Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,39

chromatograph.’

I had an uncomfortable feeling that Gerard was thinking I should have told him about profiles on the way, but it hadn’t crossed my mind.

‘I mean,’ I said, ‘if they took a sample from the distillers and matched it with the sample the police took from the Silver Moondance, they would know for sure one way or another.’

There was a silence. Finally Gerard cleared his throat and said, ‘Perhaps you might tell Tony how we were led to the Silver Moondance. Because at this moment,’ he looked straight at me, ‘there is no reason for the Customs to connect that place to the stolen tanker or to compare the samples. They aren’t aware of any link.’

I said ‘Oh’ fairly vaguely and Kenneth Charter consulted the ceiling, tipping his chair back to where it should surely have overbalanced. He finally let his weight fall forward with a thud and gave me the full blast from the blue eyes.

‘Promise of silence, laddie,’ he said.

I looked at Gerard, who nodded off-handedly as if such demands were an everyday business fact, which I supposed to him they were.

‘Promise of silence,’ I said.

Kenneth Charter nodded his long head sharply as if taking it for granted that promises would be kept; then he pulled a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked the centre drawer of his desk. The object within needed no searching for. He pulled out a small slim black notebook and laid it on the desk before him, the naturally humorous cast of his face straightening to something like grimness.

‘You can trust this laddie?’ he said to Gerard.

‘I’d believe so.’

Charter sighed, committed, turned to the page that fell open immediately in a way that spoke of constant usage.

‘Read that,’ he said, turning the notebook round for me to see but retaining it under the pressure of his thumb. ‘That’ was a long telephone number beginning 0735, which was the code for the Reading area, with underneath it two lines of writing.

‘Tell Z UNP 786 Ypicks up B’s Gin Mon 10 a.m. approx.’

‘I’ve read it,’ I said, not knowing what exactly was expected.

‘Mean anything?’

‘I suppose it’s the Silver Moondance number, and Z is Zarac?’

‘Right. And UNP 786 Y is the registration number of my tanker.’ His voice was cold and unemotional.

‘I see,’ I said.

‘Berger’s Gin is where it set out from at 10.15 a.m. a month ago tomorrow. It went to Scotland, discharged the gin, was sluiced through in Glasgow and picked up the bulk scotch at Fairley’s warehouse near Helensburgh, in Dunbartonshire. Wednesday morning it set off from there. Wednesday evening it didn’t arrive at the bottling plant. By Thursday morning we know it was parked outside a drivers’ cafe on the outskirts of Edinburgh, but it wasn’t identified until Friday as its registration plates had been changed. The Customs and Excise have impounded it, and we haven’t got it back.’

I looked at Gerard and then again at Kenneth Charter.

‘And you know,’ I said slowly. ‘You know who wrote the message.’

‘Yes, I do,’ he said. ‘My son.’

Highly complicating, as Gerard had hinted.

‘Um…’ I said, trying to make my question as noncommittal as Charter’s own voice. ‘What does your son say? Does he know where the bulk in the tanker vanished to? Because… er… six thousand gallons of scotch can’t be hidden all that easily, and the Silver Moondance wouldn’t use three times that much in six years, let alone six months… if you see.’

The blue eyes if anything grew more intense. ‘I haven’t spoken to my son. He went to Australia two weeks ago for a holiday and I don’t expect him back for three months.’

There was an element of good riddance in that statement, I thought. He wasn’t so much grieving over his offspring’s treason as finding it thoroughly awkward. I smiled at him faintly without thinking and to my surprise he grinned suddenly and broadly back.

‘You’re right,’ he said. The little bugger can stay there, as far as I’m concerned. I’m certainly not trying to fetch him home. I don’t want him charged and tried and maybe flung in jail. I don’t, I definitely don’t want any son of mine behind bars embarrassing the whole family. Making his mother cry, spoiling his sister’s wedding next spring, messing up his brother’s chances of a degree in law. If I have to sell up here, well, I will. There’ll be enough left for me to start something else. And that’s the end of the damage that sod will do. I won’t have