Odds against

ELEVEN

Radnor held a Seabury conference the next morning, Wednesday, consisting of himself, Dolly, Chico and me: the result, chiefly, of my having the previous afternoon finally wrung grudging permission from Lord Hagbourne to arrange a twenty-four hour guard at Seabury for the coming Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

The bulldozing had been accomplished without trouble, and a call to the course that morning had established that the tan was arriving in regular lorry loads and was being spread. Racing, bar any last minute accidents, was now certain. Even the weather was co-operating. The glass was rising; the forecast was dry, cold and sunny.

Dolly proposed a straight patrol system, and Radnor was inclined to agree. Chico and I had other ideas.

‘If anyone intended to sabotage the track,’ Dolly pointed out, ‘they would be frightened off by a patrol. Same thing if they were planning something in the stands themselves.’

Radnor nodded. ‘Safest way of making sure racing takes place. I suppose we’ll need at least four men to do it properly.’

I said, ‘I agree that we need a patrol tonight, tomorrow night and Friday night, just to play safe. But tomorrow, when the course will be more or less deserted… what we need is to pinch them at it, not to frighten them off. There’s no evidence yet that could be used in a court of law. If we could catch them in mid-sabotage, so to speak, we’d be much better off.’

‘That’s right,’ said Chico. ‘Hide and pounce. Much better than scaring them away.’

‘I seem to remember,’ said Dolly with a grin, ‘that the last time you two set a trap the mouse shot the cheese.’

‘Oh God, Dolly, you slay me,’ said Chico, laughing warmly and for once accepting her affection.

Even Radnor laughed. ‘Seriously, though,’ he said. ‘I don’t see how you can. A racecourse is too big. If you are hiding you can only see a small part of it. And surely if you show yourself your presence would act like any other patrol to stop anything plainly suspicious being done? I don’t think it’s possible.’

‘Um,’ I said. ‘But there’s one thing I can still do better than anyone else in this agency.’

‘And what’s that?’ said Chico, ready to argue.

‘Ride a horse.’

‘Oh,’ said Chico. ‘I’ll give you that, chum.’

‘A horse,’ said Radnor thoughtfully. ‘Well, that’s certainly an idea. Nobody’s going to look suspiciously at a horse on a racecourse, I suppose. Mobile, too. Where would you get one?’

‘From Mark Witney. I could borrow his hack. Seabury’s his local course. His stables aren’t many miles away.’

‘But can you still…?’ began Dolly, and broke off. ‘Well, don’t glare at me like that, all of you. I can’t ride with two hands, let alone one.’

‘A man called Gregory Philips had his arm amputated very high up,’ I said, ‘and went on racing in point-to-points for years.’

‘Enough said,’ said Dolly. ‘How about Chico?’

‘He can wear a pair of my jodphurs. Protective colouring. And lean nonchalantly on the rails.’

‘Stick insects,’ said Chico cheerfully.

‘That’s what you want, Sid?’ said Radnor.

I nodded. ‘Look at it from the worst angle: we haven’t anything on Kraye that will stand up. We might not find Smith, the tanker driver, and even if we do, he has everything to lose by talking and nothing to gain. When the race course stables burned down a year ago, we couldn’t prove it wasn’t an accident; an illicit cigarette end. Stable lads do smoke, regardless of bans.

‘The so-called drain which collapsed — we don’t know if it was dug a day, a week, or six weeks before it did its work. That letter William Brinton of Dunstable wrote to his brother, it’s only a copy from memory that we’ve got, no good at all for evidence. All it proves, to our own satisfaction, is that Kraye is capable of anything. We can’t show it to Lord Hagbourne, because I obtained it in confidence, and he still isn’t a hundred per cent convinced that Kraye has done more than buy shares. As I see it, we’ve just got to give the enemy a chance to get on with their campaign.’

‘You think they will, then?’

‘It’s awfully likely, isn’t it? This year there isn’t another Seabury meeting until February. A three months’ gap. And if I read it right, Kraye is in a hurry now because of the political situation. He won’t want to spend fifty thousand buying Seabury and then find building land has been nationalised overnight. If I were him, I’d want to clinch the deal and sell to a developer as quickly as possible. According to the photographs of the share transfers, he already holds twenty-three per cent of the shares. This is almost certainly enough to swing the sale of the company if it comes to a vote. But he’s greedy. He’ll want more. But he’ll only want more if he can get it soon. Waiting for February is too risky. So yes, I do think if we give him a chance that he will organise some more damage this week.’

‘It’s a risk,’ said Dolly. ‘Suppose something dreadful happens and we neither prevent it nor catch anyone doing it?’

They kicked it round among the three of them for several minutes, the pros and cons of the straight patrols versus cat and mouse. Finally Radnor turned back to me and said ‘Sid?’

‘It’s your agency,’ I said seriously. ‘It’s your risk.’

‘But it’s your case. It’s still your case. You must decide.’

I couldn’t understand him. It was all very well for him to have given me a free hand so far, but this wasn’t the sort of decision I would have ever expected him to pass on.

Still… ‘Chico and I, then,’ I said. ‘We’ll go along tonight and stay all day tomorrow. I don’t think we’ll let even Captain Oxon know we’re there. Certainly not the foreman, Ted Wilkins, or any of the other men. We’ll come in from the other side from the stands, and I’ll borrow the horse for mobility. Dolly can arrange official patrol guards with Oxon for tomorrow night… suggest he gives them a warm room, Dolly. He ought to have the central heating on by then.’

‘Friday and Saturday?’ asked Radnor, non-committally.

‘Full guards, I guess. As many as Lord Hagbourne will sub for. The racecourse crowds make cat and mouse impossible.’

‘Right,’ said Radnor, decisively. ‘That’s it, then.’

When Dolly, Chico, and I had got as far as the door he said, ‘Sid, you wouldn’t mind if I had another look at those photographs? Send Jones-boy down with them if you’re not needing them.’

‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘I’ve pored over them till I know them by heart. I bet you’ll spot something at once that I’ve missed.’

‘It often works that way,’ he said, nodding.

The three of us went back to the Racing Section, and via the switchboard I traced Jones-boy, who happened to be in Missing Persons. While he was on his way down I flipped through the packet of photographs yet again. The share transfers, the summary with the list of bank accounts, the letters from Bolt, the ten pound notes, and the two sheets of dates, initials and figures from the very bottom of the attaché case. It had been clear all along that these last were lists either of receipts or expenditure: but by now I was certain they were the latter. A certain W.L.B. had received regular sums of fifty pounds a month for twelve months, and the last date for W.L.B. was four days before William Leslie Brinton, Clerk of Dunstable Racecourse, had taken the quickest way out. Six hundred pounds and a threat; the price of a man’s soul.

Most of the other initials meant nothing to me, except the last one, J.R.S., which looked as if they could be the tanker driver’s. The first entry for J.R.S., for one hundred pounds, was dated the day before the tanker overturned at Seabury, the day before Kraye went to Aynsford for the week-end.

In the next line, the last of the whole list, a further sum of one hundred and fifty pounds was entered against J.R.S. The date of this was that of the following Tuesday, three days ahead when I took the photographs. Smith had packed up and vanished from his job and his digs on that Tuesday.

Constantly recurring amongst the other varying initials were two christian names, Leo and Fred. Each of these was on the regular pay-roll, it seemed. Either Leo or Fred, I guessed, had been the big man who had visited and frightened Mervyn Brinton. Either Leo or Fred was the ‘Big Chap’ who had sent Andrews with a gun to the Cromwell Road.

I had a score to settle with either Leo or Fred.

Jones-boy came in for the photographs. I tapped them together back into their box and gave them to him.

‘Where, you snotty nosed little coot, is our coffee?’ said Chico rudely. We had been downstairs when Jones-boy did his rounds.

‘Coots are bald,’ observed Dolly dryly, eyeing Jones-boy’s luxuriant locks.

Jones-boy unprintably told Chico where he could find his coffee.

Chico advanced a step, saying, ‘You remind me of the people sitting on the walls of Jerusalem.’ He had been raised in a church orphanage, after all.

Jones-boy also knew the more basic bits of Isaiah. He said callously, ‘You did it on the doorstep of the Barnes cop shop, I believe.’

Chico furiously lashed out a fist to Jones-boy’s head. Jones-boy jumped back, laughed insultingly, and the box he was holding flew high out of his hand, opening as it went.

‘Stop it you two, damn you,’ shouted Dolly, as the big photographs floated down on to her desk and on to the floor.

‘Babes in the Wood,’ remarked Jones-boy, in great good humour from having got the best of the slanging match. He helped Dolly and me pick up the photographs, shuffled them back into the box in no sort of order, and departed grinning.

‘Chico,’ said Dolly severely, ‘you ought to know better.’

‘The bossy-mother routine bores me sick,’ said Chico violently.

Dolly bit her lip and looked away. Chico stared at me defiantly, knowing very well he had started the row and was in the wrong.

‘As one bastard to another,’ I said mildly, ‘pipe down.’

Not being able to think of a sufficiently withering reply fast enough Chico merely scowled and walked out of the room. The show was over. The office returned to normal. Typewriters clattered, someone used the tape recorder, someone else the telephone. Dolly sighed and began to draw up her list for Seabury. I sat and thought about Leo. Or Fred. Unproductively.

After a while I ambled upstairs to Bona Fides, where the usual amount of telephone shouting filled the air. George, deep in a mysterious conversation about moth-balls, saw me and shook his head. Jack Copeland, freshly attired in a patchily faded green sleeveless pullover, took time out between calls to say that they were sorry, but they’d made no progress with Kraye. He had, Jack said, very craftily covered his tracks about ten years back. They would keep digging, if I liked. I liked.

Up in Missing Persons Sammy said it was too soon for results on Smith.

When I judged that Mark Witney would be back in his house after exercising his second lot of horses, I rang him up and asked him to lend me his hack, a pensioned-off old steeplechaser of the first water.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘What for?’

I explained what for.

‘You’d better have my horse box as well,’ he commented. ‘Suppose it pours with rain all night? Give you somewhere to keep dry, if you have the box.’

‘But won’t you be needing it? The forecast says clear and dry anyway.’

‘I won’t need it until Friday morning. I haven’t any runners until Seabury. And only one there, I may say, in spite of it being so close. The owners just won’t have it. I have to go all the way to Banbury on Saturday. Damn silly with another much better course on my doorstep.’

‘What are you running at Seabury?’

He told me, at great and uncomplimentary length, about a half blind, utterly stupid, one paced habitual non-jumper with which he proposed to win the novice chase. Knowing him, he probably would. We agreed that Chico and I should arrive at his place at about eight that evening, and I rang off.

After that I left the office, went across London by underground to Company House in the City, and asked for the files of Seabury Racecourse. In a numbered chair at a long table, surrounded by earnest men and women clerks poring over similar files and making copious notes, I studied the latest list of investors. Apart from Kraye and his various aliases, which I now recognised on sight from long familiarity with the share transfer photographs, there were no large blocks in single ownership. No one else held more than three per cent of the total: and as three per cent meant that roughly two and a half thousand pounds was lying idle and not bringing in a penny in dividends, it was easy to see why no one wanted a larger holding.

Fotherton’s name was not on the list. Although this was not conclusive, because a nominee name like ‘Mayday Investments’ could be anyone at all, I was more or less satisfied that Seabury’s Clerk was not gambling on Seabury’s death. All the big share movements during the past year had been to Kraye, and no one else.

A few of the small investors, holding two hundred or so shares each, were people I knew personally. I wrote down their names and addresses, intending to ask them to let me see Bolt’s circular letter when it arrived. Slower than via Zanna Martin, but surer.

My mind shied away from Zanna Martin. I’d had a bad night thinking about her. Her and Jenny, both.

Back in the office I found it was the tail-end of the lunch hour, with nearly all the desks still empty. Chico alone was sitting behind his, biting his nails.

‘If we’re going to be up all night,’ I suggested, ‘we’d better take the afternoon off for sleep.’

‘No need.’

‘Every need. I’m not as young as you.’

‘Poor old grandpa.’ He grinned suddenly, apologising for the morning. ‘I can’t help it. That Jones-boy gets on my wick.’

‘Jones-boy can look after himself. It’s Dolly…’

‘It’s not my bloody fault she can’t have kids.’

‘She wants kids like you want a mother.’

‘But I don’t…’ he began indignantly.

‘Your own,’ I said flatly. ‘Like you want your own mother to have kept you and loved you. Like mine did.’

‘You had every advantage, of course.’

‘That’s right.’

He laughed. ‘Funny thing is I like old Dolly, really. Except for the hen bit.’

‘Who wouldn’t?’ I said amicably. ‘You can sleep on my sofa.’

He sighed. ‘You’re going to be less easy than Dolly to work for, I can see that.’

‘Eh?’

‘Don’t kid yourself, mate. Sir, I mean.’ He was lightly ironic.

The other inmates of the office drifted back, including Dolly, with whom I fixed for Chico to have the afternoon free. She was cool to him and unforgiving, which I privately thought would do them both good.

She said, ‘The first official patrol will start on the racecourse tomorrow at six p.m. Shall I tell them to find you and report?’

‘No,’ I said definitely. ‘I don’t know where I’ll be.’

‘It had better be the usual then,’ she said. ‘They can report to the old man at his home number when they are starting the job, and again at six a.m. when they go off and the next lot take over.’

‘And they’ll ring him in between if anything happens?’ I said.

‘Yes. As usual.’

‘It’s as bad as being a doctor,’ I said smiling.

Dolly nodded, and half to herself she murmured, ‘You’ll find out.’

Chico and I walked round to my fiat, pulled the curtains, and did our best to sleep. I didn’t find it easy at two-thirty in the afternoon: it was the time for racing, not rest. It seemed to me that I had barely drifted off when the telephone rang: I looked at my watch on my way to answer it in the sitting-room and found it was only ten to five. I had asked for a call at six.

It was not the telephone exchange, however, but Dolly.

‘A message has come for you by hand, marked very urgent. I thought you might want it before you go to Seabury.’

‘Who brought it?’

‘A taxi driver.’

‘Shunt him round here, then.’

‘He’s gone, I’m afraid.’

‘Who’s the message from?’

‘I’ve no idea. It’s a plain brown envelope, the size we use for interim reports.’

‘Oh. All right, I’ll come back.’

Chico had drowsily propped himself up on one elbow on the sofa.

‘Go to sleep again,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to go and see something in the office. Won’t be long.’

When I reached the Racing Section again I found that whatever had come for me, something else had gone. The shaky lemon coloured table. I was deskless again.

‘Sammy said he was sorry,’ explained Dolly, ‘but he has a new assistant and nowhere to park him.’

‘I had things in the drawer,’ I complained. Shades of Sammy’s lunch, I thought.

‘They’re here,’ Dolly said, pointing to a corner of her desk. ‘There was only the Brinton file, a half bottle of brandy, and some pills. Also I found this on the floor.’ She held out a flat crackly celophane and paper packet.

‘The negatives of those photographs are in here,’ I said, taking it from her. ‘They were in the box, though.’

‘Until Jones-boy dropped it.’

‘Oh yes.’ I put the packet of negatives inside the Brinton file and pinched a large rubber band from Dolly to snap round the outside.

‘How about that mysterious very urgent message?’ I asked.

Dolly silently and considerately slit open the envelope in question, drew out the single sheet of paper it contained and handed it to me. I unfolded it and stared at it in disbelief.

It was a circular, headed Charing, Street and King, Stockbrokers, dated with the following day’s date, and it ran:

Dear Sir or Madam,

We have various clients wishing to purchase small parcels of shares in the following lists of minor companies. If you are considering selling your interests in any of these, we would be grateful if you would get in touch with us. We would assure you of a good fair price, based on today’s quotation.

There followed a list of about thirty companies, of which I had heard of only one. Tucked in about three-quarters of the way down was Seabury Racecourse.

I turned the page over. Zanna Martin had written on the back in a hurried hand.

This is only going to Seabury shareholders. Not to anyone owning shares in the other companies. The leaflets came from the printers this morning, and are to be posted tomorrow. I hope it is what you want. I’m sorry about last night.

Z.M.

‘What is it?’ asked Dolly.

‘A free pardon,’ I said light-heartedly, slipping the circular inside the Brinton file along with the negatives. ‘Also confirmation that Ellis Bolt is not on the side of the angels.’

‘You’re a nut,’ she said. ‘And take these things off my desk. I haven’t room for them.’

I put the pills and brandy in my pocket and picked up the Brinton file.

‘Is that better?’

‘Thank you, yes.’

‘So long, then, my love. See you Friday.’

On the walk back to the flat I decided suddenly to go and see Zanna Martin. I went straight down to the garage for my car without going up and waking Chico again, and made my way eastwards to the City for the second time that day. The rush hour traffic was so bad that I was afraid I would miss her, but in fact she was ten minutes late leaving the office and I caught her up just before she reached the underground station.

‘Miss Martin,’ I called. ‘Would you like a lift home?’

She turned round in surprise.

‘Mr Halley!’

‘Hop in.’

She hopped. That is to say, she opened the door, picked up the Brinton file which was lying on the passenger seat, sat down, tidily folded her coat over her knees, and pulled the door shut again. The bad side of her face was towards me, and she was very conscious of it. The scarf and the hair were gently pulled forward.

I took a pound and a ten shilling note out of my pocket and gave them to her. She took them, smiling.

‘The taxi-man told our switchboard girl you gave him that for bringing the leaflet. Thank you very much.’ I swung out through the traffic and headed for Finchley.

She answered obliquely. ‘That wretched chicken is still in the oven, stone cold. I just turned the gas out yesterday, after you’d gone.’

‘I wish I could stay this evening instead,’ I said, ‘but I’ve got a job on for the agency.’

‘Another time,’ she said tranquilly. ‘Another time, perhaps. I understand that you couldn’t tell me at first who you worked for, because you didn’t know whether I was an… er, an accomplice of Mr Bolt’s, and afterwards you didn’t tell me for fear of what actually happened, that I would be upset. So that’s that.’

‘You are generous.’

‘Realistic, even if a bit late.’

We went a little way in silence. Then I asked ‘What would happen to the shares Kraye owns if it were proved he was sabotaging the company? If he were convicted, I mean. Would his shares be confiscated, or would he still own them when he came out of jail?’

‘I’ve never heard of anyone’s shares being confiscated,’ she said, sounding interested. ‘But surely that’s a long way in the future?’

‘I wish I knew. It makes a good deal of difference to what I should do now.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well… an easy way to stop Kraye buying too many more shares would be to tell the racing press and the financial press that a take-over is being attempted. The price would rocket. But Kraye already holds twenty-three per cent, and if the law couldn’t take it away from him, he would either stick to that and vote for a sell out, or if he got cold feet he could unload his shares at the higher price and still make a fat profit. Either way, he’d be sitting pretty financially, in jail or out. And either way Seabury would be built on.’

‘I suppose this sort of thing’s happened before?’

‘Take-overs, yes, several. But only one other case of sabotage. At Dunstable. Kraye again.’

‘Haven’t any courses survived a take-over bid?’

‘Only Sandown, publicly. I don’t know of any others, but they may have managed it in secrecy.’

‘How did Sandown do it?’

‘The local council did it for them. Stated loudly that planning permission would not be given for building. Of course the bid collapsed then.’

‘It looks as though the only hope for Seabury, in that case, is that the council there will act in the same way. I’d try a strong lobby, if I were you.’

‘You’re quite a girl, Miss Martin,’ I said smiling. ‘That’s a very good idea. I’ll go and dip a toe into the climate of opinion at the Town Hall.’

She nodded approvingly. ‘No good lobbying against the grain. Much better to find out which way people are likely to move before you start pushing!’

Finchley came into sight. I said. ‘You do realise, Miss Martin, that if I am successful at my job, you will lose yours?’

She laughed. ‘Poor Mr Bolt. He’s not at all bad to work for. But don’t worry about my job. It’s easy for an experienced stockbroker’s secretary to get a good one, I assure you.’

I stopped at her gate, looking at my watch. ‘I’m afraid I can’t come in. I’m already going to be a bit late.’

She opened the door without ado and climbed out. ‘Thank you for coming at all.’ She smiled, shut the door crisply, and waved me away.

I drove back to my flat as fast as I could, fuming slightly at the traffic. It wasn’t until I switched off the engine down in the garage and leaned over to pick it up that I discovered the Brinton file wasn’t there. And then remembered Miss Martin holding it on her lap during the journey, and me hustling her out of the car. Zanna Martin still had Brinton’s file. I hadn’t time to go back for it, and I couldn’t ring her up because I didn’t know the name of the owner of the house she lived in. But surely, I reassured myself, surely the file would be safe enough where it was until Friday.