Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,50

came to tell me he’d done that. I went into the washroom to see, and there they were, eight bottles of St Emilion from under the tablecloth.

Brian was holding a piece of paper as if not knowing where to put it.

‘What’s that?’ I said.

‘Don’t know. It was down in the case.’ He held it out to me and I took it: a page from a notepad, folded across the centre, much handled, and damp and stained all down one side with wine from the broken bottles. I read it at first with puzzlement and then with rising amazement.

In a plain strong angular handwriting it read:

FIRST

All opened bottles of wine.

SECOND

All bottles with these names:

St Emilion.

St Estèphe.

Volnay.

Nuits St Georges.

Valpolicella.

Mâcon.

IF TIME

Spirits, etc. Anything to hand.

DARKNESS 6.30. DO NOT USE LIGHTS

‘Shall I throw that away, Mr Beach?’ Brian asked helpfully.

‘You can have six Mars Bars,’ I said.

He produced his version of a large smile, a sort of sideways leer, and followed me into the shop for his reward.

Mrs Palissey, enjoyably worried, said she was sure she could cope if I wanted to step out for ten minutes, in spite of customers coming and almost nothing on the shelves, seeing as it was Monday. I assured her I valued her highly and went out along the road to the office of a solicitor of about my age who bought my wine pretty often in the evenings.

Certainly I could borrow his photocopier, he said. Any time.

I made three clear copies of the thieves’ shopping list and returned to my own small lair, wondering whether to call Sergeant Ridger immediately and in the end not doing so.

Brian humped cases of whisky, gin and various sherries from storeroom to shop, telling me each time as he passed what he was carrying, and each time getting it right. There was pride on his big face from the accomplishment; job satisfaction at its most pure. Mrs Palissey restocked the shelves, chattering away interminably, and five people telephoned with orders.

Holding a pen was unexpectedly painful, arm muscles stiffly protesting. I realised I’d been doing almost everything left-handedly, including eating Sung Li’s chicken, but writing that way was beyond me. I took down the orders right-handedly with many an inward curse, and when it came to the long list for the wholesalers, picked it out left-handed on the typewriter. No one had told me how long the punctures might take to heal. No time was fast enough.

We got through the morning somehow, and Mrs Palissey, pleasantly martyred, agreed to do the wholesalers run with Brian in the afternoon.

When they’d gone I wandered round my battered domain thinking that I should dredge up some energy to telephone for replacement wines, replacement window… replacement self-respect. It was my own silly fault I’d been shot. No getting away from it. It hadn’t seemed natural, all the same, to tiptoe off and let the robbery continue. Wiser, of course. Easy in retrospect to see it. But at the time…

I thought about it in a jumbled way, without clarity, not understanding the compulsive and utterly irrational urge that had sent me running towards danger when every scared and skin-preserving instinct in my life had been to shy away from it.

Not that I’d been proud of that, either. Nor ashamed of it. I’d accepted that that was the way I was: not brave in the least. Disappointing.

I supposed I had better make a list of the missing wines for the insurance company, who would be getting as fed up with my repeated claims as Kenneth Charter’s insurers were with his. I supposed I should, but I didn’t do it. Appetite for chores, one might have said, was at an extremely low ebb.

I took some aspirin.

A customer came in for six bottles of port and relentlessly brought me up to date on the family’s inexhaustible and usually disgusting woes. (Father-in-law had something wrong with his bladder.)

Sung Li appeared, bowing, with a gift of spring rolls. He wouldn’t be paid for my previous evening’s dinner, he said. I was an honoured and frequent customer. When I was in need, he was my friend. I would honour him by not offering payment for yesterday. We bowed to each other, and I accepted.

He had never seen China, but his parents had been born there and had taught him their ways. He was a most punctilious neighbour and because of his roaringly successful but unlicensed take-away I sold much wine in the evenings. Whenever I could without offending him I gave him cigars,