Silks by Dick Francis, Felix Francis Page A

with sickly cream walls. The only light came from a large, energy-efficient fluorescent bulb surrounded by a wire cage in the centre of the white ceiling. Absolutely no expense had been wasted on comfort.
    ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said again. ‘I tell you, I’m being framed.’
    As it happened, I believed him. In the past I’d had clients who had sworn blind that they were innocent and were being framed, and experience had taught me not to believe most of them. One client had once sworn to me on his mother’s life that he was innocent of setting fire to his own house for the insurance money, only for the said mother to confess that she and her son had planned it together. When she gave evidence against him in court, he had shouted from the dock that he’d kill her. So much for her life.
    However, in Steve’s case I had other reasons for believing him.
    ‘Who’s framing you?’ I asked him.
    ‘I’ve got no bloody idea,’ he said. ‘That’s for you to find out.’
    ‘Who is Julian Trent?’ I asked him calmly.
    ‘Who?’ he said.
    ‘Julian Trent,’ I repeated.
    ‘Never heard of him,’ Steve said. Not a flicker in his eyes, not a fraction of hesitation in his voice. Asking questions for a living, I believed I was a reasonable judge of when someone was lying. But I was not infallible. Over the years I had frequently believed people who were telling me lies, but it was not often that I discovered that someone I thought was lying was actually being truthful. Either Steve was being straight with me, or he was fairly good at lying.
    ‘Who is he?’ Steve asked.
    ‘No one important,’ I said. It was my turn to lie. ‘I just wondered if you knew him.’
    ‘Should I?’ he asked.
    ‘No reason you should,’ I said. I decided to change the subject. ‘So why do the police think you killed Scot Barlow?’
    ‘Because they just do,’ he answered unhelpfully.
    ‘But they must have some evidence,’ I said.
    ‘It seems that it was my bloody pitchfork stuck into the little bastard.’ I could imagine that Steve referring to Barlow as ‘the little bastard’ hadn’t gone down too well with the police. ‘And would I be so stupid to have killed the little bastard with my own pitchfork? At least I would have then taken the bloody thing home again.’
    ‘What else do they have?’ I asked him.
    ‘Something about spots of his blood and some of his hairs being found in my car, and his blood being on my boots. It’s all bloody nonsense. I was never in his house.’
    ‘So where exactly were you when he was killed?’ I asked him.
    ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘They haven’t told me when he actually died. But they did ask me what I was doing between one and six on Monday afternoon. I told them I was riding at Ludlow races. But I wasn’t. The meeting was abandoned due to the bloody course being waterlogged.’
    That was really stupid, I thought. Lying wouldn’t have exactly endeared him to the police, and it was so easy for them to check.
    ‘So where were you?’ I asked him again.
    He seemed reluctant to tell me, so I sat and waited in silence.
    ‘At home,’ he said eventually.
    ‘On your own?’ I pressed him.
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I was alone reading all afternoon.’
    Now he was lying. I was sure of it and I didn’t like it.
    ‘That’s a shame,’ I said. ‘If someone was with you, they would be able to give you an alibi.’
    He sat silently.
    ‘Do you know what the word “alibi” means?’ I asked him. He shook his head. ‘It’s Latin. It means “somewhere else”. Anunshakeable alibi is proof of innocence.’ I tried to lighten the atmosphere. ‘And even you, Steve, couldn’t be in two places at once. Are you sure you were alone all afternoon?’
    ‘Absolutely,’ he said, affronted. ‘Are you saying I’m a liar?’ He stood up and looked at me.
    ‘No, of course not,’ I said. But he was. ‘I’m just trying to make sure you remembered correctly.’
    I rather hoped he would sit