Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,87
I reflected, was due to hold its Autumn Carnival jump-racing meeting near the beginning of November and was stocking up accordingly. At the Cheltenham Festival in March, one wine merchant had told me, the jump-racing crowd had in three days, apart from beer by the lakeful, despatched six thousand bottles of champagne in addition to nine thousand bottles of other wines and four thousand bottles of spirits. At Martineau, by the look of things, at least double that was expected.
The gin went through into the inner warehouse to be added to a huge stack already growing there, and I again followed. One large man with a clipboard was checking off quantities and another with a black felt pen put a mark on each box as it was unloaded.
No one paid me any attention. I stood there as if invisible to all of them, and it slowly struck me that each set thought I belonged to the other. The two delivery men disengaged the fork-lift from the pallet they’d brought in, picked up an empty one from a low stack and began wheeling back to the door. The man with the pen heaved the cases into their new positions, putting his mark on each, and the man with the clipboard watched and counted.
I thought I’d better wait until they’d finished before I interrupted, and looking back it seems possible that that brief hesitation saved my life.
The telephone rang in the office section, raucously loud.
‘Go and answer that, Mervyn,’ the man with the clipboard said, and his henchman with the marker went off to obey. Then the clipboard man frowned as if remembering something, looked sharply at his watch, and called out,’Mervyn, I’ll answer it. You go and shift those beer cases like the man says. Put them in store D. Wait outside until I tell you to come back. And tell those men not to bring in the next load until I’m off the ‘phone, right?’ His gaze flicked over me, scarcely reaching my face. ‘Your job, of course,’ he said. ‘You tell them.’
He strode away fast in the direction of the office leaving me flat-footed in his wake, and presently I could hear his voice answering the telephone and could see a portion of his backview through the glass.
‘Yes, speaking. Yes, yes. Go on.’
Before I’d consciously decided whether to retire or eavesdrop another and different voice spoke loudly from the passage outside, a voice accompanied by firm approaching footsteps.
‘Vernon? Are you there?’
He came straight through the doorway and veered immediately to his left towards the office: and to my startled eyes he was unmistakable.
Paul Young.
‘Vernon!’
‘Yes, look, I’ll be with you…’ Vernon of the clipboard put the palm of his hand over the telephone and began to turn towards the newcomer, and while neither of them was looking my way I stepped backwards out of their line of sight.
Paul Young.
My mind seemed stuck; my body of lead.
To reach the outside world I would have to go past the office section and with all that glass around Paul Young would be sure to see me. He might not have taken particular note of me on that Monday morning in the Silver Moondance Saloon but he’d certainly thought of me a good deal since. The assistant assistant would have told him who I was. He’d sent the thieves to my shop with his list. He must know how that sortie had ended. He must also know it hadn’t achieved its main purpose. I thought that if he saw me now he would know me, and the idea of that filled me with numbing, muscle-paralysing fright.
Neither Vernon nor Paul Young at that exact moment seemed to be moving, but impelled no doubt by the atavistic burrowing instincts of the hunted and trapped I sought in that brightly-lit warehouse for a dark place to hide.
There were no soft nooks or crannies, just solid blocks and columns of cases of drink. There were narrow spaces between some of the blocks into which I could squeeze… and where anyone glancing in as they walked past would easily see me.
Down the far end, I thought in panicky fashion. They might not go right down there.
But I’d have to get there, and at any second, any second… It was too far. Something else… something fast…
I climbed.
I climbed the highest and most extensive stack, which happened to be of non-vintage champagne. I lay flat on my stomach along the top of it, at the back against the wall. The ceiling