Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,83

‘What do you mean?’ Hopefully, on the whole.

I said, ‘If I write a sentence on a sheet of paper, will you sign your name to it? The name John Smith will do very well.’

‘What sentence?’ he said, looking worried again.

‘I’ll write it,’ I said. ‘Then see if you will sign.’

‘For a hundred?’

‘That’s right.’

I pulled a sheet of plain writing paper from the envelope, undipped my pen and wrote:

‘At Bradbury races (I put the date) I gave a man a message to the effect that Danielle wanted him to go up to the viewing balcony. I identify the man who gave me that message as the man I have indicated in the photograph.’

I handed it to Mr Smith. He read it. He was unsure of the consequences of signing, but he was thinking of a hundred pounds.

‘Sign it John Smith?’ he said.

‘Yes. With a flourish, like a proper signature.’

I handed him my pen. With almost no further hesitation he did as I’d asked.

‘Great,’ I said, taking the page and slipping it, with the photographs, back into the envelope. I took out my wallet again and gave him another hundred pounds, and saw him looking almost hungrily at the money he could see I still had.

‘There’s another hundred and fifty in there,’ I said, showing him. ‘It would round you up to five hundred altogether.’

He liked the game increasingly. He said, ‘For that, what would you want?’

‘To save me following you home,’ I said pleasantly, ‘I’d like you to write your real name and address down for me, on a separate sheet of paper.’

I produced a clean sheet from the envelope. ‘You still have my pen,’ I reminded him. ‘Be a good fellow and write.’

He looked as if I’d punched him in the brain.

‘I came in on the bus,’ he said faintly.

‘I can follow buses,’ I said.

He looked sick.

‘I won’t tell your wife you were at the races,’ I said. ‘Not if you’ll write down your name so I won’t have to follow you.’

‘For a hundred and fifty?’ he said weakly.

‘Yes.’

He wrote a name and address in capital letters:

A. V. HODGES,

44, CARLETON AVENUE,

WIDDERLAWN, NR BRADBURY.

‘What does the A. V. stand for?’ I asked.

‘Arnold Vincent,’ he said without guile.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Here’s the rest of the money.’ I counted it out for him. ‘Don’t lose it all at once.’

He looked startled and then shamefacedly raised a laugh. ‘I can’t go racing often, see what I mean? My wife knows how much money I’ve got.’

‘She doesn’t now,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Thank you very much, Mr Smith.’

EIGHTEEN

I had plenty of time and thought I might as well make sure. I dawdled invisibly around while John Smith bought his oil filter at a garage and caught his bus, and I followed the bus unobtrusively to Widderlawn.

John Smith descended and walked to Carleton Avenue where at number 44, a well-tended council semi-detached, he let himself in with a latchkey.

Satisfied on all counts, I drove back to London and found Litsi coming out of the library as I entered the hall.

‘I saw you coming,’ he said lazily. The library windows looked out to the street. ‘I’m delighted you’re back.’ He had been watching for me, I thought.

‘It wasn’t a trap,’ I said.

‘So I see.’

I smiled suddenly and he said, ‘A purring cat, if ever I saw one.’

I nodded towards the library. ‘Let’s go in there, and I’ll tell you.’

I carried the bag with clothes in and the big envelope into the long panelled room with its grille-fronted bookshelves, its persian rugs, its net and red velvet curtains. A nobly proportioned room, it was chiefly used for entertaining callers not intimate enough to be invited upstairs, and to me had the lifeless air of expensive waiting-rooms.

Litsi looked down at my feet. ‘Are you squelching?’ he asked disbelievingly.

‘Mm.’ I put down the bag and the envelope and peeled off my left shoe, into which one of the icepacks had leaked.

To his discriminating horror, I pulled the one intact bag out of my sock and emptied the contents onto a convenient potted plant. The second bag, having emptied itself, followed the first into the waste paper basket. I pulled off my drenched sock, left it folded on top of my bag, and replaced my wet shoe.

‘I suppose,’ Litsi said, ‘all that started out as mobile refrigeration.’

‘Quite right.’

‘I’d have kept a sprain warm,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘Cold is quicker.’

I took the envelope over to where a pair of armchairs stood, one on each side of a table with a lamp on it: switched