Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,28

know what you saw, sir,’ said Ridger without sympathy. ‘Can you identify that man? Is he the manager?’

The assistant assistant shook his head and spoke in a muffled voice through his hands. ‘The manager’s fat.’

‘Go on,’ Ridger prompted.

‘It’s Zarac,’ said the assistant assistant. ‘It’s his jacket…’

‘Who’s Zarac?’ Ridger said.

‘The wine waiter.’ The assistant assistant rose unsteadily to his feet and transferred his hands to his mouth before departing with heaving stomach towards the door marked ‘Guys’.

The wine waiter,’ Ridger repeated flatly. ‘Might have guessed.’

I pushed myself off the wall. ‘You don’t actually need me here, do you? I should go back to my shop.’

He thought it over briefly and agreed, saying he supposed he could find me easily if I were wanted. I left him standing virtual guard over the office door and went outside to my van, passing the constable who had relieved himself of his breakfast onto the drive.

‘Gripes,’ he said weakly in an endearing local accent, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that.’

‘Not an everyday sight,’ I agreed, taking refuge in flippancy: and I thought that I too had seen enough horrors since Sunday to last a lifetime.

I bought more glasses at Tuesday lunchtime and ferried them and the wines to the Thames Ladies for their fund-raising; and little else of note happened for the next three days.

The news media reported briefly on the man with the plaster topping, but no words, I thought, conveyed anything like the shock of actually seeing that football-head lying there blank and inhuman, attached to a human neck.

Cutting off the plaster at the autopsy had confirmed the identity of the victim: Fey dor Zaracievesa, British born of Polish descent, succinctly known as Zarac. He had been employed as wine waiter for eighteen months at the Silver Moondance, which had itself been open for business for almost three years. An inquest would shortly be held, it was said, and meanwhile the police were pursuing their enquiries.

Good luck to them, I thought. Pursue away.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday Mrs Palissey and Brian set off with the deliveries at four o’clock and at approximately four-thirty I stuck a notice on the shop door saying ‘Open 6—9 pm’ and scooted up the hill to go round the yard with Flora.

Shop hours as far as I was concerned were flexible, and I’d found it didn’t much matter what one did as long as one said what one was doing. The pattern of when most customers came and when they stayed away was on the whole constant:a stream in the mornings, predominantly women, a trickle of either sex in the afternoons, a healthy flow, mostly men, in the evenings.

When Emma had been alive we had opened the shop on Friday and Saturday evenings only, but since I’d been alone I’d added Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, not simply for the extra trade, but for the company. I enjoyed the evenings. Most of the evening people came for wine, which I liked best to sell: a bottle to go with dinner, champagne for a job promotion, a present on the way to a party.

It was life on a small scale, I dared say. Nothing that would change history or the record books. A passage through time of ordinary mortal dimensions: but with Emma alongside it had contented.

I had never had much ambition, a sadness to my mother and a source of active irritation to my Wellington schoolmasters, one of whom on my last term’s report had written acidly, ‘Beach’s conspicuous intelligence would take him far if only he would stir himself to choose a direction.’ My inability to decide what I wanted to be (except not a soldier) had resulted in my doing nothing much at all. I passed such exams as were thrust my way but hadn’t been drawn to university. French, my best subject, was scarcely in itself a career. I didn’t feel like a stockbroker or anything tidy in the City. I wasn’t artistic. Had no ear for music. Couldn’t face life behind a desk and couldn’t ride boldly enough for racing. My only real ability throughout my teens had been a party trick of telling all makes of chocolate blindfold, which had hardly at that time seemed a promising foundation for gainful employment.

Six months after I left school I thought I might go to France for a while, ostensibly to learn the language better, but unhappily admitting to myself that it was to avoid being seen all too clearly as a disappointing failure at home. I