Knock Down - By Dick Francis Page 0,45

the village street. One was yours. One was a Zodiac station wagon, and the man Kenneth had seen here was reported as having been observed trying to start it, failing to do so, kicking its wheels in disgust, and walking towards the main road, presumably to thumb a lift. Upon examining the station wagon we found two things. One was that the starter motor had jammed and that was why it would not start. The other was that the number plates did not coincide with the number written on the licence. We checked the licence. The car belongs to a Mr Leonard Williamson who says a young fellow took it away from him. He was asked if he knew the young fellow’s name and eventually he said he did. The young fellow was a Mr Frederick Smith. We went to the home of Mr Frederick Smith and invited him to come down here and help with our enquiries.’

‘Or in other words,’ I said smiling, ‘Leonard Williamson shopped Fred Smith who is now swearing blue murder in one of your cells.’

The Chief Inspector said primly, ‘We would like you to come and see if you know him.’

It was Frizzy-hair.

He looked hard, arrogant and unrepentant. The taunting smile he gave his victims had become a taunting sneer for his captors, and the way he sprawled on a chair with his legs spread wide was a statement of defiance.

You could see at once why young Kenneth had been able to describe him. On his left arm from biceps to knuckles he wore a large white plaster cast.

He stared boldly at me without recognition.

‘Hello, lover boy,’ I said.

The Chief Inspector looked at me sharply.

‘So you do know him.’

‘Yes. He attacked me at Ascot.’

‘I never.’

‘Mrs Kerry Sanders saw you.’

He blinked. Remembered. Narrowed his eyes with a snap and gave me a look that would have done credit to a crocodile.

‘You broke my bleeding elbow.’

‘I never,’ I said.

‘I hear your stable burnt,’ he said viciously. ‘Pity you weren’t in it.’

The Chief Inspector drew me back to his office.

‘He’s got form as long as your arm,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Well known on his own patch, is Fred Smith.’

‘Someone’s paying him,’ I said.

‘Oh yes. But we’ve no chance of him telling us who it is. He’s hard as nails. The Fred Smiths of this world never grass.’ He sounded as if he admired him for it. ‘He’ll do his time, but he’ll tell us nothing.’

Sophie came with me to see Crispin, who was sick and sorry for himself in the local hospital. His skin was pallid and sweaty, he coughed with a hand pressed to his chest, and his eyes showed that the gin level had ebbed as far as maximum agony. Like an axe chopping his brain, he’d once described it.

The first thing he said when he saw us was, ‘Give me a bloody drink. They won’t give me a bloody drink.’

I produced a small bottle of orange juice. He stared at it balefully.

‘You know what I bloody mean.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Vitamin C. Marvellous for hangovers.’ I poured the orange juice into a glass and gave it to him. A nurse watched approvingly from across the room. Crispin sniffed it crossly, tasted it, and drank the lot. He lay back against his pillows and closed the swimmy eyes.

‘Bloody orange juice,’ he said.

He lay for a minute or two as if asleep, but then with his eyes still shut said, ‘I hear you saved my bloody life.’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Near enough…. Don’t expect me to be grateful.’

‘No.’

Another long pause. ‘Come and fetch me tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘About noon, they said.’

‘All right.’

‘As for now, you can bugger off.’

Sophie walked away with me down the ward with her disgust escaping like steam.

‘Why on earth do you put up with him?’

‘He’s my brother.’

‘You could kick him out.’

‘Would you?’

She didn’t answer. When it came to the point, one couldn’t.

I thought of him lying there in his acute self-made misery, a lonely defeated man in a private hell. He’d had girlfriends once but not any more. There was no one except me between him and the gutter, and I knew he relied on me as if I’d been a solid wall.

‘Isn’t there any cure?’ Sophie said.

‘Oh yes. One certain cure. The only one.’

‘What is it?’

‘Wanting to be cured.’

She looked at me dubiously. ‘Does that make sense?’

‘He would automatically be cured if his urge to be cured was stronger than his urge to drink.’

‘But sometimes it is,’ she said. ‘You said he sometimes doesn’t drink