Read Online Comeback by Dick Francis - Free Book Online

shout to be heard.
    I nodded. Ken had enough worry besides this.
    There were the thuds of two explosions somewhere inside the walls, each causing huge spurts of flame to fly outwards through the melted front windows. Acrid smoke swirled after them, stinging the eyes.
    “Back, back,” voices yelled.
    Two more thuds. Through the windows, with a searing roar like flame throwers, sharp brilliant tongues licked across the parking space towards the spectators, sending them fleeing in panic.
    Another thud. Another fierce jet-burst of flames. A regrouping among the firemen, heads together in discussion.
    The whole roof fell in like a clap of thunder, seeming to squeeze more flames like toothpaste from the windows, and then, dramatically, the roaring inferno turned to black gritty billowing smoke and the pyrotechnics petered out into a wet and dirty mess, smelling sour.
    Ash drifted in the wind, settling in gray flakes on our hair. One could hear the hiss of water dousing hot embers. Lungs coughed from smoke. The crowd slowly began to leave, allowing the three of us to get closer to the ruined building to look for Belinda and Ken.
    “Do you think it’s safe?” Vicky asked doubtfully, stopping well short. “Weren’t those bombs going off?”
    “More like tins of paint,” I said.
    Greg looked surprised. “Does paint explode?”
    Where had he lived, I wondered, that he didn’t know that, at his age?
    “So does flour explode,” I said.
    Vicky gave me a strange look in which I only just got the benefit of the doubt as to my sanity, but indeed air filled with flour would flash into explosion if ignited. Many substances diffused in a mist in air would combust. Old buddies, oxygen, fuel and fire.
    “Why don’t you go back to the car,” I suggested to Vicky and Greg. “I’ll find the other two. I’ll tell them I’m driving you back to the house.”
    They both looked relieved and went away slowly with the dispersing throng. I ducked a few officials, saw no immediate sign of Belinda and Ken but found on the right of the burnt building an extension of the parking area that led back into a widening space at the rear. Down there, movement, lights and more people.
    Seeing Ken briefly and distantly as he hurried in and out of a patch of light, I set off to go down there despite warning shouts from behind. The heat radiating from the brick wall on my left proved to be of roasting capacity, which accounted for the shouts, and I did hope as I sped past that the whole edifice wouldn’t collapse outwards and cook me where I fell.
    Ken saw me as I hurried towards him and stood still briefly with his mouth open, looking back where I’d come.
    “Good God,” he said, “did you come along there? It isn’t safe. There’s a back way in.” He gestured behind him and I saw that indeed there was access from another road, as evidenced by a fire engine standing there that had been dealing with the flames from the rear.
    “Can I do anything?” I said.
    “The horses are all right,” Ken said. “But I need ... I need—” He stopped suddenly and began shaking, as if the enormity of the disaster had abruptly overwhelmed him once the need for urgent action had diminished. His mouth twisted and his whole face quivered.
    “God help me,” he said.
    It sounded like a genuinely desperate prayer, applying to much more than the loss of a building. I was no great substitute for the deity, but one way or another I’d helped deal with a lot of calamities. Crashed busloads of British tourists for instance, ended up, figuratively speaking, on embassy doorsteps, and I’d mopped up a lot of personal tragedies.
    “I’ll take Vicky and Greg back to the house, and then come back,” I said.
    “Will you?” He looked pathetically grateful even for the goodwill. He went on shaking, disintegration not far ahead.
    “Just hold on,” I said, and, without wasting time, left by the rear gate, hurrying along the narrow road there and getting back to the