Forfeit

11

The uncomfortable coolness between Elizabeth and myself persisted in the morning. I couldn’t go on begging for a forgiveness she didn’t feel. At ten I said I was going out, and saw her make the first heart-rending effort not to ask where.

‘Hire Cars Lucullus’ hung out in a small plushy office in Stratton Street, off Piccadilly. Royal blue wilton carpet, executive type acre of polished desk, tasteful prints of vintage cars on dove grey walls. Along one side, a wide gold upholstered bench for wide gold, upholstered clients. Behind the desk, a deferential young man with Uriah Heep eyes.

For him I adopted a languid voice and my best imitation of the homburg hat manners. I had, I explained, left some property in one of his firm’s cars, and I hoped he could help me get it back.

We established gradually that no, I had not hired one of their cars, and no, I did not know the name of the man who had, he had merely been so kind as to give me a lift. Yesterday.

Ah. Then had I any idea which car...?

A Rolls-Royce, a Silver Wraith.

They had four of those. He briefly checked a ledger, though I suspected he didn’t need to. All four had been out on hire yesterday. Could I describe the man who had given me a lift? ‘Certainly. Tallish, blondish, wearing a black homburg. Not English. Possibly South African.’

‘Ah. Yes.’ He had no need to consult the ledger this time. He put his spread finger tips carefully down on the desk. ‘I regret, sir, I cannot give you his name.’

‘But surely you keep records?’

‘This gentleman puts great store on privacy. We have been instructed not to give his name and address to anyone.’

‘Isn’t that a bit odd?’ I said, raising eyebrows.

He considered judicially. ‘He is a regular customer. We would, of course, give him any service he asked for, without question.’

‘I suppose it wouldn’t be possible to... um... purchase the information?’

He tried to work some shock into his deference. It was barely skin deep.

‘Was your lost property very valuable?’ he asked.

Tally and apple cake. ‘Very,’ I said.

‘Then I am sure our client will return it to us. If you would let us have your own name and address, perhaps we could let you know?’

I said the first name I thought of, which nearly came out as Kempton Park. ‘Kempton Jones. 31 Cornwall Street.’

He wrote it down carefully on a scratch pad. When he had finished, I waited. We both waited.

After a decent interval he said, ‘Of course, if it is really important, you could ask in the garage... they would let you know as soon as the car comes in, whether your property is still in it.’

‘And the garage is where?’ The only listed number and address of the Lucullus Cars had been the office in Stratton Street.

He studied his finger tips. I produced my wallet and resignedly sorted out two fivers. The twenty-five for the bookmaker’s clerk’s information about Charlie Boston’s boys I had put down to expenses and the Blaze had paid. This time I could be on my own. Ten pounds represented six weeks’ whisky, a month’s electricity, three and a half days of Mrs Woodward, one and a half weeks’ rent.

He took it greedily, nodded, gave me a hypocritical obsequious smile, and said ‘Radnor Mews, Lancaster Gate.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You do understand, sir, that it’s more than my job is worth to give you our client’s name?’

‘I understand,’ I said. ‘Principles are pretty things.’

Principles were luckily not so strongly held in Radnor Mews. The foreman sized me up and another tenner changed hands. Better value for money this time.

‘The chauffeur comes here to collect the car, see? We never deliver it or supply a driver. Unusual, that. Still, the client is always right, as long as he pays for it, I always say. This foreigner, see, he likes to travel in style when he comes over here. ’Course, most of our trade is like that. Americans mostly. They hire a car and a driver for a week, two weeks, maybe three. We drive them all over, see, Stratford, Broadway, the Cotswold run most often, and Scotland a good deal too. Never have all the cars in here at once, there’d hardly be room, see, four Silver Wraiths for a start, and then two Austin Princesses, and three Bentleys and a couple of large Wolseleys.’

I brought him back gently to the Silver Wraith in question.

‘I’m telling you, aren’t I?’ he protested. ‘This foreign chap, he takes a car, always a Rolls mind you, though of course not always the same one, whenever he’s over here. Started coming just over a year ago, I’d say. Been back several times, usually just for three or four days. Longer this time, I’d say. Let’s see, the chauffeur came for a car last week. I could look it up... Wednesday. Yes, that’s right. What they do, see, is, the chauffeur flies over first, picks up the car and then drives out to Heathrow to fetch his gent off the next flight. Neat, that. Shows money, that does.’

‘Do you know where they fly from?’

‘From? Which country? Not exactly. Mind, I think it varies. I know once it was Germany. But usually further than that, from somewhere hot. The chauffeur isn’t exactly chatty, but he’s always complaining how cold it is here.’

‘What is the client’s name?’ I asked patiently.

‘Oh sure, hang on a minute. We always put the booking in the chauffeur’s name, see, it’s easier, being Ross. His gent’s name is something chronic. I’ll have to look back.’

He went into his little boarded cubicle of an office and looked back. It took him nearly twenty minutes, by which time he was growing restive. I waited, making it plain I would wait all day. For ten pounds he could keep on looking. He was almost as relieved as I was when he found it.

‘Here it is, look.’ He showed me a page in a ledger, pointing to a name with a black rimmed finger nail. ‘That one.’

There was a pronunciation problem, as he’d said.

Vjoersterod.

‘Ross is easier,’ the foreman repeated. ‘We always put Ross.’

‘Much easier,’ I agreed. ‘Do you know where I could find them, or where they keep the car while they’re in England?’

He sniffed meditatively, shutting the ledger with his finger in the page.

‘Can’t say as I do, really. Always a pretty fair mileage on the clock, though. Goes a fair way in the three or four days, see? But then that’s regular with our cars, most times. Mind you, I wouldn’t say that this Ross and his gent go up to Scotland, not as far as that.’

‘Birmingham?’ I suggested.

‘Easily. Could be, easily. Always comes back immaculate, I’ll say that for Ross. Always clean as a whistle. Why don’t you ask in the front office, if you want to find them?’

‘They said they couldn’t help me.’

‘That smarmy crumb,’ he said disgustedly, ‘I’ll bet he knows, though. Give him his due, he’s good at that job, but he’d sell his grandmother if the price was right.’

I started to walk in the general direction of Fleet Street, thinking. Vjoersterod had to be the real name of Homburg Hat. Too weird to be an alias. Also, the first time he had hired a Silver Wraith from Hire Cars Lucullus he would have had to produce cast iron references and a passport at least. The smarmy crumb was no fool. He wouldn’t let five thousand pounds’ worth of machinery be driven away without being certain he would get it back.

Vjoersterod. South African of Afrikaner stock.

Nothing like Fleet Street if one wanted information. The only trouble was, the man who might have heard of Vjoersterod worked on the racing page of a deadly rival to the Blaze. I turned into the first telephone box and rang his office. Sure, he agreed cautiously, he would meet me in the Devereux for a pint and a sandwich. He coped manfully with stifling any too open speculation about what I wanted. I smiled, and crossed the road to catch a bus. A case of who pumped who. He would be trying to find out what story I was working on, and Luke-John would be slightly displeased if he were successful and scooped the Blaze.

Luke-John and Derry were both among the crowd in the Devereux. Not so, Mike de Jong. I drank a half-pint while Luke-John asked me what I planned to write for Sunday.

‘An account of the Lamplighter, I suppose.’

‘Derry can do that.’

I lowered my glass, shrugging. ‘If you like.’

‘Then you,’ said Luke-John, ‘can do another follow-up to the Tiddely Pom business. Whether he wins or loses, I mean. Give us a puff for getting him to the starting gate.’

‘He isn’t there yet,’ I pointed out.

Luke-John sniffed impatiently. ‘There hasn’t been a vestige of trouble. No reaction at all. We’ve frightened them off, that’s what’s happened.’

I shook my head, wishing we had. Asked about the reports on Tiddely Pom and the Roncey children.

‘All O.K.,’ said Derry cheerfully. ‘Everything going smoothly.’

Mike de Jong appeared in the doorway, a quick, dark, intense man with double strength glasses and a fringe of black beard outlining his jaw. Caution rolled over him like a sea mist when he saw who I was with, and most of the purposefulness drained out of his stride. It took too much manoeuvring to get Luke-John and Derry to go into the further bar to eat without me, and Luke-John left looking back over his shoulder with smouldering suspicion, wanting to know why.

Mike joined me, his sharp face alight with appreciation.

‘Keeping secrets from the boss, eh?’

‘Sometimes he’s butter-fingered with other people’s T.N.T.’

Mike laughed. The cogs whirred round in his high-speed brain. ‘So what you want is private? Not for the Blaze?’

I dodged a direct answer. ‘What I want is very simple. Just anything you may have heard about a fellow countryman of yours.’

‘Who?’ His accent was a carbon copy, clipped and flat.

‘A man called Vjoersterod.’

There was a tiny pause while the name sank in, and then he choked on his beer. Recovered, and pretended someone had jogged his elbow. Made a playing-for-time fuss about brushing six scattered drops off his trouser leg. Finally he ran out of alibis and looked back at my face.

‘Vjoersterod?’ His pronunciation was subtly different from mine. The real thing.

‘That’s right,’ I agreed.

‘Yes... well, Ty... why do you ask me about him?’

‘Just curiosity.’

He was silent for thirty seconds. Then he said carefully again, ‘Why are you asking about him?’ Who pumped who.

‘Oh come on,’ I said in exasperation. ‘What’s the big mystery? All I want is a bit of gen on a harmless chap who goes racing occasionally...’

‘Harmless. You must be mad.’

‘Why?’ I sounded innocently puzzled.

‘Because he’s...’ He hesitated, decided I wasn’t on to a story, and turned thoroughly helpful. ‘Look here, Ty, I’ll give you a tip, free, gratis and for nothing. Just steer clear of anything to do with that man. He’s poison.’

‘In what way?’

‘He’s a bookmaker, back home. Very big business, with branches in all the big cities and a whole group of them round Johannesburg. Respectable enough on the surface. Thousands of perfectly ordinary people bet with him. But there have been some dreadful rumours...’

‘About what?’

‘Oh... blackmail, extortion, general high powered thuggery. Believe me, he is not good news.’

‘Then why don’t the police...?’ I suggested tentatively.

‘Why don’t they? Don’t be so naive, Ty. They can’t find anyone to give evidence against him, of course.’

I sighed. ‘He seemed so charming.’

Mike’s mouth fell open and his expression became acutely anxious.

‘You’ve met him?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Here... in England?’

‘Well, yes, of course.’

‘Ty... for God’s sake... keep away from him.’

‘I will,’ I said with feeling. ‘Thanks a lot, Mike. I’m truly grateful.’

‘I’d hate anyone I liked to tangle with Vjoersterod,’ he said, the genuine friendship standing out clear in his eyes, unexpectedly affecting. Then with a born newspaper man’s instinct for the main chance, a look of intense curiosity took over.

‘What did he want to talk about with you?’ he asked.

‘I really don’t know,’ I said, sounding puzzled.

‘Is he going to get in touch with you again?’

‘I don’t know that, either.’

‘Hm... give me a ring if he does, and I’ll tell you something else.’

‘Tell me now.’ I tried hard to make it casual.

He considered, shrugged, and friendship won again over journalism. ‘All right. It’s nothing much. Just that I too saw him here in England; must have been nine or ten months ago, back in the Spring.’ He paused.

‘In that case,’ I said, ‘why ever were you so horrified when I said I’d met him?’

‘Because when I saw him he was in the buffet bar on a race train, talking to another press man. Bert Checkov.’

With an enormous effort, I kept my mildly puzzled face intact.

Mike went on without a blink. ‘I warned Bert about him later, just like I have you. In here, actually. Bert was pretty drunk. He was always pretty drunk after that.’

‘What did he say?’ I asked.

‘He said I was three months too late.’

Mike didn’t know any more. Bert had clammed up after that one indiscretion and had refused to elaborate or explain. When he fell out of the window, Mike had wondered. Violent and often unexplained deaths among people who had had dealings with Vjoersterod were not unknown, he said. When I said I had met Vjoersterod, it had shocked him. He was afraid for me. Afraid I could follow Bert down on to the pavement.

I put his mind at rest. After what he’d told me, I would be forewarned, I said.

‘I wonder why he got his hooks into Bert...’ Mike said, his eyes on the middle distance, all the cogs whirring.

‘I’ve no idea,’ I said, sighing, and distracted his attention on to another half-pint and a large ham sandwich. Luke-John’s thin freckled face loomed over his shoulder, and he turned to him with a typical bounce, as if all his body were made of springs.

‘So how’s the Gospel Maker? What’s cooking on the Blaze?’

Luke-John gave him a thin smile. He didn’t care for his Fleet Street nickname; nor for puns in general. Nor, it seemed, for Mike de Jong’s puns in particular. Mike received the message clearly, sketched me a farewell, and drifted over to another group.

‘What did he want?’ Luke-John asked sharply.

‘Nothing,’ I said mildly. ‘Just saying hello.’

Luke-John gave me a disillusioned look, but I knew very well that if I told him at that stage about Vjoersterod he would dig until he stumbled on the blackmail, dig again quite ruthlessly to find out how I could have been blackmailed, and then proceed to mastermind all subsequent enquiries with a stunning absence of discretion. Vjoersterod would hear his steam roller approach clean across the country. Luke-John was a brilliant Sports Editor. As a Field Marshal his casualty list would have been appalling.

He and Derry drank around to closing time at three, by which time the crowd had reduced to Sunday writers only. I declined their invitation to go back with them to the doldrums of the office, and on reflection telephoned to the only member of the racing authorities I knew well enough for the purpose.

Eric Youll at thirty-seven was the youngest and newest of the three stewards of the National Hunt Committee, the ruling body of Steeplechasing. In two years, by natural progression, he would be Senior Steward. After that, reduced to the ranks until re-elected for another three-year term. As a Steward he made sense because until recently he had himself ridden as an amateur, and knew at first hand all the problems and mechanics of racing. I had written him up in the Blaze a few times and we had been friendly acquaintances for years. Whether he either could or would help me now was nonetheless open to doubt.

I had a good deal of trouble getting through to him, as he was a junior sprig in one of the grander merchant banks. Secretaries with bored voices urged me to make an appointment.

‘Right now,’ I said, ‘will do very well.’

After the initial shock the last voice conceded that right now Mr Youll could just fit me in. When I got there, Mr Youll was busily engaged in drinking a cup of tea and reading the Sporting Life. He put them both down without haste, stood up, and shook hands.

‘This is unexpected,’ he said. ‘Come to borrow a million?’

‘Tomorrow, maybe.’

He smiled, told his secretary on the intercom to bring me some tea, offered me a cigarette, and leaned back in his chair, his manner throughout one of indecision and uncertainty. He was wary of me and of the purpose of my visit. I saw that uneasy expression almost every day of my life: the screen my racing friends erected when they weren’t sure what I was after, the barrier that kept their secrets from publication. I didn’t mind that sort of withdrawal. Understood it. Sympathised. And never printed anything private, if I could help it. There was a very fine edge to be walked when ones friends were ones raw material.

‘Off the record,’ I assured him. ‘Take three deep breaths and relax.’

He grinned and tension visibly left his body. ‘How can I help you, then?’

I waited until the tea had come and been drunk, and the latest racing news chewed over. Then, without making much of it, I asked him if he’d ever heard of a bookmaker called Vjoersterod.

His attention pin-pointed itself with a jerk.

‘Is that what you’ve come to ask?’

‘For openers.’

He drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘Someone showed me your column last week and the week before... Stay out of it, Ty.’

‘If you racing bigwigs know what’s going on and who is doing it, why don’t you stop him?’

‘How?’

The single bald word hung in the air, cooling. It told me a lot about the extent of their knowledge. They should have known how.

‘Frankly,’ I said at last, ‘that’s your job, not mine. You could of course ban all ante-post betting, which would knock the fiddle stone dead.’

‘That would be highly unpopular with the Great British Public. Anyway your articles have hit the ante-post market badly enough as it is. One of the big firms was complaining to me bitterly about you a couple of hours ago. Their Lamplighter bets are down by more than twenty per cent.’

‘Then why don’t they do something about Charlie Boston?’

He blinked. ‘Who?’

I took a quiet breath. ‘Well, now... just what do the Stewards know about Vjoersterod?’

‘Who is Charlie Boston?’

‘You first,’ I said.

‘Don’t you trust me?’ He looked hurt.

‘No,’ I said flatly. ‘You first.’

He sighed resignedly and told me that all the Stewards knew about Vjoersterod was hearsay, and scanty at that. None of them had ever actually seen him, and wouldn’t know him if they did. A member of the German horse racing authorities had sent them a private warning that Vjoersterod was suspected of stage managing a series of non-starting ante-post favourites in big races in Germany, and that they had heard rumours he was now beginning to operate in England. Pursuit had almost cornered him in Germany. He was now moving on. The British Stewards had noted the alarming proportion of non-starters in the past months and were sure the German authorities were right, but although they had tried to find out the facts from various owners and trainers, they had been met with only a brick wall of silence everywhere.

‘It’s a year since Vjoersterod came here first,’ I remarked. ‘A year ago he bought out Charlie Boston’s string of betting shops round Birmingham and started raking in the dough. He also found a way to force Bert Checkov to write articles which persuaded ante-post punters to believe they were on to a good thing. Vjoersterod chose a horse, Checkov wrote it up, Vjoersterod stopped it running, and Bingo, the deed was done.’

His face was a mixture of astonishment and satisfaction. ‘Ty, are you sure of your facts?’

‘Of course I am. If you ask me, both the bookmakers and the authorities have been dead slow on the trail.’

‘And how long exactly have you been on it?’

I grinned, conceding the point. I said ‘I met Vjoersterod yesterday. I referred to Charlie Boston being his partner and he told me he owned Charlie Boston. Vjoersterod wanted to know where Tiddely Pom was.’

He stared. ‘Would you... um... well, if necessary, testify to that?’

‘Certainly. But it would be only my word against his. No corroboration.’

‘Better than anything we’ve had before.’

‘There might be a quicker way to get results, though.’

‘How?’ he asked again.

‘Find a way to shut Charlie Boston’s shops, and you block off Vjoersterod’s intakes. Without which there is no point in him waiting around to stop any favourites. If you can’t get him convicted in the Courts, you might at least freeze him out, back to South Africa.’

There was another long pause during which he thought complicated thoughts. I waited, guessing what was in his mind. Eventually, he said it.

‘How much do you want for your help?’

‘An exclusive for the Blaze.’

‘As if I couldn’t guess...’

‘It will do,’ I conceded, ‘if the Blaze can truthfully claim to have made the ante-post market safe for punters to play in. No details. Just a few hints that but for the libel laws, all would and could be revealed.’

‘Why ever do you waste your time with that dreadful rag?’ he exclaimed in exasperation.

‘Good pay,’ I said. It’s a good paper to work for. And it suits me.’

‘I’ll promise you one thing,’ he said, smiling. ‘If through you personally we get rid of Vjoersterod, I’ll take it regularly.’

From Eric Youll’s bank, I went home. If the youngest Steward did his stuff, Vjoersterod’s goose was on its way to the oven and would soon be cooked. He might of course one day read the Blaze and send someone to carve up the chef. It didn’t trouble me much. I didn’t believe it would happen.

Elizabeth had had Mrs Woodward put her favourite rose pink, white-embroidered sheets on the bed. I looked at her searchingly. Her hair had been done with particular care. Her makeup was flawless.

‘You look pretty,’ I said tentatively.

Her expression was a mixture of relief and misery. I understood with a sudden rocking wince what had led her to such scenery painting: the increased fear that if she were bitchy I would leave her. No matter if I’d earned and deserved the rough side of her tongue; I had to be placated at all costs, to be held by the best she could do to appear attractive, to be obliquely invited, cajoled, entreated to stay.

‘Did you have a good day?’ Her voice sounded high and near to cracking point.

‘Quite good... how about a drink?’

She shook her head, but I poured her one all the same, and fixed it in the clip.

‘I’ve asked Mrs Woodward to find someone to come and sit with me in the evenings,’ she said. ‘So that you can go out more.’

‘I don’t want to go out more,’ I protested.

‘You must do.’

‘Well, I don’t.’ I sat down in the armchair and took a hefty mouthful of nearly neat whisky. At best, I thought, in an unbearable situation alcohol offered postponement. At worst, aggravation. And anyway it was too damned expensive, nowadays, to get drunk.

Elizabeth didn’t answer. When I looked at her, I saw she was quietly crying again. The tears rolled down past her ears and into her hair. I took a tissue out of the box and dried them. Had she but known it, they were harder for me to bear than any amount of fury.

‘I’m getting old,’ she said. ‘And you still look so young. You look... strong... and dark... and young.’

‘And you look pale and pretty and about fifteen. So stop fretting.’

‘How old is... that girl?’

‘You said you didn’t want to hear about her.’

‘I suppose I don’t, really.’

‘Forget her,’ I said. ‘She is of no importance. She means nothing to me. Nothing at all.’ I sounded convincing, even to myself. I wished it were true. In spite of the scope of her betrayal, in a weak inner recess I ached to be able to sleep with her again. I sat with the whisky glass in my hand and thought about her on the white rug and in her own bed and in the hotel, and suffered dismally from the prospect of the arid future.

After a while I pushed myself wearily to my feet and went to fix the supper. Fish again. Mean little bits of frozen plaice. I cooked and ate them with aversion and fed Elizabeth when her wrist tired on the gadget. All evening she kept up the pathetic attempt to be nice to me, thanking me exaggeratedly for every tiny service, apologising for needing me to do things for her which we had both for years taken for granted, trying hard to keep the anxiety, the embarrassment and the unhappiness out of her eyes and voice, and nowhere near succeeding. She couldn’t have punished me more if she had tried.

Late that evening Tiddely Pom developed violent colic.

Norton Fox couldn’t get hold of Luke-John or Derry, who had both long gone home. The Blaze never divulged home addresses, however urgent the enquiry. Norton didn’t know my telephone number either; didn’t know anyone who did.

In a state of strong anxiety, and on his vet’s advice, he rang up Victor Roncey and told him where his horse was, and what they were doing to save its life.