Straight Read online

  “So you’ve remembered the numbers?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. It was just, this morning, with everything ... they went out of my head.”

  “And the vault,” I said. “Does that have any electronics?”

  “No, but it has an intricate locking system in that heavy door, though it looks so simple from the outside. Mr. Franklin always locks ... locked ... the vault before he left. When he went away on long trips, he made the key available to me.”

  I wondered fleetingly about that awkward phrase, but didn’t pursue it. I asked her instead about the showroom, which I hadn’t seen and, again with pride, she went into the corridor, programmed a shining brass doorknob with the open sesame numbers, and ushered me into a windowed room that looked much like a shop, with glass-topped display counters and the firm’s overall ambience of wealth.

  Annette switched on powerful lights and the place came to life. She moved contentedly behind the counters, pointing out to me the contents now bright with illumination.

  “In here are examples of everything we stock, except not all the sizes, of course, and not the faceted stones in the vault. We don’t really use the showroom a great deal, only for new customers mostly, but I like being in here. I love the stones. They’re fascinating. Mr. Franklin says stones are the only things the human race takes from the earth and makes more beautiful.” She lifted a face heavy with loss. “What will happen without him?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said, “but in the short term we fill the orders and dispatch them, and order more stock from where you usually get it. We keep to all the old routines and practices. OK?”

  She nodded, relieved at least for the present.

  “Except,” I added, “that it will be you who arrives first and leaves last, if you don’t mind.”

  “That’s all right. I always do when Mr. Franklin’s away.”

  We stared briefly at each other, not putting words to the obvious, then she switched off the showroom lights almost as if it were a symbolic act, and as we left pulled the self-locking door shut behind us.

  Back in Greville’s office I wrote down for her my own address and telephone number, and said that if she felt insecure, or wanted to talk, I would be at home all evening.

  “I’ll come back here tomorrow morning after I’ve seen the bank manager,” I said. “Will you be all right until then?”

  She nodded shakily. “What do we call you? We can’t call you Mr. Franklin, it wouldn’t seem right.”

  “How about Derek?”

  “Oh no.” She was instinctively against it. “Would you mind, say ... Mr. Derek?”

  “If you prefer it.” It sounded quaintly old-fashioned to me, but she was happy with it and said she would tell the others.

  “About the others,” I said, “sort everyone out for me, with their jobs. There’s you, June, Lily ...

  “June works the computers and the stock control,” she said. “Lily fills the orders. Tina, she’s a general assistant, she helps Lily and does some of the secretarial work. So does June. So do I, actually. We all do what’s needed, really. There are few hard and fast divisions. Except that Alfie doesn’t do much except pack up the orders. It takes him all his time.”

  “And that younger guy with the spiky orange halo?”

  “Jason? Don’t worry about the hair, he’s harmless. He’s our muscles. The stones are very heavy in bulk, you know. Jason shifts boxes, fills the stockrooms, does odd jobs and vacuums the carpets. He helps Alfie sometimes, or Lily, if we’re busy. Like I said, we all do anything, whatever’s needed. Mr. Franklin has never let anyone mark out a territory.”

  “His words?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Collective responsibility, I thought. I bowed to my brother’s wisdom. If it worked, it worked. And from the look of everything in the place, it did indeed work, and I wouldn’t disturb it.

  I closed and locked the vault door with Greville’s key and asked Annette which of his large bunch overrode the electronic locks. That one, she said, pointing, separating it.

  “What are all the others, do you know?”

  She looked blank. “I’ve no idea.”

  Car, house, whatever. I supposed I might eventually sort them out. I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile, sketched a goodbye to some of the others and rode down in the service elevator to find Brad out in the yard.

  “Swindon,” I said. “The medical center where we were on Friday. Would you mind?”

  “ ‘Course not.” Positively radiant, I thought.

  It was an eighty-mile journey, ten miles beyond home. Brad managed it without further communication and I spent the time thinking of all the things I hadn’t yet done, like seeing to Greville’s house and stopping delivery of his daily paper, wherever it might come from, and telling the post office to divert his letters.... To hell with it, I thought wearily. Why did the damned man have to die?

  The orthopedist X-rayed and unwrapped my ankle and tut-tutted. From toes to shin it looked hard, black and swollen, the skin almost shiny from the stretching.

  “I advised you to rest it,” he said, a touch crossly.

  “My brother died ...” I explained about the mugging, and also about having to see to Greville’s affairs.

  He listened carefully, a strong sensible man with prematurely white hair. I didn’t know a jockey who didn’t trust him. He understood our needs and our imperatives, because he treated a good many of us who lived in or near the training center of Lambourn.

  “As I told you the other day,” he said when I’d finished, “you’ve fractured the lower end of the fibula, and where the tibia and fibula should be joined, they’ve sprung apart. Today, they are farther apart. They’re now providing no support at all for the talus, the heel bones. You’ve now completely ripped the lateral ligament, which normally binds the ankle together. The whole joint is insecure and coming apart inside, like a mortise joint in a piece of furniture when the glue’s given way.”

  “So how long will it take?” I said.

  He smiled briefly. “In a crepe bandage it will hurt for about another ten days, and after that you can walk on it. You could be back on a horse in three weeks from now, if you don’t mind the stirrup hurting you, which it will. About another three weeks after that, the ankle might be strong enough for racing.”

  “Good,” I said, relieved. “Not much worse than before, then.”

  “It’s worse, but it won’t take much longer to mend.”

  “Fine.”

  He looked down at the depressing sight. “If you’re going to be doing all this traveling about, you’d be much more comfortable in a rigid cast. You could put your weight on it in a couple of days. You’d have almost no pain.”

  “And wear it for six weeks? And get atrophied muscles?”

  “Atrophy is a strong word.” He knew all the same that jump jockeys needed strong leg muscles above all else, and the way to keep them strong was to keep them moving. Inside plaster they couldn’t move at all and weakened rapidly. If movement cost a few twinges, it was worth it.

  “Delta-cast is lightweight,” he said persuasively. “It’s a polymer, not like the old plaster of paris. It’s porous, so air circulates and you don’t get skin problems. It’s good. And I could make you a cast with a zip in it so you could take it off for physiotherapy.”

  “How long before I was racing?”

  “Nine or ten weeks.”

  I didn’t say anything for a moment or two and he looked up fast, he eyes bright and quizzical.

  “A cast, then?” he said.

  “No.

  He smiled and picked up a roll of crepe bandage. “Don’t fall on it again in the next month, or you’ll be back to square one.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  He bandaged it all tight again from just below the knee down to my toes and back, and gave me another prescription for Distalgesic. “No more than eight tablets in twenty-four hours and not with alcohol.” He said it every time.

/>   “Right.”

  He considered me thoughtfully for a moment and then rose and went over to a cabinet where he kept packets and bottles of drugs. He came back tucking a small plastic bag into an envelope, which he held out to me.

  “I’m giving you something known as DF 118s. Rather appropriate, as they’re your own initials! I’ve given you three of them. They are serious painkillers, and I don’t want you to use them unless something like yesterday happens again.”

  “OK,” I said, putting the envelope into my pocket. “Thanks.”

  “If you take one, you won’t feel a thing.” He smiled. “If you take two at once, you’ll be spaced out, high as a kite. If you take all three at once, you’ll be unconscious. So be warned.” He paused. “They are a last resort.”

  “I won’t forget,” I said, “and I truly am grateful.”

  Brad drove to a chemist’s, took my prescription in, waited for it to be dispensed, and finished the ten miles home, parking outside my door.

  “Same time tomorrow morning?” I asked. “Back to London?”

  “Yerss.”

  “I’d be in trouble without you,” I said, climbing out with his help. He gave me a brief haunted glance and handed me the crutches. “You drive great,” I said.

  He was embarrassed, but also pleased. Nowhere near a smile, of course, but a definite twitch in the cheeks. He turned away, ducking my gaze, and set off doggedly toward his mother.

  I let myself into the house and regretted the embargo on a large scotch. Instead, with June’s lunchtime sandwich a distant memory, I refueled with sardines on toast and ice cream after, which more or less reflected my habitual laziness about cooking.

  Then, aligned with icepacks along the sofa, I telephoned to the man in Newmarket who trained Greville’s two racehorses.

  He picked up the receiver as if he’d been waiting for it to ring.

  “Yes?” he said. “What are they offering?”

  “I’ve no idea,” I said. “Is that Nicholas Loder?”

  “What? Who are you?” He was brusque and impatient, then took a second look at things and with more honey said, “I beg your pardon, I was expecting someone else. I’m Loder, yes, who am I talking to?”

  “Greville Franklin’s brother.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  It meant nothing to him immediately. I pictured him as I knew him, more by sight than face to face, a big light-haired man in his forties with enormous presence and self-esteem to match. Undoubtedly a good-to-great trainer, but in television interviews occasionally overbearing and condescending to the interviewer, as I’d heard he could be also to his owners. Greville kept his horses with him because the original horse he’d taken as a bad debt had been in that stable. Nicholas Loder had bought Greville all his subsequent horses and done notably well with them, and Greville had assured me that he got on well with the man by telephone, and that he was perfectly friendly.

  The last time I’d spoken to Greville myself on the telephone he’d been talking of buying another two-year-old, saying that Loder would get him one at the October sales, perhaps.

  I explained to Loder that Greville had died and after the first sympathetic exclamations of dismay he reacted as I would have expected, not as if missing a close friend but on a practical business level.

  “It won’t affect the running of his horses,” he said. “They’re owned in any case by the Saxony Franklin company, not by Greville himself. I can run the horses still in the company name. I have the company’s Authority to Act. There should be no problem.”

  “I’m afraid there may be,” I began.

  “No, no. Dozen Roses runs on Saturday at York. In with a great chance. I informed Greville of it only a few days ago. He always wanted to know when they were running, though he never went to see them.”

  “The problem is,” I said, “about my being his brother. He has left the Saxony Franklin company to me.”

  The size of the problem suddenly revealed itself to him forcibly. “You’re not his brother, Derek Franklin? That brother? The jockey?”

  “Yes. So ... could you find out from Weatherby’s whether the horses can still run while the estate is subject to probate?”

  “My God,” he said weakly.

  Professional jockeys, as we both knew well, were not allowed to own runners in races. They could own other horses such as brood mares, foals, stallions, hacks, hunters, show-horses, but they couldn’t run them.

  “Can you find out?” I asked again.

  “I will.” He sounded exasperated. “Dozen Roses should trot up on Saturday.”

  Dozen Roses was currently the better of Greville’s two horses whose fortunes I followed regularly in the newspapers and on television. A triple winner as a three-year-old, he had been disappointing at four, but in the current year, as a five-year-old, he had regained all his old form and had scored three times in the past few weeks. A “trot-up” on Saturday was a reasonable expectation.

  Loder said, “If Weatherby’s gives the thumbs-down to the horse running, will you sell it? I’ll find a buyer by Saturday, among my owners.”

  I listened to the urgency in his voice and wondered whether Dozen Roses was more than just another trot-up, of which season by season he had many. He sounded a lot more fussed over than seemed normal.

  “I don’t know whether I can sell before probate,” I said. “You’d better find that out too.”

  “But if you can, will you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, puzzled. “Let’s wait and see, first.”

  “You won’t be able to hang on to him, you know,” he said forcefully. “He’s got another season in him. He’s still worth a good bit. But unless you do something like turn in your license, you won’t be able to run him, and he’s not worth turning in your license for. It’s not as if he were favorite for the Derby.”

  “I’ll decide during the week.”

  “But you’re not thinking of turning in your license, are you?” He sounded almost alarmed. “Didn’t I read in the paper that you’re on the injured list but hope to be back racing well before Christmas?”

  “You did read that, yes.”

  “Well, then.” The relief was as indefinable as the alarm, but came clear down the wires. I didn’t understand any of it. He shouldn’t have been so worried.

  “Perhaps Saxony Franklin could lease the horse to someone,” I said.

  “Oh. Ah. To me?” He sounded as if it were the perfect solution.

  “I don’t know,” I said cautiously. “We’ll have to find out.”

  I realized that I didn’t totally trust him, and it wasn’t a doubt I’d have felt before the phone call. He was one of the top five Flat race trainers in the country, automatically held to be reliable because of his rock-solid success.

  “When Greville came to see his horses,” I asked, “did he ever bring anyone with him? I’m trying to reach people he knew, to tell them of his death.”

  “He never came here to see his horses. I hardly knew him personally myself, except on the telephone.”

  “Well, his funeral is on Friday at Ipswich,” I said. “What if I called in at Newmarket that day, as I’ll be over your way, to see you and the horses and complete any paperwork that’s necessary?”

  “No,” he said instantly, Then, softening it, “I always discourage owners from visiting. They disrupt the stable routine. I can’t make any exceptions. If I need you to sign anything I’ll arrange it another way.”

  “All right,” I agreed mildly, not crowding him into corners. “I’ll wait to hear from you about what Weatherby’s decides.”

  He said he would get in touch and abruptly disconnected, leaving me thinking that on the subject of his behavior I didn’t know the questions let alone the answers.

  Perhaps I had been imagining things: but I knew I hadn’t. One could often hear more nuances in someone’s voice on the telephone than one could face to face. When people were relaxed, the lower vibration of their voices came over the wires undi
sturbed; under stress, the lower vibrations disappeared because the vocal cords involuntarily tightened. After Loder had discovered I would be inheriting Dozen Roses, there had been no lower vibrations at all.

  Shelving the enigma, I pondered the persisting difficulty of informing Greville’s friends. They had to exist, no one lived in a vacuum; but if it had been the other way round, I supposed that Greville would have had the same trouble. He hadn’t known my friends either. Our worlds had scarcely touched except briefly when we met, and then we had talked a bit about horses, a bit about gadgets, a bit about the world in general and any interesting current events.

  He’d lived alone, as I did. He’d told me nothing about any love life. He’d said merely, “Bad luck” when three years earlier I’d remarked that my live-in girlfriend had gone to live-in somewhere else. It didn’t matter, I said. It had been a mutual agreement, a natural ending. I’d asked him once about his long-ago divorced wife. “She remarried. Haven’t seen her since,” was all he’d said.

  If it had been I who had died, I thought, he would have told the world I worked in: he’d have told, perhaps, the trainer I mostly rode for, and maybe the racing papers. So I should tell his world: tell the semiprecious stone fraternity. Annette could do it, regardless of the absence of Greville’s address book, because of June’s computer. The computer made more and more nonsense of the break-in. I came back to the same conviction: Something else had been stolen, and I didn’t know what.

  I remembered at about that point that I did have Greville’s pocket diary, even if his desk diary had lost October, so I went and fetched it from the bedroom where I’d left it the night before. I thought I might find friends’ names and phone numbers in the addresses section at the back, but he had been frugal in that department as everywhere else in the slim brown book. I turned the pages, which were mostly unused, seeing only short entries like “R arrives from Brazil” and “B in Paris” and “Buy citrine for P.”