Even Money - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,11
an audience, so he took off.”
“Now, about your father,” he said. “What was his full name?”
“Peter James Talbot,” I said. The detective constable wrote it down.
“And his address?” he asked.
“I’m not sure of his full address,” I said, “but I believe he lived in Melbourne, Australia.”
“Then can you tell us, Mr. Talbot,” the detective sergeant said, “why the man, who you claim was your father, had a credit card and a driver’s license in his jacket both in the name of Alan Charles Grady?”
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Are you telling us that you didn’t know your father existed?” the detective chief inspector asked.
“Well,” I said slowly, “yes and no.”
“Which?” he demanded. “Yes, obviously I knew that he existed thirty-seven years ago, but, no, I didn’t know until today that he still existed.” It was confusing. After all, he didn’t now exist, not as a living being anyway.
I was again with Detective Sergeant Murray and DC Walton, but we had transferred as a group from Wexham Park Hospital to Windsor Police Station, swapping the grieving families’ room for a stark police interview room with no windows. The chairs at each place, I noticed, could have come from the same manufacturer’s batch.
We had been joined by Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn, who did not extend the nicety of expressing sympathy for my dead father. I decided I didn’t like him very much, and he clearly had no good feelings towards me either.
“A bookmaker, eh?” he’d said by way of introduction, curling his lip. He, like many, clearly believed that all bookmakers were villains unless proved otherwise, and even then there’d be some doubt remaining.
“Are you absolutely certain that this man was your father?” He stabbed his finger at the driver’s license that sat on the table in front of me, its black-and-white photograph clearly being that of the man I had left lying dead under a sheet at the hospital.
“No,” I said, looking up at the detective chief inspector, “I can’t say I am absolutely certain. But I still think he was. It was not so much what he looked like or what he said but his mannerisms and demeanor that convinced me. He picked at his fingers in the same way I watched my grandfather do a million times, and there was something about his lolloping walk that is somehow reminiscent of my own.”
“Then why is this license in the name of someone called Alan Grady?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “Is it genuine?”
“We’re checking,” he said.
“Well, I still believe the man in that photograph is my father.” The detective chief inspector clearly didn’t share my confidence. “The DNA will tell us for sure one way or another,” he said. I had been asked for, and had given, a sample of my DNA at the hospital. “And you say he’s lived in Australia for the past thirty years or so?”
“That’s what he told me, yes,” I replied.
“And you believed him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why not?” I said. “Why would he lie to me?”
“Mr. Talbot,” he said, “in my experience, people lie all the time.” He leaned forward and looked at me closely. “And I think you might be lying to me right now.”
“Think away,” I said. “But I’m not.”
“We’ll see,” said the detective chief inspector, standing up abruptly and walking out of the room.
“Chief Inspector Llewellyn has left the room,” said the detective sergeant for the benefit of the audio-recording machine that sat on the table to my left.
“Can I go now?” I asked.
“Mr. Talbot,” said the detective sergeant, “you can leave anytime you like. You are not under arrest.”
Maybe not, I thought, but I had been questioned “under caution.”
“Then I would like to go home,” I said. “I have to be back at Ascot racetrack at ten-thirty in the morning.”
“Interview terminated,” said the detective sergeant, glancing up at the clock on the wall, “at twenty-two forty-five.” He pushed the STOP button on the front of the recording machine.
“Have you spoken to any of the other people who were there in the parking lot?” I asked him as we walked along the corridor.
“We continue to make inquiries,” he answered unhelpfully.
“Please can I have a photocopy of that driver’s license?” I asked him.
“What for?” he said.
“The photograph. The only one I have of my father was taken before I was born. I would like to have another.”
“Er,” said the detective sergeant, looking around at Detective Constable Walton, “I’m not sure that I can.”