High Stakes

13

Charlie, Allie, Bert and Owen were all in the caravan when I drove back there, drinking coffee and laughing like kids.

‘Here,’ Bert said, wheezing with joy. ‘A bleeding police car came along a second after I’d picked up the census notices and all those cones. Just a bleeding second.’

‘It didn’t stop, I hope.’

‘Not a bleeding chance. Mind you, I’d taken off the fancy clobber. First thing. The fuzz don’t love you for impersonating them, even if your hatband is only a bit of bleeding ribbon painted in checks.’

Charlie said more soberly. ‘It was the only police car we’ve seen.’

‘The cones were only in the road for about ten minutes,’ Allie said. ‘It sure would have been unlucky if the police had driven by in that time.’

She was sitting by one of the desks looking neat but unremarkable in a plain skirt and jersey. On the desk stood my typewriter, uncovered, with piles of stationery alongside. Charlie, at the other desk, wore an elderly suit, faintly shabby and a size too small. He had parted his hair in the centre and brushed it flat with water, and had somehow contrived a look of middling beaurocracy instead of world finance. Before him, too, lay an impressive array of official forms and other literature and the walls of the caravan were drawing-pinned with exhortative Ministry posters.

‘How did you get all this bleeding junk?’ said Bert, waving his hand at it.

‘Applied for it,’ I said. ‘It’s not difficult to get government forms or information posters. All you do is ask.’

‘Blimey.’

‘They’re not census forms, of course. Most of them are application forms for driving licences and passports and things like that. Owen and I just made up the census questions and typed them out for Charlie, and he pretended to put the answers on the forms.’

Owen drank his coffee with a happy smile and Charlie said, chuckling, ‘You should have seen your man here putting on his obstructive act. Standing there in front of me like an idiot and either answering the questions wrong or arguing about answering them at all. The two men from the horsebox thought him quite funny and made practically no fuss about being kept waiting. It was the other man, Pete Duveen, who was getting tired of it, but as he was at the back of the queue he couldn’t do much.’

‘Four minutes,’ Owen said. ‘You said you needed a minimum of four. So we did our best.’

‘You must have given me nearer five,’ I said gratefully. ‘Did you hear anything?’

Allie laughed. ‘There was so much darned racket going on in here. Owen arguing, me banging away on the typewriter, the traffic outside, pop radio inside, and that heater... How did you fix that heater?’

We all looked at the calor gas heater which warmed the caravan. It clattered continually like a broken fan.

‘Screwed a small swinging flap up at the top here, inside. The rising hot air makes it bang against the casing.’

‘Switch it off,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s driving me mad’.

I produced instead a screwdriver and undid the necessary screws. Peace returned to the gas and Charlie said he could see the value of a college education.

‘Pete Duveen knew the other box driver,’ Allie said conversationally. ‘Seems they’re all one big club.’

‘See each other every bleeding day at the races,’ Bert confirmed. ‘Here, that box driver made a bit of a fuss when I said the lad had to go into the caravan too. Like you said, they aren’t supposed to leave a racehorse unguarded. So I said I’d bleeding guard it for him. How’s that for a laugh? He said he supposed it was okay, as I was the police. I said I’d got instructions that everyone had to go into the census, no exceptions.’

‘People will do anything if it looks official enough,’ Charlie said, happily nodding.

‘Well...’ I put down my much needed cup of coffee and stretched my spine. ‘Time to be off, don’t you think?’

‘Right,’ Charlie said. ‘All this paper and stuff goes in Owen’s van.’

They began moving slowly, the reminiscent smiles still in place, packing the phoney census into carrier bags. Allie came out with me when I left.

‘We’ve had more fun...’ she said. ‘You can’t imagine.’

I supposed that I felt the same way, now that the flurry was over. I gave her a hug and a kiss and told her to take care of herself, and she said you, too.

‘I’ll call you this evening,’ I promised.

‘I wish I was coming with you.’

‘We can’t leave that here all day,’ I said, pointing to the Land-Rover and the trailer.

She smiled. ‘I guess not. Charlie says we’d all best be gone before anyone starts asking what we’re doing.’

‘Charlie is a hundred per cent right.’

I went to Stratford on Avon races.

Drove fast, thinking of the righting of wrongs without benefit of lawyers. Thinking of the ephemeral quality of racehorses and the snail pace of litigation. Thinking that the best years of a hurdler’s life could be wasted in stagnation while the courts deliberated to whom he belonged. Wondering what Jody would do when he found out about the morning’s work and hoping that I knew him well enough to have guessed right.

When I drew up in the racecourse car park just before the first race, I saw Jody’s box standing among a row of others over by the entrance to the stables. The ramp was down and from the general stage of activity I gathered that the horse was still on board.

I sat in my car a hundred yards away, watching through raceglasses. I wondered when the lad would realise he had the wrong horse. I wondered if he would realise at all, because he certainly wouldn’t expect to set off with one and arrive with another, and he would quite likely shrug off the first stirring of doubt. He was new in the yard since I had left and with average luck, knowing Jody’s rate of turnover, he would be neither experienced nor very bright.

Nothing appeared to be troubling him at that moment. He walked down the ramp carrying a bucket and a bundle of other equipment and went through the gate to the stables. He looked about twenty. Long curly hair. Slight in build. Wearing flashy red trousers. I hoped he was thinking more of his own appearance than his horse’s. I put the glasses down and waited.

My eye was caught by a woman in a white coat striding across the car park towards the horse boxes, and it took about five seconds before I realised with a jolt who she was.

Felicity Leeds.

Jody might have taken his knowing eyes to Chepstow, but Felicity had brought hers right here.

I hopped out of the car as if stung and made speed in her direction.

The lad came out of the stable, went up the ramp and shortly reappeared, holding the horse’s head. Felicity walked towards him as he began to persuade the horse to disembark.

‘Felicity,’ I called.

She turned, saw me, looked appalled, threw a quick glance over her shoulder at the descending horse and walked decisively towards me.

When she stopped I looked over her shoulder and said with the sort of puzzlement which takes little to tip into suspicion, ‘What horse is that?’

She took another hurried look at the black hindquarters now disappearing towards the stable and visibly gathered her wits.

‘Padellic. Novice hurdler. Not much good.’

‘He reminds me...’ I said slowly.

‘First time out, today,’ Felicity said hastily. ‘Nothing much expected.’

‘Oh,’ I said, not sounding entirely reassured. ‘Are you going into the stables to see him, because I...’

‘No,’ she said positively. ‘No need. He’s perfectly all right.’ She gave me a sharp nod and walked briskly away to the main entrance to the course.

Without an accompanying trainer no one could go into the racecourse stables. She knew I would have to contain my curiosity until the horse came out for its race and until then, from her point of view, she was safe.

I, however, didn’t want her visiting the stables herself. There was no particular reason why she should, as trainers mostly didn’t when the journey from home to course was so short. All the same I thought I might as well fill up so much of her afternoon that she scarcely had time.

I came up with her again outside the weighing room, where she vibrated with tension from her patterned silk headscarf to her high-heeled boots. There were sharp patches of colour on her usually pale cheeks and the eyes which regarded me with angry apprehension were as hot as fever.

‘Felicity,’ I said. ‘Do you know anything about a load of muck that was dumped in my front garden?’

‘A what?’ The blank look she gave me was not quite blank enough.

I described at some length the component parts and all-over consistency of the obstruction and remarked on their similarity to the discard pile at her own home.

‘All muck heaps are alike,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t tell where one particular load came from.’

‘All you’d need is a sample for forensic analysis.’

‘Did you take one?’ she said sharply.

‘No,’ I admitted.

‘Well, then.’

‘You and Jody seem the most likely to have done it.’

She looked at me with active dislike. ‘Everyone on the racecourse knows what a shit you’ve been to us. It doesn’t surprise me at all that someone has expressed the same opinion in a concrete way.’

‘It surprises me very much that anyone except you should bother.’

‘I don’t intend to talk about it,’ she said flatly.

‘Well I do,’ I said, and did, at some length, repetitively.

The muck heap accounted for a good deal of the afternoon, and Quintus, in a way, for the rest.

Quintus brought his noble brow and empty mind on to the stands and gave Felicity a peck on the cheek, lifting his hat punctiliously. To me he donated what could only be called a scowl.

Felicity fell upon him as if he were a saviour.

‘I didn’t know you were coming!’ She sounded gladder than glad that he had.

‘Just thought I would, you know, my dear.’

She drew him away from me out of earshot and began talking to him earnestly. He nodded, smiling, agreeing with her. She talked some more. He nodded benignly and patted her shoulder.

I homed in again like an attacking wasp.

‘Oh for God’s sake, leave the bloody subject alone,’ Felicity exploded.

‘What’s the fella talking about?’ Quintus said.

‘A muck heap on his doorstep.’

‘Oh,’ Quintus said. ‘Ah...’

I described it all over again. I was getting quite attached to it, in retrospect.

Quintus was distinctly pleased. Chuckles quivered in his throat and his eyes twinkled with malice.

‘Serves you right, what?’ he said.

‘Do you think so?’

‘Shit to a shit,’ he said, nodding with satisfaction.

‘What did you say?’

‘Er... nothing.’

Realisation dawned on me with a sense of fitness. ‘You did it yourself,’ I said with conviction,

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ He was still vastly amused.

‘Lavatory humour would be just your mark.’

‘You are insulting.’ Less amusement, more arrogance.

‘And the police took away the card you left to test it for fingerprints.’

His mouth opened and shut. He looked blank. ‘The police?’

‘Fellows in blue,’ I said.

Felicity said furiously, ‘Trust someone like you not to take a joke.’

‘I’ll take an apology,’ I said mildly. ‘In writing.’

Their objections, their grudging admissions and the eventual drafting of the apology took care of a lot of time. Quintus had hired a tip-up truck for his delivery and had required his gardener to do the actual work. Jody and Felicity had generously contributed the load. Quintus had supervised its disposal and written his message.

He also, in his own hand and with bravado-ish flourishes, wrote the apology. I thanked him courteously and told him I would frame it, which didn’t please him in the least.

By that time the fifth race was over and it was time to saddle the horses for the sixth.

Felicity, as the trainer’s wife, was the natural person to supervise the saddling of their runner, and I knew that if she did she would know she had the wrong horse.

On the other hand if she did the saddling she couldn’t stop me, as a member of the public, taking a very close look, and from her point of view that was a risk she didn’t want to take.

She solved her dilemma by getting Quintus to see to the saddling.

She herself, with a superhuman effort, laid her hand on my arm in a conciliatory gesture and said, ‘All right. Let bygones be bygones. Let’s go and have a drink.’

‘Sure,’ I said, expressing just the right amount of surprise and agreement. ‘Of course, if you’d like.’

So we went off to the bar where I bought her a large gin and tonic and myself a scotch and water, and we stood talking about nothing much while both busy with private thoughts. She was trembling slightly from the force of hers, and I too had trouble preventing mine from showing. There we were, both trying our darnedest to keep the other away from the horse, she because she thought it was Energise and I because I knew it wasn’t. I could feel the irony breaking out in wrinkles round my eyes.

Felicity dawdled so long over her second drink that the horses were already leaving the parade ring and going out to the course when we finally made our way back to the heart of things. Quintus had understudied splendidly and was to be seen giving a parting slap to the horse’s rump. Felicity let her breath out in a sigh and dropped most of the pretence of being nice to me. When she left me abruptly to rejoin Quintus for the race, I made no move to stop her.

The horse put up a good show, considering.

There were twenty-two runners, none of them more than moderate, and they delivered the sort of performance Energise would have left in the next parish. His substitute was running in his own class and finished undisgraced in sixth place, better than I would have expected. The crowd briefly cheered the winning favourite, and I thought it time to melt prudently and inconspicuously away.

I had gone to Stratford with more hope than certainty that the horse would actually run without the exchange being noticed. I had been prepared to do anything I reasonably could to achieve it, in order to give Ganser Mays the nasty shock of losing every penny he’d laid out on his squeezer.

What I hadn’t actually bargained for was the effect the lost race would have on Felicity.

I saw her afterwards, though I hadn’t meant to, when she went to meet her returning horse. The jockey, a well-known rider who had doubtless been told to win, was looking strained enough, but Felicity seemed on the point of collapse.

Her face was a frightening white, her whole body shook and her eyes looked as blank as marbles.

If I had ever wanted any personal revenge, I had it then, but I drove soberly away from the racecourse feeling sorry for her.