Rat Race

Chapter Fifteen

It hit me below the left shoulder and the jolt threw me forward on my twisting legs so that I hit my forehead solidly on the edge of the marble slab mantelshelf. Blacking out, falling, I put out a hand to stop myself, but there was nothing there, only the empty black hollow of the fireplace, and I went on, right down, smashing and crashing amongst the brass fire irons... but I heard them only dimly... and then not at all.

I woke up slowly, stiffly, painfully, after less than a quarter of an hour. Everything was silent. No sound. No people. Nothing.

I couldn’t remember where I was or what had happened. Not until I tried to get up. Then the tearing soreness behind my shoulder stung me straight back into awareness.

Had a knife sticking in my back.

Lying face down among the fire irons I felt gingerly round with my right hand. My ringers brushed like feathers against the hilt. I cried out at my own touch. It was frightful.

Stupid the things you think of in moments of disaster. I thought: damn it, only three weeks and one day to my medical. I’ll never pass it...

Never pull knives out of wounds, they say. It makes the bleeding worse. You can die from pulling knives out of wounds. Well... I forgot all that. I could see only that Acey-Carthy-Todd had left me for dead and if he found me alive when he came back he would most certainly finish the job. Therefore I had to get out of his office before he came back. And it seemed incongruous, really, to walk round Warwick with a knife in one’s back. So I pulled it out.

I pulled it out in two stages and more or less fainted after each. Kidded myself it was concussion from the mantelshelf, but I was crying as well. No stoic, Matt Shore.

When it was out I lay where I was for a while, looking at it, snivelling weakly and feeling the sticky warmth slowly spread, but being basically reassured because I was pretty sure by then that the knife had not gone through into my lung. It must have been deflected by hitting my shoulder blade: it had been embedded to three or four inches, but slanting, not straight in deep. I wasn’t going to die. Or not yet.

After a while I got up on to my knees. I didn’t have all the time in the world. I put my right hand on Carthy-Todd’s desk: pulled myself to my feet.

Swayed. Thought it would be much much worse if I fell down again. Leant my hip against the desk and looked vaguely round the office.

The bottom drawer of the second filing cabinet was open.

Shouldn’t be. I’d shut it.

Open.

I shifted myself off the desk and tried a few steps. Tottered. Made it. Leant gingerly against the wall. Looked down into the drawer.

The cardboard boxes were still there. The empty tin was still there. The small heavy tin wasn’t.

Realised coldly that the future no longer meant simply getting myself to safety out of that office, but getting to the Duke before the bomb did.

It was only four hundred yards... Only...

I’d have to do it, I thought, because if I hadn’t searched the office Carthy-Todd wouldn’t now be in a tearing hurry. When I didn’t turn up to ferry home the White knights, or turn up anywhere again for that matter, except with a stab wound in a ditch, the Duke would say where I had been last... and Carthy-Todd would want to avoid a police investigation like a slug shrinking away from salt. He wouldn’t wait for that. He would obliterate my tracks.

There was something else missing from the office. I didn’t know what it was, just knew it was something. It niggled for a moment, but was gone. Didn’t think it could be important...

Walked with deliberation to the door. Opened it, went outside. Stopped dead at the top of the stairs, feeling dizzy and weak.

Well. Had to get down them somehow. Had to.

The handrail was on the left-hand side. I couldn’t bear to lift my left arm. Turned round, hung on tightly, and went down backwards.

‘There you are,’ I said aloud. ‘You bloody can.’ Didn’t convince myself. It took Carthy-Todd to convince.

I laughed weakly. I was a fully paid up insurer with the Fund. Like to see Carthy-Todd pay my claim... a thousand smackers for a knife in the back. Lovely.

Rolled out into the hot sunlit street as light headed as a blond.

Blond Acey Jones...

Acey Jones was being pushed. Hurried. Knowing I’d found him out but still believing he could retrieve the situation. Still make his two hundred thousand. If he kept his nerve. If he killed the Duke immediately, this afternoon, and somehow made it look like an accident. If he dumped me somewhere later, as he had the Major...

He would think he could still do it. He didn’t know I’d told Colin, didn’t know that Colin knew he was Carthy-Todd...

The empty street had got much longer during the afternoon. Also it wouldn’t stay absolutely still. It shimmered. It undulated. The pavement was uneven. Every time I put my foot down the paving stones reached up and stabbed me in the back.

I passed only an elderly woman on the way. She was muttering to herself. I realised that I was, too.

Half way. I squinted along at the gate of the car park. Had to make it. Had to. And that wasn’t all. Had to find someone to go and fetch the Duke, so that I could explain... explain...

Felt myself falling and put a hand out towards the wall. Mustn’t shut my eyes... I’d be done for... spun heavily against the bricks and shuddered at the result. Rested my head against the wall, trying not to weep. Couldn’t spare the time. Had to get on.

I pushed myself back into a moderately upright walking position. My feet couldn’t tell properly how far it was down to the pavement: half the time I was climbing imaginary steps.

Weird.

Something warm on my left hand. I looked down. My head swam. Blood was running down my fingers, dripping on to the pavement. Looked up again, along to the course. Head swam again. Didn’t know if it was concussion or heat or loss of blood. Only knew it reduced the time factor. Had to get there. Quickly.

One foot in front of the other, I told myself... just go on doing that: one foot in front of the other. And you’ll get there.

Concentrate.

I got there. Gate to the car park. And no official guarding it. At that time in the afternoon, they’d given up expecting further customers.

I said ‘Ohh...’ in weak frustration. Have to go still further. Have to find someone... I turned in to the car park. Through the car park there was a gate into the paddock. Lots of people there. Lots...

I went between the cars, staggering, holding on to them, feeling my knees bending, knowing the dizzy weakness was winning and caring less and less about the jagged pain of every step. Had to find someone. Had to.

Someone suddenly called to me from quite close.

‘Matt!’

I stopped. Looked slowly round. Midge was climbing out of Colin’s parked Aston Martin down the row and running to catch me up.

‘Matt,’ she said, ‘We’ve been looking for you. I came back to the car because I was tired. Where have you been?’

She put her hand with friendship on my left arm.

I said thickly, ‘Don’t... touch me.’

She took her hand away with a jerk. ‘Matt!’

She looked at me more closely, at first in puzzlement and then in anxiety. Then she looked at her fingers, and where she’d grasped my coat there were bright red smears.

‘It’s blood,’ she said blankly.

I nodded a fraction. My mouth was dry. I was getting very tired.

‘Listen... Do you know the Duke of Wessex?’

‘Yes. But...’ she protested.

‘Midge,’ I interrupted. ‘Go and find him. Bring him here... I know it sounds stupid... but someone is trying to kill him... with a bomb.’

‘Like Colin? But that wasn’t...’

‘Fetch him, Midge,’ I said. ‘Please.’

‘I can’t leave you. Not like this.’

‘You must.’

She looked at me doubtfully.

‘Hurry.’

‘I’ll get you some help, too,’ she said. She turned lightly on her heel and half walked, half ran towards the paddock. I leant the bottom of my spine against a shiny grey Jaguar and wondered how difficult it would be to prevent Carthy-Todd from planting his bomb. That tin... it was small enough to fit into a binocular case... probably identical with the one which had destroyed the Cherokee. I would have sweated at the thought of so much confined explosive power if I hadn’t been sweating clammily already.

Why didn’t they come? My mouth was drier... The day was airless... I moved restlessly against the car. After I’d told the Duke, he’d have to go off somewhere and stay safely out of sight until the Board of Trade had dealt with Carthy-Todd...

I dispassionately watched the blood drip from my fingers on to the grass. I could feel that all the back of my coat was soaked. Couldn’t afford a new one, either. Have to get it cleaned, and have the slit invisibly mended. Get myself mended, too, as best I could. Harley wouldn’t keep the job for me. He’d have to get someone else in my place. The Board of Trade doctors wouldn’t let me fly again for weeks and weeks. If you. gave a pint of blood as a donor, they grounded you for over a month... I’d lost more than a pint involuntarily, by the looks of things... though a pint would make a pretty good mess, if you spilled it.

I lifted my lolling head up with a jerk. Got to stay awake until they came. Got to explain to the Duke...

Things were beginning to fuzz round the edges. I licked my dry lips. Didn’t do much good. Didn’t have any moisture in my tongue either.

I finally saw them, and it seemed a long way off, coming through the gate from the paddock. Not just Midge and the Duke, but two others as well. Young Matthew, jigging along in front.

And Nancy.

Chanter had receded into the unimportant past. I didn’t give him a thought. Everything was as it had been before, the day she flew to Haydock. Familiar, friendly, trusting. The girl I hadn’t wanted to get involved with, who had melted a load of ice like an acetylene torch.

Across the sea of cars Midge pointed in my direction and they began to come towards me, crossing through the rows. When they were only twenty or so yards away, on the far side of the row in front of me, they unaccountably stopped.

Come on, I thought. For God’s sake come on.

They didn’t move.

With an effort I pushed myself upright from the Jaguar and took the few steps past its bonnet, going towards them. On my left, six cars along, was parked what was evidently the Duke’s Rolls. On the bonnet stood a bright red and gold tin. Matthew was pointing, wanting to cross over and fetch it, and Midge was saying urgently, ‘No, come on, Matt said to come quickly, and he’s bleeding...’

Matthew gave her a concerned look and then nodded, but at the last second temptation was too much and he ran over and picked up the tin and started back to join them.

Bright red and gold tin. Containing sticks of orange peel dipped in chocolate. It had been on the desk. And afterwards... not on the desk. Something missing. Red and gold tin.

Missing from Carthy-Todd’s desk.

My heart bumped. I shouted, and my voice came out hopelessly weak.

‘Matthew, throw it to me.’

He looked up doubtfully. The others began to walk through the rows of cars towards him. They would reach him before I could. They would be standing all together, Nancy and Midge and the Duke and young Matthew, who knew too that I’d been in Carthy-Todd’s office that day.

I scanned the car park desperately, but he was there. He’d put the tin on the car and simply waited for them to come out of the races. The last race was about to start... the horses had gone down to the post and at that moment the loudspeakers were announcing ‘They’re under starter’s orders’... He knew it wouldn’t be long before they came... He was standing over nearer the rails of the course with his black head showing and the sun glinting on his glasses. He had meant just to kill young Matthew and the Duke, but now there were Nancy and Midge as well... and he didn’t know he couldn’t get away with it... didn’t know Colin knew... and he was too far away for me to tell him... I couldn’t shout... could barely talk.

‘Matthew, throw me the tin.’ It was a whisper, nothing more.

I began to walk towards him, holding out my right arm. Stumbled. Swayed. Frightened him.

The others were closing on him.

No more time. I took a breath. Straightened up,

‘Matthew,’ I said loudly. ‘To save your life, throw me that tin. Throw it now. At once.’

He was upset, uncertain, worried.

He threw the tin.

It was taking Carthy-Todd several seconds to press the transmission buttons. He wasn’t as adept at it as Rupert Tyderman. He wouldn’t be able to see that he had missed his opportunity with the Duke, and that now there was only me. But whatever he did, he’d lost the game.

The red gold tin floated towards me like a blazing sun and seemed to take an eternity crossing the fifteen feet from Matthew. I stretched my right arm forward to meet it and when it landed on my hand I flung it with a bowling action high into the air behind where I was standing, back as far as I could over the parked rows, because behind them, at the rear, there was empty space.

The bomb went off in the air. Three seconds out of my hand, six seconds out of Matthew’s. Six seconds. As long a time as I had ever lived.

The red and gold tin disintegrated into a cracking fireball like the sun, and the blast of it knocked both young Matthew and me with a screeching jolt flat to the ground. The windows in most of the cars in the car park crashed into splinters, and the two Fords just below the explosion were thrown about like toys. Nancy and Midge and the Duke, still sheltered between two cars, rocked on their feet and clung to each other for support.

Along in the stands, we heard later, no one took much notice. The race had started and the commentator’s voice was booming out, filling everyone’s ears with the news that Colin Ross was lying handy and going nicely on the favourite half a mile from home.

Young Matthew picked himself smartly up and said in amazement ‘What was that?’

Midge completed the four bare steps to bis side and held his hand.

‘It was a bomb,’ she said in awe. ‘Like Matt said, it was a bomb.’

I was trying to get myself up off the grass. Even though the Duke was for the present safe, the Fund money was not. Might as well try for set and match...

On my knees, I said to Matthew, ‘Can you see Carthy-Todd anywhere? It was his tin... his bomb...’

‘Carthy-Todd?’ repeated the Duke vaguely. ‘It can’t be. Impossible. He wouldn’t do a thing like that.’

‘He just did,’ I said. I was having no success in getting up any further. Had nothing much left. A strong arm slid under my right armpit, helping me. A soft calm voice said in my ear ‘You look as if you’d be better staying down.’

‘Nancy...’

‘How did you get into this state?’

‘Carthy-Todd... had a knife...’

‘There he is!’ Matthew suddenly shouted. ‘Over there.’

I wobbled to my feet. Looked where Matthew was pointing. Carthy-Todd, running between the rows. Nancy looked too.

‘But that’s,’ she said incredulously, ‘That’s the man I saw in the car with Major Tyderman. I’d swear to it.’

‘You may have to,’ I said.

‘He’s running to get out,’ Matthew shouted. ‘Let’s head him off.’

It was almost a game to him, but his enthusiasm infected several other racegoers who had come early out of the races and found their windows in splinters.

‘Head him off,’ I heard a man shout, and another ‘There, over there. Head him off.’

I leaned in hopeless weakness against a car, and dimly watched. Carthy-Todd caught sight of the growing number converging on him. Hesitated. Changed course. Doubled back on his tracks. Made for the only free and open space he could see. The green grass behind him. The racecourse itself.

‘Don’t...’ I said. It came out a whisper, and even if I’d had a microphone he wouldn’t have heard.

‘Oh God,’ Nancy said beside me. ‘Oh no.’

Carthy-Todd didn’t see his danger until it was too late. He ran blindly out across the course looking over his shoulder at the bunch of men who had suddenly, aghast, stopped chasing him.

He ran straight in front of the thundering field of three year olds sweeping round the last bend to their final flying effort up the straight.

Close bunched, they had no chance of avoiding him. He went down under the pounding hooves like a rag into a threshing machine, and a second later the flowing line of horses broke up into tumbling chaos... crashing at thirty miles an hour... legs whirling... jockeys thudding to the ground like bright blobs of paint... a groaning shambles on the bright green turf... and side-stepping, swaying, looking over their shoulders, the rear ones in the field swerved past and went on to a finish that no one watched.

Nancy said in anguish, ‘Colin!’ and ran towards the rails. The pink and white silks lay still, a crumpled bundle curled in a protective ball. I followed her, plod by plod, feeling that I couldn’t go any further, I simply couldn’t. One car short of the rails, I stopped. I clung on to it, sagging. The tide was going out.

The pink and white ball stirred, unrolled itself, stood up. Relief made me even weaker. Crowds of people had appeared on the course, running, helping, gawping... closing in like a screen round the strewn bodies... I waited for what seemed an age, and then Colin and Nancy reappeared through a thronging wall of people and came back towards the car park.

‘Only stunned for a second,’ I heard him say to a passing enquirer. ‘I shouldn’t go over there...’ But the enquirer went on, looking avid.

Nancy saw me and waved briefly, and ducked under the rails with Colin.

‘He’s dead,’ she said abruptly. She looked sick. ‘That man... he... he was Acey Jones... Colin said you knew... his hair was lying on the grass... but it was a wig... and there was this bald white head and that pale hair... and you could see the line of grease paint... and the black moustache...’ Her eyes were wide. Full of horror.

‘Don’t think about it,’ Colin said. He looked at me. ‘She shouldn’t have come over...’

‘I had to... you were lying there,’ she protested. He went on looking at me. His expression changed. He said ‘Nancy said you were hurt. She didn’t say... how badly.’ He turned abruptly to Nancy and said ‘Fetch the doctor.’

‘I tried to before,’ she said. ‘But he said he was on duty and couldn’t see to Matt before the race in case he was needed...’ She tailed off and looked over at the crowd on the course. ‘He’ll be over there... seeing to those two jockeys...’ She looked back at Colin with sudden fright. ‘Midge said Matt had cut his arm... Is it worse...?’

‘I’ll fetch him,’ Colin said grimly, and ran back to the battlefield. Nancy looked at me with such flooding anxiety that I grinned.

‘Not as bad as all that,’ I said.

‘But you were walking... you threw that bomb with such force... I didn’t realise... You do look ill...’

The Duke and young Matthew and Midge reappeared from somewhere. I hadn’t seen them come. Things were getting hazier.

The Duke was upset. ‘My dear chap,’ he said over and over again. ‘My dear chap...’

‘How did you know it was a bomb?’ Matthew asked.

‘Just knew.’

‘That was a pretty good throw.’

‘Saved our lives,’ said the Duke. ‘My dear chap...’

Colin was back.

‘He’s coming,’ he said. ‘Immediately.’

‘Saved our lives...’ said the Duke again. ‘How can we repay...’

Colin looked at him straightly. ‘I’ll tell you how, sir. Set him up in business... or take over Derrydowns... give him an air taxi business, based near Newmarket. He’ll make you a a profit. He’ll have me for a customer, and Annie, and Kenny... and in fact the whole town, because the Fund can go on now, can’t it?’ He looked at me enquiringly, and I fractionally nodded. ‘It may cost a bit to put right,’ Colin said, ‘But your Fund can go on, sir, and do all the good it was meant to...’

‘An air taxi business. Take over Derrydowns,’ the Duke repeated. ‘My dear Colin, what a spendid idea. Of course. Of course.’

I tried to say something... anything... to begin to thank him for so casually thrusting the world into my fingers... but I couldn’t say anything... couldn’t speak. I could feel my legs collapsing. Could do nothing any more to stop them. Found myself kneeling on the grass, keeping myself from falling entirely by hanging on to a door handle of the car. Didn’t want to fall. Hurt too much.

‘Matt!’ Nancy said. She was down on her knees beside me. Midge too. And Colin.

‘Don’t bloody die,’ Nancy said.

I grinned at her. Felt light-headed. Grinned at Colin. Grinned at Midge.

‘Want a lodger?’ I asked.

‘Soon as you like,’ Colin said.

‘Nancy,’ I said. ‘Will you... will you...’

‘You nit,’ she said. ‘You great nit.’

My hand slipped out of the door handle. Colin caught me as I fell. Everything drifted quietly away, and by the time I reached the ground I couldn’t feel anything at all.