10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [15]
“Ben ... Ben... has George been shot?”
“No, Polly.” I tried to reassure her. “No.”
“Someone said George had been shot.” She was out of breath and full of disbelief.
“Look, he is there.” I took her arm and pointed. “There. Hopping. And hopping mad with himself for twisting his ankle and needing someone to help him along.”
Polly’s arm was vibrating with the inner shakes, which only slowly abated when she could see that indeed George was alive and healthily swearing.
“But ... the shot ...”
I said, “It seems someone did fire a gun at the same moment that he tripped on the cobbles, but I promise you he wasn’t hit. No blood.”
“But you’re so young, Ben.” Her doubts still showed.
“Even a tiny kid could tell you there’s no blood.” I said it teasingly, but I guess it was my own relief that finally convinced her. She walked beside me and followed the pied-piper-like procession to the headquarters’ door, where my father produced a key and let everyone in.
He hopped across to his swivel chair behind his accustomed desk and, consulting a list, telephoned the local police.
“They’ve had several complaints already,” he told everyone, putting down the receiver. “They’re on their way here. Letting off a firearm... disturbing the peace... that sort of thing.”
Someone said, “What you need is a doctor ...” and someone else arranged for one to come. “So kind. You’re all so bloody kind,” my father said.
I left the hubbub and went to the open door, looking across the square to The Sleeping Dragon, which perversely had every eye wide open, with people leaning out of upstairs windows and people standing in brightly lit doorways below.
I remembered the “zzing” of the passing bullet and thought of ricochets. My father and I had been steering a straight line from hotel to headquarters; and if the bullet had been aimed at him, and if he’d stumbled at the exact second that the trigger was squeezed, and if the bullet’s trajectory had been from upstairs somewhere in The Sleeping Dragon (and not from downstairs because there were still too many people about), and if the bullet had smashed some glass so that I heard the tinkle, then why was every pane of the window in the bow-fronted headquarters intact?
Because, I told myself, the whole thing had been a coincidence. The bullet had not been intended to stop George Juliard’s political career before it started. Of course not. Dramatics were childish.
I turned to go back inside, and saw for an instant a flash of light on broken glass down on the ground.
It was a window of the charity shop next door that had been hit.
Zzing. Ricochet. Smash. The straight trajectory could have been deflected by the curve of a cobble. A rifle bullet traveling straight and true would very likely have gone straight through glass without breaking it, but a wobbling bullet... that might set up glass-smashing vibrations.
The police arrived at the parking-lot side of the headquarters, and the doctor also. Everyone talked at once.
The doctor, bandaging, said he thought the injury a strain, not a break. Ice and elevation, he prescribed. The police listened to the self-important man’s view on gunshots.
I stood to one side and at one point found my father looking at me through the throng, his expression both surprised and questioning. I smiled at him a bit, and the window of line of sight closed again as people moved.
I did tell a junior-looking uniformed policeman that the glass of the charity shop’s bow-front was broken, and he did come outside to look. But when I tentatively mentioned ricochets he looked quizzical and asked how old I was. I had done a bit of rifle shooting at school, I said. He nodded, unimpressed, and made a note. I followed when he returned to join his colleagues.
Dearest Polly stood at my father’s side and listened to everything worriedly. A man with a camera flashed several pictures. Considering that no one had actually been shot, the fuss went on for a long time and it was nearly two o’clock when I finally closed and bolted the doors, front and