Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,73

ghosts, they were within me: Emma, my father and the titanic figure of my grandfather, impossibly brave. They lived in me not condemning but unconsoling. I struggled forever to come to terms with them, for if I didn’t I was sunk, but all three of their shadows fell long.

Pregnancy might recently have raised Emma’s blood pressure, they’d said. It was quite common. Higher blood pressure would have put too much strain on the slow leak, opening it wider… too wide.

Pregnancy itself, they’d said, had tipped the scales towards death. Although we had both wanted children, the seed that I’d planted had killed her.

FIFTEEN

I let myself into the shop the next morning wondering what I could trade with Sergeant Ridger for a sample of the Silver Moondance scotch, and he solved the problem himself by apearing almost immediately at my door as if transported by telekinesis.

‘Morning,’ he said, as I let him in. Raincoat belted, shoes polished, hair brushed. Hadn’t he heard, I wondered, that plain clothes policemen these days were supposed to dress in grubby jeans and look unemployed?

‘Good morning,’ I replied, shutting the door behind him. ‘Can I sell you something?’

‘Information.’ He was serious, as always, coming into the centre of the shop and standing solidly there with his feet apart.

‘Ah. Yes, well fire away.’

‘Is your arm worse? You didn’t have a sling last time I came.’

‘No worse.’ I shook my head. ‘More comfortable.’

He looked not exactly relieved but reassured. ‘Good. Then… I’m making an official request to you to aid us in our enquiries.’

‘What aid? What enquiries?’

‘This is a direct suggestion from Detective Chief Superintendent Wilson.’

‘Is it?’ I was interested. ‘To me personally?’

‘He suggested you himself, yes.’ Ridger cleared his throat. ‘It is in connection with our enquiries into complaints received about goods supplied by licensed premises other than the Silver Moondance.’

‘Er…’ I said. ‘Sergeant, would you drop the jargon?’

Ridger looked surprised. What he’d said had been obviously of crystal clarity to his notebook mind. He said, ‘In the course of our investigations into the murder of Zarac it was suggested that we should follow up certain other complaints of malpractice throughout the whole area. There was a top level regional conference yesterday, part of which I attended as the officer first on the spot in the drinks fraud, and Chief Superintendent Wilson requested me directly to enlist your help as before. He said if we could find another place passing off one whisky as another, and if such whisky were similar or identical to that in the Silver Moondance, we might also find a lead to Zarac’s supplier and murderer. It was worth a try, he said, as there were so few other lines of enquiry. So, er, here I am.’

I gazed at him in awe. ‘You’re asking me to go on a pub crawl?’

‘Er… if you must put it like that, yes.’

Beautiful, I thought. Stunning. Fifty thousand bars between home and Watford… with the known bad apples offered on the platter of a police list.

‘Would you be driving me, like last time?’ I asked.

‘I’ve been assigned to that duty.’ He showed no feelings either for or against. ‘Can I take it you will be available?’

‘You can,’ I said. ‘When?’

He consulted his bristling wristwatch. ‘Ten-fifteen.’

‘This morning?’

‘Of course. I’ll go back now and report and return for you later.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘And Sergeant, when you return, would you bring with you the Bell’s whisky bottle from the Silver Moondance bar?’

Re looked concentratedly doubtful.

‘I’d like to taste its contents again,’ I explained. ‘It’s ten days since that morning in the Silver Moondance. If more of that scotch is what you’re looking for in these enquiries, I’ll have to learn it well enough to know it anywhere.’

He saw the logic. ‘I’ll request it.’

‘Mm… say it’s a requirement. I can’t do what you’re asking without it.’

‘Very well.’ He pulled out the notebook and wrote in it, rolling his wrist for another time check and adding nine-fourteen punctiliously.

‘How many places are we going to?’ I asked.

‘It’s quite a long list.’ He spoke matter-of-factly. ‘It’s a big area, of course. My Chief Inspector’s hoping we can complete the enquiry within two weeks.’

‘Two weeks!’

‘Working from ten-thirty to two o’clock daily in licensing hours.’

‘Is this an official appointment with pay?’

He checked internally before he answered. ‘It was being discussed.’

‘And?’

‘They used to have an available consultant expert, but he’s just retired to live in Spain. He was paid. Sure to have been.’

‘How often was he… consulted?’

‘Don’t rightly know. I only saw him once or twice.