Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,43

we’ll comply with that. We’re having to work from the Silver Moondance end, and frankly, since Zarac’s murder, that’s far from easy.’

I reflected for a while and then said, ‘Can you pick the police brains at all?’

‘Sometimes. It depends.’

‘They’ll be looking for Paul Young,’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘Did Flora mention him? A man who came to the Silver Moondance from what he said was head office. He arrived while I was there with Detective Sergeant Ridger, who took me there to taste the Laphroaig.’

Gerard frowned as he drove. ‘Flora said one of the managers had come in when you were tasting the whisky and wine, and was furious.’

I shook my head. ‘Not a manager.’ I told Gerard in detail about Paul Young’s visit, and he drove more and more slowly as he listened.

‘That makes a difference,’ he said almost absently when I’d finished. ‘What else do you know that Flora didn’t tell me?’

‘The barman’s homosexual,’ I said flippantly. Gerard didn’t smile. ‘Well,’ I sighed, ‘Larry Trent bought a horse for thirty thousand pounds, did she tell you that?’

‘No… Is that important?’

I related the saga of the disappearing Ramekin. ‘Maybe the Silver Moondance made that sort of money, but I doubt it,’ I said. ‘Larry Trent kept five horses in training, which takes some financing, and he gambled in thousands. Gamblers don’t win, bookmakers do.’

‘When did Larry Trent buy this horse?’ Gerard asked.

‘At Doncaster Sales a year ago.’

‘Before the whisky thefts,’ he said regretfully.

‘Before those particular whisky thefts. Not necessarily before all the red wines in his cellar began to taste the same.’

‘Do you want a full-time job?’ he said.

‘No thanks.’

‘What happened to Ramekin, do you think?’

‘I would think,’ I said, ‘that at a guess he was shipped abroad and sold.’

TEN

At the rear of the row where my shop was located there was a service road with several small yards opening from it, leading to back doors, so that goods could be loaded and unloaded without one having to carry everything in and out through the front. It was into one of these yards that the bolted door next to my storeroom led, and it was in that yard that we commonly parked the van and the car.

Mrs Palissey, that Sunday, had the van. The Rover estate was standing in the yard where I’d left it when Gerard picked me up. Despite my protestations, when we returned at six he insisted on turning into the service road to save me walking the scant hundred yards from the end.

‘Don’t bother,’ I said.

‘No trouble.’

He drove along slowly, saying he’d be in touch with me the following day as we still had things to discuss, turning into the third yard on the left, at my direction.

Besides my car there was a medium-sized van in the yard, its rear doors wide open. I looked at it in vague surprise, as the two other shops who shared the yard with me were my immediate neighbour, a hairdresser, and next to that a dress shop, both of them firmly closed all day on Sundays.

My other immediate neighbour, served by the next yard, was a Chinese takeaway, open always; the van, I thought in explanation, must have driven into my yard in mistake for his.

Gerard slowed his car to a halt… and a man carrying a case of wine elbowed his way sideways out of the back door of my shop: the door I had left firmly bolted at two o’clock. I exclaimed furiously, opening the passenger door to scramble out.

‘Get back in,’ Gerard was saying urgently, but I hardly listened. ‘I’ll find a telephone for the police.’

‘Next yard,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘Sung Li. Ask him.’ I slammed the door behind me and fairly ran across to the intruding van, so angry that I didn’t give my own safety the slightest thought. Extremely foolish, as everyone pointed out to me continually during the next week, a view with which in retrospect I had to agree.

The man who had walked from my shop hadn’t seen me and had his head in the van, transferring the weight of the case from his arms to the floor, a posture whose mechanics I knew well.

I shoved him hard at the base of the spine to push him off balance forwards and slammed both of the van’s doors into his buttocks. He yelled out, swearing with shock and outrage, his voice muffled to all ears but mine. He couldn’t do much to tree himself: I’d got him pinned into the van by the