Break In

Eleven

I didn’t suppose an apology printed in the Flag would melt Bobby’s bank manager’s cash register heart, and I was afraid that the Flag’s compensation, if they paid it, wouldn’t be enough, or soon enough, to make much difference.

I thought with a sigh of the manager in my own bank, who had seen me uncomplainingly through bad patches in the past and had stuck out his neck later to lend me capital for one or two business excursions, never pressing prematurely for repayment. Now that I looked like being solvent for the foreseeable future he behaved the same as ever, friendly, helpful, a generous source of advice.

Getting the apology printed was more a gesture than an end to Bobby’s troubles, but at least it should reassure the owners and put rock back under the quicksands for the tradespeople in Newmarket. If the stable could be saved, it would be saved alive, not comatose.

I’d got from Sam Leggatt a tacit admission that the Flag had been at fault, and the certainty that he knew the answers to my questions. I needed those answers immediately and had no hope of unlocking his tongue.

With a sense of failure and frustration I booked into a nearby hotel for the night, feeling more tired than I liked to admit and afraid of falling asleep on the seventy dark miles home. I ordered something to eat from room service and made a great many telephone calls between yawns.

First, to Holly.

‘Well done, today,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Your win, of course.’

‘Oh, yes.’ It seemed a lifetime ago. ‘Thanks.’

‘Where are you?’ she said. ‘I tried the cottage.’

‘In London.’ I told her the hotel and my room number. ‘How are things?’

‘Awful.’

I told her about the Flag promising to print the apology, which cheered her a little but not much.

‘Bobby’s out. He’s gone walking on the Heath. It’s all dreadful. I wish he’d come back.’

The anxiety was raw in her voice and I spent some time trying to reassure her, saying Bobby would certainly return soon, he would know how she worried; and privately wondering if he wasn’t sunk so deep in his own despair that he’d have no room for imagining Holly’s.

‘Listen,’ I said after a while. ‘Do something for me, will you?’

‘Yes. What?’

‘Look up in the form books for Maynard’s horse Metavane. Do you remember, it won the 2000 Guineas about eight years ago?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘I want to know who owned it before Maynard.’

Is it important?’ She sounded uninterested and dispirited.

‘Yes. See if you can find out, and ring me back.’

‘All right.’

‘And don’t worry.’

‘I can’t help it.’

No one could help it, I thought, disconnecting. Her unhappiness settled heavily on me as if generated in my own mind.

I telephoned Rose Quince at the home number she had given me on my way out, and she answered breathlessly at the eighth ring saying she had just that minute come through the door.

‘So they didn’t throw you to the presses?’ she said.

‘No. But I fear I got bounced off the flak jacket.’

‘Not surprising.’

‘All the same, read Intimate Details on Friday. And by the way, do you know a man called Tunny? He edits Intimate Details.’

‘Tunny,’ she said. ‘Tug Tunny. A memory like a floppy disc, instant recall at the flick of a switch. He’s been in the gossip business all his life. He probably pulled the wings off butterflies as a child and he’s fulfilled if he can goad any poor slob to a messy divorce.’

‘He didn’t look like that,’ I said dubiously.

‘Don’t be put off by the parsonage exterior. Read his column. That’s him.’

‘Yes. Thanks. And what about Owen Watts and Jay Erskine?’

‘The people who left their belongings in your sister’s garden?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Owen Watts I’ve never heard of before today,’ Rose said. ‘Jay Erskine... if it’s the same Jay Erskine, he used to work on the Towncrier as a crime reporter.’

There were reservations in her voice, and I said persuasively, ‘Tell me about him.’

‘Hm.’ She paused, then seemed to make up her mind. ‘He went to jail some time ago,’ she said. ‘He was among criminals so much because of his job, he grew to like them, like policemen sometimes do. He got tried for conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice. Anyway, if it’s the same Jay Erskine, he was as hard as nails but a terrific writer. If he wrote those pieces about your brother-in-law, he’s sold out for the money.’

‘To eat,’ I said.

‘Don’t get compassionate,’ Rose said critically. ‘Jay Erskine wouldn’t.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Thanks. Have you been inside the Flag building?’

‘Not since they did it up. I hear it’s gruesome. When Pollgate took over he let loose some decorator who’d been weaned on orange kitchen plastic. What’s it like?’

‘Gruesome,’ I said, ‘is an understatement. What’s Pollgate like himself?’

‘Nestor Pollgate, owner of the Flag as of a year ago,’ she said, ‘is reported to be a fairly young upwardly mobile shit of the first water. I’ve never met him myself. They say a charging rhinoceros is safer.’

‘Does he have editorial control?’ I asked. ‘Does Sam Leggatt print to Pollgate’s orders?’

‘In the good old days proprietors never interfered,’ she said nostalgically. ‘Now, some do, some still don’t. Bill Vaughnley gives general advice. The old Lord edited the Towncrier himself in the early years, which was different. Pollgate bought the Flag over several smarting dead bodies and you’ll see old-guard Flag journalists weeping into their beer in Fleet Street bars over the whipped-up rancour they have to dip their pens in. The editor before Sam Leggatt threw in the sponge and retired. Pollgate has certainly dragged the Flag to new heights of depravity, but whether he stands over Leggatt with a whip, I don’t know.’

‘He wasn’t around tonight, I don’t think,’ I said.

‘He spends his time putting his weight about in the City, so I’m told. Incidentally, compared with Pollgate, your man Maynard is a babe in arms with his small takeovers and his saintly front. They say Pollgate doesn’t give a damn what people think of him, and his financial bullying starts where Maynard’s leaves off.’

‘A right darling.’

‘Sam Leggatt I understand,’ she said. ‘Pollgate I don’t. If I were you I wouldn’t twist the Flag’s tail any further.’

‘Perhaps not.’

‘Look what they did to your brother-in-law,’ she said, ‘and be warned.’

‘Yes,’ I said soberly. ‘Thank you.’

‘Any time.’

She said goodbye cheerfully and I sat drinking a glass of wine and thinking of Sam Leggatt and the fearsome manipulator behind him: wondering if the campaign against Maynard had originated from the very top, or from Leggatt or from Tunny, or from Watts and Erskine, or from outside the Flag altogether, or from one of Maynard’s comet-trail of victims.

The telephone rang and I picked up the receiver, hearing Holly’s voice saying without preamble, ‘Maynard got Metavane when he was an unraced two-year-old, and I couldn’t find the former owners in the form book. But Bobby has come back now, and he says he thinks they were called Perryside. He’s sure his grandfather used to train for them, but they seem to have dropped right out of racing.’

‘Um,’ I said. ‘Have you got any of those old Racing Who’s Whos? They had pages of owners in them, with addresses. I’ve got them, but they’re in the cottage, which isn’t much good tonight.’

‘I don’t think we’ve got any from ten years ago,’ she said doubtfully, and I heard her asking Bobby. ‘No, he says not.’

‘Then I’ll ring up Grandfather and ask him. I know he’s kept them all, back to the beginning.’

‘Bobby wants to know what’s so important about Metavane after all these years.’

‘Ask him if Maynard still owns any part of Metavane.’

The murmuring went on and the answer came back. ‘He thinks Maynard still owns one share. He syndicated the rest for millions.’

I said, ‘I don’t know if Metavane’s important. I’ll know tomorrow. Keep the chin up, won’t you?’

‘Bobby says to tell you the dragon has started up the drive.’

I put the receiver down smiling. If Bobby could make jokes he had come back whole from the Heath.

Grandfather grumbled that he was ready for bed but consented to go downstairs in his pyjamas. ‘Perryside,’ he said, reading, ‘Major Clement Perryside, The Firs, St Albans, Hertfordshire, telephone number attached.’ Disgust filled the old voice. ‘Did you know the fella had his horses with Allardeck?’

‘Sorry, yes.’

‘To hell with him, then. Anything else? No? Then goodnight.’

I telephoned to the Perryside number he’d given me and a voice at the other end said, Yes, it was The Firs, but the Perrysides hadn’t lived there for about seven years. The voice had bought the house from Major and Mrs Perryside, and if I would wait they might find their new address and telephone number.

I waited. They found them. I thanked them; said goodnight.

At the new number another voice said, No, Major and Mrs Perryside don’t live here any more. The voice had bought the bungalow from them several months back. They thought the Perrysides had gone into sheltered housing in Hitchin. Which sheltered housing? They couldn’t say, but it was definitely in Hitchin. Or just outside. They thought.

Thank you, I said, sighing, and disconnected.

Major and Mrs Perryside, growing older and perhaps poorer, knowing Maynard had made millions from their horse: could they still hold a grievance obsessional enough to set them tilting at him at this late stage? But even if they hadn’t, I thought it would be profitable to talk to them.

If I could find them; in Hitchin, or outside.

I telephoned to my answering machine in the cottage and collected my messages: four from various trainers, the one from Holly, and a final unidentified man asking me to ring him back, number supplied.

I got through to Wykeham Harlowe first because he, like my grandfather, went early to bed, and he, too, said he was in his pyjamas.

We talked for a while about that day’s runners and those for the next day and the rest of the week, normal more or less nightly discussions. And as usual nowadays he said he wouldn’t be coming to Towcester tomorrow, it was too far. Ascot, he said, on Friday and Saturday. He would go to Ascot, perhaps only on one day, but he’d be there.

‘Great,’ I said.

‘You know how it is, Paul,’ he said. ‘Old bones, old bones.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know. This is Kit.’

‘Kit? Of course you’re Kit. Who else would you be?’

‘No one,’ I said. ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow night.’

‘Good, good. Take care of those novices. Goodnight, then, Paul.’

‘Goodnight,’ I said.

I talked after that with the three other trainers, all on the subject of the horses I’d be riding for them that week and next, and finally, after ten o’clock and yawning convulsively, I got through to the last, unidentified, number.

‘This is Kit Fielding,’ I said.

‘Ah.’ There was a pause, then a faint but discernible click, ‘I’m offering you,’ said a civilised voice, ‘a golden opportunity.’

He paused. I said nothing. He went on, very smoothly, ‘Three thousand before, ten thousand after.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘You haven’t heard the details.’

I’d heard quite enough. I disconnected without saying another word and sat for a while staring at walls I didn’t see.

I’d been propositioned before, but not quite like that. Never for such a large sum. The before-and-after merchants were always wanting jockeys to lose races to order, but I hadn’t been approached by any of them seriously for years. Not since they’d tired of being told no.

Tonight’s was an unknown voice, or one I hadn’t heard often enough to recognise. High in register. Education to match. Prickles wriggled up my spine. The voice, the approach, the amount, the timing, all of them raised horrid little suggestions of entrapment.

I sat looking at the telephone number I’d been given.

A London number. The exchange 722. I got through to the operator and asked whereabouts in London one would find exchange 722, general information printed in London telephone directories. Hold on, she said, and told me almost immediately; 722 was Chalk Farm stroke Hampstead.

I thanked her. Chalk Farm stroke Hampstead meant absolutely nothing, except that it was not an area known for devotion to horse racing. Very much the reverse, I would have thought. Life in Hampstead tended to be intellectually inward-looking, not raucously open-air.

Why Hampstead...

I fell asleep in the chair.

After a night spent at least half in bed I drank some coffee in the morning and went out shopping, standing in draughty doorways in Tottenham Court Road, waiting for the electronic wizards to unbolt their steel-mesh shutters.

I found a place that would re-record Rose’s professional three-quarter-inch tape of Maynard on to a domestic size to fit my own player, no copyright questions asked. The knowingly obliging youth who performed the service seemed disgusted and astounded that the contents weren’t pornographic, but I cheered him up a little by buying a lightweight video-recording camera, a battery pack to run it off and a number of new tapes. He showed me in detail how to work everything and encouraged me to practise in the shop. He could point me to a helpful little bachelor club, he said, if I needed therapy.

I declined the offer, piled everything in the car, and set off north to Hitchin, which was not exactly on the direct route to Towcester but at least not in a diametrically opposite direction.

Finding the Perrysides when I got there was easy: they were in the telephone book. Major C. Perryside, 14 Conway Retreat, Ingle Barton. Helpful locals pointed me to the village of Ingle Barton, three miles outside the town, and others there explained how to find number 14 in the retirement homes.

The houses themselves were several long terraces of small one-storey units, each with its own brightly painted front door and strip of minute flower bed. Paths alone led to the houses: one had to park one’s car on a tarmac area and walk along neatly paved ways between tiny segments of grass. Furniture removal men, I thought, would curse the lay-out roundly, but it certainly led to an air of unusual peace, even on a cold damp morning in November.

I walked along to number 14, carrying the video camera in its bag. Pressed the bell push. Waited.

Everywhere was quiet, and no one answered the door. After two or three more unsuccessful attempts at knocking and ringing I went to the door of the right-hand neighbour and tried there.

An old lady answered, round, bright-eyed, interested.

‘They walked round to the shop,’ she said.

‘Do you know how long they’ll be?’

‘They take their time.’

‘How would I know them?’ I asked.

‘The Major has white hair and walks with a stick. Lucy will be wearing a fishing hat, I should think. And if you’re thinking of carrying their groceries home for them, young man, you’ll be welcomed. But don’t try to sell them encyclopaedias or life insurance. You’ll be wasting your time.’

‘I’m not selling,’ I assured her.

‘Then the shop is past the car park and down the lane to the left.’ She gave me a sharp little nod and retreated behind her lavender door, and I went where she’d directed.

I found the easily recognisable Perrysides on the point of emerging from the tiny village stores, each of them carrying a basket and moving extremely slowly. I walked up to them without haste and asked if I could perhaps help.

‘Decent of you,’ said the Major gruffly, holding out his basket.

‘What are you selling?’ Lucy Perryside said suspiciously, relinquishing hers. ‘Whatever it is, we’re not buying.’

The baskets weren’t heavy: the contents looked meagre.

‘I’m not selling,’ I said, turning to walk with them at the snail’s pace apparently dictated by the Major’s shaky legs. ‘Would the name Fielding mean anything to you?’

They shook their heads.

Lucy under the battered tweed fishing hat had a thin imperious-looking face, heavily wrinkled with age but firm as to mouth. She spoke with clear upper-class diction and held her back ramrod straight as if in defiance of the onslaughts of time. Lucy Perryside, in various guises and various centuries, had pitched pride against bloody adversity and come through unbent.

‘My name is Kit Fielding,’ I said. ‘My grandfather trains horses in Newmarket.’

The Major stopped altogether. ‘Fielding. Yes. I remember. We don’t like to talk about racing. Better keep off the subject, there’s a good chap.’

I nodded slightly and we moved on as before, along the cold little lane with the bare trees fuzzy with the foreboding of drizzle; after a while Lucy said, ‘That’s why he came, Clement, to talk about racing.’

‘Did you?’ asked the Major apprehensively.

‘I’m afraid so, yes.’

This time, however, he went on walking, with, it seemed to me, resignation; and I had an intense sense of the disappointments and downward adjustments he had made, swallowing his pain and behaving with dignity, civil in the face of disasters.

‘Are you a journalist?’ Lucy asked.

‘No... a jockey.’

She gave me a sweeping glance from head to foot. ‘You’re too big for a jockey.’

‘Steeplechasing,’ I said.

‘Oh.’ She nodded. ‘We didn’t have jumpers.’

‘I’m making a film,’ I said. ‘It’s about hard luck stories in racing. And I wondered if you would help with one segment. For a fee, of course.’

They glanced at each other, searching each other’s reactions, and in their private language apparently decided not to turn down the offer without listening.

‘What would we have to do?’ Lucy asked prosaically.

‘Just talk. Talk to my camera.’ I indicated the bag I was carrying along with the baskets. ‘It wouldn’t be difficult.’

‘Subject?’ the Major asked, and before I could tell him he sighed and said, ‘Metavane?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

They faced up to it as to a firing squad, and Lucy said eventually, ‘For a fee. Very well.’

I mentioned an amount. They made no audible comment, but it was clear from their nods of acceptance that it was enough, that it was a relief, that they badly needed the money.

We made our slow progress across the car park and down the path and through their bright blue front door, and at their gestured invitation I brought out the camera and fed in a tape.

They grouped themselves naturally side by side on the sofa whose chintz cover had been patched here and there with different fabrics. They sat in a room unexpectedly spacious, facing large sliding windows which let out on to a tiny secluded paved area where in summer they could sit in the sun. There was a bedroom, Lucy said, and a kitchen and a bathroom, and they were comfortable, as I could see.

I could see that their furniture, although sparse, was antique, and that apart from that it looked as if everything saleable had been sold.

I adjusted the camera in the way I’d been taught and balanced it on a pile of books on a table, kneeling behind it to see through the viewfinder.

‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’ll ask you questions. Would you just look into the camera lens while you talk?’

They nodded. She took his hand: to give courage, I thought, rather than to receive.

I started the camera silently recording and said, ‘Major, would you tell me how you came to buy Metavane?’

The Major swallowed and blinked, looking distinguished but unhappy.

‘Major,’ I repeated persuasively, ‘please do tell me how you bought Metavane?’

He cleared his throat. ‘I er... we... always had a horse, now and then. One at a time. Couldn’t afford more, do you see? But loved them.’ He paused. ‘We asked our trainer... he was called Allardeck... to buy us a yearling at the sales. Not too expensive, don’t you know. Not more than ten thousand. That was always the limit. But at that price we’d had a lot of fun, a lot of good times. A few thousand for a horse every four or five years, and the training fees. Comfortably off, do you see.’

‘Go on, Major,’ I said warmly as he stopped. ‘You’re doing absolutely fine.’

He swallowed. ‘Allardeck bought us a colt that we liked very much. Not brilliant to look at, rather small, but good blood lines. Our sort of horse. We were delighted. He was broken in during the winter and during the spring he began to grow fast. Allardeck said we shouldn’t race him then until the autumn, and of course we took his advice.’ He paused. ‘During the summer he developed splendidly and Allardeck told us he was very speedy and that we might have a really good one on our hands if all went well.’

The ancient memory of those heady days lit a faint glow in the eyes, and I saw the Major as he must have been then, full of boyish enthusiasm, inoffensively proud.

‘And then, Major, what happened next?’

The light faded and disappeared. He shrugged. He said, ‘Had a bit of bad luck, don’t you know.’

He seemed at a loss to know how much to say, but Lucy, having contracted for gain, proved to have fewer inhibitions.

‘Clement was a member of Lloyd’s,’ she said. ‘He was in one of those syndicates which crashed... many racing people were, do you remember? He was called upon, of course, to make good his share of the losses.’

‘I see,’ I said, and indeed I did. Underwriting insurance was fine as long as one never actually had to pay out.

‘A hundred and ninety-three thousand pounds,’ the Major said heavily, as if the shock was still starkly fresh, ‘over and above my Lloyd’s deposit, which was another twenty-five. Lloyd’s took that, of course, straight away. And it was a bad time to sell shares. The market was down. We cast about, do you see, to know what to do.’ He paused gloomily, then went on, ‘Our house was already mortgaged. Financial advisors, you understand, had always told us it was best to mortgage one’s house and use the money for investments. But the investments had gone badly down... some of them never recovered.’

The flesh on his old face drooped at the memory of failure. Lucy looked at him anxiously, protectively stroking his hand with one finger.

‘It does no good to dwell on it,’ she said uneasily. ‘I’ll tell you what happened. Allardeck got to hear of our problems and said his son Maynard could help us, he understood finance. We’d met Maynard once or twice and he’d been charming. So he came to our house and said if we liked, as we were such old owners of his father, he would lend us whatever we needed. The bank had agreed to advance us fifty thousand on the security of our shares, but that still left a hundred and forty. Am I boring you?’

‘No, you are not,’ I said with emphasis. ‘Please go on.’

She sighed. ‘Metavane was going to run in about six weeks and I suppose we were clutching at straws, we hoped he would win. We needed it so badly. We didn’t want to have to sell him unraced for whatever we could get. If he won he would be worth very much more. So we were overwhelmed by Maynard’s offer. It solved all our problems. We accepted. We were overjoyed. We banked his cheque and Clement paid off his losses at Lloyd’s.’

Sardonic bitterness tugged at the corners of her mouth, but her neck was still stretched high.

‘Was Maynard charging you interest?’ I asked.

‘Very low,’ the Major said. ‘Five per cent. Damned good of him, we thought.’ The downward curve of his mouth matched his wife’s. ‘We knew it would be a struggle, but we were sure we would get back on our feet somehow. Economise, do you see. Sell things. Pay him back gradually. Sell Metavane, when he’d won.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What happened next?’

‘Nothing much for about five weeks,’ Lucy said. ‘Then Maynard came to our house again in a terrible state and told us he had two very bad pieces of news for us. He said he would have to call in some of the money he had just lent us as he was in difficulties himself, and almost worse, his father had asked him to tell us that Metavane had lamed himself out at exercise so badly that the vet said he wouldn’t be fit to run before the end of the season. It was late September by then. We’d counted on him running in October. We were absolutely, completely shattered, because of course we couldn’t afford any longer to pay training fees for six months until racing started again in March, and worse than that, a lame unraced two-year-old at the end of the season isn’t worth much. We wouldn’t be able to sell him for even what we’d paid for him.’

She paused, staring wretchedly back to the heartbreak.

‘Go on,’ I said.

She sighed. ‘Maynard offered to take Metavane off our hands.’

‘Is that how he put it?’

‘Yes. Exactly. Take him off our hands is what he said. He said moreover he would knock ten thousand off our debt, just as if the colt was still worth that much. But, he said, he desperately needed some cash, and couldn’t we possibly raise a hundred thousand for him at once.’ She looked at me bleakly. ‘We simply couldn’t. We went through it all with him, explaining. He could see that we couldn’t pay him without borrowing from a moneylender at a huge interest and he said in no way would he let us do that. He was understanding and charming and looked so worried that in the end we found ourselves comforting him in his troubles, and assuring him we’d do everything humanly possible to repay him as soon as we could.’

‘And then?’

‘Then he said we’d better make it all legal, so we signed papers transferring ownership of Metavane to him. He changed the amount we owed him from a hundred and forty to a hundred and thirty thousand, and we signed a banker’s order to pay him regularly month by month. We were all unhappy, but it seemed the best that could be done.’

‘You let him have Metavane without contingencies?’ I asked. ‘You didn’t ask for extra relief on your debt if the horse turned out well?’

Lucy shook her head wearily. ‘We didn’t think about contingencies. Who thinks about contingencies for a lame horse?’

‘Maynard said he would have to put our interest payments up to ten per cent,’ the Major said. ‘He kept apologising, said he felt embarrassed.’

‘Perhaps he was,’ I said.

Lucy nodded. ‘Embarrassed at his own wickedness. He went away leaving us utterly miserable, but it was nothing to what we felt two weeks later. Metavane ran in a two-year-old race at Newmarket and won by three lengths. We couldn’t believe it. We saw the result in the paper. We telephoned Allardeck at once. And I suppose you’ll have guessed what he said?’

I half nodded.

‘He said he couldn’t think why we thought Metavane was lame. He wasn’t. He never had been. He had been working brilliantly of late on the Heath.’