Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,54

work daily not only among customers but in people to whom others had to go in trust, officials and professional people of all sorts. One never knew for certain: Gerard might indulge secret sins galore, locking his Hyde in a closet; but what I saw, I liked.

I told him about Brian finding the thieves’ shopping list and gave him one of the photostats out of my pocket, explaining about it being very likely in Paul Young’s own handwriting.

‘Great God,’ he said, reading it. ‘He might as well have signed a confession.’

‘Mm.’

‘But you can see why the robbers needed a written list,’ he said. ‘All those French names. They needed a visible check actually in their hand. They’d never have been sure to take the right things without.’

‘Not unless they knew the right labels intimately.’

Gerard looked up from the list. ‘You mean, the men who broke in are therefore not the designers of the swindle.’

‘If they were they wouldn’t have needed the list.’

‘Right.’ He smiled slightly. ‘How would they grab you as the murderers of Zarac?’

I opened my mouth and shut it again: then when the small shock had passed, I slowly and undecidedly shook my head.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘They were rough .. but there was a moment, when the bigger one picked the gun out of the van, that he pointed it at me and visibly hesitated. If he’d already helped to kill Zarac… wouldn’t he have killed me then?’

Gerard considered it. ‘We can’t tell. Zarac died out of earshot of a Chinese takeaway. The hesitation may have been because of the more public nature of the yard. But people who take shotguns to robberies have at least thought of killing, never forget.’

I wouldn’t forget, I thought.

‘What made you become a detective?’ I asked curiously.

‘Don’t say detective. Tina doesn’t like it.’

‘Investigating consultant, then.’

‘I was baby-snatched from college while detection still seemed a glamorous idea to my immature mind.’ Again the lop-sided self-mocking smile. ‘I’d done an accountancy course and was at business school but not much looking forward to living what it taught. Rather dismayed, actually, by my prospects. I mentioned to an uncle of mine one day that I thought I’d like to join the police only the family would have mass heart attacks, and a friend of his who was there said why didn’t I join the business police… I didn’t know what he meant, of course, but he steered me to an agency and I think spoke in their ear. They offered me a trial year and started to teach me how to search… It was a different agency, not Deglet’s. Deglet’s took us over, and I was part of the furniture and fittings.’

‘And you’ve never regretted it?’

He said thoughtfully, ‘It’s fashionable to explain away all crime as the result of environment and upbringing, always putting the blame on someone else, never the actual culprit. No one’s born bad, all that sort of thing. If it weren’t for poor housing, violent father, unemployment, capitalism, et cetera, et cetera… You’ll have heard it all, over and over. Then you get a villain from a good home with normal parents who’s in a job and can’t keep his fingers out of the till. I’ve seen far far more of those. They’re the ones I investigate. Sometimes there’s a particular set of circumstances you can point to as the instigation of their thieving or spying or betraying of confidence, but so many of them, I find, simply have an urge to be dishonest. Often not out of dire need, but because that’s how they get their kicks. And whichever way you look at them, as poor little victims of society or as marauding invaders, they damage everyone in their path.’ He shifted against his pillows. ‘I was brought up to respect that most old-fashioned concept, fair play. Even the present weary world tends not to think all’s fair in war… I seek to restore fair play. I only achieve a bit here and there and the next trickster with a computer is being born every minute… What did you ask me?’

‘You’ve answered it,’ I said.

He ran his tongue round his lips as if they were dry. ‘Pass me that water, will you?’ he said.

I gave him the glass and put it down when he’d drunk.

Be grateful for villany, I thought. The jobs of millions depended on it, Gerard’s included. Police, lawyers, tax inspectors, prison warders, court officials, security guards, locksmiths and people making burglar alarms… Where would they