Knock Down - By Dick Francis Page 0,71

filled with tears. I put my right arm round her and held her close.

‘Why don’t you get the bloody thing fixed?’ she said.

‘You won’t catch me having any more orthopaedic operations if I don’t absolutely have to.’

She sniffed the tears away. ‘You’re a coward.’

‘All the way.’

I walked with her to Vic’s-office. We stood in the doorway, looking in. He lay by the window, face down, the back of his purple shirt a glistening crimson obscenity.

Whatever he had done to me, I had done worse to him. Because of the pressure I’d put on him, he was dead. I supposed I would never outlive a grinding sense of responsibility and regret.

‘I half saw who killed him,’ I said.

‘Half?’

‘Enough.’

The indelible impression made sense. The pattern had become plain.

We turned away.

There was a sound of a car drawing up outside, doors slamming, two or three pairs of heavy feet.

‘The police,’ Sophie said in relief.

I nodded. ‘Keep it simple, though. If they start on Vic’s and my disagreements we’ll be here all night.’

‘You’re immoral.’

‘No… lazy.’

‘I’ve noticed.’

The police were their usual abrasive selves, saving their store of sympathy for worthier causes like old ladies and lost kids. They looked into the office, telephoned for reinforcements and invited us in a fairly hectoring manner to explain what we were doing there. I stifled an irritated impulse to point out that if we’d chosen we could have gone quietly away and left someone else to find Vic dead. Virtue’s own reward was seldom worth it.

Both then and later, when the higher ranks arrived, we gave minimum information and kept quiet in between. In essence I said, ‘There were no lights on in the front of the house when I arrived. I know the house slightly. I walked round to the side to see if Vic was in his office. I had a tentative arrangement to see him for five or six minutes at six o’clock. I was driving Miss Randolph home to Esher and called in at Vic’s on the way, parking outside on the road and walking up the drive. I saw him in his office. I saw him fall against the window, and then collapse. I hurried round to the front to try to get into the house to help him. A light-coloured Ford Cortina was starting up. It shot away in a hurry but I caught a glimpse of the driver. I recognised the driver.’

They listened to my identification impassively, neither pleased nor sceptical. Did I see a gun, they asked. There was no gun in Vic’s office.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing but the driver’s head.’

They grunted and turned to Sophie.

‘Jonah left me in his car,’ she said. ‘Then this other car came crashing out of the drive at a reckless speed. I decided to see if everything was all right. I walked up here and found Jonah in front of the house. The house door was open, so we went inside. We found Mr Vincent lying in his office. We telephoned immediately to you.’

We sat for nearly three hours in Vic’s beautiful dining-room while the end of his life was dissected by the prosaic professionals for whom murder was all in the day’s work. They switched on every light and brought more of their own, and the glare further dehumanised their host.

Maybe it was necessary for them to think of him as a thing, not a person. I still couldn’t.

I was finally allowed to take Sophie home. I parked outside and we went up to her flat, subdued and depressed. She made coffee, which we drank in the kitchen.

‘Hungry?’ she said. ‘There’s some cheese, I think.’

We ate chunks of cheese in our fingers, absent-mindedly.

‘What are you going to do?’ she said.

‘Wait for them to catch him, I suppose.’

‘He won’t run… he doesn’t know you saw him.’

‘No.’

She said anxiously, ‘He doesn’t… does he?’

‘If he’d seen me he’d have come back and shot us both.’

‘You think the nicest thoughts.’

The evening had left smudgy circles round her eyes. She looked more than tired: over-stretched, over-strained. I yawned and said I ought to be going home, and she couldn’t disguise her flooding relief.

I smiled. ‘You’ll be all right alone?’

‘Oh yes.’ Absolute certainty in her voice. Solitude offered her refuge, healing, and rest. I didn’t. I had brought her a car crash, a man with a pitchfork, a bone-setting and a murder. I’d offered an alcoholic brother, a half-burnt home and a snap engagement. None of it designed for the well-being of someone who needed the order and peace