Free 10 lb Penalty by Dick Francis Page B

Range Rover. What was wrong with it?”
    “Apart from the fancy paintwork?” He scratched his shiny head. “Foreign body in the oil sump. I suppose you might say that. Nothing else. I gave it a good clean-out.”
    “What sort of foreign body?”
    He looked at me dubiously. “I don’t rightly know.”
    “Well, um ... how do you know it was there?”
    He took his time in answering by starting at the beginning of his involvement. “A man in your party’s headquarters—said his name was Teck or some such—he phones Basil saying there might be something dicey about a fancy Range Rover they’d got there and to send someone over pronto to take a decko, so I went over there and this Mr. Teck gave me the keys and the Range Rover started at first touch, sweet as anything.”
    I looked at him without comment.
    “Yeah, well,” he said, scratching his bald head again. “This Teck guy said something about maybe someone took a potshot at your old man and to check that the Range Rover’s brakes hadn’t been mucked about with or anything, so I looked it all over and could see nothing wrong. No bombs, nothing like that, but anyway this Teck guy said to bring it here and do a thorough service, so I did.”
    He stopped for effect. I said obligingly, “What did you find?”
    “See, it was what I didn’t find.”
    “I wish you’d explain.”
    “No plug on the sump.”
    “What?”
    “Oil change. Routine service. I run the Range Rover over the inspection pit and I take a spanner to unscrew the sump plug to drain out the old oil, and there you are, no plug. No plug, I ask you. But there’s oil there, according to the dipstick. Normal. Full. So I run the engine a bit and the oil-pressure gauge reads normal, like it did on my way ‘round here, so there has to be oil circulating ’round the engine, see, so why, if the sump plug is missing, why hasn’t the oil all emptied out?”
    “Well, why?”
    “Because there’s something else plugging up the hole, that’s why.”
    “A rag?” I suggested. “A wad of tissues?”
    “Nothing like that, I don’t think. Something harder. Anyway, I poked a bit of wire into the hole and freed whatever was there and the oil poured out like it always does. Not filthy oil, mind you. It hadn’t been long since the last oil change.”
    “So the plug, whatever it is, is still in the sump?”
    He shrugged. “I dare say so. It won’t do much harm there. The sump drain hole’s not much bigger than a little finger.” He held up his own grimy hand. “It wasn’t a big plug, see.”
    “Mm.” I hesitated. “Did you tell Basil Rudd about it?”
    He shook his big head. “He’d gone home for the day when I put the work-done sheets in his office, and I didn’t think much of it. I found a new plug that fits the Range Rover and screwed it up tight. Then I filled up with clean oil, same as usual, and put the Range Rover out in the yard, where it is now. It’s all hunkydory. You’ll have no trouble with it.”
    “I’ll take it in a minute,” I said. “I’ll just go back into the office to see about settling up.”
    I went into the office and asked Basil Rudd if I could telephone my father in the party headquarters and he obligingly held out the receiver to me with a be-my-guest invitation.
    I said to my father, “Please, could you ask whoever it was who worked on your Range Rover last, if there was a normal plug on the oil-sump drain.” I relayed Terry’s finding and his solution to the problem.
    Basil Rudd looked up sharply from a paper he was writing on and began to protest, but I smiled, said it was an unimportant inquiry, and waited for my father’s answer. He told me to stay right where I was and five minutes later was back on the line.
    “My mechanic is very annoyed at any suggestion that there was any irregularity at all with any part of the Range Rover. He did a complete overhaul on Monday. So what is going on?”
    “I don’t exactly know. It’s probably