(1983) The Danger by Francis Dick

Author:Francis, Dick [Dick, Francis,]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-06-30T14:53:24.015000+00:00

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Chapter eleven

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JOHN NERRITY was a heavily built man of medium height with graying hair cut neat and short; clipped moustache to match. On good days I could imagine him generating a fair amount of charm, but on that evening I saw only a man accustomed to power who had married a girl less than half his age and looked like regretting it.

They lived in a large detached house on the edge of a golf course near Sutton, Surrey, south of London, only about three miles distant from where their four-legged wonder had made a fortune on Epsom Downs.

The exterior of the house, in the dusk of our arrival, had revealed itself as thirties-developed Tudor, but on a restrained and successful scale. Inside, the carpets wall-to-wall looked untrodden, the brocade chairs un-sat-on, the silk cushions unwrinkled, the paper and paint unscuffed. Unfaded velvet curtains hung in stiff regular folds from beneath elaborate pelmets, and upon several glass and chromium coffee tables lay large glossy books, unthumbed. There were no photographs and no flowers, and the pictures had been chosen to occupy wall space, not the mind; the whole thing more like a shop window than the home of a little boy.

John Nerrity was holding a gin and tonic with ice clinking and lemon slice floating, a statement in itself of his resistance to crisis. I couldn’t imagine Paolo Cenci organizing ice and lemon six hours after the first ransom demand: it had been almost beyond him to pour without spilling.

With Nerrity were Tony Vine wearing his most enigmatic expression and another man, sour of mouth and bitter of eye, who spoke with Tony’s accent and looked vaguely, in his flannels and casual sweater, as if he’d been out for a stroll with his dog.

“Detective Superintendent Rightsworth,” Tony said, introducing him deadpan. “Waiting to talk to Mrs. Nerrity.”

Rightsworth gave me barely a nod, and that more of repression than of acknowledgement. One of those, I thought. A civilian-hater. One who thought of the police as “us” and the public as “them,” the “them” being naturally inferior. It always surprised me that policemen of that kind got promoted, but Rightsworth was proof enough that they did.

Alessia and Miranda had come into the sitting room close together and a step behind me, as if using me as a riot shield: and it was clear from John Nerrity’s face that the first sight of his wife prompted few loving, comforting, or supportive feelings.

He gave her no kiss. No greeting. He merely said, as if in a continuing conversation, “Do you realize that Ordinand isn’t mine to sell? Do you realize we’re in hock to the limit? No, you don’t. You can’t do anything. Not even something simple like looking after a kid.”

Miranda crumpled behind me and knelt on the floor. Alessia and I bent to help her up, and I said to Miranda’s ear, “People who are frightened are often angry and say things that hurt. He’s as frightened as you are.

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