Rat Race - By Dick Francis Page 0,54

the Cherokee.

‘Colin and Matt will see to everything.’

‘All right, then…’ She let herself be taken off by Annie Villars, who had recovered her poise and assumed total command as a good general should. Kenny and the other jockey and trainer meekly followed.

‘Now,’ said Colin. ‘How on earth did you know we needed you?’

‘I’ll show you,’ I said abruptly. ‘Come and look.’ I walked him back to the little Cherokee, climbed up on to the wing and lay down on my back across the two front seats, looking up under the control panel.

‘What on earth…?’

The device was there. I showed it to him. Very neat, very small. A little polythene-wrapped packet swinging free on a rubber band which was itself attached to the cable leading to the master switch. Nearer the switch one wire of the two wire cable had been bared: the two severed ends of copper showed redly against the black plastic casing.

I left everything where it was and eased myself out on to the wing.

‘What is it? What does it mean?’

‘Your electric system was sabotaged.’

‘For God’s sake… why?’

‘I don’t know,’ I sighed. ‘I only know who did it. The same person who planted the bomb a month ago. Major Rupert Tyderman.’

He stared at me blankly. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Not much. No.’

I told him how the Major had set off the bomb while we were safely on the ground, and that today he had thought I was flying Nancy’s Cherokee and could get myself out of trouble.

‘But that’s… that means…’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘He’s trying to make it look as though someone’s trying to kill me.’

I nodded. ‘While making damn sure you survive.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Board of Trade came down like the hounds of Hell and it wasn’t the tall reasonable man I faced this time in the crew room but a short hard-packed individual with an obstinate jaw and unhumorous eyes. He refused to sit down: preferred to stand. He had brought no silent note-taker along. He was strictly a one man band. And hot on percussion.

‘I must bring to your attention the Air Navigation Order Nineteen sixty six.’ His voice was staccato and uncompromising, the traditional politeness of his department reduced to the thinnest of veneers.

I indicated that I was reasonably familiar with the order in question. As it ruled every cranny of a professional pilot’s life, this was hardly surprising.

‘We have been informed that on Friday last you contravened Article 25, paragraph 4, sub section a, and Regulation 8, paragraph 2.

I waited for him to finish. Then I said ‘Who informed you?’

He looked at me sharply. ‘That is beside the point.’

‘Could it have been Polyplanes?’

His eyelids flickered in spite of himself. ‘If we receive a complaint which can be substantiated we are bound to investigate.’

The complaint could be substantiated, all right. Saturday’s newpapers were still strewn around the crew room this Monday morning, all full of the latest attempt on Colin Ross’s life. Front page stuff. Also minute details from all my passengers about how we had led him out to sea and brought him home under the 700 ft cloud base.

Only trouble was, it was illegal in a single engine aeroplane like the Six to take paying customers out over the sea as low as I had, and to land them at an airport where the cloud base was lower than one thousand feet.

‘You admit that you contravened Section…’

I interrupted him. ‘Yes.’

He opened his mouth and shut it again. ‘Er, I see.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You will receive a summons in due course.’

‘Yes,’ I said again.

‘Not your first, I believe.’ An observation, not a sneer.

‘No,’ I said unemotionally.

A short silence. Then I said, ‘How did that gadget work? The nitric acid package on the rubber band.’

‘That is not your concern.’

I shrugged. ‘I can ask any schoolboy who does chemistry.”

He hesitated. He was not of the stuff to give anything away. He would never, as the tall man had, say or imply that there could be any fault in his Government or the Board. But having searched his conscience and no doubt his standing orders, he felt able after all to come across.

‘The package contained fluffy fibreglass soaked in a weak solution of nitric acid. A section of wire in the cable to the master switch had been bared, and the fibreglass wrapped around it. The nitric acid slowly dissolved the copper wire, taking, at that concentration, probably about an hour and a half to complete the process.’ He stopped, considering.

‘And the rubber band?’ I prompted.

‘Yes… well, nitric