Field of Thirteen - Dick Francis [15]
Gypsy Joe, his quarry, gave a cursory glance at the neat youngish undistinguished racegoer reading his racecard six feet away and felt none of the supernatural shudder of foreboding that his ancestry would have expected. Gypsy Joe looked at Red Millbrook’s murderer and didn’t know him.
An hour later, on the stands before the fifth race, Emil Jacques rubbed sleeves with Davey The Rock and listened to him complaining acidly to Nigel Tape about merciless trainers, the slow post and the spitefulness of ungrateful whores.
Emil Jacques, disliking him, decided to increase his fee sharply.
When the proposal reached Davey The Rock three days later he screeched with fury; the swollen payment demanded up-front would swallow the rest of his savings. But Gypsy Joe’s campaign of accusation was driving him to drink and madness, and he would do anything – anything – he thought, to get rid of the remorseless whispers in his ears. ‘Murderer. Murderer. Admit you let loose a murderer.’
Davey Rockman sent every advance cent asked for, leaving nothing in reserve. He was foolishly risking that the murderer would not come looking for the rest after the deed was done.
A week later, at the beginning of March, the patron of the cafe passed two letters – nudge nudge – to his lucky customer with the busy sex life. The customer winked and smiled and began to think of moving to a different mail box.
Emil Jacques took his letters home. One, a thick sort of package, contained the whole of Davey The Rock’s hard-earned savings. The other proposed the almost immediate assassination of a politician in Brussels, death to occur within ten days, before a crucial vote.
Emil Jacques stood by his high window and looked down on the Seine. Caution warned him that Brussels was too soon. His anonymity, he reckoned, depended in part on the infrequency of his operations.
He had survived Red Millbrook’s murder easily, but the hunt would be redoubled after Gypsy Joe’s. The enlarged fee might make that death worthwhile, but a further murder in Brussels, his third in little over three months, that quick murder might give him an identity in police consciousness. The last thing he wanted, he thought grimly, was to be ‘Wanted’.
All the same, the Brussels proposal included the offer of a magnificent fee for a prompt performance, and he was, he considered, the BEST.
The following day therefore he banked Davey Rockman’s savings, put in a morning’s teaching with new guns at the gun club and in the afternoon and evening drove across Belgium to Brussels. He would reconnoitre the Brussels job, he decided, and would give his yes or no before crossing to England to terminate Gypsy Joe. He would be careful, he thought, and go one step at a time.
He spent three too-slow days in Brussels stalking his politician round the bazaars of the European parliament, finding to his growing dismay that his quarry was seldom alone and even in the gents was thoroughly guarded. What was worse, there was a fond wife and a pack of bright children with little sharp eyes. Children were a hazard for sensible murderers to steer wide of.
Emil Jacques, impatient and under pressure, unusually sent an acceptance by post of the Brussels proposition without clearly planning his ambush in advance, confident he would think of a good one in plenty of time. Meanwhile, as he waited for the Brussels up-front money to arrive, he would finish off Gypsy Joe: he would spend the weekend in England, earning the Rockman fee. He set off on this plan but almost at once things again began to go wrong. Even before he’d even left the city, his car broke down. (‘Mon auto ne marche pas.’) Emil cursed.
It was Friday morning. He was told his car would be repaired by Monday lunchtime. Emil Jacques blasphemed.
He went into a travel agent’s office to study his options and found himself at the desk of a smiling motherly middle-aged madame who took a liking to her youngish customer and made endless