Hot Money

CHAPTER EIGHT

"Which door did you go out of, with the dogs?" I asked.

"The kitchen door, like I always do."

"The kitchen door is about five steps along that covered way from the rear door into the garage."

"Yes, of course it is," Malcolm said testily.

"You told me that you set off down the garden with the dogs, and I suppose you told the police the same thing?"

"Yes, of course I did."

"But you can't really remember actually going. You remember that you meant to, isn't that what you told me?"

He frowned. "I suppose it is."

"So what if you never made it to the garden, but were knocked out right there by the kitchen door? And what if you weren't dragged from there into the garage, but carried?"

His mouth opened. "But I'm -"

"You're not too heavy," I said. "I could carry you easily in a fireman's lift."

He was five foot seven, stocky but not fat. He weighed ten stone something, I would have guessed.

"And the fingerprints?" Norman West asked.

"In a fireman's lift," I said, "you sling the person you want to carry over your left shoulder, don't you, with his head hanging down your back. Then you grasp his knees with your left arm, and hold his right wrist in your own right hand, to stop him slipping off?"

They both nodded.

"So if you're holding someone's wrist, you can put his hand easily onto any surface you like, including car door handles… particularly," I said, thinking, "if you've opened the doors yourself first with gloves on, so that your victim's prints will be on top of any smudges you have made."

"You should have been an assassin," Malcolm said. "You'd have been good at it."

"So now we have Malcolm slumped in the back seat, half lying, like you said. So next you switch on the engine and leave the doors open so that all the nice fumes pour into the car quickly."

"Doors?" Malcolm interrupted.

"The driver's door and one of the rear doors, at the least."

"Oh, yes."

"And then you have," I said, "a suicide."

"And when I woke up," Malcolm said gloomily, "I put my prints all over the place. On the ignition key… everywhere."

"No one could have counted on that."

"It just looked bad to the police."

We contemplated the scenario.

"If it happened like that, "West said, "as indeed it could have done, whoever attacked you had to know that you would go out of the kitchen door at around that time."

Malcolm said bleakly, "if I'm at home, I always go for a walk with the dogs about then. Take them out, bring them back, give them their dinners, pour myself a drink. Routine!"

"And… eris there anyone in your family who doesn't know when you walk the dogs?"

"Done it all my life, at that time," Malcolm said.

There was a short silence, then I said, "I wish I'd known all this when that car nearly killed us at Newmarket. We really ought to have told the police." "I was fed up with them," Malcolm said. "I've spent hours and hours with the suspicious buggers since Moira's death. I'm allergic to them. They bring me out in a rash."

"You can't blame them, sir. Most murdered wives are killed by their husbands," West said. "And frankly, you appeared to have an extremely strong motive."

"Rubbish," Malcolm said. "I don't see how people can kill people they've loved."

"Unfortunately it's common." West paused. "Do you want me to continue with your family, sir, considering how little progress I've been able to make with them?"

"Yes," Malcolm said heavily. "Carry on. I'll get Joyce to tell them all to answer your questions. She seems to be able to get them to do what she wants."

To get them to do what THEY want, I thought. She couldn't stir them into courses they didn't like.

Norman West put his notebook into his jacket pocket and shifted his weight forward on his chair.

"Before you go," I said, "I thought you might like to know that I asked the telephonist of the Cambridge hotel if anyone besides yourself had asked if a Mr Pembroke was staying there last weekend. She said they'd definitely had at least three calls asking for Mr Pembroke, two men and a woman, and she remembered because she thought it odd that no one wanted to talk to him, or would leave a message; they only wanted to know if he was there."

"THREE!" Malcolm exclaimed.

"One would be Mr West," I pointed out. To West, I said, "In view of that, could you tell us who asked you to find my father?"

West hesitated. "I don't positively know which Mrs Pembroke it was. And… er… even if I became sure during these investigations, well, no sir, I don't think I could."

"Professional ethics," Malcolm said, nodding.

"I did warn you, sir," West said to me, "about a conflict of interests!"

"So you did. Hasn't she paid you yet, then? No name on any cheque?"

"No, sir, not yet."

He rose to his feet, no one's idea of Atlas, though world-weary all the same. He shook my hand damply, and Malcolm's, and said he would be in touch. When he'd gone, Malcolm sighed heavily and told me to pour him some scotch.

"Don't you want some?" he said, when I gave him the glass.

"Not right now."

"What did you think of Mr West?"

"He's past it."

"You're too young. He's experienced."

"And no match for the female Pembrokes."

Malcolm smiled with irony. "Few are," he said.

We flew to Paris in the morning in the utmost luxury and were met by a chauffeured limousine which took its place with regal slowness in the solid traffic jam moving as one entity towards Longchamp.

The French racecourse, aflutter with flags, seemed to be swallowing TOUT LE MONDE with insatiable appetite, until no one could walk in a straight line through the public areas where the crowds were heavy with guttural vowels and garlic.

Malcolm's jet/ limousine package also included, I found, an invitation from the French Jockey Club, passes to everywhere and a Lucullan lunch appointment with the co-owner of Blue Clancy, Mr Ramsey Osborn.

Ramsey Osborn, alight with the JOIE DE VIVRE gripping the whole place, turned out to be a very large sixtyish American who towered over Malcolm and took to him at once. Malcolm seemed to see the same immediate signals. They were cronies within two minutes.

"My son, Ian," Malcolm said eventually, introducing me.

"Glad to know you." He shook my hand vigorously. "The one who fixed the sale, right?" His eyes were light grey and direct. "Tell you the truth, there's a colt and a filly I want to buy for next year's Classics, and this way Blue Clancy will finance them very nicely."

"But if Blue Clancy wins the Arc?" I said.

"No regrets, son." He turned to Malcolm. "You've a cautious boy, here."

"Yeah," Malcolm said. "Cautious like an astronaut."

The Osborn grey eyes swivelled back my way. "Is that so? Do you bet?"

"Cautiously, sir." He laughed, but it wasn't unalloyed good humour. Malcolm, I thought, was much more to his liking. I left them sitting down at table together and, confident enough that no assassin would penetrate past the eagle-eyed doorkeepers of the upper citadel of the French Jockey Club, went down myself to ground level, happier to be with the action.

I had been racing in France a good deal, having for some years been assistant to a trainer who sent horses across the Channel as insouciantly as to York. Paris and Deauville were nearer anyway, he used to say, despatching me from Epsom via nearby Gatwick airport whenever he felt disinclined to go himself. I knew in consequence a smattering of racecourse French and where to find what I wanted, essential assets in the vast stands bulging with hurrying, vociferous, uninhibited French racegoers.

I loved the noise, the smell, the movement, the quick angers, the gesticulations, the extravagance of ground-level French racing. British jockeys tended to think French racegoers madly aggressive, and certainly once I'd actually had to defend with my fists a jockey who'd lost on a favourite I'd brought over. jockeys in general had been insulted and battered to the extent that they no longer had to walk through crowds when going out or back from races at many tracks, and at Longchamp made the journey from weighing- room to horse by going up an elevator enclosed with plastic walls like a tunnel, across a bridge, and down a similar plastic-tunnel escalator on the other side.

I wandered around, greeting a few people, watching the first race from the trainers' stand, tearing up my losing pari-mutuel ticket, wandering some more, and feeling finally, without any work to do, without any horse to saddle, purposeless. It was an odd feeling. I couldn't remember when I'd last gone racing without being actively involved. Racing wasn't my playground, it was my work; without work it felt hollow.

Vaguely depressed, I returned to Malcolm's eyrie and found him blossoming in his new role as racehorse owner. He was referring to Le Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe familiarly as "the Arc' as if it hadn't swum into his consciousness a bare half-week earlier and discussing Blue Clancy's future with Ramsey Osborn as if he knew what he was talking about.

"We're thinking of the Breeders' Cup," he said to me, and I interpreted the glint in his eyes as a frantic question as well as an instant decision.

"if he runs well today," Osborn put in, qualifying it.

"It's a long way to California," I said, agreeing with him. "To the world championships, one might say."

Malcolm was grateful for the information and far from dismayed by it. Pretty well the opposite, I saw. It would be to California we would go on the way to Australia, I guessed, rather than Singapore.

Lunch seemed to be continuing all afternoon, in the way French lunches do, with tidy circles of chateaubriand appearing, the empty plates to be cleared before small bundles of beans and carrots were served, followed by fresh little cheeses rolled in chopped nuts, and tiny strawberry tart lets with vanilla coul is According to the menu, I had through my absence missed the ecrevisses, the consomme, the crepes de volaille, the salade verte and the sorbet. just as well, I thought, eyeing the friandises which arrived with the coffee. Even amateur jockeys had to live by the scales.

Malcolm and Ramsey Osborn passed mellowly to cognac and cigars and watched the races on television. No one was in a hurry: the Arc was scheduled for five o'clock and digestion could proceed until four- thirty.

Ramsey Osborn told us he came from Stamford, Connecticut, and had made his money by selling sports clothes. "Baseball caps by the million," he said expansively. "I get them made, I sell them to retail outlets. And shoes, shirts, jogging suits, whatever goes. Health is big business, we'd be nowhere without exercise."

Ramsey looked as if he didn't exercise too much himself, having pads of fat round his eyes, a heavy double chin and a swelling stomach. He radiated goodwill, however and listened with kind condescension as Malcolm said reciprocally that he himself dealt modestly in currency and metal.

Ramsey wasn't grasping Malcolm's meaning, I thought, but then for all his occasional flamboyance Malcolm never drew general attention to his wealth. Quantum was a large comfortable Victorian family house, but it wasn't a mansion: when Malcolm had reached mansion financial status, he'd shown no signs of wanting to move. I wondered briefly whether that would change in future, now that he'd tasted prodigality.

In due course, the three of us went down to the saddling boxes and met both Blue Clancy and his trainer. Blue Clancy looked aristocratic, his trainer more so. Malcolm was visibly impressed with the train eras indeed was reasonable, as he was a bright young star, now rising forty, who had already trained six Classic winners and made it look easy.

Blue Clancy was restless, his nostrils quivering. We watched the saddling ritual and the final touches; flick of oil to shine the hooves, sponging of nose and mouth to clean and gloss, tweaking of forelock and tack to achieve perfection. We followed him into the parade ring and were joined by his English jockey who was wearing Ramsey's white, green and crimson colours and looking unexcited.

Malcolm was taking with alacrity to his first taste of big-time ownership. The electricity was fairly sparking. He caught my eye, saw what I was thinking, and laughed. "I used to think you a fool to choose racing," he said. "Couldn't understand what you saw in it."

"It's better still when you ride."

"Yes… I saw that at Sandown. And about time, I suppose."

Ramsey and the trainer claimed his attention to discuss tactics with the jockey, and I thought of the summer holidays when we were children, when Gervase, Ferdinand and I had all learned to ride. We'd learned on riding-school ponies, cycling to the nearby stables and spending time there grooming, feeding and mucking out. We'd entered local gymkhanas, and booted the poor animals in pop-the- balloon races. We' ridden them backwards, bareback and with our knees on the saddle, and Ferdinand, the specialist, standing briefly on his head. The ponies had been docile and no doubt tired to death, but for two or three years we had been circus virtuosi: and Malcolm had paid the bills uncomplainingly, but had never come to watch us. Then Gervase and Ferdinand had been whisked away by Alicia, and in the lonely vacuum afterwards I'd ridden almost every possible morning, laying down a skill without meaning it seriously, not realising, in the flurry of academic school examinations, that it was the holiday pastime that would beckon me for life.

Blue Clancy looked as well as any of the others, I thought, watching the runners walk round, and the trainer was displaying more confidence than uncertainty. He thanked me for fixing the sale (from which he'd made a commission) and assured me that the two- million-guinea yearling, was now settled snugly in a prime box in his yard. He'd known me vaguely until then as another trainer's assistant, a dogsbody, but as son, and go-between of a new owner showing all signs of being severely hooked by the sport, I was now worth cultivation.

I was amused and far from minding. Life was like that. I might as well make the most of Malcolm's coat-tails while I was on them, I thought. I asked if I could see round the trainer's yard next time I was in Newmarket, and he said sure, he'd like it, and almost seemed to mean it.

"I'm sometimes there with George and Jo," I said. "Schooling their few jumpers. I ride them in amateur chases. "Everyone in Newmarket knew who George and Jo were: they were the equivalent of minor royalty.

"Oh, that's you, is it?" He put a few things together. "Didn't realise that was you."

"Mm."

"Then come any time." He sounded warmer, more positive. "I mean it," he said.

The way upwards in racing, I thought, ironic at myself, could lead along devious paths. I thanked him without effusiveness, and said "Soon."

Blue Clancy went out to the parade and the rest of us moved to the owners' and trainers' stand, which was near the core of things and buzzing with other similar groups locked in identical tensions.

"What chance has he got?" Malcolm demanded of me. "Seriously." His eyes searched my face as if for truth, which wasn't what I thought he wanted to hear.

"A bit better than he had on Thursday, since the second favourite has been scratched." He wanted me to tell him more, however unrealistic, so I said, "He's got a good chance of being placed. Anything can happen. He could win."

Malcolm nodded, not knowing whether or not to believe me, but wanting to. Well and truly hooked, I thought, and felt fond of him.

I thought in my heart of hearts that the horse would finish sixth or seventh, not disgraced but not in the money. I'd backed him on the pari-mutuel but only out of loyalty: I'd backed the French horse Meilleurs Voeux out of conviction.

Blue Clancy moved well going down to the start. This was always the best time for owners, I thought, while the heart beat with expectation and while the excuses, explanations, disappointments were still ten minutes away. Malcolm lifted my binoculars to his eyes with hands that were actually trembling.

The trainer himself was strung up, I saw, however he might try to disguise it. There was only one "Arc" in a year, of course, and too few years in a lifetime.

The horses seemed to circle for an interminable time at the gate but were finally fed into the slots to everyone's satisfaction. The gates crashed open, the thundering rainbow poured out, and twenty- six of Europe's best thoroughbreds were out on the right-hand circuit straining to be the fastest, strongest, bravest over one and a half miles of grass.

"Do you want your binoculars?" Malcolm said, hoping not.

"No. Keep them, I can see."

I could see Ramsey Osborn's colours on the rails halfway back in the field, the horse moving easily, as were all the others at that point of the race. In the "Arc", the essentials were simple: to be in the first ten coming round the last long right-hand bend, not to swing too wide into the straight and, according to the horse's stamina, pile on the pressure and head for home. Sometimes in a slow-starting "Arc", one jockey would slip the field on the bend and hang on to his lead; in others, there would be war throughout to a whisker verdict. Blue Clancy's "Arc" seemed to be run at give- no-quarter speed, and he came into the finishing straight in a bunch of flying horses, lying sixth or eighth, as far as I could see.

Malcolm shouted "Come on," explosively as if air had backed up in his lungs from not breathing, and the ladies around us in silk dresses and hats, and the men in grey morning suits, infected by the same urgency, yelled and urged And cursed in polyglot babel. Malcolm put down the race glasses and yelled louder, totally involved, rapt, living through his eyes.

Blue Clancy was doing his bit, I thought. He hadn't blown up. In fact, he was hanging-on to fifth place. Going faster. Fourth…

The trainer, more restrained than owners, was now saying, "Come on, come on" compulsively under his breath, but two of the horses already in front suddenly came on faster than Blue Clancy and drew away from the field, and the real hope died in the trainer with a sigh and a sag to the shoulders.

The finish the crowd watched was a humdinger which only a photograph could decide. The finish Malcolm, Ramsey, the trainer and I watched was two lengths further back, where Blue Clancy and his jockey, never giving up, were fighting all out to the very end, flashing across the line absolutely level with their nearest rival, only the horse's nose in front taking his place on the nod.

"On the nod," the trainer said, echoing my thought.

"What does that mean?" Malcolm demanded. He was high with excitement, flushed, his eyes blazing. "Were we third? Say we were third."

"I think so," the trainer said. "There'll be a photograph."

We hurried down from the stand to get to the unsaddling enclosure, Malcolm still short of breath and slightly dazed. "What does on the nod mean?" he asked me.

"A galloping horse pokes his head out forward with each stride in a sort of rhythm, forward, back, forward, back. If two horses are as close as they were, and one horse's nose is forward when it passes the finishing line, and the other horse's happens to be back… well, that's on the nod."

"Just luck, you mean?"

"Luck."

"My God," he said, "I never thought I'd feel like that. I never thought I'd care. I only did it for a jaunt." He looked almost with wonderment at my face, as if I'd been before him into a far country and he'd now discovered the mystery for himself.

Ramsey Osborn, who had roared with the best, beamed with pleasure when an announcement confirmed Blue Clancy's third place, saying he was sure glad the half-share sale had turned out fine. There were congratulations all round, with Malcolm and Ramsey being introduced to the owners of the winner, who were Italian and didn't understand Ramsey's drawl. Press photographers flashed like popping suns. There were television cameras, enquiring journalists, speeches, presentations. Malcolm looked envious of the Italian owners: third was fine but winning was better.

The four of us went for a celebratory drink; champagne, of course.

"Let's go for it," Ramsey said. "The Breeders' Cup. All the way."

"We'll have to see how he is after today," the trainer said warningly. "He had a hard race."

"He'll be all right," Ramsey said with hearty confidence. "Did you see the distance? Two lengths behind the winner. That's world class and no kidding."

The trainer looked thoughtful but didn't argue. The favourite, undeniably world class, had finished second; victory snatched away no doubt by his earlier exhausting outing. He might not come back at all after his gruelling "Arc". The French favourite (and mine), Meilleurs Voeux, had finished fifth which made Blue Clancy better than I'd thought. Maybe he wouldn't be disgraced in the Breeders' Cup, if we went. I hoped we would go, but I was wary of hope.

The afternoon trickled away with the champagne, and Malcolm, almost as tired as his horse, sank euphoric ally into the limousine going back to the airport and closed his eyes in the jet.

"My first ever runner," he said sleepily. "Third in the 'Arc'. Not bad, eh?"

"Not bad."

"I'm going to call the yearling Chrysos."

"Why Chrysos?" I said.

He smiled without opening his eyes. "It's Greek for gold."

Malcolm was feeling caged in the Savoy.

On Sunday night, when we returned from Paris, he'd hardly had the energy to undress. By Monday morning, he was pacing the carpet with revitalised energy and complaining that another week in the suite would drive him bonkers. "I'm going back to Quantum," he said. "I miss the dogs."

I said with foreboding, "It would take the family half a day at most to find out you were there."

"I can't help it. I can't hide for ever. You can come and stay close to me there."

"Don't go," I said. "You're safe here."

"Keep me safe at Quantum."

He was adamant and began packing, and short of roping him to the bedstead, I couldn't stop him.

just before we left, I telephoned Norman West and found him at home – which didn't bode well for the investigations. He was happy to tell me, he said, that it was now certain Mrs Deborah Pembroke, Ferdinand's wife, couldn't have been at Newmarket Bloodstock Sales, as on that day she had done a photo-modelling session. He had checked up with the magazine that morning, as Mrs Deborah had told him he could, and they had provided proof.

"Right," I said. "What about Ferdinand himself?"

"Mr Ferdinand was away from his office on both those days. Working at home on the Friday. The next week, he attended a course on the statistical possibilities of insurance fraud. He says that after registration on the Monday, they kept no record of attendance. I checked there too, and no one clearly remembers, they're all half strangers to each other."

I sighed. "Well… my father and I are going back to Quantum."

"That's not wise, surely."

"He's tired of imprisonment. Report to us there, will you?"

He said he would, when he had more news.

Cross off Debs, I thought. Bully for Debs.

I drove us down to Berkshire, stopping at Arthur Bellbrook's house in the village to collect the dogs. The two full-grown Dobermanns greeted Malcolm like puppies, prancing around him and rubbing against his legs as he slapped and fondled them. Real love on both sides, I saw. Uncomplicated by greed, envy or rejection.

Malcolm looked up and saw me watching him.

"You should get a dog," he said. "You need something to love."

He could really hit home, I thought.

He bent back to his friends, playing with their muzzles, letting them try to snap at his fingers, knowing they wouldn't bite. They weren't guard dogs as such: he liked Dobermanns; for their muscular agility, for their exuberance. I'd been brought up with relays of them around me, but it wasn't the affection of dogs I wanted, and I'd never asked for one of my own.

I thought of the afternoon he'd let them out of the kitchen and then been hit on the head. The dogs must have seen or sensed someone there. Though not guard dogs, they should still have warned Malcolm.

"Do those two dogs bark when strangers call?" I asked.

"Yes, of course." Malcolm straightened, still smiling, letting the lithe bodies press against his knees. "Why?"

"Did they bark a week last Friday, when you set out to walk them?"

The smile died out of his face. With almost despair he said, "No. I don't think so. I don't remember. No… not especially. They were pleased to be going out."

"How many of the family do they know well?" I said.

"Everyone's been to the house several times since Moira died. All except you. I thought at first it was to support me, but…" he shrugged with disillusion, "they were all busy making sure none of the others ingratiated themselves with me and cut them out."

Every possibility led back to the certainty we couldn't accept.

Malcolm shuddered and said he would walk through the village with the dogs. He would meet people he knew on the way, and there were people in that village who'd been close friends with Vivien, Alicia and Joyce and had sided with them, and had since fed them inflammatory half-lies about Malcolm's doings.

"You know the village grapevine is faster than telex," I said. "Put the dogs in the car."

He wouldn't listen. It was only six days since the second time someone had tried to kill him, but he was already beginning to believe there would be no more attempts. Well, no more that morning, I supposed. He walked a mile and a half with the dogs, and I drove slowly ahead, looking back, making sure at each turn that he was coming into sight. When he reached the house safely, he said I was being over-protective.

"I thought that was what you wanted," I said.

"it is and it isn't."

Surprisingly, I understood him. He was afraid and ashamed of it, and in consequence felt urged to bravado. Plain straightforward fear, I thought, would have been easier to deal with. At least I got him to wait outside with the dogs for company while I went into the house to reconnoitre, but no one had been there laying booby traps, no one was hiding behind doors with raised blunt instruments, no one had sent parcel bombs in the post.

I fetched him, and we unpacked. We both took it for granted I would sleep in my old room, and I made up the bed there. I had bought provisions in London to the extent of bread, milk, lemons, smoked salmon and caviar, a diet both of us now considered normal. There was champagne in the cellar and a freezer full of post-Moira TV dinners in cardboard boxes. We weren't going to starve, I thought, inspecting them, though we might get indigestion.

Malcolm spent the afternoon in his office opening letters and talking to his stockbroker on the telephone, and at the routine time proposed to give the dogs their pre-dinner walk.

"I'll come with you," I said.

He nodded without comment, and in the crisp early October air we set off down the garden, through the gate into the field, and across to the willow-lined stream he had been aiming for ten days earlier.

We had all sailed toy boats down that stream when we'd been children, and picked watercress there, and got thoroughly wet and muddy as a matter of course. Alicia had made us strip, more than once, before she would let us into her bridal-white kitchen.

"Last Monday," Malcolm said casually, watching the dogs sniff for water rats round the tree roots, "I made a new will."

"Did you?"

"I did. In Cambridge. I thought I might as well. The old one left a lot to Moira. And then, after that Friday… well, I wanted to put things in orderin case… just in case."

"What did you do with it?" I asked.

He seemed amused. "The natural question is surely, 'What's in it? What have you left to me?'"

"Mm," I said dryly. "I'm not asking that, ever. What I'm asking is more practical."

"I left it with the solicitor in Cambridge."

We were wandering slowly along towards the stream, the dogs quartering busily. The willow leaves, yellowing, would fall in droves in the next gale, and there was bonfire smoke drifting somewhere in the still air.

"Who knows where your will is?" I asked.

"I do. And the solicitor."

"Who's the solicitor?"

"I saw his name on a brass plate outside his office and went in on impulse. I've got his card somewhere. We discussed what I wanted, he had it typed up, and I signed it with witnesses in his office and left it there for safekeeping."

"For a brilliant man," I said peaceably, "you're as thick as two planks."