Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,49

and self-disciplined person were ever entirely off duty. Probably always as watchful, as careful, as ready to prickle into suspicion. I was probably seeing, I thought, the real man.

I looked at my watch. Nine-twenty. Mrs Palissey and Brian should be arriving in ten minutes.

I said, ‘I suppose it’s O.K. with you if I get all this mess cleared up? Replace the window, and so on?’

He nodded. ‘I’ll just take a look round outside, though, before I go. Come and tell me what’s different from before the break-in.’

I got slowly to my feet. We went out into the littered passage and without comment Ridger himself unbolted the heavy door and opened it.

‘My car was parked all day yesterday just about where it is now,’ I said. ‘Gerard McGregor’s car wasn’t there, of course.’

Ridger looked back through his notebook, found an entry, nodded, and flipped forward again. The door swung shut in its slow way. Ridger pushed it open and went out, looking over his shoulder for me to follow. I stepped after him into the raw cold air and watched him pacing about, measuring distances.

‘The thieves’ van was here?’ he asked, standing still.

‘A bit to your right.’

‘Where was the man with the shotgun standing when he fired at you?’

‘About where you are now.’

He nodded matter-of-factly, swung round towards Gerard’s car and raised his arm straight before him. ‘He fired at the car,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Then…’ he turned his body with the arm still outstretched until it was pointing at me. ‘He fired again.’

‘I wasn’t actually standing here by that time.’

Ridger permitted a smile. ‘Too close for comfort, I’d say.’ He walked the five steps separating us and ran his hand over the outside of the door. ‘Want to see what nearly hit you?’

The toughly-grained wood was dark with creosote, the preservative recently applied against the coming winter. I looked more closely to where he pointed, to an area just below the latch, a few inches in from the edge of the door. Wholly embedded in the wood as if they were part of it were dozens and dozens of little black pellets, most of them in a thick cluster, with others making marks like woodworm holes in a wider area all around.

‘There are three hundred of those in a normal cartridge,’ Ridger observed calmly. ‘The report we got from the hospital said they dug eleven of them out of your right arm.’

I looked at the deadly grouping of the little black shots and remembered the frenzied panic of my leap through the door. I’d left my elbow too far out for a split second too long.

The main cluster in the wood was roughly at the height of my heart.

ELEVEN

Mrs Palissey and Brian arrived on time and fell into various attitudes of horror, which couldn’t be helped. I asked her to open the shop for business and asked Brian to start clearing up, and I stayed out in the yard myself knowing it was mostly to postpone answering their eagerly probing questions.

Ridger was still pacing about, estimating and making notes, fetching up finally at a dark red stain on the dirty concrete.

He said, frowning, ‘Is this blood?’

‘No. It’s red wine. The thieves dropped a case of bottles there. Some of them smashed in the case and seeped through onto the ground.’

He looked around. ‘Where’s the case now?’

‘In the sink in the washroom. Your policemen carried it there yesterday evening.’

He made a note.

‘Sergeant…?’

‘Yes?’ He looked up with his eyes only, his head still bent over the notebook.

‘Let me know, would you, how things are going?’

‘What things, for instance?’

‘Whether you find that van… Whether you find a lead to Paul Young.’

He looked up fully and soberly, not refusing at once. I could almost feel his hesitation and certainly see it; and his answer when it came was typically ambivalent.

‘We could perhaps warn you that you might be needed at some future date for identification purposes.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Not promising, mind.’ He was retreating into the notebook.

‘No.’

He finished eventually and went away, and Mrs Palissey enjoyed her ooh/ahh sensations. Mrs Palissey wasn’t given to weeping and wailing and needing smelling salts. Mrs Palissey’s eyes were shining happily at the newsvalue of the break-in and at the good isn’t-it-awful gossip she’d have at lunchtime with the traffic warden.

Brian with little change to his normal anxious expression swept and tidied and asked me what to do about the case in the sink.

‘Take out the whole bottles and put them on the draining board,’ I said, and presently he