Crossfire by Dick;Felix Francis Francis Page A

again.
    “No.” She did little more than mouth the word. “Please, no.”
    “Then tell me why not,” I said. My voice seemed loud and strong compared to my mother’s.
    I remembered back to what my platoon color sergeant had said at Sandhurst: “Command needs to be expressed in the correct tone. Half the struggle is won if your men believe you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t, and a strong, decisive tone will give them that belief.”
    I was now “in command” of the present situation, whether my mother or stepfather believed it or not.
    “Because your mother would go to prison,” Derek said slowly.
    The brandy must be going to his head, I thought.
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.
    “I’m not,” he said. “She would. And me too probably, as an accessory.”
    “An accessory to what?” I said. “Have you murdered someone?”
    “No.” He almost smiled. “Not quite that bad.”
    “Then what is it?”
    “Tax,” he said. “Evading tax.”
    I looked at my mother.
    The shaking had spread from her hands to much of her body, and she was crying openly as I had never seen her before. She certainly didn’t look like the woman that the entire village was proud of. And she was a shadow of the person who must have collected the National Woman of the Year Award on the television just a month before. She suddenly looked much older than her sixty-one years.
    “So what are we going to do about it?” I said in my voice-of-command.
    “What do you mean?” Derek asked.
    “Well, you can’t go on paying two thousand pounds a week, now, can you?”
    He looked up at me in surprise.
    “I saw the bank statements,” I said.
    He sighed. “It’s not just the money. We might cope if it was just the money.”
    “What else?” I asked him.
    His shoulders slumped. “The horses.”
    “What about the horses?”
    “No,” my mother said, but it was barely a whisper.
    “What about the horses?” I asked again forcefully.
    He said nothing.
    “Have the horses had to lose to order?” I asked into the silence.
    He gulped and looked down, but his head nodded.
    “Is that what happened to Pharmacist?” I asked.
    He nodded again. My mother meanwhile now had her eyes firmly closed as if no one could see her if she couldn’t see them. The shaking had abated, but she rocked gently back and forth in the chair.
    “How do you get the orders?” I asked Derek.
    “On the telephone,” he said.
    There were so many questions: how, what, when and, in particular, who?
    My mother and stepfather knew the answers to most of them, but sadly, not the last. Of that they were absolutely certain.
    I refilled their brandy glasses and started the inquisition.
    “How did you get into this mess?” I asked.
    Neither of them said anything. My mother had shrunk down into her chair as if trying to make herself even more invisible, while Derek just drank heavily from his glass, hiding behind the cut crystal.
    “Look,” I said. “If you want me to help you, then you will have to tell me what’s been going on.”
    There was a long pause.
    “I don’t want your help,” my mother said quietly. “I want you to go away and leave us alone.”
    “But I’m sure we can sort out the problem,” I said, in a more comforting manner.
    “I can sort it out myself,” she said.
    “How?” I asked.
    There was another long pause.
    “I’ve decided to retire,” she said.
    My stepfather and I sat there looking at her.
    “But you can’t retire,” he said.
    “Why not?” she asked with more determination. She almost sounded like her old self.
    “Then how would we pay?” he said in exasperation. I thought that he was now about to cry.
    My mother shrank back into her chair.
    “The only solution is to find out who is doing this and stop them,” I said. “And for that I need you to answer my questions.”
    “No police,” my mother said.
    It was my turn to pause.
    “But we might need the police to find the blackmailer.”
    “No,” she