Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,42

He paused, seeking no doubt for the thousandth time for guilt in himself, where there was none. ‘He wouldn’t work. He seemed to think the world owed him a living. He’d go out and refuse to say where he’d been, and he wouldn’t lift a finger to help his mother in the house. He sneered all the time at his brother and sister, who are bonny kids. I offered him his fare to Australia and some money to spend there, and he said he’d go. I hoped, you know, that they’d knock some sense into him over there.’ His tall body moved in a sort of shudder. ‘I’d no idea he’d done anything criminal. He was a pain in the arse… Didn’t he know he would ruin me in this business? Did he care? Did he mean to?’

The son sounded irredeemable to me and for the sake of the rest of the Charter family I hoped he’d never come home, but life was seldom so tidy.

‘Mr McGregor may save your business,’ I said, and he laughed aloud in one of his mercurial changes of mood and clapped me on the shoulder. ‘A politician, Mr McGregor, that’s what you’ve brought me here. Aye, laddie, so he may, so he may for the healthy fee I’m paying him.’

Gerard smiled indulgently and we walked on through the length of the maintenance area and out through the door at the far end. Outside, as Charter had said, there was a tall commercial-sized car wash, but he turned away from that and led us round to the side of the building to where the fleet of tankers nestled in line.

‘We’ve some out on the road,’ Charter said. ‘And I’m having to arrange huge insurance for every one separately, which is wiping out our profit. I’ve drivers sitting at home watching television and customers going elsewhere. We can’t carry alcohol, the Customs won’t let us. It’s illegal for this company to operate if it can’t pay its workforce and other debts; and I reckon we can keep running on reserves for perhaps two weeks from now, if we’re lucky. We could be shut down in five minutes then if the bank foreclosed on the tankers, which they will. Half of these tankers at any one time are being bought on loans, and if we can’t service the loans, we’re out.’ He smoothed a loving hand over one of the gleaming monsters. ‘I’ll be bloody sorry, and that’s a fact.’

The three of us walked soberly along the imposing row until we were back at the entrance, and Gerard’s car.

‘Two weeks, Mr McGregor,’ Kenneth Charter said. He shook our hands vigorously. ‘Hardly a sporting chance, would you say?’

‘We’ll try for results,’ Gerard assured him in a stockbroker voice, and we climbed into his car and drove away.

‘Any thoughts?’ he asked me immediately, before we’d even left the industrial estate.

‘Chiefly,’ I said, ‘why you need me at all.’

‘For your knowledge, as I told you. And because people talk to you.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Kenneth Charter told you far more about his son than he told me. Flora says she talks to you because you listen. She says you hear things that aren’t said. I was most struck by that. It’s a most useful ability in a detective.’

‘I’m not…’

‘No. Any other thoughts?’

‘Well…’ I said. ‘Did you see the rest of the son’s notebook, when you were there before?’

‘Yes, I did. Charter didn’t want me to take it for some reason, so I used his photocopier to reproduce every page that was written on. As he said, there were just some telephone numbers and a few memos about things to do. We’ve checked on all the telephone numbers these last few days but they seem to be harmless. Friends’ houses, a local cinema, a snooker club and a barber. No lead to how the son knew Zarac, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Mm. I’ll show you the photostats presently. See if you can suggest anything we’ve missed.’

Unlikely, I thought.

‘Is he actually in Australia?’ I asked.

‘The son? Yes, he is. He stayed in a motet in Sydney the night he arrived. His father made the reservation, and the son did stay there. We checked. Beyond that, we’ve lost him, except that we know he hasn’t used his return ticket. Quite possibly he doesn’t know Zarac’s dead. If he does know, he’s likely to drop even further out of sight. In any case, Kenneth Charter’s instructed us not to look for him, and