Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,45

more cases of wine. The bits of shot that had actually landed felt like sharp stings in my arm: like hot stabs.

The door swung shut behind me. If I bolted it, I thought, I would be safe. I also thought of Gerard outside in his car, and along with these two thoughts I noticed blood running down my right hand. Oh well… I wasn’t dead, was I? I struggled to my feet and opened the door enough to see what I’d be walking out to, and found that it wouldn’t be very much, as the two black-headed robbers were scrambling into their van with clear intentions of driving away.

I didn’t try to stop them. They rocketed past Gerard’s car and swerved into the service road, disappearing with the rear doors swinging open and three or four cases of wine showing within.

The windscreen of Gerard’s car was shattered. I went over there with rising dread and found him lying across both front seats, the top of one shoulder reddening and his teeth clenched with pain.

I opened the door beside the steering wheel. One says really such inadequate things at terrible times. I said, ‘I’m so sorry…’ knowing he’d come back to help me, knowing I shouldn’t have gone in there, shouldn’t have needed help.

Sung Li from next door came tearing round the corner on his feet, his broad face wide with anxiety.

‘Shots,’ he said. ‘I heard shots.’

Gerard said tautly, ‘I ducked. Saw the gun. I guess not totally fast enough,’ and he struggled into a sitting position, holding on to the wheel and shedding crazed crumbs of windscreen like snow. ‘The police are coming and you yourself are alive, I observe. It could fractionally have been worse.’

Sung Li, who spoke competent English, looked at Gerard as if he couldn’t believe his ears, and I laughed, transferring his bewilderment to myself.

‘Mr Tony,’ he said anxiously as if fearing for my reason, ‘do you know you are bleeding also?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

Sung Li’s face mutely said that all English were mad, and Gerard didn’t help by asking him to whistle up an ambulance, dear chap, if he wouldn’t mind.

Sung Li went away looking dazed and Gerard gave me what could only be called a polite social smile.

‘Bloody Sundays,’ he said, ‘are becoming a habit.’ He blinked a few times. ‘Did you get the number of that van?’

‘Mm,’ I nodded. ‘Did you?’

‘Yes. Gave it to the police. Description of men?’

‘They were wearing wigs,’ I said. ‘Fuzzy black wigs, both the same. Also heavy black moustaches, identical. Clip-ons, I should think. Also surgical rubber gloves. If you’re asking would I know them again without those additions, then unfortunately I don’t think so.’

‘Your arm’s bleeding,’ he said. ‘Dripping from your hand.’

‘They were stealing my wine.’

After a pause he said, ‘Which wine, do you think?’

‘A bloody good question. I’ll go and look,’ I said. ‘Will you be all right?’

‘Yes.’

I went off across the yard to my back door, aware of the warm stickiness of my right arm, feeling the stinging soreness from shoulder to wrist, but extraordinarily not worried. Elbow and fingers still moved per instructions, though after the first exploratory twitches I decided to leave them immobile for the time being. Only the outer scatterings of the shot had caught me, and compared with what might have happened it did truthfully at that moment seem minor.

I noticed at that point how the thieves had got in: the barred washroom window had been comprehensively smashed inward, frame, bars and all, leaving a hole big enough for a man. I went into the washroom, scrunching on broken glass, and picked up the cloth with which I usually dried the glasses after customers had tasted wines, wrapping it a few times round my wrist to mop up the crimson trickles before going out to see what I’d lost.

For a start I hadn’t lost my small stock of really superb wines in wooden boxes at the back of the storeroom. The prizes, the appreciating Margaux and Lafite, were still there.

I hadn’t lost, either, ten cases of champagne or six very special bottles of old Cognac, or even a readily handy case of vodka. The boxes I’d fallen over in the passage were all open at the tops, the necks of the bottles showing, and when one went into the shop one could see why.

The robbers had been stealing the bottles from the racks. More peculiarly they had taken all the half-drunk wine bottles standing re-corked on the tasting table, and all