Driving Force

Chapter 2

Predictably, I woke stiff and cold as soon as nature’s lighting system began creeping into the electric stuff, and I trailed yawning across to the kitchen for warmth and coffee. The newspapers and the post arrived. I sorted through the bills, read the headlines and turned to the racing pages, ate some cornflakes and answered the first phone calls of the new day.

My routine working hours started at six or seven and normally ended at midnight, Sundays included, but it was a way of life, not a hardship. It was the same for trainers, all of whom seemed to believe that if they were up and caring for their horses by or before dawn, everyone who worked for them should be available likewise.

Plans tended to change overnight. The first call on that day, a Friday, was from the trainer of a horse that had got cast in its stable and injured himself by thrashing about on the floor, trying to get himself back onto his feet.

‘The bugger’s twisted his off-hind. My head lad found him, hopping lame.’ The big healthy voice reverberated into my ear. ‘He can’t run at Southwell, sod it. Strike him off your list, will you?’

I said I would. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’

‘I know you run tight schedules,’ he boomed. ‘The four for Sandown are OK. Don’t send that Brett for them, he’s a whiner, he upsets my lads.’

I assured him he wouldn’t get Brett.

‘Right, Freddie. See you at the sports.’

Without wasting time, I buzzed my head driver and asked if the boxes for Southwell had already left.

‘Warming up,’ he assured me.

‘Miss out Larry Dell. Their horse got cast.’

‘Got you.’

I put down the kitchen receiver and went through to the sitting room where most of the desk top was taken up by the week’s comprehensive chart indicating which box was going where with whose horses. I wrote it always in pencil because of the constant changes.

On an adjacent table, easily reached by swivelling the green leather chair, stood a computer, monitor and keyboard. Theoretically, it was easier to call each box to the screen to enter or rearrange its journeys, and actually I did keep the details of the journeys recorded there permanently once they’d been completed, but for an advance overview I still clung to my pencil and rubber.

Along at the farm, in the main office, my two bright secretaries, Isobel and Rose, kept the computer competently accurate and up to the minute, and despaired of my old-fashioned methods. The terminal in my sitting-room was a sort of sub-station upon which appeared all the changes they’d made on the main computer, and that was what I chiefly used it for: checking what had been organised in my absence.

In return, I typed in any changes which came in before or after their office hours and, one way or another, we had not so far left any expectant runner waiting in vain for the coach to take it to the ball.

I checked down the list on what looked like a typical Friday for the first week of March. Two boxes going north to Southwell, where the all-weather track held both flat and jumping races all winter. Four boxes collecting runners for that afternoon’s programme of steeplechasing at Sandown, south of London. One nine-horsebox taking broodmares to Ireland. One six-box taking broodmares to Newmarket, one taking broodmares to Gloucestershire, another taking mares to a stud down in Surrey: the thoroughbred breeding season in full flood.

One box was out of action, scheduled for maintenance. One was going to France. One would be taking Jericho Rich’s fillies to Newmarket. Brett and his nine-horser, standing outside my window in the strengthening dawn, were due to spend the day shuttling a whole string for a trainer moving to Pixhill from out on Salisbury Plain: not long journeys but multiple and, from my point of view, good profit.

The following week would see the Cheltenham Festival, peak of the steeplechasing year, with the Flat season proper getting into gear the week after, its crowded programme bringing me six months of good business. March was sigh-of-relief time, the fogs and freezes of winter relaxing their paralysing menace: there was no income to be made from a row of boxes standing silent in the snow, but the drivers had to be paid all the same.

My head driver phoned back. Harve by name, short for Harvey.

‘Pat’s got flu,’ he said. ‘She’s in bed.’

‘Shit.’

‘It’s a bugger, the flu this year. Knocks you out. It’s not her fault.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘How’s Gerry?’

‘Still bad. We could put those broodmares off till Monday.’

‘No, they’re near to foaling. I promised they’d go to Surrey today. I’ll sort something out.’

Pat and Gerry were reliable drivers: if they said they were too ill to work, then they were. Reshuffle required.

‘Dave can do the Gloucestershire broodmares, instead of Pat,’ I said. Dave was a slow driver, and I didn’t send him out behind the wheel unless I had to. ‘Those mares have no deadline.’

‘Yeah. OK.’

‘I want him here first though. When he turns up at the farm, send him along here. Brett too.’

‘Will do,’ he said. ‘Is it about the dead man?’

‘It is.’

‘Silly sods.’

‘And tell Jogger I need him p.d.q. Tell him to bring his slider.’

‘He won’t be in for half an hour.’

‘That will do.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Sure to be, in five minutes.’

He laughed and went away, leaving me thinking, as I often did, that I was lucky to have him. When I’d been a jockey Harve had been my weighing-room valet, bringing my cleaned saddles and fresh breeches to the races every day. Valets were a bit like theatrical dressers, although one valet would ‘do’ ten or so jockeys regularly. It was a close personal service: one could keep few physical secrets from one’s valet.

When I’d hung up my boots and bought the transport business, he’d appeared to my surprise on my doorstep.

‘I’m here to see if you’ll give me a job,’ he said for openers, coming straight to the point.

‘But I don’t need a valet any more.’

‘Not that. I don’t want to keep on with that. My old dad’s died and the weighing-room’s not the same as when he was there, and I want a change. I’m sick of the wash-tub. How about it if I drive for you? I drive hundreds of miles every week anyway; have for years.’

‘But,’ I said slowly, ‘you’d need a Heavy Goods Vehicle licence.’

‘I’ll get one.’

‘The boxes aren’t like cars. You’d have to take a course.’

‘If I get the licence, will you give me a job?’

I’d said I would because we’d always got on easily together, and in that casual way I’d acquired the best lieutenant one could imagine.

He was sandy-haired, strong-armed, about my own age, an inch or two taller. Dryly disillusioned, he was quick to denigrate but in a way that made one smile. Brett, he had remarked to me once, shifted the blame before you even realised there was a fault. ‘He carries a bagful of alibis around with him, ready to pull one out.’

I went upstairs, showered, shaved, tweaked the duvet straight on my bed and returned in short time to my desk and the uninterrupted view of the horsebox.

Jogger, the company mechanic, swept up the drive in his van and squeaked to a halt nose to nose with the horsebox. Spry, bow-legged, bald and cockney, he eeled out of the van and stood looking at the horsebox while scratching his head. Then he came over to the house in the peculiar gait that had earned him his nickname, a rolling motion like that of speed walkers, almost running but with one foot on the ground all the time, elbows tucked in.

I went to the door to meet him and we walked back to the box together, he impatiently slowing his scuttling progress to match mine.

‘What’s the boil, then?’ he said.

He spoke his own sort of cockney rhyming slang, and indeed I often thought he made most of it up himself, but I was used to it by that time. For boil, read boil and bubble, trouble.

‘Just check it all over, will you?’ I answered. ‘Take a good look at the engine. Then slide under, make sure we’re not leaking or carrying additions.’

‘Gor,’ he said.

I watched him check the engine, his eyes swift, fingers delicate, head nodding with certainties.

‘All hunky-dory,’ he said.

‘Good. Go over the rest.’

He went along to his truck and brought out the flexible stick, with mirror attached, that could be angled to reveal invisibilities round corners, and also the low platform on castors, on which he lay on his back to slide under the boxes for quick underguts inspections.

‘When you’re done, I’ll be in the house,’ I said.

‘Am I looking for anything particular?’

‘Just for anything you don’t understand.’

He peered at me speculatively. ‘This box went to Italy earlier, dinnit?’

I agreed that it had. ‘Went last Friday, returned by Tuesday evening.’ There had been no problems or hold-ups, though; as far as I knew, of course.

‘That Brett never cleans it proper. Got no Jekyll.’

Jekyll and Hyde, I thought: pride.

‘Brett had Wednesday off,’ I said. ‘Harve drove a load of colts to Newmarket that day in this box. Brett took it to Newmarket and back yesterday. A couple of odd things have happened, so... carry on with the check.’

‘You talking about that stiff?’

‘Partly.’

‘He didn’t have no chance to duff the box up, though, did he?’

‘I don’t know any more than you,’ I said. ‘And get a move on, Jogger, I’ve got to get this thing cleaned and out on the road within an hour.’

He lay down philosophically and shoved himself trustingly out of sight, except for his feet, under ten or so tons of steel. Just the prospect of it gave me a sort of claustrophobia, which Jogger knew about but loftily forgave. My failing increased his self-esteem: it did no harm.

I went back to the house and Harve phoned.

‘Dave’s on his way along to you now,’ he said with agitation. ‘But he says Brett’s packing his bags.’

‘He’s doing what?’

‘Dave says Brett’s not a complete thicko, he knows his trial three months is nearly up and that you won’t keep him on. He’s ducking out first. That way he can go around saying he gave you the chuck, not the other way round. He’ll be whinging all over the place about how hard he worked here, Dave says, and how you never appreciated him.’

‘He can get on with it,’ I said. ‘The thing is, what about today?’

‘The Marigold shuttle,’ Harve said. ‘Brett was doing that.’

‘Exactly. Who else have we got?’ I knew the answer as soon as I asked. We had me.

‘Well...’ He hesitated.

‘Yes, all right. I’ll do it if there’s no one else.’

‘It’s not just the shuttle,’ he went on unhappily. ‘Vic’s wife says he’s got a temperature of a hundred and three and no way is he driving to Sandown.’

One of those days.

‘They’re both here at the farm,’ Harve went on, ‘Vic and his missus. He says he wants to go, she says she’ll divorce him. You can see he’s got a fever, though.’

‘Send him home, he’ll just spread the flu around more.’

‘OK. But...’

‘Give me a minute. Inspiration will strike.’

He laughed. ‘Hurry it up,’ he said, disconnecting.

I sucked my teeth. If racehorse trainers hadn’t been as fussy as they normally were, I could have travelled the two Surrey-bound broodmares in one of the boxes taking ’chasers to Sandown. The box could have dropped off the two racers, taken the mares to their destination and returned to Sandown to bring the ’chasers home. I might have risked it if I hadn’t been sure the trainer in question would get to hear of it from his lads: and the trainer in question would never ever let his own horses travel with any horses from any other stables. Sending his runners in company with broodmares would lose me his custom instantly and evermore.

I went out to the nine-horsebox. Jogger was nowhere to be seen but when I yelled his name a pair of boots slid out into view, followed by grease-clogged trousers, filthy army sweater and a dirt-streaked face.

‘You’re right, we’ve picked up a stranger,’ he reported, and added, grinning with yellow teeth. ‘Did you know? You must have known.’

‘No, I didn’t.’ Nor was I pleased. Very put out, in fact.

‘Have a decko,’ he encouraged me, removing himself from the slider and slyly offering me his place.

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I said, staying upright. ‘What have you found?’

‘I’d say it’s stuck on with a magnet.’ He gave me his opinion judiciously. ‘It’s a sort of tin box. Like a big cash box, lid downwards.’

‘Shiny?’ I asked.

‘Course not. Want it out?’

‘Yes, but wait... um... we’ve got three drivers now with flu. Would you do a run yourself, just to help out?’

He rubbed his greasy hands down his trousers and looked dubious. Driving meant cleaning up and there was no doubt he felt happier dirty. I seldom asked him to drive more than his regular test runs on all the boxes, when he listened to their resonances as to a language and heard trouble before it happened.

‘Broodmares, not to the races,’ I explained.

‘Well then... when?’

‘Lunch time.’

‘Bonus?’

‘Sure, if you do your regular maintenance work as well.’

He shrugged, lay down again on the slider and disappeared. I went back to my desk, phoned Harve and told him, ‘Jogger.’

‘He’s driving?’ He sounded incredulous. ‘He agreed?’

‘The broodmares to Surrey,’ I confirmed. ‘It’s Phil whose box is in for maintenance, isn’t it? Wake him up, twist his arm, sob stuff if you like, tell him his day off’s postponed, we need him to take Vic’s box to Sandown.’

‘OK.’

‘That should cover it,’ I said.

‘Fingers crossed.’

‘Come down here yourself, would you, when you have a minute?’

After the briefest of pauses he said, ‘Right.’

He would be wondering what I wanted but not to the level of worry. At least, I hoped not.

Dave at that point bicycled in across the tarmac and leaned his rusty conveyance against my wood pile. Dave did have a car, even rustier than the cycle, but it spent most of the time out of action. One day, he’d been saying for months, he would equip it with retreads and get it back on the road. No one believed him. He spent his money on greyhounds.

He knocked on the outside door on his way in and appeared in the sitting-room doorway with the martyred air of having stepped out of a tumbril.

‘You wanted me, Freddie?’ He was nervous but trying for bravado: not a success.

‘I want you and Brett to clean that box. It’s due out again before nine.’

‘But, Brett—​’ He stopped.

‘Go on.’

‘Harve told you, didn’t he? Brett says he’ll be waiting at the office door for his P45 the second Isobel gets there, then he’s off.’

‘He’s due some wages and holiday money,’ I said, unruffled. ‘You get back on your bike and go and tell him he can have it now, here, in cash, but cleaning that box is yesterday’s job, and if he doesn’t finish it, his unemployment dates from yesterday morning. No pay for yesterday, understand?’

‘You can’t do that,’ Dave said uncertainly.

‘Want to bet? By rights, he should give me a week’s notice. And ask him if he thinks he might ever need a reference.’

Dave gave me a hollow look.

‘Hurry and fetch him,’ I said. ‘And come back yourself.’

When he’d gone I switched on the computer and brought Brett and his affairs to the screen. Every journey he’d done for me was listed there, with dates, times, horses’ names, expenses and notes. The day before’s journey of nine two-year-olds to Newmarket had been entered only as ‘proposed’: no dead bodies yet cluttered the entry.

His terms of employment were there, along with days worked and holiday entitlement earned: no problem at all to put together his present due. I printed a copy of the income information, ready to give to him.

Through the window, I watched Jogger heel-and-toe his way towards the house, a greyish-brown shape like a big shoe box in his hands. He came into the sitting-room and plonked the object down on my chart, not caring about mundane considerations like dirt. He looked surprised when I asked him to lift the box up again so that I could spread a newspaper under it.

‘I had a hell of a job getting it off,’ he said. ‘Like a limpet mine, it was.’

‘Where’s the magnet?’ I asked.

‘Still stuck to the chassis, behind the second fuel tank. Super-glue job, most like. This box came off in the end, though I had to use a tyre lever. No one meant it to move, I’m telling you.’

‘How long would you say it’s been there?’

The box was thick with grime except for a clean circular saucer-sized patch on its underside where it had been in contact with the magnet.

Jogger shrugged unhappily. ‘It’s not in a place I need to inspect all that often.’

‘A week? A month? More?’

‘Dunno,’ he said.

I picked the box up in the newspaper and shook it. It was comparatively light, with no rattle.

‘Empty,’ Jogger said, nodding.

About fifteen inches by ten by six deep, it was a strong old-fashioned grey metal cash box with rounded corners, a recessed carrying handle and a sturdy lock. No key, naturally. A dent on one edge from the tyre lever. The carrying handle, stuck into its recess, wouldn’t lift up.

‘Can you open it?’ I asked. ‘Without breaking it.’

Jogger gave me a sideways look. ‘I could pick the lock if I fetch my tools and you squint the other way.’

‘Go on, then.’

He decided to take the box out to his van for the job and presently with a yellow grin returned with it open.

Nothing inside, not even dust. I put my nose down to it. It smelled surprisingly clean inside considering the grime on the outside. It smelled even fresh, like talcum powder or soap.

‘How difficult was it to search underneath?’ I asked.

‘Easy, on a slider. Very easy over an inspection pit, if you knew where to look. I nearly missed it, though. It’s the same colour as everything else under there. See, that’s it, you wouldn’t expect to see it, unless you knew it was there. You’d have to park that bit over the pit, too, which you wouldn’t normally do.’

‘How long since you had Brett’s box over the inspection pit?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Did an oil change, checked the air brakes, say five weeks ago. Total overhaul must’ve been before Christmas. Don’t remember the day.’

‘The computer will have it,’ I said.

Jogger looked across at the dark screen without favour. He liked to be able to invent memories, not have them checked.

‘Thanks, anyway,’ I said warmly. ‘I wouldn’t have found this cash box myself in a million years.’

The yellow teeth made a brief appearance. ‘You want to get under there,’ he said.

But no, I didn’t.

Dave came back on his bicycle followed by Brett, slowly, in his car, neither of them showing much appetite for the morning. They came into the sitting-room, greeted Jogger unenthusiastically and looked without reaction at the dirty grey cash box lying open on the newspaper.

‘Has either of you seen that before?’ I asked neutrally.

Uninterestedly, they said they hadn’t.

‘It’s not my fault the horsebox wasn’t cleaned,’ Brett said defensively. ‘Sandy Smith wouldn’t let me near it last night.’

‘Clean it now, will you, while I assemble your pay packet?’

‘It was Dave’s idea to give that man a lift.’

‘Yes, so you said.’

‘I wouldn’t have done it on my own.’

‘That’s bloody unfair,’ Dave protested furiously.

‘Both of you shut up,’ I said. ‘Clean the box.’

Seething, they both went out and through the window I watched the rigidity of their anger as they marched towards the task. Undoubtedly the picking up of the hitchhiker had been Dave’s doing, but I found I could forgive his irresponsibility more easily than Brett’s self-righteousness. They had both for sure pocketed Kevin Keith Ogden’s money, although nothing would get them to say how much.

Jogger said, pointing at the cash box, ‘What do you want me to do with that?’

‘Oh... just leave it here. And thanks.’

‘Where’s Brett off to in that box today?’ he asked, following my gaze through the window.

‘Nowhere. He’s leaving the firm. I’ll be driving it myself.’

‘Straight up? Then I’ll do you a favour.’

I switched my attention to his grubby, lined, fifty-three-year-old face, the wily exterior of an old soldier who knew every skiving trick of the trade but lived by his own code of strict honesty in some respects, notably for anything that moved on wheels.

‘You’ve got a strong active uncovered magnet under that box,’ he informed me. ‘If you’re not careful, it’ll pick up iron bars and such and you could catch them on something or back onto them and maybe pierce a fuel tank or worse.’

I moved my head in appreciation. ‘What’s best to do?’

‘I’ll stick something over it, if you like.’

‘Thanks, Jogger.’

He heard the real gratitude in my voice and nodded briefly. ‘What’ve we been carrying, eh?’ he asked. ‘Carpets?’

I was mystified. ‘Carpets?’

‘And rugs. Drugs.’

‘Oh.’ I understood belatedly. ‘I hope not.’ I pondered briefly. ‘Keep it to yourself for now, Jogger, will you? Until I get it sorted out.’

He said he would, a promise easily given that might last into the third pint that evening in the pub, but no further.

At close quarters he smelled of oil and dust, those constant companions, and also of stale smoke and a general earthiness. I found it less objectionable than the overpoweringly sweet aftershave and clashing medicinal mouthwash of one of the other drivers, whose odour pervaded his whole horsebox even overriding the scent of horses.

As far as possible, each driver drove one particular horsebox all the time, making it his own. I’d found they all preferred it like that, and they also looked after the vehicles better that way, kept them cleaner, understood their idiosyncrasies and generally treated them with pride as their personal property. Each driver kept the keys of his own box in his possession and could personalise his own cab if he cared to. Several of them who liked to sleep on board had rigged curtains for the windows. Pat, now sick with flu, carried fresh flowers and an ingenious folding changing room in hers. I could almost infallibly have told which box I was in simply by the cab.

Brett’s cab was consistent with how little of himself he’d committed to the job; devoid of anything personal. I would be glad to see the back of him even though it compounded the driver shortage.

Saying he’d fetch something for the magnet and that he’d better get on with things if he was going to Surrey with the broodmares, Jogger joggled his way back to his van, loaded the slider and drove off. Dave hosed down the outside of the horsebox and cleaned the windows with a squeegee. Brett swept internal debris carelessly out through the grooms’ doors onto the tarmac.

The inside plan of the 35-foot long horsebox made provision for three sets of three stalls, with spaces between the sets. The horses’ heads protruded forwards into these spaces, where often sat an attendant travelling near them.

The width of the box allowed for three stalls only if the horses travelling were of average build. Heavily muscled horses, like older steeplechasers, needed more room and could travel only two side by side. The same for broodmares. When we took mares with foals, the three stalls across converted to one single large one. So nine two-year-olds or three mares with foals could be accommodated.

These versatile arrangements were easily achieved by many cleverly-designed swinging partitions, all of them of wood, covered with soft padding, to avoid injuries and bruising. We loaded the horses and bolted the stalls as needed around them.

The floors of the stalls were of thick black rubber to stop the horses sliding about, and sometimes we sprinkled the surface with shavings to catch the droppings, especially on long journeys. At each destination, the attendants or the driver would sweep the stalls clean of the muck: the nine-horsebox had therefore arrived home reasonably clean already, having come back empty from Newmarket.

A narrow cupboard at the rear of each box contained brooms, a shovel, hose, squeegees and mop. We took also a bucket or two, feed sometimes for the horses, and several plastic containers of drinking water. The locker under the attendants’ bench seat — where Ogden had died — housed spare tack in the form of head collars, ropes, straps, a horse blanket or two and a first aid kit. Behind the driver’s seat lay an efficient fire-extinguisher; and that was about all we carried except for the attendants’ own belongings up on the shelf with the mattress. The lads mostly took with them clean tidy clothes to change into for leading their charges round the parade ring, changing back into working things for the return home.

Day after day, all over the country, fleets of horseboxes like mine ferried all the runners to the races, most days about a hundred runners to each meeting, on bad days, down to, perhaps, thirty. Most of the runners that were trained in Pixhill travelled, luckily, in my boxes and as at least twenty-five trainers were in business in the district, I was making money, if not a fortune.

For all steeplechase jockeys in their early thirties the urgent question arose, what next? One life lay behind, unfilled time lay ahead. I’d been driving horseboxes by the age of eighteen for my father, who had owned his own transport; driving some of his horses to the races, looking after them, riding them in amateur races, driving home. By twenty, turning professional, I’d been retained by a top stable, and for twelve years after that I’d finished each season around second to sixth in the jockeys’ list, riding upwards of 400 jump races a year. Few jump jockeys lasted longer than that near the top owing to the physical battering of falls, and at thirty-two time and injuries had caught up with me, as they’d been bound to do in the end.

From jockey to full-time horse transporter had been a jolting change of outlook in some ways, but familiar territory in others. Three years into the new life, it seemed as if it had been inevitable all along.

I made up Brett’s pay packet with cash from my safe as promised and typed the information into the computer, so that along in the office Rose could incorporate it into the P45. One way and another she hadn’t had much practice at P45s, as the turnover in drivers had proved small.

Brett’s envelope in hand, I went out to the horsebox where he and Dave were now standing on the tarmac glaring at each other. Having removed the hose from the outside tap beyond the wood pile, Dave stood with its green flabby plastic loops over his arm, apparently childishly arguing that it was Brett’s job to put it away in its cupboard.

Give me strength, I thought, and asked Dave nicely to put it away himself. With bad grace he climbed with it into the box and Brett watched him spitefully.

‘That’s not the only time Dave’s picked up a hitchhiker,’ he said.

I listened but didn’t reply.

Brett said, ‘It’s him you ought to sack, not me.’

‘I didn’t sack you.’

‘As good as.’

His sharp young face lacked any sort of humour and I felt sorry for him that he should go through life making himself disliked. There seemed to be no way of changing him; he would go whining to the grave.

‘You’ll have to leave a forwarding address with Isobel,’ I said conversationally. ‘You might be called on for the inquest on yesterday’s passenger.’

‘It’s Dave they’ll want.’

‘All the same, leave an address.’

He grunted, accepted his pay packet without thanks and drove off, Dave coming to earth again by my side and looking after him balefully.

‘What did he say?’ he asked.

‘That you’d picked up other hitchhikers.’

Dave looked furious. ‘He would.’

‘Don’t do it, Dave.’

He listened to the weight I put into the words and, unsuccessfully trying to joke, said, ‘Is that some sort of threat?’

‘A warning.’

‘It don’t seem fair to leave people standing by the roadside.’

‘It may not seem fair to you,’ I said, ‘but just grit your teeth and do it.’

‘Well... OK.’ He gave me a half-hearted grin and promised not to give any lifts on his way back from leaving the broodmares in Gloucestershire that afternoon.

‘I’m serious, Dave.’

He sighed. ‘Yeah. I know it.’

He retrieved his rusty bike from the wood pile and squeaked away down the drive, wobbling aside for Jogger who was returning in his van.

Jogger had brought with him a book-sized piece of wood with a cluster of nails driven into it. The nail-heads would stick to the magnet, he said, but not so firmly that he wouldn’t be able to get the whole thing off at the next overhaul. The wood would prevent the magnet from picking up anything else.

I took his word for it, and watched him roll expertly under the chassis without using the slider, taking only seconds to put the insulating wood in place. He was up on his feet giving me a sideways yellow smile in an instant.

‘That didn’t take long,’ I said thoughtfully.

‘If you know where to look, it’s a piece of cake.’

Harve arrived at that moment, crossing with Jogger’s departure. We walked together to the house and I showed him the grime-laden cash box, explaining where Jogger had found it. He looked as puzzled as I felt.

‘But what’s it for?’ he said.

‘Jogger thinks we’ve been entertaining drugs unawares.’

‘What?’

‘Smuggling cocaine, perhaps?’

‘No.’ Harve was adamant. ‘No one could do that without us knowing.’

Ruefully I said, ‘Maybe one of us does know.’

Harve didn’t agree. Our drivers were saints, he implied.

I told him about the night visitor, who’d come in black disguise and entered the horsebox.

‘He had a key to the grooms’ door,’ I said. ‘He must have done. There’s no damage to the locks.’

‘Yes,’ Harve said, thinking, ‘but you know those groom-door keys don’t open just one box. I mean, I know for a certainty that my own box has the same key as Brett’s, here. Quite a lot of them are duplicated.’

I nodded. The ignition keys were individually special and couldn’t be copied, but the grooms’ door locks came from a different smaller range, and several of the boxes had keys that fitted others.

‘What was he doing inside the cab?’ Harve asked, ‘if this thing... this hiding place... was underneath?’

‘I don’t know. He had dirt on his clothes. Maybe he’d already looked underneath and found the hiding place empty.’

‘What are you going to do about it?’ Harve said. ‘Tell Sandy Smith?’

‘Maybe. Sometime. I don’t want to run us into trouble if I don’t have to.’

Harve was happy with that. ‘We don’t want the Customs to hear of it,’ he said, nodding. ‘They’d hold us up for hours, every crossing. They’d treat it as specific information received, I wouldn’t wonder.’

His pleasant face was only lightly anxious; and the unwelcome discovery, I supposed, didn’t merit the instant pushing of panic buttons.

‘OK,’ I said, ‘let’s get on. I’ll come along to the farm for fuel and start the shuttle.’

I locked the house while Harvey left, then followed along to the farmyard, less than a mile away, nearer to the heart of Pixhill.

Harve, his wife and four tow-headed children lived next door to the farmyard in what had been the old farmhouse. The old farm barn was now Jogger’s domain, a workshop with inspection pit and every aid to mechanical perfection that he could cajole me into buying.

What had once been a cowshed was now a small canteen and a suite of three offices with windows looking into the farmyard, from where one could watch the horseboxes come and go, each to and from its own allocated parking space. A small stable block with room for three horses was sited in the space between the end of the stretch of offices and the high wall of the barn. We sometimes housed our passengers there temporarily if they were due to leave or arrive in the middle of the night.

Several of the day’s sorties had already begun. The other nine-box had already left to collect the broodmares bound for Ireland. The two Southwell boxes’ spaces were empty also. Jogger was driving Phil’s box over to the barn for its overhaul.

I drew to a halt by the diesel pump and topped up the tanks.

Normally we refuelled on return in the evenings to avoid water problems from air condensing overnight in quarter-full tanks, a tip I’d learned from a pilot friend. We also hosed down the boxes at that point and cleaned the insides with disinfectant so they were fresh and ready to go in the mornings.

Brett, I noticed, had removed the remains of his picnic, but his solution to the stain on the bench-seat had been not to clean it off but to fold the horse rug and lay it along the seat to cover it. Typical, I thought.

In the offices, Isobel and Rose were consulting their machines, turning up the heaters and drinking coffee from the canteen next door. Rose said she had already given Brett his P45 and taken his mother’s address and was glad to be rid of him.

Rose, plumply middle-aged, kept the financial records, seeing to the pay packets, sending out bills, preparing cheques for my signature, keeping track of the pennies. Isobel, gentle, young, clearheaded, answered the telephone, took the bookings and chatted usefully with many trainers’ secretaries, harvesting advance notice of their stables’ requirements.

Rose and Isobel had an office each, in which they worked from eight-thirty to four. The third office, less busy-looking, less personal, was technically my own but was used just as much by Harve. The documentation of the boxes was kept in there, and also duplicates of the ignition keys, in a locked drawer.

In spite of the flu, in spite of Brett, in spite of Kevin Keith Ogden, that Friday’s work seemed to be going smoothly.

The driver due to transfer Jericho Rich’s six fillies to Newmarket had already arrived in the farmyard, as for some unspecified reason Michael Watermead had wanted them to leave his stable earlier in the morning than the load of two-year-olds the day before.

I explained to Nigel, the driver, that Michael wouldn’t be sending any of his own lads to care for the fillies (‘Jericho can whistle for favours, bloody man’) but that a car with a couple of lads would be coming over from the destination trainer in Newmarket.

‘They did the same yesterday with Brett and the day before with Harve, so you shouldn’t have any trouble,’ I said.

Nigel nodded.

‘And don’t pick up any corpses on the way home.’

He laughed. He was twenty-four, insatiably heterosexual, found life a joke and could call on inexhaustible stamina, his chief virtue in my eyes. Any time we needed long night-driving I sent him, if I could.

Trainers often had a favourite among the drivers, a particular man they knew and trusted. In Michael Watermead’s case, there was a driver called Lewis, at that moment warming his hands round a mug of tea and listening to Dave’s self-justifying account of the last ride of K. K. Ogden.

‘Didn’t he say anything?’ Lewis asked interestedly. ‘Just snuffed it?’

‘Makes you think, doesn’t it?’

Lewis agreed about that, nodding his close-cropped head. In his twenties, like the majority of the drivers, he was willing, resourceful and strong, with a tattoo of a dragon on one forearm and a reputed past as a biker. The rave-up history had raised my doubts to begin with, but he’d proved thoroughly reliable at the wheel of his glossy super-six box, and Michael, who had exacting standards, had taken to him firmly.

In consequence, Lewis drove prestigious horses to big meetings. The Watermead stable at that moment housed ‘Classic’ contenders, with representative runners in both the Guineas and Oaks; and all of the drivers had already put their money on the Watermead star three-year-old colt, Irkab Alhawa which, if all went well, Lewis would be driving to Epsom, in June, for the Derby.

He was, that morning, setting off to France to collect two two-year-olds that an owner had bought to be trained in Michael’s yard. As he was going alone, without a relief driver — agreed with Michael — he would have to take rest stops on the way and wouldn’t be back until Monday evening. He would sleep as usual in his cab, which he preferred.

I checked with him that he had the right documents and food and water for the two-year-olds, and watched him set off cheerfully on the errand.

Harve having gone through the rest of the day’s programme again with me, I set off myself towards chilly gale-swept Salisbury Plain to get to grips with the yo-yo shuttle which could take until evening and give me a headache. The headache would result from the voice and personality of the trainer on the move, a forceful lady in her fifties with the intonation and occasionally the vocabulary of a barrack-room parrot. I wanted nevertheless to please her, aiming for all her future business.

She strode across to the box when I pulled up in her yard and produced the first squawk of the day.

‘The boss himself!’ she proclaimed ironically, seeing my face. ‘Why the honour?’

‘Flu,’ I said succinctly. ‘Morning, Marigold.’

She peered beyond me to the empty passenger seats. ‘Didn’t you bring a handler? Your secretary said there would be two of you.’

‘He’s had to drive today. Sorry.’

She clicked her tongue in irritation. ‘Half my lads have got the bug. It’s a pest.’

I jumped down from the cab and lowered the two ramps while she watched and grumbled, a wiry figure in a padded jacket and woolly hat, her nose blue with cold. She was moving to Pixhill, she’d told the racing press, because it was warmer for the horses.

She’d made lists laying out the order in which her string was to travel. Her depleted force of lads led the horses up the ramps into the box and I bolted the partitions round them until the first nine were installed.

Marigold — Mrs English, as the lads called her — encouraged the loading with various raucous epithets and an overall air of impatience. I certainly could have done with Dave’s knack of imparting confidence to horses while leading them up ramps: Marigold’s method tended to frighten them upwards so that I bolted several of them quivering and wild-eyed into their stalls.

She had decided to drive herself in her car to Pixhill to be ready in the new yard when I and the horses arrived. Four of her lads travelled with me in the cab, all of them apparently enthusiastic over the move, the night-life of Pixhill being seen as hotly wicked when compared with the winds of Stonehenge.

Her new yard was an old yard in Pixhill, now modernised and enlarged. Its first nine inhabitants clattered down the ramps and were directed loudly to their new homes by Marigold with a list. I shovelled the droppings onto muck sacks supplied by her lads and put the wagon ship-shape for the second foray.

Pleased, Marigold told me that as I was doing the work myself she wouldn’t need to travel backwards and forwards all day to supervise and would entrust the next loading to me entirely. She gave me the list. I thanked her. She looked on me kindly. I thought with satisfaction that I would glue her to me as a permanent customer by nightfall.

With such profitable thoughts I set off back to Salisbury Plain and had my complacence shattered by Jogger on the phone.

‘Hi ho Silver,’ he said cheerfully, ‘we’ve got another couple of Lone Rangers.’

‘Jogger... you’ve lost me.’

‘Limpets,’ he said helpfully. ‘Barnacles. Stuck to the ships’ bottoms.’

‘Where are you, exactly?’ I asked.

‘In your office.’

‘Is there someone else with you?’

‘Nothing wrong with your uptake, is there? Do you want to talk to Constable Smith? He’s here now.’

‘Wait,’ I said, ‘do you mean what I think you mean? For Lone Rangers, do I understand... strangers?’

‘You got it.’

‘Like the cash box?’

‘Like, but not twins.’ Jogger paused, letting me hear a rumble from Sandy Smith’s familiar voice. ‘Constable Smith,’ Jogger said, ‘wants to know when you’ll be back. He says there was a warrant out for that stiff.’