Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,96

there by van daily as required. It’s a very big operation, as I said.’ He sounded vastly self-satisfied. ‘I have streamlined the whole business considerably.’

‘Were spirits by the tot in the private boxes here your own idea ?’ I asked.

‘What?’ His eyebrows rose. ‘Yes, of course. Got to fall in line with other racecourse caterers. Much more profitable. Got to answer to shareholders, you know. Shareholders are always with us.’

‘Mm,’ I said.

He heard doubt in my tone. He said sharply, ‘Don’t forget it’s to the box-holder’s advantage. When only a little has been used, we don’t insist on them buying the whole bottle.’

‘True,’ I said neutrally. A Quigley-Swayle face-to-face could draw blood: diverting prospect. ‘Your strawberry tartlets are excellent.’

He looked at me uncertainly and explained to Gerard that all the paperwork to do with wines, beer and spirits passed through the small office to our left. Vernon, he said without happiness, was wholly in charge.

‘He chooses and orders?’ Gerard said.

‘Yes. He’s done it for years.’

‘And pays the bills?’

‘No. We have a computerised system. The checked invoices go from here to the office two miles away to be paid through the computer. Saves time. I installed it, of course.’

Gerard nodded, ignoring the smugness.

‘We keep beer in here, as you see,’ Quigley said. ‘This is just back-up. Normally we get suppliers to deliver on the day of need.’

Gerard nodded.

‘Outside in the passage… we’ve just passed it… is the one passenger lift which comes down here… in this part of the stands the ground floor as far as the public is concerned is above our heads. We transfer from here to the bars and the boxes using that lift: to the bars on all floors. Early on racedays we are extremely busy.’

Gerard said he was sure.

‘Through here are the wines and spirits,’ Quigley said, leading the way into the main storeroom. ‘As you see.’

Gerard saw. Quigley walked a few steps ahead of us and Gerard said quietly, ‘Where were you yesterday?’

‘Lying up here… on the Pol Roger.’

He looked at me with curiosity. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You look… it can’t be right… you look of all things ashamed.’

I swallowed. ‘When I was up there… I was frightened sick.’

He looked round the storeroom; at the possibilities and limitations of concealment; and he said judiciously, ‘You’d have been a fool not to be scared stiff. I don’t think there’s much doubt Paul Young would have killed you if he’d found you. Killing the second time is easier, I’m told. Fear in a fearful situation is normal. Absence of fear is not. Keeping one’s nerve in spite of fear is courage.’

He had a way, I thought, of speaking without sympathy while giving incredible comfort. I didn’t thank him, but profoundly in my heart I was grateful.

‘Shall we start?’ he said as we rejoined Quigley. ‘Tony, you said the suspect cases are somewhere at the far end?’

‘Yes.’

We all moved through the central canyon between the piled-high city blocks of cartons until we reached the end wall.

‘Where now?’ Quigley demanded. ‘I see nothing wrong. This all looks exactly the same as usual.’

‘Always Bell’s whisky at the end here?’

‘Of course.’

The size of the Bell’s block would have shamed the wholesalers I regularly bought from. Even Gerard looked daunted at the possibility of having to open the whole lot to find the bad apples, which was nothing to the vision of paralytic drunkenness crossing my own imagination.

‘Er…’ I said. ‘There may be marks of some sort on the boxes. Someone was putting black felt tip squiggles on the gin when it was being checked in.’

‘Mervyn, probably,’ Quigley said.

‘Yes, that’s right.’

I walked back to the gin and looked at Mervyn’s handiwork: a hasty curling cross with two diagonals almost joined in a circle on the right side. The only problem was that it appeared also on every Bell’s case in sight. No other distinguishing mark seemed to be on any that we could see without dismantling the whole mountain.

‘Vernon must have been able to tell one from another, easily,’ Gerard said. ‘He wouldn’t risk not knowing his stuff at a glance.’

‘I don’t believe all this,’ Quigley announced irritably. ‘Ver-non’s a most efficient manager.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ Gerard murmured.

‘Perhaps we could find the wine,’ I suggested. ‘It might be less difficult.’

Wine was stacked in narrower blocks on the opposite wall from the spirits, the quantity in each stack less but the variety more: and I found St Estèphe and St Emilion six deep behind a fronting wall of unimpeachable Mouton Cadet.

Quigley