In the Frame - By Dick Francis Page 0,79

organising ability… I didn’t know when I came that the organisation was so huge, but I did know it was organised, if you see what I mean. It was an overseas operation. It took some doing. Knowhow.’

Jik tugged the ring off a can of beer and passed it to me, wincing as he stretched.

‘But he convinced me I was wrong about him,’ I said, drinking through the triangular hole. ‘Because he was so careful. He pretended he had to look up the name of the gallery where Donald bought his picture. He didn’t think of me as a threat, of course, but just as Donald’s cousin. Not until he talked to Wexford down on the lawn.’

‘I remember,’ Sarah said. ‘When you said it had ripped the whole works apart.’

‘Mm… I thought it was only that he had told Wexford I was Donald’s cousin, but of course Wexford also told him that I’d met Greene in Maisie’s ruins in Sussex and then turned up in the gallery looking at the original of Maisie’s burnt painting.’

‘Jesus Almighty,’ Jik said. ‘No wonder we beat it to Alice Springs.’

‘Yes, but by then I didn’t think it could be Hudson I was looking for. I was looking for someone brutal, who passed on his violence through his employees. Hudson didn’t look or act brutal.’ I paused. ‘The only slightest crack was when his gamble went down the drain at the races. He gripped his binoculars so hard that his knuckles showed white. But you can’t think a man is a big-time thug just because he gets upset over losing a bet.’

Jik grinned. ‘I’d qualify.’

‘In spades, redoubled,’ Sarah said.

‘I was thinking about it in the Alice Springs hospital… There hadn’t been time for the musclemen to get to Alice from Melbourne between us buying Renbo’s picture and me diving off the balcony, but there had been time for them to come from Adelaide, and Hudson’s base was at Adelaide… but it was much too flimsy.’

‘They might have been in Alice to start with,’ Jik said reasonably.

‘They might, but what for?’ I yawned. ‘Then on the night of the Cup you said Hudson had made a point of asking you about me… and I wondered how he knew you.’

‘Do you know,’ Sarah said, ‘I did wonder too at the time, but it didn’t seem important. I mean, we’d seen him from the top of the stands, so it didn’t seem impossible that somewhere he’d seen you with us.’

‘The boy knew you,’ I said. ‘And he was at the races, because he followed you, with Greene, to the Hilton. The boy must have pointed you out to Greene.’

‘And Greene to Wexford, and Wexford to Hudson?’ Jik asked.

‘Quite likely.’

‘And by then,’ he said, ‘They all knew they wanted to silence you pretty badly, and they’d had a chance and muffed it… I’d love to have heard what happened when they found we’d robbed the gallery.’ He chuckled, tipping up his beer can to catch the last few drops.

‘On the morning after,’ I said, ‘a letter from Hudson was delivered by hand to the Hilton. How did he know we were there?’

They stared. ‘Greene must have told him,’ Jik said. ‘We certainly didn’t. We didn’t tell anybody. We were careful about it.’

‘So was I,’ I said. ‘That letter offered to show me round a vineyard. Well… if I hadn’t been so doubtful of him, I might have gone. He was a friend of Donald’s… and a vineyard would be interesting. From his point of view, anyway, it was worth a try.’

‘Jesus!’

‘On the night of the Cup, when we were in that motel near Box Hill, I telephoned the police in England and spoke to the man in charge of Donald’s case, Inspector Frost. I asked him to ask Donald some questions… and this morning outside Wellington I got the answers.’

‘This morning seems several light years away,’ Sarah said.

‘Mm…’

‘What questions and what answers?’ Jik said.

‘The questions were, did Donald tell Hudson all about the wine in his cellar, and did Donald tell Wexford about the wine in the cellar, and was it Hudson who had suggested to Donald that he and Regina should go and look at the Munnings in the Arts Centre. And the answers were “Yes, of course”, and “No, whyever should I?”, and “Yes”.’

They thought about it in silence. Jik fiddled with the dispenser in the room’s in-built refrigerator and liberated another can of Fosters.

‘So what then?’ Sarah said.

‘So the Melbourne police said it was too insubstantial, but