Slay Ride Page 7

‘A disadvantage.’

  ‘No woman would think so.’

  Arne came back from the hall looking preoccupied.

  ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Oh… er… ja.’ He blinked several times. ‘It is all arranged. Nine o’clock tomorrow morning, they drag the pond.’ He paused. ‘Will you be there, David?’

  I nodded. ‘And you?’

  ‘Ja.’ The prospect did not seem to please him; but then I was not wildly excited about it myself. If Bob Sherman were indeed there, he would be the sort of unforgettable object you wished you had never seen, and my private gallery of those was already too extensive.

  Arne piled logs on the fire as if to ward off demons, and Kari said it was time to eat. She gave us reindeer steaks in a rich dark sauce and after that the promised cloudberries, which turned out to be yellowy-brown and tasted of caramel.

  ‘They are very special,’ Arne said, evidently pleased to be able to offer them. ‘They grow in the mountains, and are only in season for about three weeks. There is a law about picking them. One can be prosecuted for picking them before the right date.’

  ‘You can get them in tins,’ Kari said. ‘But they don’t taste the same as these.’

  We ate in reverent silence.

  ‘No more until next year,’ Arne said regretfully, putting down his spoon. ‘Let’s have some coffee.’

  Kari brought the coffee and with amusement declined half-hearted offers from me to help with the dishes.

  ‘You do not want to. Be honest.’

  ‘I do not want to,’ I said truthfully.

  She laughed. A highly feminine lady with apparently no banners to wave about equality in the kitchen. Between her and Arne the proposition that everything indoors was her domain, and everything outside, his, seemed to lead only to harmony. In my own sister it had led to resentment, rows, and a broken marriage. Kari, it seemed to me, expected less, settled for less, and achieved more.

  I didn’t stay late. I liked looking at Kari just a shade too much, and Arne, for all his oddnesses, was an investigator. I had taught him myself how to notice where people were looking, because where their eyes were, their thoughts were, as often as not. Some men felt profound gratification when others lusted after their wives, but some felt a revengeful anger. I didn’t know what Arne’s reaction would be, and I didn’t aim to find out.

  6

  Monday morning. Drizzle. Daylight slowly intensifying over Øvrevoll racecourse, changing anthracite clouds to flannel grey. The dark green spruce and yellow birch stood around in their dripping thousands and the paper debris from the day before lay soggily scattered across the wet tarmac.

  Round the lower end of the track, Gunnar Holth and one or two other trainers were exercising their strings of racehorses, but the top part, by and above the winning post, had been temporarily railed off.

  Shivering from depression more than cold, I was sitting up in the observation tower with Lars Baltzersen, watching the dragging of the pond down below. Hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, rain dripping off hat brims, Arne and two policemen stood at the water’s edge, peering morosely at the small boat going slowly, methodically, backwards and forwards from bank to bank.

  The pond was more or less round, approximately thirty yards in diameter, and apparently about six feet deep. The boat contained two policemen with grappling hooks and a third, dressed in a black rubber scuba suit, who was doing the rowing. He wore flippers, gloves, hood and goggles, and had twice been over the side with an underwater torch to investigate when the grapples caught. Both times he had returned to the surface and shaken his head.

  The swans and the black and white ducks swam around in agitated circles. The water grew muddier and muddier. The boat moved slowly on its tenth traverse, and Lars Baltzersen said gloomily, ‘The police think this is a waste of time.’

  ‘Still,’ I said, ‘they did come.’

  ‘They would, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  We watched in silence.

  A grapple caught. The swimmer went over the side, submerged for a full minute, came up, shook his head, and was helped back into the boat. He took up the oars: rowed on. One each side of the boat, the two men swung the three-pronged grapples into the water again, dragging them slowly across the bottom.

  ‘They considered emptying the pond,’ Baltzersen said. ‘But the technical difficulties are great. Water drains into it from all the top part of the racecourse. They decided on dragging.’

  ‘They are being thorough enough,’ I said.

  He looked at me soberly. ‘If they do not find Sherman, then, will you be satisfied that he is not there?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘That is reasonable.’

  We watched for another hour. The swimmer made two more trips into the water, and came up with nothing. The boat finished its journey, having missed not an inch. There was no body. Bob Sherman was not in the pond.

  Beside me, Baltzersen stood up stiffly and stretched, his chair scraping loudly on the wooden boards.

  ‘That is all, then,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  I stood and followed him down the outside staircase, to be met at the bottom by Arne and the policeman in charge.

  ‘No one is there,’ he said to me in English, implying by his tone that he wasn’t surprised.

  ‘No. But thank you for finding out.’

  He, Baltzersen and Arne spoke together for some time in Norwegian, and Baltzersen walked across to thank the boatmen personally. They nodded, smiled, shrugged, and began to load their boat on to a trailer.

  ‘Never mind, David,’ said Arne with sympathy. ‘It was a good idea.’

  ‘One more theory down the drain,’ I agreed philosophically. ‘Not the first, by a long way.’

  ‘Will you go on looking?’

  I shook my head. The fjords were too deep. Someone in the Chairman’s room had reacted strongly to my mention of water, and if Bob Sherman wasn’t in the pond he was somewhere just as wet.

  Baltzersen, Arne, the senior policeman and I trudged back across the track and into the paddock enclosure, on our way to the cars parked beside the main entrance. Baltzersen frowned at the rubbish lying around in the shape of dropped race-cards and old tote tickets and said something to Arne. Arne replied in Norwegian and then repeated it in English.

  ‘The manager thought it better that the refuse collectors should not be here to see the police drag the pond. Just in case, you see… Anyway, they are coming tomorrow instead.’

  Baltzersen nodded. He had taken the morning off from his timber business and looked as though he regretted it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘To have wasted your time.’

  He made a little movement of his head to acknowledge that I was more or less forgiven. The persistent drizzle put a damper on anything warmer.

  In silence we passed the stands, the ornamental pond (too shallow) and secretariat, and it was probably because the only noise was the crunch of our feet that we heard the child.

  He was standing in a corner of the Tote building, sobbing. About six, soaked to the skin, with hair plastered to his forehead in forlorn-looking spikes. The policeman looked across to him and beckoned, and in a kind enough voice said what must have been ‘Come here.’

  The boy didn’t move, but he said something which halted my three companions in mid-step. They stood literally immobile, as if their reflexes had all stopped working. Their faces looked totally blank.

  ”What did he say?’ I asked.

  The boy repeated what he had said before, and if anything the shock of my companions deepened.

  Baltzersen loosened his jaw with a visible effort, and translated.

  ‘He said, ”I have found a hand”.’

  The child was frightened when we approached, his big eyes looking frantically around for somewhere to run to, but whatever the policeman said reassured him, and when we reached him he was just standing there, wet, terrified, and shiveri
ng.

  The policeman squatted beside him, and they went into a longish quiet conversation. Eventually the policeman put out his hand, and the child gripped it, and after that the policeman stood up and told us in English what he’d said.

  ‘The boy came to look for money. The racing crowd often drop coins and notes, especially after dark. This boy says he always squeezes through a hole in the fence, before the rubbish collectors come, to see if he can find money. He says he always finds some. This morning he found twenty kroner before the men came. He means before the police came. But he is not supposed to be here, so he hid. He hid behind the stands, up there.’ The policeman nodded across the tarmac. ‘He says that behind the stands he found a hand lying on the ground.’

  He looked down at the child clutching his own hand like a lifeline, and asked Arne to go across to his men, who had packed up all their gear and were on the point of leaving, to ask them to come over at the double. Arne gave the child a sick look and did as he was asked, and Baltzersen himself slowly returned to businesslike efficiency.

  The policeman had difficulty transferring the boy’s trust to one of his men, but finally disengaged himself, and he, two of his men, Baltzersen, Arne and I walked up to and around the stands to see the hand which was lying on the ground.

  The child was not mistaken. Waxy white and horrific, it lay back downwards on the tarmac, fingers laxly curled up to meet the rain.

  What the child had not said, however, was that the hand was not alone.

  In the angle between the wall and the ground lay a long mound covered by a black tarpaulin. Half way along its length, visible to the wrist, the hand protruded.

  Wordlessly the senior policeman took hold of a corner of the tarpaulin and pulled it back.

  Arne took one look, bolted for the nearest bushes, and heaved up whatever Kari had given him for breakfast. Baltzersen turned grey and put a shaking hand over his mouth. The policemen themselves looked sick, and I added another to the unwanted memories.

  He was unrecognisable really: it was going to be a teeth job for the inquest. But the height and clothes were right, and his overnight grip was lying there beside him, still with the initials R. T. S. stamped on in black.

  A piece of nylon rope was securely knotted round the chest, and another half way down the legs, and from each knot, one over the breastbone, one over the knees, led a loose piece of rope which finished in a frayed end.

  One of the policemen said something to his chief, and Baltzersen obligingly translated for me.

  ‘That is the policeman who was diving,’ he said, and ‘he says that in the pond the grapples caught on a cement block. He did not think anything of it at the time, but he says there were frayed ends of rope coming from the cement. He says it looked like the same rope as this.’

  The policeman in charge pulled the tarpaulin back over the tragic bundle and started giving his men instructions. Arne stood several yards away, mopping his face and mouth with a large white handkerchief and looking anywhere but at the black tarpaulin. I walked over and asked if he was all right. He was trembling, and shook his head miserably.

  ‘You need a drink,’ I said. ‘You’d better go home.’

  ‘No.’ He shuddered. ‘I’ll be all right. So stupid of me. Sorry, David.’

  He came with me round to the front of the stands and we walked over to where Baltzersen and the top policeman had rejoined the little boy. Baltzersen adroitly drew me aside a pace or two, and said quietly, ‘I don’t want to upset Arne again… The child says the hand was not showing at first. He lifted the tarpaulin a little to see what was underneath… you know what children are like… and he saw something pale and tried to pull it out. It was the hand. When he saw what it was… he ran away.’

  ‘Poor little boy,’ I said.

  ‘He shouldn’t have been here,’ he said, meaning by his tone, serve him right.

  ‘If he hadn’t been, we wouldn’t have found Bob Sherman.’

  Lars Baltzersen looked at me thoughtfully. ‘I suppose whoever took him out of the pond meant to return with transport and get rid of him somewhere else.’

  ‘No, I shouldn’t think so,’ I said.

  ‘He must have done. If he didn’t mind him being found, he would have left him in the pond.’

  ‘Oh sure. I just meant… why take him anywhere else? Why not straight back into the pond… as soon as it was dark? That’s the one place no one would ever look for Bob Sherman again.’

  He gave me a long considering stare, and then unexpectedly, for the first time that morning, he smiled.

  ‘Well… you’ve done what we asked,’ he said.

  I smiled faintly back and wondered if he yet understood the significance of that morning’s work. But catching murderers was a matter for the police, not for me. I was only catching the two-five to Heathrow, with little enough margin for what I still had to do first.

  I said, ‘Any time I can help…’ in the idle way that one does, and shook hands with him, and with Arne, and left them there with their problem, in the drizzle.

  I picked up Emma Sherman at her hotel as I had arranged, and took her up to my room in the Grand. I had been going to give her lunch before we set off to the airport, but instead I asked the restaurant to bring hot soup upstairs. Still no brandy. Not until three o’clock, they said. Next time, I thought, I’d pack a gallon.

  Champagne was emotionally all wrong for the news I had to give her, so I stirred it around with some orange juice and made her drink it first. Then I told her, as gently as I could, that Bob had died at the time of his disappearance. I told her he was not a thief and had not deserted her. I told her he had been murdered.

  The desperately frail look came back to her face, but she didn’t faint.

  ‘You did… find him, then.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ”Where… is he?’

  ‘At the racecourse.’

  She stood up, swaying a bit. ‘I must go and see him.’

  ‘No,’ I said firmly, holding her elbow. ‘No, Emma, you must not. You must remember him alive. He doesn’t look the same now, and he would hate you to see him. He would beg you not to see him.’

  ‘I must see him… of course I must.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Do you mean…’ It began to dawn on her… ‘That he looks… horrible?

  ‘I’m afraid so. He’s been dead a month.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  She sat down with weak knees and began to cry. I told her about the pond, the ropes, the cement. She had to know sometime, and it couldn’t be much worse than the agony of spirit she had suffered through four long weeks.

  ‘Oh my poor Bob,’ she said. ‘Oh darling… oh darling…’

  The floodgates of all that misery were opened and she wept with a fearful outpouring intensity, but at least and at last it was a normal grief, without the self doubt and humiliating shame.

  After a while, still shaking with sobs, she said, ‘I’ll have to get my room back, at the hotel.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re coming home to England today, with me, as we planned.’

  ‘But I can’t…’

  ‘Indeed you can, and indeed you will. The last place for you now is here. You need to go home, to rest, recover, and look after that baby. The police here will do everything necessary, and I’ll see that the Jockey Club, and the Injured Jockeys’ Fund perhaps, organises things from the English end. In a little while we can have Bob brought home to England, if that’s what you would like… But for today, it’s you that matters. If you stay here, you will be ill.’

  She listened, took in barely half, but in fact raised no more objections. Maybe the police would not be overjoyed at her leaving, I thought, but they’d had her around for a month, and there couldn’t be much she hadn’t already told them. We caught the flight on schedule, and she stared out of the window all the way home with exhausted tears running intermittently down her cheeks.

  Her grandfather, alerted from Oslo, met her at Hea
throw. Tall, thin, stooping and kind, he greeted her with a small kiss and many affectionate pats: her parents, she had told me, had died during her school days, leaving her and a brother to be shuttled between relays of other relations. She liked her mother’s widowed father best, and wanted him most in her troubles.

  He shook my hand.

  ‘I’ll see she’s looked after,’ he said.

  He was a nice scholarly man. I gave him my private address and telephone number, in case she needed an inside edge on official help.

  7

  Tuesday morning from nine to ten I spent in the office finding out that everyone had been doing just great in my absence and would undoubtedly continue to do so if I disappeared altogether. On my desk lay neat reports of finished enquiries: the man we had suspected of running a retired high-class ’chaser under a hunter’s name in a point-to-point had in fact done so and was now in line for a fraud prosecution, and an applicant for a trainer’s licence in the Midlands had been found to have totally unsuitable training facilities.

  Nothing to make the hair curl. Nothing like weighted bodies in Norwegian ponds.

  The whole of the rest of the day was spent with two opposite numbers from the New York Racing Commission who had come to discuss the viability of a world-wide racing investigatory link-up, something along the lines of Interpol. It was one of a series of talks I’d had with officials of many countries and the idea seemed very slowly to be staggering towards achievement. As usual the chief stumbling block to any rapid progress seemed to be my own apparent youth: I supposed that by the time I was sixty, when I’d run out of steam, they would begin to nod while they listened.

  I talked my throat dry, gave away sheaves of persuasive literature, took them to dinner at Inigo Jones, and hoped the seed hadn’t fallen on stony ground. At farewell time the older of them asked a question I was by then well used to.

  ‘If you succeed in setting this thing up, do you have it in mind to be head of it yourself?’

  I smiled. I knew very well that if the baby was born it would very smartly be found to be not mine after all.