In the Frame - By Dick Francis Page 0,34

you think I’ve done anything wrong.’

The man from the office put his hand to the switch on the outside wall and carefully fiddled with it, and the steel gate slid up out of sight, a good deal more slowly than it had come down.

‘Sorry,’ he said perfunctorily. ‘But we have to be careful, with so many valuable paintings on the premises.’

‘Well, I see that,’ I said, stepping forward and resisting a strong impulse to make a dash for it. ‘But all the same…’ I managed an aggrieved tone. ‘Still, no harm done, I suppose.’ Magnanimous, as well.

They all walked behind me along the corridor and up the stairs and through the upper gallery, doing my nerves no slightest good. All the other visitors seemed to have left. The receptionist was locking the front door.

My throat was dry beyond swallowing.

‘I thought everyone had gone,’ she said in surprise.

‘Slight delay,’ I said, with a feeble laugh.

She gave me the professional smile and reversed the locks. Opened the door. Held it, waiting for me.

Six steps.

Out in the fresh air.

God almighty, it smelled good. I half turned. All four stood in the gallery watching me go. I shrugged and nodded and trudged away into the drizzle, feeling as weak as a fieldmouse dropped by a hawk.

I caught a passing tram and travelled a good way into unknown regions of the huge city, conscious only of an urgent desire to put a lot of distance between myself and that basement prison.

They would have second thoughts. They were bound to. They would wish they had found out more about me before letting me go. They couldn’t be certain it wasn’t a coincidence that I’d turned up at their gallery, because far more amazing coincidences did exist, like Lincoln at the time of his assassination having a secretary called Kennedy and Kennedy having a secretary called Lincoln; but the more they thought about it the less they would believe it.

If they wanted to find me, where would they look? Not at the Hilton, I thought in amusement. At the races: I had told them I would be there. On the whole I wished I hadn’t.

At the end of the tramline I got off and found myself opposite a small interesting-looking restaurant with B.Y.O. in large letters on the door. Hunger as usual rearing its healthy head, I went in and ordered a steak, and asked for a look at the wine list.

The waitress looked surprised. ‘It’s B.Y.O.,’ she said.

‘What’s B.Y.O.?’

Her eyebrows went still higher. ‘You a stranger? Bring Your Own. We don’t sell drinks here, only food.’

‘Oh.’

‘If you want something to drink, there’s a drive-in bottle shop a hundred yards down the road that’ll still be open. I could hold the steak until you get back.’

I shook my head and settled for a teetotal dinner, grinning all through coffee at a notice on the wall saying ‘We have an arrangement with our bank. They don’t fry steaks and we don’t cash cheques.’

When I set off back to the city centre on the tram, I passed the bottle shop, which at first sight looked so like a garage that if I hadn’t known I would have thought the line of cars was queuing for petrol. I could see why Jik liked the Australian imagination: both sense and fun.

The rain had stopped. I left the tram and walked the last couple of miles through the bright streets and dark parks, asking the way. Thinking of Donald and Maisie and Greene with an ‘e’, and of paintings and burglaries and violent minds.

The overall plan had all along seemed fairly simple: to sell pictures in Australia and steal them back in England, together with everything else lying handy. As I had come across two instances within three weeks, I had been sure there had to be more, because it was surely impossible that I could have stumbled on the only two, even given the double link of racing and painting. Since I’d met the Petrovitches and the Minchlesses, it seemed I’d been wrong to think of all the robberies taking place in England. Why not in America? Why not anywhere that was worth the risk?

Why not a mobile force of thieves shuttling container-fuls of antiques from continent to continent, selling briskly to a ravenous market. As Inspector Frost had said, few antiques were ever recovered. The demand was insatiable and the supply, by definition, limited.

Suppose I were a villain, I thought, and I didn’t want to waste weeks in foreign countries