I’ll be glad to help.’

‘Very good, sir,’ he said vaguely, and then with more attention, ‘Right, then. Thanks.’

I nodded and went back through the ‘Private’ door into the entrance hall, glancing across at the inconspicuous ‘Staff only’ door which merged chameleon-like with the decor of the walls: and it was while I was supposing that the manager preferred not to be tracked down by grievance-bearing diners that the door itself opened and the assistant assistant manager reeled out backwards through the gap, staring at some sight cut off by the door swinging shut behind him.

The weakly inefficient man of the day before was now in a complete state of non-function, gasping and looking faint. I fairly sprinted across the entrance hall carpet and caught him as he sagged.

‘What is it?’I said.

He moaned slightly, his eyes rolling upwards, his weight growing heavier. I let him slide all the way to the carpet until he lay flat and spent a second or two pulling his tie loose. Then with a raised pulse and some shortening of my own breath I opened the door of the manager’s office and went in.

It was here, I saw immediately, that the real business was done. Here in this office, very functional indeed, were all the forms, files and untidy heaps of paperwork in progress so conspicuously missing from Larry Trent’s. Here there was a metal desk, old and scratched, with a plastic chair behind it and pots of pens among the clutter on its top.

There were stacks of miscellaneous stores in boldy labelled boxes all around: light bulbs, ashtrays, toilet rolls, tablets of soap. There was a floor-to-ceiling cupboard, open, spilling out