Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,67
investigator.
Carl came into the office and handed me a letter. ‘This came for you the day before yesterday,’ he said.
It was the letter from Forest Heath District Council informing me that they intended to prosecute me. I remembered that I had been on my way to collect the other letter from Suzanne Miller when my brakes had failed. I called her office number.
‘Hello, Suzanne,’ I said. ‘Max Moreton here.’
‘Hello, Max,’ she said in her trill manner. ‘Are you all right’? I heard about your accident.’
‘I’m fine, Suzanne, thank you,’ I said. ‘Just a little concussion, although my car has had it completely.’
‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘And I’m sorry that I never made it to you to collect the letter from Forest Heath District Council.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ she said. ‘But it’s still here waiting for you.’
‘They sent me another copy to the restaurant,’ I said.
‘I thought they might have,’ she said.
‘Have you had any luck with the lists I asked you to get?’ I asked, coming to the real purpose of my call.
‘I’m afraid I can’t help you with the guest list for the dinner,’ she said. ‘The one you already have is the only one available. Short of calling all the people named on the list and asking them for the names of their guests, I can’t think of anything else to do. But I’ve had a bit more luck with the Delafield Industries’ list. Apparently Special Branch asked for lists of the guests in all the boxes. Something to do with security for that Arab.’ She didn’t sound too impressed by Special Branch. ‘Fat lot of good it did.’
She still thought, like everyone else apart from me, that the bomb had been aimed at the prince.
‘Where are the lists?’ I asked her.
‘Special Branch has them, I suppose,’ she said. ‘I only found out about the lists because another of the box-holders told me. He was rather indignant at having to tell the police the names of his guests. If you ask me it was because he had his mistress with him and he wanted to keep her name a secret.’
‘Are you sure?’ I said.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘He told my staff she was his niece but it was obvious she wasn’t. We had a great time playing them along.’ She laughed down the phone.
I wouldn’t have believed it of her. ‘Who was it?’ I asked eagerly.
‘I’d better not say,’ she said, but then she did. She couldn’t resist it. I knew who it was. Everyone in racing would have known who it was. She then told me the name of his mistress too. How delicious. ‘But don’t tell anyone,’ she said seriously. I didn’t need to; in time Suzanne would see to that.
‘So how do I get the list from Special Branch?’ I asked.
‘Why don’t you ask them for it?’ she said.
So I did.
I typed ‘Special Branch UK’ into my computer and found a website that told me that every police force has its own Special Branch. So I called Suffolk Police who told me that protection for VIPs was handled by Special Branch of the Met, the Metropolitan Police. They kindly gave me a number.
‘We don’t give out information to members of the public,’ I was told firmly by a Detective Inspector Turner when I called and asked for the lists.
‘But I’m not just a member of the public, I was there,’ I said. ‘I was blown up by the bomb and I ended up in hospital.’ I didn’t tell him that it was only for a bit of a sore knee and a scratched leg.
‘And what exactly is it you are after?’ he said.
I explained to him that I had been the chef at the lunch that had been served in the bombed box and that one of my staff had been killed in the explosion. He was appropriately sympathetic. I told him that I believed Special Branch had been given a list of all the guests invited to that box and I was trying to obtain that list, so that I could invite the survivors to join a self-help therapy group being set up in the name of my dead waitress. To help them recover from the trauma of the bombing.
It was the best I could think of on the spur of the moment.
‘I’ll see what I can do, sir,’ he said.
I thanked him and gave him my e-mail address as well as my telephone number.