Driving Force

Chapter 9

As I was leaving Winchester the car phone rang. Isobel’s voice said, ‘Oh, good, I’ve been trying to reach you. The police are here about Jogger.’

‘Which police?’

‘Not Sandy Smith. Two others. They want to know when you’ll be back.’

‘Tell them twenty minutes. Did the computer man come?’

‘He’s here now. Another half-hour, he says.’

‘Fine.’

‘Nina Young phoned. She and Nigel have picked up the Jericho Rich showjumper and they’re on their way back. No incidents, she said to tell you.’

‘OK.’

I completed the journey and kept the police waiting while I checked with the young computer expert in Isobel’s office. Yes, he confirmed, he had brought with him a replacement computer for my house, as requested, and he would come straight away to fix it up.

After I’d talked to the police, I said.

He looked at his watch and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I’m due at Michael Watermead’s stables. Same job as this. I’ll do him first, then come to you.’

‘Michael?’ I asked, surprised.

He smiled. ‘Rather apt, I thought, being Michelangelo, but he didn’t think it funny.’

‘No, he wouldn’t.’

Barely digesting the news, let alone the significance, of the failure of the Watermead hard disk, I went along to where the policemen waited in my own office.

They proved to be the two whose manner had so easily raised my antagonism on their Monday visit. I resolved for Sandy’s sake to be cooperative, and answered their questions truthfully, politely and briefly. They exuded suspicion and hostility, for which I could see no reason, and they asked most of Monday’s questions over again.

They needed, they announced, to take scrapings of the dirt surrounding and inside the inspection pit. Go right ahead, I said. They told me they were in the process of asking my staff what had brought Jogger to the farmyard on the Sunday morning.

Fine.

Had I instructed him to go to the farmyard on that morning?

No, I hadn’t.

Did I object to his going there on a Sunday morning?

‘No. As I mentioned before, all the staff could go in and out of the farmyard whenever they liked.’

Why was that?

‘Company policy,’ I said, and didn’t feel like explaining that the drivers’ pride in their vehicles led them to make them more personal, which they did chiefly on Sundays. Curtains were hung on Sundays. Seat and mattress covers were fitted. Bits of carpet appeared underfoot. Wives helped with the homes-from-homes. Metal and furniture polish accompanied pride. Loyalty and contentment were the products of Sundays.

Did Jogger normally go to the farmyard on Sundays?

I said that the horse transport business was always working on Sundays, though usually not as busily as on all other days. Jogger would certainly consider it normal to go to the farmyard on a Sunday.

They asked, as Sandy had predicted, what I had been doing on that Sunday morning. I told them. They wrote it down dubiously. You say you picked daffodils from your garden and put them on your parents’ grave? Yes, I did. Was I in the habit of doing that? I took flowers there from time to time, I said. How often? Five or six times a year.

I gathered, both from their general attitude and the limitations of their questions, that there was still in the collective police mind a basic indecision as to how to view Jogger’s death; accident or worse.

Rust, I thought, would decide for them.

I went with them and watched them take scrapings from all round the pit. They fed the patches of dirt into small plastic bags, closing and labelling each with its area of provenance. North end of pit floor... east, west, south. North interior wall of pit... east, west, south. North rim of pit... east, west, south.

They were thorough and fair. One way or another, rust would tell.

They drove away finally, leaving me to my ambivalent feelings and two alarmed secretaries.

Isobel said, scandalised, ‘They asked us how you and Jogger got along! Why did they ask that? Jogger fell into the pit, didn’t he?’

‘They have to find out.’

‘But... but...’

‘Mm,’ I said, ‘let’s hope he fell.’

‘All the drivers say he must have. They’ve been saying so all week.’

Trying to convince themselves, I thought.

I drove home, where the computer whizz soon joined me. He stood with his legs apart in the centre of my devastated sitting-room, the hand combing through the hair non-stop.

‘Yes,’ I said to his stunned silence. ‘It took a bit of strength and a lot of pleasure.’

‘Pleasure?’ He thought it over. ‘I guess so.’

He put the wreck of the old computer onto one of the few free areas of carpet and installed the new version in its place, attaching it to its phone line to the computer in Isobel’s room. Although I would still maintain my pencil charts, it was reassuring to see the screen come alive again with the active link to the office.

‘I guarantee that this new disk is clean,’ the expert said. ‘And I’m selling you a disk you can use to check that it stays that way.’ He showed me how to ‘scan’ the disk. ‘If you find any virus on there, please phone me at once.’

‘I certainly will.’ I watched his busy fingers and asked a few questions. ‘If someone fed the Michelangelo virus into the office computer, would it also infect the computer here?’

‘Yes, it would, as soon as you called the office programmes onto your screen. And the other way round. If someone fed the virus into here, the office would catch it. It would then spread to all the computers on the same network.’

‘Like Rose’s?’

‘Is Rose the other secretary? Yes, sure, into hers in a flash.’

‘And... um... if we make back-up floppy disks, would the virus be in those, too?’

He said earnestly, ‘If you do have any back-ups, let me check them before you use them.’

‘Yes.’

‘But your girls said they hadn’t made any for ages.’

‘I know.’ I paused. ‘Did Michael Watermead’s secretary make back-ups?’

He hesitated. ‘Don’t know if I should tell you.’

‘Professional etiquette?’

‘Sort of.’

‘She’ll tell Isobel, anyway.’

‘Then... er... yes, she did, and the back-up floppy she’s been using lately has Michelangelo on it. I’m having to clean up their whole act.’

‘Will you save their records?’

‘Every chance.’

He finished the installation and gave me a cheerful pitying look. ‘You need lessons,’ he said. ‘You need to know about write-protect and boot-up floppy disks, for a start. I could teach you, if you like, though you’re pretty old.’

‘How long have you been in computers?’ I asked.

‘From before I could hold a pen.’

The way I could ride, I thought.

‘I’ll come for lessons,’ I said.

‘Really? Great, then. Really great.’

After he’d gone I managed to stay awake to watch all the racing at Cheltenham and had the bitter-sweet satisfaction of seeing a horse I’d schooled and taught his business win the Gold Cup.

I should have been riding him. I might have been... Well, it had to be enough to remember the first of his triumphs, a scramble of a two-mile hurdle. Enough to remember his first steeplechase, a high-class novice race that he’d won by outjumping the opposition though nearly giving it away by floundering all over the place in the last hundred yards. I’d ridden him eight times in all into first place past the winning post, and now here he was, nine years old and a star, charging up the Cheltenham hill as straight as a die with all the panache and courage a jockey could hope for.

God dammit...

I shook off the sickening self-pitying regrets. I should have got over it by this time, I told myself. A decent period of mourning was reasonable, but three years along the road I should have stopped looking back. I supposed rather uneasily that I wouldn’t be free of nostalgia until the last of the horses I’d ridden was heading towards Centaur Care. Not even then, if many like Peterman turned up on my doorstep.

The minute I switched off the set the telephone rang and I listened to Lizzie’s voice sounding surprised.

‘Hello! I thought I’d get your answering machine. I thought you’d be at Cheltenham.’

‘I didn’t go.’

‘So it seems. Why not? Is your head all right?’

‘Nothing to worry about. I keep wanting to go to sleep.’

‘Thoroughly natural. Listen to nature.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Thanks for lending me Aziz. What a fascinating young man.’

‘Is he?’

‘Too bright for his job, I’d say.’

‘Why do you think so? I need bright drivers.’

‘Most drivers can’t discuss the periodic table of elements, let alone in French.’

I laughed.

‘Just think about it. Anyway,’ she said, ‘I’ve a report on your tubes.’

It took me a few seconds to work out which tubes she meant, typical of the sluggish state of my brain.

‘Tubes,’ I said. ‘Oh, great.’

‘They each contained 10 ccs of viral transport medium.’

‘Of what?’

‘To be precise about the ingredients, the tubes contained bovine albumin, glutamic acid, sucrose and an antibiotic called Gentamicin, all in sterile water at a balanced pH of 7.3.’

‘Er...’ I said, reaching for a pencil. ‘Spell all that slowly.’

She laughed and did so.

‘But what’s it for?’ I asked.

‘For transporting a virus, as I said.’

‘But what virus?’ My mind thought irrationally of Michelangelo, which was nonsense. Michelangelo needed a different sort of tube.

‘Any virus,’ Lizzie said. ‘Viruses are highly mysterious and barely visible even under an electron microscope. One can usually only see their results. You can also detect the antibodies the invaded organism develops to defend itself.’

‘But...’ I paused to organise a few scattering thoughts, ‘was there any virus in the tubes?’

‘It’s impossible to say. It looks likely, considering that the tubes were carefully sealed and were being carried in the dark in a vacuum flask — and incidentally, the vacuum flask would have been necessary to maintain the tubes in a chilled environment, say 4 °C, not a hot one — but you’ve had those tubes for days, haven’t you?’

‘They were being carried in one of my horseboxes a week ago today.’

‘That’s what I thought. Well, viruses will only survive outside a living organism for a very short time. Viral transport medium is used for taking virally infected matter from a sufferer to a laboratory for testing, and for infecting another organism for research purposes, but viruses don’t live long in the medium or on culture plates.’

‘How long?’

‘It would depend. The conflicting views here in the university say for as little as five hours or for as many as forty-eight. After that, any virus would be inactive.’

‘But Lizzie...’

‘Yes, what?’

‘I mean... I don’t really understand.’

‘You’re hardly alone,’ she said. ‘There are about six hundred known viruses, probably there are at least double that number, and they are all unidentifiable by sight. They’re particles of DNA or RNA surrounded by a coating of protein. They are cylindrical or polyhedral in shape, but you can’t tell what they do by looking at them. They’re not like bacteria, where the organisms are recognizable individually by their appearance. Most viruses look the same. They live by invading living tissue and reproducing in animal cells — for animal, read also human. Flu, colds, polio, smallpox, measles, rabies, AIDS, dozens of things. Everyone knows their effects. No one knows how they evolved. Some, like flu, are constantly changing.’

In silence I thought about what she’d told me until in the end she said, ‘Freddie? Are you still there?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Do you mean,’ I asked slowly, ‘that you could take some flu virus from someone and transport it for miles and infect someone else, without the people even meeting?’

‘Sure, you could. But why would you?’

‘Malice?’ I suggested.

‘Freddie!’

‘You could, couldn’t you?’

‘As far as I gather, you’d have to have a large inoculum in a small amount of medium, the pathogenicity of the virus would have to be high and the receptor would have to be highly susceptible.’

‘Is that straight Professor Quipp?’

She said tartly, ‘Since you ask, yes.’

‘Lizzie,’ I said apologetically, ‘it’s just that I need it in plain English.’

‘Oh. Well, in that case, what it means is that you’d have to have a very active virus and as much of it as possible in relation to the amount of medium, and the person receiving it would have to be likely to catch the infection. It wouldn’t be any good trying to infect someone with the present strain of flu if they’d been inoculated against it. You couldn’t give polio to anyone who’d taken the Salk vaccine, or give smallpox or measles to protected people. There’s no proven vaccine yet against AIDS, and AIDS is terrifying because it may be that it changes, like flu, though that’s not established so far.’

‘If it was flu virus in the tubes,’ I asked, thinking, ‘would you inject it?’

‘No, you wouldn’t. Flu is spread through respiratory droplets or saliva. You’d have to squirt the medium up someone’s nose. That might do it.’

‘Or sprinkle it on their cornflakes?’

‘Not really reliable. A respiratory virus would have to go into the respiratory tract, not the stomach. From the nose or lungs it could invade the whole system, but it might not have any effect if you injected it into a muscle or straight into the bloodstream.’ She paused. ‘You do have gruesome thoughts.’

‘It’s been a gruesome week.’

She agreed with the assessment. ‘Is my dear little helicopter still exactly where I left it?’

‘Yes. What do you want me to do with it?’

‘My partners suggest putting it on a low-loader and bringing it home.’

‘Do you think it can be salvaged?’ I probably sounded surprised, but there were bits of it, she said, that looked unharmed. The tail rotor, for example, and the main rotor’s linkage, the most expensive part of the works. A helicopter could be rebuilt. It would have to stay as it was, though, she said, until after the aircraft crash inspector had been to see it and made a report. Even ground accidents, it seemed, had to go through the mill.

‘Talking of viruses,’ I said, ‘we’ve had a doozy in the computer.’

‘A what?’

‘A killer. No vaccine given in time, alas.’

‘What exactly are you talking about?’

I told her.

‘Inconvenient,’ she said. ‘Let me know if you need anything else.’

‘I will. Incidentally, Aziz said you were a nice lady.’

‘So I should hope.’

I laughed with affection and disconnected and from my bedroom window watched a zippy small car drive onto my tarmac and stop with a shocked jolt within first sight of the Jaguar-Robinson embrace.

My visitor, as I was delighted to see as she stood up in the open air to stare at the wreckage, was Maudie Watermead; blonde, slight, forever legs in blue denim.

I opened my window and yelled down to her.

‘Hi,’ she shouted back. ‘Can I come in?’

‘I’ll be straight down.’

I leapt down the stairs and opened the door for her.

I said, kissing her cheek, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve come to hop into bed?’

‘Not a chance.’

‘Come in for a drink, then.’

She took the less dramatic invitation for granted and followed me into the house. The state of the sitting-room opened her mouth.

‘Wow,’ she said breathlessly. ‘All of Pixhill’s heard about this, but I never... I mean...’

‘The thoroughness,’ I said dryly, ‘is impressive.’

‘Oh, Freddie!’ She sounded truly sympathetic and gave me a hug. Too chaste, however. ‘And your super car...’ She bent down and picked up one of the chopped photographs, sharp pieces of glass falling in a cascade from an old soaring flight over The Chair fence in the Grand National. ‘How can you bear it?’

‘Without tears,’ I said.

She gave me a swift sideways glance. ‘You’re as tough as ever.’

What was tough, I wondered. Unfeeling? Yet I felt.

‘I was talking to the computer boy,’ Maudie said. ‘He described all this. He said if anyone had done this to him, he’d have taken an axe to him himself.’

‘Mm. But you have to axe the right person and he didn’t sign his name.’ Something flickered deep in my brain. Something about signing names. Flickered and vanished. ‘What will you drink?’ I asked. ‘There’s champagne in the fridge.’

‘If you really feel like it,’ she said doubtfully.

‘Why not?’

So we went into the kitchen and sat at the table there and drank from my best glasses, all unshattered inside a kitchen cupboard.

‘Michael was furious about our computer. That young genius who’s fixed it for us told us we hadn’t had the virus lurking inside there for more than a month. Betsy started using new floppy disks as back-up disks a month ago. The virus was on those, but it wasn’t on the back-up disks she’d used earlier. So the wizard says we didn’t have the virus then.’

I thought about it. ‘So Betsy hasn’t used the old back-up disks recently?’

‘No. No need. I mean, you only use back-ups if the computer itself goes haywire, don’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘The wizard says there are hundreds of these wretched viruses about. Michael’s on the point of returning to parchment and quill pens.’

‘Can’t blame him.’

‘Betsy says your Isobel’s told her they didn’t make back-ups, even, in your office.’

‘One lives and learns.’

‘But what will you do?’

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘start on the parchment and quills, I suppose. I mean, all the records and figures in the computer are still around on paper. Rose kept paper copies of the bills she sent out. We’ve all the invoices for supplies coming in. The drivers’ log books still exist.’

‘Yes, but what a mammoth task.’

‘Infuriating,’ I agreed.

‘Why aren’t you snarling and gnashing your teeth?’

‘Doesn’t do any good.’

She sighed. ‘You’re amazing, Freddie, you really are.’

‘But I don’t get what I want.’

She knew what I meant. She almost blushed, then said, ‘No, you don’t,’ much too firmly, and drank her champagne. ‘I came to see if I could help you in any way,’ she went on, and before I could say anything added quickly, ‘and not in that way, don’t be a fool.’

‘Pity.’

‘Michael said to ask you to lunch on Sunday.’

‘Tell Michael yes, thank you.’

Tell Michael, Sandy had said, that his daughter, Tessa, had criminal potential. I looked at Maudie’s high cheekbones, at her fair eyebrows, her delicious mouth; looked at her good sense and generous spirit. How could one warn such a mother or such a father to look out for trouble in their daughter? Maybe a critical aunt could have managed it, but I certainly could not.

I had no right to do it and no inclination, and moreover I wouldn’t be believed and would lose a welcome friendship. I might privately suspect that Sandy was on target, but that was what the thought would remain; private. I could, on the other hand, alert Maudie to less nebulous dangers.

I said tentatively, ‘Have you come across one of my drivers called Nigel?’

The fair eyebrows rose. ‘We nearly always have Lewis.’

‘Yes. But... um... Nigel’s a sexy hunk, my secretaries say, and... um...’

‘Get on with it,’ Maudie urged.

‘I just thought... you might not want him seeing too much of Tessa.’

‘Tessa! Oh God. I thought it was Lewis she was keen on. She’s always whispering with Lewis.’

‘The pub landlord mentioned to me that Nigel was buying Cokes there for Tessa and Ed one evening. I’m sure there’s absolutely nothing to worry about, but perhaps you should know.’

‘Stupid kids!’ She seemed basically unworried. ‘Coca-Cola in a pub!’ She laughed. ‘In my young days it was “my needle or yours” that had parents hopping.’

I refilled her glass. She frowned, not at the champagne, but at a sudden memory, and thoughtfully said, ‘You sent that Nigel to us last week to take Jericho Rich’s damned horses off to Newmarket, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. Friday. But I won’t allocate him to your work any more.’

‘Betsy told me... He came too early, or something, and Tessa climbed into his cab and said she wanted to go with him, but Michael saw her and said she wasn’t to go.’

That version of what had happened sounded much more likely than the one I’d heard from Isobel, that Nigel had virtuously said he wouldn’t take her because of my ban on hitchhikers.

Maudie said, ‘Michael told me he couldn’t imagine why she wanted to go with Jericho’s horses when she said she detested the man, but if it was Nigel she wanted to go with, it makes more sense. Do you really think we might have a problem there?’

‘He’s unmarried and has powerful pheromones, I’m told.’

‘What a way of putting it.’ She was amused. ‘I’ll keep an eye on things. And thanks.’

‘I don’t like to tell tales.’

‘Tessa can be a bit of a handful, sometimes.’ She looked mildly rueful but forgiving. ‘Seventeen’s a rebellious age, I suppose.’

‘Did you rebel?’ I asked.

‘No, actually. I don’t think so. Did you?’

‘I was too busy riding.’

‘And here you still are, in your father’s house.’ She mocked me gently. ‘You never even left home.’

‘Home is wherever I am,’ I said.

‘Wow. How’s that for utter security!’

‘You wouldn’t care to leave Michael, I suppose?’

‘And four children? And an integrated life? And I’m older than you, anyway.’

The thing that made the game most worth playing, I thought, was the certainty that I wouldn’t win it. She finished her drink happily, my desire for her as pleasurable an intoxification as the bubbles. Casual consummation would have spoiled the future and she was too nice to allow it. She put down her glass and stood up, smiling.

‘If you need anything, let us know.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘See you on Sunday, then.’

I walked out to her car with her and got an affectionate, passionless kiss and a carefree wave as she turned her car and departed. Celibacy, I thought, returning to the house, could go on for too long, and too long, at that point, was a year. The older I grew, the more I saw consequences in advance and the more I cared, like Maudie, about not doing damage for the sake of a passing pleasure. I looked back over the years with horror, sometimes. After I’d lost Susan Palmerstone, I’d drifted in and out of several relationships without understanding that I might have awoken much deeper feelings than I felt myself; and I’d dodged a thrown plate or two and laughed about it. How dreadfully long it had taken me to stop grazing. All the same... I sighed.

I went into the sitting-room to see what I could retrieve from the mess, and stood considering the answering machine, which had been split into two pieces with its guts, in the shape of recording tape, unspooling onto the floor.

On the tape, I thought, was Jogger’s voice.

I hadn’t in the end written down exactly what he’d said, and although I could more or less remember, I wasn’t certain of being exact. No amount of rhyming dictionary would help if I got the original words wrong. I rummaged in the kitchen for a star screwdriver and other tools and liberated the hacked pieces of cassette from the answering machine, trying not to tear the tape itself but finding that the axe, in going through one of the spools, had severed a lot of it into very short lengths.

Cursing, I sought and found an old cassette with nothing of note on it, and took that apart and removed all the tape from it. Then I carefully unrolled the whole of the longest section of tape from the answering machine’s one undamaged spool and wound it from its beginning onto one of the newly freed spools. I attached the severed end to the second freed spool and replaced them into their cassette, screwing it shut again.

Then I searched the house for an old seldom-used pocket-sized cassette player which I knew I had somewhere, but naturally when I finally ran it to earth its batteries were flat.

A short pause ensued while I raided another gadget with the same size batteries in working order, but finally, with a sort of prayer, I pressed the play button and held my breath.

‘I hate this bloody machine,’ Jogger’s voice said. ‘Where have you gone, Freddie?’

Loud and clear. Hallelujah.

The whole of his message was there, though slightly distorted by my not having wound the tape evenly enough. When I ran it back and then forward again the distortions had disappeared. I took a sheet of paper and wrote down what he’d said, word for word, indicating his pauses with dots, but I still didn’t understand his meaning.

A dead nun in the pit last August.

Most unlikely! Someone would have told me about it even though I’d spent a good deal of August in France (Deauville races) and America (Saratoga, ditto).

What rhymed with nun? Bun, done, fun, run, sun...

No. What paired with nun?

Nun and monk.

Monk... bunk, chunk, dunk, drunk, funk, hunk, junk, punk, sunk, stunk, chipmunk.

A dead chipmunk? A dead funk? A dead hunk? Hunk of what? Dead junk. Dead punk? A dead drunk?

I would give the transcript to Nina, I thought, and let the collective brains of the Jockey Club Security Service loose on it. I laid the nonsense aside feeling that even if we cracked the code the message could turn out to be irrelevant. Jogger obviously hadn’t known he was going to die. He hadn’t been leaving me an intensely significant message, fearing it to be his last.

With a shift of focus I switched on the new computer, hoping there wouldn’t be a flash and a fizzle and another total collapse of hard disk. Amazingly, however, the wizard had restored me to smooth computer life, everything working as before. I called up Isobel’s office machine to see what, if anything, she and Rose had entered and filed since that morning.

They’d been busy, both of them. They’d been quick, conscientious, generous with their time. I’d told both of them to start with that day’s entries and go slowly backwards between their other jobs, if they could, but not to go further back in any case than the beginning of the month.

‘Leave it on paper for now,’ I said.

‘But the spreadsheets...’ Rose said.

‘Leave the spreadsheets.’

‘If you say so,’ she agreed doubtfully.

‘It’s our own fault we lost everything,’ Isobel said dolefully.

‘Never mind.’ I still didn’t tell them I might produce full back-up copies if, first, the safe cracker didn’t somehow destroy them in getting the safe open, and if, second, the Michelangelo virus hadn’t already wiped them out. I also didn’t want to incur a repeat attack on myself or my belongings if someone heard the disks existed and knew they could reveal high risk information. The bruise on my head might be fading, but my car and my sitting-room continually reminded me that melodrama in Pixhill had come through my gates and might not yet be extinct.

On the screen I read the next day’s engagements for the fleet. Not bad for that week: steeplechasers to Wolverhampton and Lingfield Park. Broodmares to three studs. Irish horses to Bristol airport, returning home from Cheltenham.

Advance plans for Saturday looked good.

I called up the directory of files to see what else Isobel and Rose had entered and found an unusual one there: ‘Visitors.’

‘Visitors’ turned out to be the list I’d asked them for of everyone they could remember who’d visited the farmyard office lately.

The dears, I thought, pleased. Helpful beyond duty.

The list read:

I typed a thank you message onto the list and made a back-up copy of the new work onto a clean unused floppy, though I suspected the office would be ankle-deep in back-ups from now on. I switched off the computer, made some food, drank the rest of the champagne and thought a lot about viruses, both organic and electronic.

Nina telephoned, yawning, at about ten.

‘Where are you?’ I asked.

‘In the cab of the horsebox, in the farmyard. We’ve refuelled and Nigel’s hosing down the outside of the box, thank God. I’m knackered.’

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing, don’t worry. The trip went according to plan. We’ve delivered the showjumper. The owner’s father, Jericho Rich, he was there when we unloaded, shouting orders all over the place. What a bloody awkward man. I nearly snapped his head off but thought I’d better not, for your sake. No, nothing much else happened, it’s just that this long-distance driving lark is a job for strong young men; you’re right about that.’

‘How did you get on with Nigel?’

‘My God, he’s randy. Had his hand on my knee a couple of times and I’m old enough to be his mother. Actually he’s not bad fun. No complaints. We chatted a lot. Can I tell you tomorrow?’ She yawned again. ‘He’s nearly finished the cleaning. He’s got inexhaustible stamina.’

‘His chief virtue,’ I agreed.

‘See you in the morning. Bye.’

In the morning I went to the farmyard early, wanting to see some of the drivers before they set off. Harve himself was down for an early start to Wolverhampton, and in such absences of his I very often wandered around in case there were last-minute queries or alterations.

Early starts were normal, as most trainers insisted on their horses arriving at a course at least three hours before they were due to race. In the winter, when racing could start at noon in order to complete the programme in the abbreviated daylight, the drivers could be loading at six or seven in the dark and unloading in the dark twelve hours later, according to the length of the journey. By the vernal equinox, we were loading and unloading at dawn and dusk with the long light summer days beckoning, and in the three years I’d had the business I’d seen a regular pattern of energy enhanced by the sun. The workload might be the same in January and June, but not the fatigue level.

Most of the drivers were in the canteen when I arrived on that Friday. The sky outside was gloriously pink and ginger, high, clear and cold. In the canteen the tea looked the colour of teak with strength to match, and white plastic teaspoons stood upright in the sugar bowl.

‘Morning, Freddie...’

I answered the chorus. ‘Good morning.’

Harve had already set off to Wolverhampton. I checked the other assembled drivers against the list I’d copied from the computer screen and found them all well briefed by Harve and Isobel. I realised I’d left a lot to those two since Tuesday night and had been more affected than I’d acknowledged by the rattling of my brain.

Phil, Dave and Lewis were there, Lewis showing no sign of flu. Nigel, despite his late return the evening before, exuded undiminished animal strength. Aziz smiled, as ever. A bunch of others looked at their watches, drank their tannin, used the washroom and ambled out on a collective mission to pick up most of the Pixhill horses that were running that afternoon at Lingfield Park.

Dave was down to go with Aziz in the nine-box on a broodmare mission to Ireland. Both men had arrived in plenty of time, and I asked Dave to come along to my office as I had something to discuss with him. He came in his usual happy-go-lucky way, carrying his tea mug and wearing an amiable unsuspecting expression.

I gestured to him to sit in the chair in front of the desk and closed the door behind us.

‘OK, Dave,’ I said, taking the chair behind the desk and feeling irritation with him, rather than outright anger, ‘who arranged your diarrhoea?’

‘What?’ He blinked, dismissing the thought crossing his mind. Dismissing the possibility that I knew what he’d done. Dismissing it wrongly, too soon.

‘Diarrhoea,’ I reminded him, ‘needing a stop at South Mimms service station to buy Imodium.’

‘Oh... yes. That. Mm. That’s right.’

‘Who arranged that stop?’

‘What? Well, no one. I had the squits, like.’

‘Let’s just face it, Dave,’ I said a shade wearily, ‘you did not pick up Kevin Keith Ogden by accident.’

‘Who?’

‘The hitchhiker. And let’s stop playing games. You know perfectly well who I mean. You went to his inquest yesterday. You and Brett stopped at South Mimms not because of any mythical squits but to pick up a passenger in order to take him to Chieveley. All of which you did not tell the coroner.’

Dave’s mouth opened with automatic denials ready and closed on account of what he saw in my face.

‘Who arranged it?’ I repeated.

He didn’t know what to say. I could almost chart the tumbling thoughts; could clearly see the indecision. I waited while he consulted his tea and searched for answers in the brightening sky beyond the window. The little-boy freckles as always lent his expression a natural air of innocence but the half-sly artful assessing look he finally gave me spoke of a more adult guilt.

‘There was nothing wrong in it,’ he said wheedlingly.

‘How do you know?’

He tried one of the ingratiating grins to which I was by then immune. ‘What makes you think it was arranged? Like I said, there was this geezer cadging a lift...’

‘Stop it, Dave,’ I said sharply. ‘If you want to keep your job, you’ll tell me the truth.’

Shock stopped him. I’d never looked forbidding to him before. ‘The truth,’ I urged.

‘Honestly, Freddie, I didn’t mean no harm.’ He began to look worried. ‘What harm could it do?’

‘What was the arrangement?’

‘Look, it couldn’t do no harm to give a man a lift.’

‘Who paid you?’

‘I... well...’

‘Who?’ I insisted. ‘Or you get on your bike now and you don’t come back.’

‘No one,’ he said desperately. ‘All right. All right. I was supposed to be paid, but I never was.’ His disgust looked genuine. ‘I mean, you weren’t supposed to know about him, but then he died...’ His voice faded, the realisation of his admission hitting home. ‘They said I would find an envelope in the cab of the nine-box first thing Friday, but of course the box was outside your house and there was no envelope in it in the morning, though I looked for it when we were cleaning, like, and I’ve never heard no more, and it’s not fair.’

‘Serves you right,’ I said unsympathetically. ‘Who are they?’

‘What?’

‘ “They” who said you would find an envelope in the cab?’

‘Well...’

‘Dave!’ I said, exasperated. ‘Get on with it.’

‘Yes, but, see, I don’t know.’

I said sarcastically, ‘You agreed to do something you knew I had over and over again forbidden, and you don’t know who you jeopardised your job for?’

‘Yes, but...’

‘No buts,’ I said. ‘How did “they” get in touch with you, and were “they” a man or a woman?’

‘Er...’

I would strangle him, I thought.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘all right.’ He took an unhappy breath. ‘It was a she, and she phoned me at home and my wife answered it and she didn’t like it being some strange woman, not Isobel, like, but anyway this woman just said it would be worth my while to give this man a lift, and you don’t turn down windfalls like that. I mean... well... it’s all beer money, isn’t it?’

‘Did you recognise her voice?’

He shook his head miserably.

‘What accent did she have?’

He seemed merely puzzled by the question. ‘She was English,’ he said, ‘not foreign.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Like I said, she said to pick up this man...’

‘How were you to know him?’

‘She said he would be near the diesel pumps and he’d see us pull up and he would speak to me... and he did.’

‘Who thought up the diarrhoea?’

‘Like, she did. See, she said I had to have some way of getting Brett to stop at South Mimms. So I told Brett if he didn’t stop, I’d have to drop my trousers in the cab and he would have to clean it up.’ He laughed uneasily. ‘Brett said he would rub my face in it. But anyway, he stopped.’

‘So Brett wasn’t in the scheme?’

Dave looked furious. ‘Brett’s a shit.’

‘Why, exactly?’

Dave’s sense of injustice overcame caution. ‘He said he wouldn’t take the man unless he paid us. So I asked this Ogden, but he said he hadn’t any money. He must have had some, but he said that wasn’t in the bargain, I would be getting paid later, and I said Brett wouldn’t agree to it without being paid first, and this Ogden got sort of purple, he was so upset, and he found some money after all, but not a lot, and Brett said it wasn’t enough and so I gave Brett some money and I had to tell him I’d be getting it back, so then he said he’d be wanting some of that if I didn’t want him to tell you that I’d fixed up a hitchhiker for money. And not only that,’ Dave’s fury increased, ‘but Brett came to the pub on Saturday evening and made me pay for his beer and he was effing gloating, and I told him the pay envelope hadn’t turned up but all he said was, “Too bad, mate, that’s your bad luck” and went on drinking.’

‘And you took a swipe at Jogger,’ I said.

‘Well, he wouldn’t shut up and I was raging about Brett, and Jogger was going on and on about things stuck on the bottom of the horseboxes, on and on about the cash box in your sitting-room, that filthy old cash box, on and on about things being carried under the lorries...’

‘Did you understand what he was talking about?’ I asked, surprised.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘About lone rangers?’

‘Yeah, of course. Strangers.’

‘What about nuns and Poland?’

‘Eh?’

His face was blank. Nuns and Poland meant nothing.

‘Did Jogger,’ I asked, ‘know about your private enterprise?’

‘What? Do you mean that Ogden? Of course Jogger knew he’d died, like. I didn’t tell him the ride had been fixed in advance. I’m not loony, see, he’d have been round to you in five minutes telling on me. Always on your side, was Jogger.’

‘I thought you were, too,’ I observed.

‘Yeah.’ He looked very faintly ashamed. ‘Well, like, there’s no harm in a bit of beer money on the side.’

‘There was, this time.’

‘How was I to know he’d die?’ Dave asked aggrievedly.

‘What was he carrying?’ I asked.

‘Carrying?’ His forehead wrinkled. ‘A bag. One of them briefcases. And, um, a sort of carrier bag with sandwiches and a flask. I helped him put them all up in the cab.’

‘What did he do with the sandwiches?’

‘Ate them, I suppose. I don’t know.’

‘Did you and Brett buy sandwiches?’

He looked puzzled by the questions but found them easier to answer than earlier ones. ‘Brett did,’ he said readily, though sourly. ‘He went off laughing and bought some with my money, the turd.’

‘Brett said you’d picked up hitchhikers on other occasions.’

‘He’s a shit.’

‘Well, did you? And were they arranged in advance?’

‘No, they were casual, like. Brett never minded, if he got some of the dosh.’

‘What about the other drivers? Have they done the same?’

‘I’m not snitching on anyone,’ he said virtuously.

‘Meaning that they have?’

‘No.’ He physically squirmed.

I left it. Instead I asked, ‘How long before you went to Newmarket was the stop at South Mimms arranged?’

‘The night before.’

‘Time?’

‘After I got back from the Folkestone races.’

‘That means late.’

He nodded. ‘My wife didn’t like it.’

‘Had the woman tried to reach you before you got back?’

‘My wife would have gone on about it if she had.’

He seemed to be well under his wife’s thumb, and it didn’t seem to have occurred to him to ask how the woman on the telephone had known he wouldn’t be home until late, and had also known he would be going to Newmarket the next day. She had known, moreover, that he could be bribed to pick up a hitchhiker.

She had known a good deal too much.

Who, for God’s sake, had told her?