Forfeit

5

I telephoned to Charles Dembley, the ex-owner of Brevity, on Wednesday morning, and a girl answered, bright fresh voice, carefree and inexperienced.

‘Golly, did you say Tyrone? James Tyrone? Yes, we do have your perfectly frightful paper. At least we used to. At least the gardener does, so I often read it. Well, of course come down and see Daddy, he’ll be frightfully pleased.’

Daddy wasn’t.

He met me outside his house, on the front step, a smallish man nearing sixty with a grey moustache and heavy pouches under his eyes. His manner was courteous stone-wall.

‘I am sorry you have had a wasted journey, Mr Tyrone. My daughter Amanda is only fifteen and is apt to rush into things... I was out when you telephoned, as I expect she told you. I hope you will forgive her. I have absolutely nothing to say to you. Nothing at all. Good afternoon, Mr Tyrone.’

There was a tiny twitch in one eyelid and the finest of dews on his forehead. I let my gaze wander across the front of his house (genuine Georgian, not too large, unostentatiously well kept) and brought it gently back to his face.

‘What threat did they use?’ I asked. ‘Amanda?’

He winced strongly and opened his mouth.

‘With a fifteen-year-old daughter,’ I commented, ‘one is dangerously vulnerable.’

He tried to speak but achieved only a croak. After clearing his throat with difficulty he said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘How did they set about it?’ I asked. ‘By telephone? By letter? Or did you actually see them face to face?’

His expression was a full giveaway, but he wouldn’t answer.

I said, ‘Mr Dembley, I can write my column about the last-minute unexplained withdrawal of favourites, mentioning you and Amanda by name, or I can leave you out of it.’

‘Leave me out,’ he said forcefully. ‘Leave me out.’

‘I will,’ I agreed, ‘if in return you will tell me what threat was made against you, and in what form.’

His mouth shook with a mixture of fear and disgust. He knew blackmail when he heard it. Only too well.

‘I can’t trust you.’

‘Indeed you can,’ I said.

‘If I keep silent you will print my name and they will think I told you anyway...’ He stopped dead.

‘Exactly,’ I said mildly.

‘You’re despicable.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’d simply like to stop them doing it to anyone else.’

There was a pause. Then he said ‘It was Amanda. They said someone would rape her. They said I couldn’t guard her twenty-four hours a day for years on end. They said to make her safe all I had to do was call Weatherbys and take Brevity out of the Champion Hurdle. Just one little telephone call, against my daughter’s... my daughter’s health. So I did it. Of course I did. I had to. What did running a horse in the Champion Hurdle matter compared with my daughter?’

What indeed.

‘Did you tell the police?’

He shook his head. ‘They said...’

I nodded. They would.

‘I sold all my horses, after,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t any point going on. It could have happened again, any time.’

‘Yes.’

He swallowed. ‘Is that all?’

‘No... Did they telephone, or did you see them?’

‘It was one man. He came here, driven by a chauffeur. In a Rolls. He was, he seemed to me, an educated man. He had an accent, I’m not sure what it was, perhaps Scandinavian, or Dutch, something like that. Maybe even Greek. He was civilized... except for what he said.’

‘Looks?’

‘Tall... about your height. Much heavier, though. Altogether thicker, more flesh. Not a crook’s face at all. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing him say. It didn’t fit the way he looked.’

‘But he convinced you,’ I commented.

‘Yes.’ He shuddered. ‘He stood there watching me while I telephoned to Weatherbys. And when I’d finished he simply said “I’m sure you’ve made a wise decision, Mr Dembley”, and he just walked out of the house and the chauffeur drove him away.’

‘And you’ve heard no more from him at all?’

‘No more. You will keep your bargain, too, like him?’

My mouth twisted. ‘I will.’

He gave me a long look. ‘If Amanda comes to any harm through you, I will see it costs you... costs you...’ He stopped.

‘If she does,’ I said, ‘I will pay.’

An empty gesture. Harm couldn’t be undone, and paying wouldn’t help. I would simply have to be careful.

‘That’s all,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’ He turned on his heel, went back into his house and shut the front door decisively between us.

For light relief on the way home I stopped in Hampstead to interview the man who had done the handicap for the Lamplighter. Not a well-timed call. His wife had just decamped with an American colonel.

‘Damn her eyes,’ he said. ‘She’s left me a bloody note.’ He waved it under my nose. ‘Stuck up against the clock, just like some ruddy movie.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘Come in, come in. What do you say to getting pissed?’

‘There’s the unfortunate matter of driving home.’

‘Take a taxi, Ty, be a pal. Come on.’

I looked at my watch. Four thirty. Half an hour to home, counting rush hour traffic. I stepped over the threshold and saw from his relieved expression that company was much needed. He already had a bottle out with a half-full glass beside it, and he poured me one the same size.

Major Colly Gibbons, late forties, trim, intelligent, impatient and positive. Never suffered fools gladly and interrupted rudely when his thoughts leaped ahead, but was much in demand as a handicapper, as he had a clear comprehensive view of racing as a whole, like a master chess player winning ten games at once. He engineered more multiple dead heats than anyone else in the game; the accolade of his profession and a headache to the interpreters of photo finishes.

‘A bloody colonel,’ he said bitterly. ‘Out-ranked, too.’

I laughed. He gave me a startled look and then an unwilling grin.

‘I suppose it is funny,’ he said. ‘Silly thing is, he’s very like me. Looks, age, character, everything. I even like the guy.’

‘She’ll probably come back,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘If she chose a carbon copy of you, she can’t hate you all that much.’

‘Don’t know as I’d have her,’ he said aggressively. ‘Going off with a bloody colonel, and a Yank at that.’

His pride was bent worse than his heart: none the less painful. He sloshed another stiff whisky into his glass and asked me why, as a matter of interest, I had come. I explained about the Tally article, and, seeming to be relieved to have something to talk about besides his wife, he loosened up with his answers more than I would normally have expected. For the first time I understood the wideness of his vision and the grasp and range of his memory. He knew the form book for the past ten years by heart.

After a while I said, ‘What can you remember about ante-post favourites which didn’t run?’

He gave me a quick glance which would have been better focussed three drinks earlier. ‘Is this for Tally, still?’

‘No,’ I admitted.

‘Didn’t think so. Question like that’s got the Blaze written all over it.’

‘I won’t quote you.’

‘Too right you won’t.’ He drank deeply, but seemed no nearer oblivion. ‘Put yourself some blinkers on and point in another direction.’

‘Read what I say on Sunday,’ I said mildly.

‘Ty,’ he said explosively. ‘Best to keep out.’

‘Why?’

‘Leave it to the authorities.’

‘What are they doing about it? What do they know?’

‘You know I can’t tell you,’ he protested. ‘Talk to the Blaze! I’d lose my job.’

‘Mulholland went to jail rather than reveal his sources.’

‘All journalists are not Mulholland.’

‘Same secretive tendencies.’

‘Would you,’ he said seriously, ‘go to jail?’

‘It’s never cropped up. But if my sources want to stay unrevealed, they stay unrevealed. If they didn’t, who would tell me anything?’

He thought it over. ‘Something’s going on,’ he said at last.

‘Quite,’ I said. ‘And what are the authorities doing about it?’

‘There’s no evidence... look, Ty, there’s nothing you can put your finger on. Just a string of coincidences.’

‘Like Bert Checkov’s articles?’ I suggested.

He was startled. ‘All right, then. Yes. I heard it on good authority that he was going to be asked to explain them. But then he fell out of the window...’

‘Tell me about the non-runners,’ I said.

He looked gloomily at the note from his wife, which he still clutched in his hand. He took a deep swallow and shrugged heavily. The caution barriers were right down.

‘There was this French horse, Polyxenes, which they made favourite for the Derby. Remember? All last winter and spring there was a stream of information about it, coming out of France... how well he was developing, how nothing could stay with him on the gallops, how he made all the three year olds look like knock-kneed yearlings? Every week, something about Polyxenes.’

‘I remember,’ I said. ‘Derry Clark wrote him up for the Blaze.’

Colly Gibbons nodded. ‘So there we are. By Easter, six to one favourite for the Derby. Right? They leave him in through all the forfeit stages. Right? They declare him at the four day declarations. Right? Two days later he’s taken out of the race. Why? He knocked himself out at exercise and his leg’s blown up like a football. Can’t run a lame horse. Too bad, everybody who’d backed him. Too bad. All their money down the drain. All right. Now I’ll tell you something, Ty. That Polyxenes, I’ll never believe he was all that good. What had he ever done? Won two moderate races as a two year old at St. Cloud. He didn’t run this year before the Derby. He didn’t run the whole season in the end. They said his leg was still bad. I’ll tell you what I think. He never was good enough to win the Derby, and from the start they never meant him to run.’

‘If he were as bad as that they could have run him anyway. He wouldn’t have won.’

‘Would you risk it, if you were them? The most fantastic outsiders have won the Derby. Much more certain not to run at all.’

‘Someone must have made thousands,’ I said slowly.

‘More like hundreds of thousands.’

‘If they know it’s going on, why don’t the racing authorities do something about it?’

‘What can they do? I told you, no evidence. Polyxenes was lame, and he stayed lame. He was seen by dozens of vets. He had a slightly shady owner, but no shadier than some of ours. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could be proved.’

After a pause I said, ‘Do you know of any others?’

‘God, Ty, you’re a glutton. Well... yes...’

Once started, he left little out. In the next half hour I listened to the detailed case histories of four more ante-post favourites who hadn’t turned up on the day. All could have been bona fide hard luck stories. But all, I knew well, had been over-praised by Bert Checkov.

He ran down, in the end, with a faint look of dismay.

‘I shouldn’t have told you all this.’

‘No one will know.’

‘You’d get information out of a deaf mute.’

I nodded. ‘They can usually read and write.’

‘Go to hell,’ he said. ‘Or rather, don’t. You’re four behind me, you aren’t trying.’ He waved the bottle in my general direction and I went over and took it from him. It was empty.

‘Got to go home,’ I said apologetically.

‘What’s the hurry?’ He stared at the letter in his hand. ‘Will your wife give you gip if you’re late? Or will she be running off with some bloody Yankee colonel?’

‘No,’ I said unemotionally. ‘She won’t.’

He was suddenly very sober. ‘Christ, Ty... I forgot.’

He stood up, as steady as a rock. Looked forlornly round his comfortable wifeless sitting room. Held out his hand.

‘She’ll come back,’ I said uselessly.

He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’ He sighed deeply. ‘Anyway, I’m glad you came. Needed someone to talk to, you know. Even if I’ve talked too much... better than getting drunk alone. And I’ll think of you, this evening. You... and your wife.’

I got hung up in a jam at Swiss Cottage and arrived home at eight minutes past seven. An hour and a half’s overtime. Mrs Woodward was delighted.

‘Isn’t she sweet?’ Elizabeth said when she had gone. ‘She never minds when you are late. She never complains about having to stay. She’s so nice and kind.’

‘Very,’ I said.

As usual I spent most of Thursday at home, writing Sunday’s article. Mrs Woodward went out to do the week’s shopping and to take and collect the laundry. Sue Davis came in and made coffee for herself and Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s mother telephoned to say she might not come on Sunday, she thought she could be getting a cold.

No one came near Elizabeth with a cold. With people on artificial respiration, colds too often meant pneumonia, and pneumonia too often meant death.

If Elizabeth’s mother didn’t come on Sunday, I couldn’t go to Virginia Water. I spent too much of the morning unproductively trying to persuade myself it would be better if the cold developed, and knowing I’d be wretched if it did.

Luke-John galloped through the article on non-starting favourites, screwed his eyes up tight and leaned back in his chair with his face to the ceiling. Symptoms of extreme emotion. Derry reached over, twitched up the typewritten sheets and read them in his slower intense short-sighted looking way. When he’d finished he took a deep breath.

‘Wowee,’ he said. ‘Someone’s going to love this.’

‘Who?’ said Luke-John, opening his eyes.

‘The chap who’s doing it.’

Luke-John looked at him broodingly. ‘As long as he can’t sue, that’s all that matters. Take this down to the lawyers and make sure they don’t let it out of their sight.’

Derry departed with a folded carbon copy of the article and Luke-John permitted himself a smile.

‘Up to standard, if I may say so.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘Who told you all this?’

‘Couple of little birds.’

‘Come off it, Ty.’

‘Promised,’ I said. ‘They could get their faces pushed in, one way or another.’

‘I’ll have to know. The Editor will want to know.’

I shook my head. ‘Promised.’

‘I could scrub the article altogether...’

‘Tut, Tut,’ I said. ‘Threats, now?’

He rubbed his larynx in exasperation. I looked round the vast busy floor space, each section, like the Sports Desk, collecting and sorting out its final copy. Most of the feature stuff went down to the compositors on Fridays, some even on Thursdays, to be set up in type. But anything like a scoop stayed under wraps upstairs until after the last editions of the Saturday evening papers had all been set up and gone to press. The compositors were apt to make the odd ten quid by selling a red hot story to reporters on rival newspapers. If the legal department and the Editor both cleared my article, the print shop wouldn’t see it until too late to do them any good. The Blaze held its scandalous disclosures very close to its chest.

Derry came back from the lawyers without the article.

‘They said they’d have to work on it. They’ll ring through later.’

The Blaze lawyers were of Counsel standard on the libel laws. They needed to be. All the same they were true Blaze men with ‘publish and be damned’ engraved on their hearts. The Blaze accountants allowed for damages in their budget as a matter of course. The Blaze’s owner looked upon one or two court cases a year as splendid free advertising, and watched the sales graphs rise. There had however been four actions in the past six months and two more were pending. A mild memo had gone round, saying to cool it just a fraction. Loyal for ever, Luke-John obeyed even where he disapproved.

‘I’ll take this in to the Editor,’ he remarked. ‘See what he says.’

Derry watched his retreating back with reluctant admiration.

‘Say what you like, the sports pages sell this paper to people who otherwise wouldn’t touch it with gloves on. Our Luke-John, for all his stingy little ways, must be worth his weight in gumdrops.’

Our Luke-John came back and went into a close huddle with a soccer correspondent. I asked Derry how the funeral had been, on the Wednesday.

‘A funeral’s a funeral.’ He shrugged. ‘It was cold. His wife wept a lot. She had a purple nose, blue from cold and red from crying.’

‘Charming.’

He grinned. ‘Her sister told her to cheer up. Said how lucky it was Bert took out all that extra insurance.’

‘He did what?’

‘Yeah. I thought you’d like that. I chatted the sister up a bit. Two or three weeks ago Bert trebled his life insurance. Told his wife they’d be better off when he retired. Sort of self-help pension scheme.’

‘Well, well,’ I said.

‘So it had to be an accident,’ Derry nodded. ‘In front of witnesses. The insurance company might not have paid up if he’d fallen out of the window with no one watching.’

‘I wonder if they’ll contest it.’

‘Don’t see how they can, when the inquest said misadventure.’

The Editor’s secretary came back with my piece. The Editor’s secretary was an expensive package tied up with barbed wire. No one, reputedly, had got past the prickles to the goodies.

The Editor had scrawled ‘O.K. on the lawyer’s say so’ across the top of the page. Luke-John stretched out a hand for it, nodded in satisfaction, and slid it into the lockable top drawer of his desk, talking all the while to the soccer man. There was no need for me to stay longer. I told Derry I’d be at home most of the day if they wanted me and sketched a goodbye.

I was half-way to the door when Luke-John called after me.

‘Ty... I forgot to tell you. A woman phoned, wanted you.’

‘Mrs Woodward?’

‘Uhuh. Let’s see, I made a note... oh, yes, here it is. A Miss Gail Pominga. Would you ring her back. Something about Tally magazine.’

He gave me the slip of paper with the telephone number. I went across to the under-populated News Desk and picked up the receiver. My hands were steady. My pulse wasn’t.

‘The Western School of Art. Can I help you?’

‘Miss Pominga...’

Miss Pominga was fetched. Her voice came on the line, as cool and uninvolved as at the railway station.

‘Are you coming on Sunday?’ Crisp. Very much to the point.

‘I want to.’ Understatement. ‘It may not be possible to get away.’

‘Well... I’ve been asked out to lunch.’

‘Go, then,’ I said, feeling disappointment lump in my chest like a boulder.

‘Actually, if you are coming I will stay at home.’

Damn Elizabeth’s mother, I thought. Damn her and her cold.

‘I want to come. I’ll come if I possibly can,’ I said.

There was a short silence before she said, ‘When can you let me know for sure?’

‘Not until Sunday, really. Not until I go out to catch the train.’

‘Hmm...’ She hesitated, then said decisively, ‘Ring me in any case, whether you can come or whether you can’t. I’ll fix it so that I can still go to lunch if you aren’t coming.’

‘That’s marvellous,’ I said, with more feeling than caution.

She laughed. ‘Good. Hope to see you, then. Any time after ten. That’s when Harry and Sarah go off to golf.’

‘It would be eleven-thirty or so.’

She said ‘All right,’ and ‘Goodbye,’ and disconnected. I went home to write up Colly Gibbons for Tally and to have lunch with Elizabeth and Mrs Woodward. It was fish again: unspecified variety and not much flavour. I listened to Elizabeth’s sporadic conversation and returned her smiles and hoped fiercely not to be there with her forty-eight hours later. I ate automatically, sightlessly. By the end of that meal, treachery tasted of salt.