Dead Cert

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Cheltenham National Hunt Festival meeting started on Tuesday, 2 March.

Three days of superlative racing lay ahead, and the finest 'chasers in the world crowded into the racecourse stables. Ferries from Ireland brought them across by boat and plane load; dark horses from the bogs whose supernatural turn of foot was foretold in thick mysterious brogue, and golden geldings who had already taken prizes and cups galore across the Irish Sea.

Horse-boxes from Scotland, from Kent, from Devon, from everywhere, converged on Gloucestershire. Inside, they carried Grand National winners, champion hurdlers, all-conquering handicappers, splendid hunters: the aristocrats among jumpers.

With four big races in the three days reserved for them alone, every amateur jockey in the country who could beg, borrow, or buy a mount hurried to the course. A ride at Cheltenham was an honour: a win at Cheltenham an experience never to be forgotten. The amateur jockeys embraced the Festival with passionate fervour.

But one amateur jockey, Alan York, felt none of this passionate fervour as he drove into the car park. I could not explain it to myself, but for once the hum of the gathering crowd, the expectant faces, the sunshine of the cold invigorating March morning, even the prospect of riding three good horses at the meeting, stirred me not at all.

Outside the main gate I sought out the newspaper seller I had spoken to at Plumpton. He was a short, tubby little Cockney with a large moustache and a cheerful temperament. He saw me coming, and held out a paper.

'Morning, Mr York,' he said. 'Do you fancy your horse today?'

'You might have a bit on,' I said, 'but not your shirt. There's the Irishman to be reckoned with.'

'You'll do him, all right.'

'Well, I hope so.' I waited while he sold a newspaper to an elderly man with enormous race glasses. Then I said, 'Do you remember the taxi-drivers fighting at Plumpton?'

'Couldn't hardly forget it, could I?' He beamed.

'You told me one lot came from London and one from Brighton.'

'Yes, that's right.'

'Which lot were which?' I said. He looked mystified.

I said, 'Which lot came from London and which came from Brighton?'

'Oh, I see.' He sold a paper to two middle-aged ladies wearing thick tweeds and ribbed woollen stockings, and gave them change. Then he turned back to me.

'Which lot was which, like? Hm- I see 'em often enough, you know, but they ain't a friendly lot. They don't talk to you. Not like the private chauffeurs, see? I'd know the Brighton lot if I could see 'em, though. Know 'em by sight, see?' He broke off to yell 'Midday Special' at the top of his lungs, and as a result sold three more papers. I waited patiently.

'How do you recognize them?' I asked.

'By their faces, o'course.' He thought it a foolish question.

'Yes, but which faces? Can you describe them?'

'Oh, I see. There's all sorts.'

'Can't you describe just one of them?' I asked.

He narrowed his eyes, thinking, and tugged his moustache. 'One of 'em. Well, there's one nasty-looking chap with sort of slitty eyes. I wouldn't like a ride in his taxi. You'd know him by his hair, I reckon. It grows nearly down to his eyebrows. Rum-looking cove. What do you want him for?'

'I don't want him,' I said. 'I just want to know where he comes from.'

' Brighton, that's it.' He beamed at me. 'There's another one I see sometimes, too. A young ted with sideboards, always cleaning his nails with a knife.'

'Thanks a lot,' I said. I gave him a pound note and his beam grew wider. He tucked it into an inside pocket.

'Best of luck, sir,' he said. I left him, with 'Midday Special' ringing in my ears, and went in to the weighing room, pondering on the information that my captors with the horse-box came from Brighton. Whoever had sent them could not have imagined that I had seen them before, and could find them again.

Preoccupied, I suddenly realized that Pete Gregory was talking to me. '- Had a puncture on the way, but they've got here safely, that's the main thing. Are you listening, Alan?'

'Yes, Pete. Sorry. I was thinking.'

'Glad to hear you can,' said Pete with a fat laugh. Tough and shrewd though he was, his sense of humour had never grown up. Schoolboy insults passed as the highest form of wit for him; but one got used to it.

'How is Palindrome?' I asked. My best horse.

'He's fine. I was just telling you, they had a puncture-' He broke off, exasperated. He hated having to repeat things. 'Oh well- do you want to go over to the stables and have a look at him?'

'Yes, please,' I said.

We walked down to the stables. Pete had to come with me because of the tight security rules. Even owners could not visit their horses without the trainer to vouch for them, and stable boys had passes with their photographs on, to show at the stable gate. It was all designed to prevent the doping or 'nobbling' of horses.

In his box I patted my beautiful 'chaser, an eight-year-old bay with black points, and gave him a lump of sugar. Pete clicked his tongue disapprovingly and said, 'Not before the race,' like a nanny who had caught her charge being given sweets before lunch. I grinned. Pete had a phobia on the subject.

'Sugar will give him more energy,' I said, giving Palindrome another lump and making a fuss of him. 'He looks well.'

'He ought to win if you judge it right,' said Pete. 'Keep your eyes on that Irishman, Barney. He'll try to slip you all with a sudden burst as you go into the water so that he can start up the hill six lengths in front. I've seen him do it time and again. He gets everyone else chasing him like mad up the hill using up all the reserves they need for the finish. Now, either you burst with him, and go up the hill at his pace and no faster, or, if you lose him, take it easy up the hill and pile on the pressure when you're coming down again. Clear?'

'As glass,' I said. Whatever one might think of Pete's jokes, his advice on how to ride races was invaluable, and I owed a great deal to it.

I gave Palindrome a final pat, and we went out into the yard. Owing to the security system, it was the quietest place on the racecourse.

'Pete, was Bill in any trouble, do you know?' I said, plunging in abruptly.

He finished shutting the door of Palindrome's box, and turned round slowly, and stood looking at me vaguely for so long that I began to wonder if he had heard my question.

But at last he said, 'That's a big word, trouble. Something happened-'

'What?' I said, as he lapsed into silence again.

But instead of answering, he said, 'Why should you think there was any- trouble?'

I told him about the wire. He listened with a calm, unsurprised expression, but his grey eyes were bleak.

He said, 'Why haven't we all heard about it before?'

'I told Sir Creswell Stampe and the police a week ago,' I said, 'but with the wire gone they've nothing tangible to go on, and they're dropping it.'

'But you're not?' said Pete. 'Can't say I blame you. I can't help you much, though. There's only one thing- Bill told me he'd had a telephone call which made him laugh. But I didn't listen properly to what he said – I was thinking about my horses, you know how it is. It was something about Admiral falling. He thought it was a huge joke and I didn't go into it with him to find out what I'd missed. I didn't think it was important. When Bill was killed I did wonder if there could possibly be anything odd about it, but I asked you, and you said you hadn't noticed anything-' His voice trailed off.

'Yes, I'm sorry,' I said. Then I asked, 'How long before his accident did Bill tell you about the telephone call?'

'The last time I spoke to him,' Pete said. 'It was on the Friday morning just before I flew to Ireland. I rang him to say that all was ready for Admiral's race at Maidenhead the next day.'

We began to walk back to the weighing room. On an impulse I said, 'Pete, do you ever use the Brighton taxis?' He lived and trained on the Sussex Downs.

'Not often,' he said. 'Why?'

'There are one or two taxi-drivers there I'd like to have a few words with,' I said, not adding that I'd prefer to have the words with them one at a time in a deserted back alley.

'There are several taxi lines in Brighton, as far as I know,' he said. 'If you want to find one particular driver, why don't you try the railway station? That's where I've usually taken a taxi from. They line up there in droves for the London trains.' His attention drifted off as an Irish horse passed us on its way into the paddock for the first race.

'That's Connemara Pal or I'm a Dutchman,' said Pete enviously. 'I took one of my owners over and tried to buy him, last August, but they wanted eight thousand for him. He was tucked away in a broken-down hut behind some pigsties, so my owner wouldn't pay that price. And now look at him. He won the Leopardstown novice 'chase on Boxing Day by twenty lengths and would have blown a candle out afterwards. Best young horse we'll see this year.' Pete's mind was firmly back in its familiar groove, and we talked about the Irish raid until we were back in the weighing room.

I sought out Clem, who was very busy, and checked with him that my kit was all right, and that he knew the weight I was due to carry on Palindrome.

Kate had told me she was not coming to Cheltenham, so I went in search of the next best thing: news of her.

Dane's peg and section of bench were in the smaller of the two changing rooms, and he was sitting only one place away from the roaring stove, a sure sign of his rise in the jockeys' world. Champions get the warmest places by unwritten right. Beginners shiver beside the draughty doors.

He was clad in his shirt and pants, and was pulling on his nylon stockings. There was a hole in each foot and both his big toes were sticking comically out of them. He had long narrow feet, and long, narrow delicately strong hands to match.

'It's all very well for you to laugh,' said Dane, pulling the tops of the stockings over his knees. They don't seem to make nylons for size eleven shoes-'

'Get Walter to get you some stretching ones,' I suggested. 'Have you a busy day?'

'Three, including the Champion Hurdle,' said Dane.

'Pete has entered half the stable here.' He grinned at me. 'I might just find time to tell you about the Penn household, though, if that's what you're after. Shall I start with Uncle George, or Aunt Deb, or-' He broke off to pull on his silk breeches and his riding boots. His valet, Walter, gave him his under-jersey and some particularly vile pink and orange colours. Whoever had chosen them had paid no regard to their effect against a manly complexion.'- Or do you want to hear about Kate?' finished Dane, covering up the sickening jersey with a windproof jacket.

The changing room was filling up, packed with the extra Irish jockeys who had come over for the meeting and were in high spirits and robust voice. Dane and I went out into the crowded weighing room, where at least one could hear oneself speak.

'Uncle George,' he said, 'is a gem. And I'm not going to spoil him for you by telling you about him. Aunt Deb is the Honourable Mrs Penn to you and me, mate, and Aunt Deb to Kate alone. She has a chilly sort of charm that lets you know she would be downright rude if she were not so well bred. She disapproved of me, for a start. I think she disapproves on principle of everything to do with racing, including Heavens Above and Uncle George's idea of a birthday present.'

'Go on,' I urged, anxious for him to come to the most interesting part of the chronicle before someone else buttonholed him.

'Ah yes. Kate. Gorgeous, heavenly Kate. Strictly, you know, her name is Kate Ellery, not Penn at all. Uncle George added the hyphen and the Penn to her name when he took her in. He said it would be easier for her to have the same surname as him – save a lot of explanations. I suppose it does,' said Dane, musingly, knowing full well how he was tantalizing me. He relented, and grinned. 'She sent you her love.'

I felt a warm glow inside. The Cheltenham Festival meeting suddenly seemed not a bad place to be, after all.

'Thanks,' I said, trying not to smile fatuously and scarcely succeeding. Dane looked at me speculatively; but I changed the subject back to racing, and presently I asked him if he had ever heard Bill Davidson spoken of in connection with any sort of odd happenings.

'No, I never did,' he said positively. I told him about the wire. His reaction was typical.

'Poor Bill,' he said with anger. 'Poor old Bill. What a bloody shame.'

'So if you hear anything which might have even the faintest significance-'

'I'll pass it on to you,' he promised.

At that moment Joe Nantwich walked straight into Dane as if he hadn't seen him. He stopped without apology, took a step back, and then went on his way to the changing room. His eyes were wide, unfocused, staring.

'He's drunk,' said Dane, incredulously. 'His breath smells like a distillery.'

'He has his troubles,' I said.

'He'll have more still before the afternoon's much older. Just wait, till one of the Stewards catches that alcoholic blast.'

Joe reappeared at our side. It was true that one could smell his approach a good yard away. Without preamble he spoke directly to me.

'I've had another one.' He took a paper out of his pocket. It had been screwed up and straightened out again, so that it was wrinkled in a hundred fine lines, but its ball-pointed message was still abundantly clear.

BOLINGBROKE. THIS WEEK, it Said.

'When did you get it?' I asked.

'It was here when I arrived, waiting for me in the letter rack.'

'You've tanked up pretty quickly, then,' I said.

'I'm not drunk,' said Joe indignantly. 'I only had a couple of quick ones in the bar opposite the weighing room.'

Dane and I raised our eyebrows in unison. The bar opposite the weighing room had no front wall, and anyone drinking there was in full view of every trainer, owner, and Steward who walked out of the weighing room. There might be a surer way for a jockey to commit professional suicide than to have 'a couple of quick ones' at that bar before the first race, but I couldn't think of it off-hand. Joe hiccuped.

'Double quick ones, I imagine,' said Dane with a smile, taking the paper out of my hand and reading it. 'What does it mean, Bolingbroke this week? Why are you so steamed up about it?'

Joe snatched the paper away and stuffed it back into his pocket. He seemed for the first time to be aware that Dane was listening.

'It's none of your business,' he said rudely.

I felt a great impulse to assure him it was none of mine either. But he turned back to me and said, 'What shall I do?' in a voice full of whining self-pity.

'Are you riding today?' I asked.

'I'm in the fourth and the last. Those bloody amateurs have got two races all to themselves today. A bit thick, isn't it, leaving us only four races to earn our living in? Why don't the fat-arsed gentlemen riders stick to the point-to-points where they belong? That's all they're – well, fit for,' he added, alliteratively.

There was a small silence. Dane laughed. Joe was after all not too drunk to realize he was riding his hobby horse in front of the wrong man. He said weakly, in his smarmiest voice, 'Well, Alan, of course I didn't mean you personally-'

'If you still want my advice, in view of your opinion of amateur jockeys,' I said, keeping a straight face, 'you should drink three cups of strong black coffee and stay out of sight as long as you can.'

'I mean, what shall I do about this note?' Joe had a thicker skin than a coach-hide cabin trunk.

'Pay it no attention at all,' I said. 'I should think that whoever wrote it is playing with you. Perhaps he knows you like to drown your sorrows in whisky and is relying on you to destroy yourself without his having to do anything but send you frightening letters. A neat, bloodless, and effective revenge.'

The sullen pout on Joe's babyish face slowly changed into a mulish determination which was only slightly less repellent.

'No one's going to do that to me,' he said, with an aggressiveness which I guessed would diminish with the alcohol level in his blood. He weaved off out of the weighing room door, presumably in search of black coffee. Before Dane could ask me what was going on, he received a hearty slap on the back from Sandy Mason, who was staring after Joe with dislike.

'What's up with that stupid little clot?' he asked, but he didn't wait for an answer. He said, 'Look, Dane, be a pal and gen me up on this horse of Gregory's I'm riding in the first. I've never seen it before, as far as I know. It seems the owner likes my red hair or something.' Sandy 's infectious laugh made several people look round with answering smiles.

'Sure,' said Dane. They launched into a technical discussion and I turned away from them. But Dane touched my arm.

He said, 'Is it all right for me to tell people, say Sandy for instance, about the wire and Bill?'

'Yes, do. You might strike oil with someone I wouldn't have thought of asking about it. But be careful.' I thought of telling him about the warning in the horse-box, but it was a long story and it seemed enough to say, 'Remember that you're stirring up people who can kill, even if by mistake.'

He looked startled. 'Yes, you're right. I'll be careful.'

We turned back to Sandy together.

'What are you two so solemn about? Has someone swiped that luscious brunette you're both so keen on?' he said.

'It's about Bill Davidson,' said Dane, disregarding this.

'What about him?'

'The fall that killed him was caused by some wire being strung across the top of the fence, Alan saw it.'

Sandy looked aghast. 'Alan saw it,' he repeated, and then, as the full meaning of what Dane had said sank in, 'But that's murder.'

I pointed out the reasons for supposing that murder had not been intended. Sandy 's brown eyes stared at me unwinkingly until I had finished.

'I guess you're right,' he said. 'What are you going to do about it?'

'He's trying to find out what is behind it all,' said Dane. 'We thought you might be able to help. Have you heard anything that might explain it? People tell you things, you know.'

Sandy ran his strong brown hands through his unruly red hair, and rubbed the nape of his neck. This brain massage produced no great thoughts, however. 'Yes, but mostly they tell me about their girl friends or their bets or such like. Not Major Davidson though. We weren't exactly on a bosom pals basis, because he thought I strangled a horse belonging to a friend of his. Well,' said Sandy with an engaging grin, 'maybe I did, at that. Anyway, we had words, as they say, a few months ago.'

'See if your bookmaker friends have heard any whispers, then,' said Dane. 'They usually have their ears usefully to the ground.'

'OK,' said Sandy. 'I'll pass the news along and see what happens. Now come on, we haven't much time before the first and I want to know what this sod of a horse is going to do.' And as Dane hesitated, he said, 'Come on, you don't have to wrap it up. Gregory only asks me to ride for him when it's such a stinker that he daren't ask any sensible man to get up on it.'

'It's a mare,' said Dane, 'with a beastly habit of galloping into the bottoms of fences as if they weren't there. She usually ends up in the open ditch.'

'Well, thanks,' said Sandy, apparently undaunted by this news. 'I'll tan her hide for her and she'll soon change her ways. See you later, then.' He went into the changing room.

Dane looked after him. 'The horse isn't foaled that could frighten that blighter Sandy,' he said with admiration.

'Nothing wrong with his nerve,' I agreed. 'But why ever is Pete running an animal like that here, of all places?'

'The owner fancies having a runner at Cheltenham. You know how it is. Snob value, and so on,' he said indulgently.

We were being jostled continually, as we talked, by the throng of trainers and owners. We went outside. Dane was immediately appropriated by a pair of racing journalists who wanted his views on his mount in the Gold Cup, two days distant.

The afternoon wore on. The racing began. With the fine sunny day and the holiday mood of the crowd, the excitement was almost crackling in the air.

Sandy got the mare over the first open ditch but disappeared into the next. He came back with a broad smile, cursing hard.

Joe reappeared after the second race, looking less drunk but more frightened. I avoided him shamelessly.

Dane, riding like a demon, won the Champion Hurdle by a head. Pete, patting his horse and sharing with the owner the congratulations of the great crowd round the unsaddling enclosure, was so delighted he could hardly speak. Large and red-faced, he stood there with his hat pushed back showing his baldness, trying to look as if this sort of thing happened every day, when it was in fact the most important winner he had trained.

He was so overcome that he forgot, as we stood some time later in the parade ring before the amateurs' race, to make his customary joke about Palindrome going backwards as well as forwards. And when I, following his advice to the letter, stuck like a shadow to the Irishman when he tried to slip the field, lay a scant length behind him all the way to the last fence, and passed him with a satisfying spurt fifty yards from the winning post, Pete said his day was complete.

I could have hugged him, I was so elated. Although I had won several races back in Rhodesia and about thirty since I had been in England, this was my first win at Cheltenham. I felt as high as if I had already drunk the champagne which waited unopened in the changing-room, the customary crateful of celebration for Champion Hurdle day. Palindrome was, in my eyes, the most beautiful, most intelligent, most perfect horse in the world. I walked on air to the scales to weigh in, and changed into my ordinary clothes, and had still not returned to earth when I went outside again. The gloom I had arrived in seemed a thousand years ago. I was so happy I could have turned cartwheels like a child. Such total, unqualified fulfilment comes rarely enough: and unexpectedly, I wished that my father were there to share it.

The problem of Bill had receded like a dot in the distance, and it was only because I had earlier planned to do it that I directed my airy steps down to the horsebox parking ground.

It was packed. About twenty horses ran in each race that day, and almost every horse-box available must have been pressed into service to bring them. I sauntered along the rows, humming light-heartedly, looking at the number plates with half an eye and less attention.

And there it was.

APX 708.

My happiness burst like a bubble.

There was no doubt it was the same horse-box. Regulation wooden Jennings design. Elderly, with dull and battered varnish. No name of owner or trainer painted anywhere on the doors or bodywork.

There was no one in the driver's cab. I walked round to the back, opened the door, and climbed in.

The horse-box was empty except for a bucket, a hay net, and a rug, the normal travelling kit for racehorses. The floor was strewn with straw, whereas three days earlier it had been swept clean.

The rug, I thought, might give me a clue as to where the box had come from. Most trainers and some owners have their initials embroidered or sewn in tape in large letters on the corners of their horse rugs. If there were initials on this one, it would be easy.

I picked it up. It was pale fawn with a dark brown binding. I found the initials. I stood there as if turned to stone. Plainly in view, embroidered in dark brown silk, were the letters A.Y.

It was my own rug.

Pete, when I ran him to earth, looked in no mood to answer any questions needing much thought. He leaned back against the weighing-room wall with a glass of champagne in one hand and a cigar in the other, surrounded by a pack of friends similarly equipped. From their rosy smiling faces I gathered the celebration had already been going on for some time.

Dane thrust a glass into my hand.

'Where have you been? Well done on Palindrome. Have some bubbly. The owner's paying, God bless him.' His eyes were alight with that fantastic, top-of-the-world elation that I had so lately felt myself. It began to creep back into me too. It was, after all, a great day. Mysteries could wait.

I drank a sip of champagne and said, 'Well done yourself, you old son-of-a-gun. And here's to the Gold Cup.'

'No such luck,' said Dane. 'I haven't much chance in that.' And from his laughing face I gathered he didn't care, either. We emptied our glasses. I'll get another bottle,' he said, diving into the noisy, crowded changing room.

Looking around I saw Joe Nantwich backed up into a nearby corner by the enormous Mr Tudor. The big man was doing the talking, forcefully, his dark face almost merging with the shadows. Joe, still dressed in racing colours, listened very unhappily.

Dane came back with the bubbles fizzing out of a newly opened bottle and filled our glasses. He followed my gaze.

'I don't know whether Joe was sober or not, but didn't he make a hash of the last race?' he said.

'I didn't see it.'

'Brother, you sure missed something. He didn't try a yard. His horse damned nearly stopped altogether at the hurdle over on the far side, and it was second favourite, too. What you see now,' he gestured with the bottle, 'is, I should think, our Joe getting the well-deserved sack.'

'That man owns Bolingbroke,' I said.

'Yes, that's right. Same colours. What a fool Joe is. Owners with five or six goodish horses don't grow on bushes any more.'

Clifford Tudor had nearly done. As he turned away from Joe in our direction we heard the tail end of his remarks.

'- think you can make a fool of me and get away with it. The Stewards can warn you off altogether, as far as I'm concerned.'

He strode past us, giving me a nod of recognition, which surprised me, and went out.

Joe leaned against the wall for support. His face was pallid and sweating. He looked ill. He took a few unsteady steps towards us and spoke without caution, as if he had forgotten that Stewards and members of the National Hunt Committee might easily overhear.

'I had a phone call this morning. The same voice as always. He just said, Don't win the sixth race and rang off before I could say anything. And then that note saying Bolingbroke, this week – I don't understand it- and I didn't win the race and now that bloody wog says he'll get another jockey- and the Stewards have started an inquiry about my riding- and I feel sick.'

'Have some champagne,' said Dane, encouragingly.

'Don't be so bloody helpful,' said Joe, clutching his stomach and departing towards the changing-room.

'What the hell's going on?' said Dane.

'I don't know,' I said, perplexed and more interested in Joe's troubles than I had been before. The phone call was inconsistent, I thought, with the notes. One ordered business as usual, the other promised revenge. 'I wonder if Joe always tells the truth,' I said.

'Highly unlikely,' said Dane, dismissing it.

One of the Stewards came and reminded us that even after the Champion Hurdle, drinking in the weighing room itself was frowned on, and would we please drift along into the changing room. Dane did that, but I finished my drink and went outside.

Pete, still attended by a posse of friends, had decided that it was time to go home. The friends were unwilling. The racecourse bars, they were saying, were still open.

I walked purposefully up to Pete, and he made me his excuse for breaking away. We went towards the gates.

'Whew, what a day!' said Pete, mopping his brow with a white handkerchief and throwing away the stub of his cigar.

'A wonderful day,' I agreed, looking at him carefully.

'You can take that anxious look off your face, Alan, my lad. I'm as sober as a judge and I'm driving myself home.'

'Good. In that case you'll have no difficulty in answering one small question for me?'

'Shoot.'

'In what horse-box did Palindrome come to Cheltenham?' I said.

'Eh? I hired one. I had five runners here today. The hurdler, the mare, and the black gelding came in my own box. I had to hire one for Palindrome and the novice Dane rode in the first.'

'Where did you hire it from?'

'What's the matter?' asked Pete. 'I know it's a bit old, and it had a puncture on the way, as I told you, but it didn't do him any harm. Can't have done, or he wouldn't have won.'

'No, it's nothing like that,' I said. 'I just want to know where that horse-box comes from.'

'It's not worth buying, if that's what you're after. Too old by half.'

'Pete, I don't want to buy it. Just tell me where it comes from.'

'The firm I usually hire a box from, Littlepeths of Steyning.' He frowned. 'Wait a minute. At first they said all their boxes were booked up; then they said they could get me a box if I didn't mind an old one.'

'Who drove it here?' I asked.

'Oh, one of their usual drivers. He was swearing a bit at having to drive such an old hen coop. He said the firm had got two good horse-boxes out of action in Cheltenham week and he took a poor view of the administration.'

'Do you know him well?'

'Not exactly well. He often drives the hired boxes, that's all. He's always grousing about something. Now, what is all this in aid of?'

'It may have something to do with Bill's death,' I said, 'but I'm not sure what. Can you find out where the box really comes from? Ask the hire firm? And don't mention me, if you don't mind.'

'Is it important?' asked Pete.

'Yes, it is.'

'I'll ring 'em tomorrow morning, then,' he said.

As soon as he saw me the next day, Pete said, 'I asked about that horse-box. It belongs to a farm near Steyning. I've got his name and address here.' He tucked two fingers into his breast pocket, brought out a slip of paper, and gave it to me. 'The farmer uses the box to take his hunters around, and his children's show jumpers in the summer. He sometimes lets the hire firm use it, if he's not needing it. Is that what you wanted?'

'Yes, thank you very much,' I said. I put the paper in my wallet.

By the end of the Festival meeting I had repeated the story of the wire to at least ten more people, in the hope that someone might know why it had been put there. The tale spread fast round the racecourse.

I told fat Lew Panake, the well-dressed bookmaker who took my occasional bets. He promised to'sound out the boys' and let me know.

I told Calvin Bone, a professional punter, whose nose for the smell of dirty work was as unerring as a bloodhound's.

I told a sly little tout who made his living passing on stray pieces of information to anyone who would pay for them.

I told the newspaper seller, who tugged his moustache and ignored a customer.

I told a racing journalist who could scent a doping scandal five furlongs away.

I told an army friend of Bill's; I told Clem in the weighing-room; I told Pete Gregory's head travelling lad.

From all this busy sowing in the wind I learned absolutely nothing. And I would still, I supposed, have to reap the whirlwind.