Decider - By Dick Francis Page 0,72

phone directory and just tried my number on the off-chance…’

He stopped, searching our faces, begging for understanding but not getting much.

‘Well,’ he said weakly, ‘I was being evicted from my flat for non-payment of rent and I’d nowhere to go and I lived rough on the streets once before and anything’s better than that.’

Something in this recital, some tinge in the self-pity, reminded me sharply that this was an actor, a good one, and that the sob-stuff couldn’t be trusted. Still, I thought, let him run on. There might be truth in him somewhere.

He realised himself that the piteousness wasn’t achieving an over-sympathetic response and reacted with a more businesslike explanation.

‘I asked what was wanted, and they said to come here and make a bloody intolerable nuisance of myself…’

‘They?’ Roger asked.

‘He, then. He said to try to get some real demonstrators together and persuade them to come here and rant and rave a bit, so I went to a fox hunt and got that loud-mouthed bitch Paula to bring some of her friends… and I tell you, I’ve spent nearly a week with them and they get on my wick something chronic…’

‘But you’ve been paid?’ I suggested. ‘You’ve taken the money?’

‘Well…’ grudgingly, ‘some up front. Some every day. Yes.’

‘Every day?’ I repeated, incredulously.

He nodded.

‘And for burning the fence?’

He began to squirm again and to look mulishly sullen. ‘He didn’t say anything about burning the fence, not to begin with.’

‘Who,’ Roger asked without threat, ‘is he?

‘He didn’t tell me his name.’

‘Do you mean,’ Roger said in the same reasonable voice, ‘that you mounted a threatening demonstration here for someone unknown?’

‘For money. Like I said.’

‘And you just trusted you’d get paid?’

‘Well, I was.’ His air of defiance was of no help to him; much the reverse. ‘If I hadn’t been paid, all I’d have laid out was the bus fare from London, but he promised me, and he kept his promise. And every day that I caused trouble, I got more.’

‘Describe him,’ I said.

Quest shook his head, rear-guarding.

‘Not good enough,’ Roger said crisply. ‘The racecourse will lay charges against you for wilful destruction of property, namely burning down the fence at the open ditch.’

‘But you said…’ began Quest, impotently protesting.

‘We promised nothing. If you withhold the identity of your, er, procurer, we fetch the police across here immediately.’

Quest, looking hunted, caved in.

‘He told me,’ he said, seeking to persuade us, ‘to stop every car and be as much nuisance as I could, and one of the cars would be his, and he would wind down the window and tell me my telephone number, and I would know it was him, and I would put my hand into the car and he would put money into my hand, and I was not to ask questions or speak to him – as God’s my judge.’

‘Your judge will be a damn sight nearer than God,’ Henry bellowed, ‘if you’re not telling us straight.’

‘As God’s my…’ Quest began, and collapsed into speechlessness, unable to deal with so many accusers, with such complete disbelief.

‘All right,’ Roger told him prosaically, ‘you may not have wanted to look at him in the face, to be able to identify him, but there’s one thing you do now know, which you can tell us.’

Quest simply looked nervous.

‘Which car?’ Roger said. ‘Describe it. Tell us its number.’

‘Well… I…’

‘After the first payment,’ Roger said, ‘you’d have been looking out for that car.’

I suppose that rabbits might look at snakes as Quest looked at Roger.

‘Which car?’ Henry yelled in Quest’s ear.

‘A Jaguar XJ6. Sort of silver.’ He mumbled the number.

Roger, slightly aghast but not disbelieving, said to me succinctly, ‘Keith’s’.

He and I digested the news. Henry raised his eyebrows our way. Roger flapped a hand, nodding. Henry, perceiving that the really essential piece of information had surfaced, looked more benignly upon his demoralised captive.

‘Well, now,’ he said, at only medium fortissimo, ‘when did you get hold of the firelighters?’

After a moment, meekly, Quest said, ‘I bought them.’

‘When?’ Roger asked.

‘Saturday.’

‘On his instructions?’

Quest said feebly, ‘There was a piece of paper in with the money. He said to burn the open ditch fence, where a horse had been killed on the Saturday. He said dowse it with petrol, to make sure.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘I’m not daft.’

‘Not far off it,’ Henry told him.

‘Where do I get petrol?’ Quest asked rhetorically. ‘Buy a can from a garage, buy five gallons of petrol, then burn a fence down? I ask you! He took me for daft.’

‘Eating a hamburger was daft,’