Risk

14

Jossie met me on the doorstep, fizzing with life.

‘Dad says please come in for a drink.’ She held the door open for me and looked uncertainly at my face. ‘Are you all right? I mean... I suppose I didn’t realise...’

I kissed her mouth. Soft and sweet. It made me hungry.

‘A drink would be fine,’ I said.

William Finch was already pouring Scotch as we walked into his office-sitting-room. He greeted me with a smile and held out the glass.

‘You look as if you could do with it,’ he said. ‘You’ve been having a rough time, by all accounts.’

‘I’ve a fellow feeling for footballs.’ I took the glass, lifted it in a token toast, and sipped the pale fine spirit.

Jossie said, ‘Kicked around?’

I nodded, smiling. ‘Somebody,’ I said, ‘is playing a strategic game.’

Finch looked at me curiously. ‘Do you know who?’

‘Not exactly. Not yet.’

Jossie stood beside her father, pouring grapefruit juice out of a small bottle. One could see heredity clearly at work: they both had the same tall, well-proportioned frame, the same high carriage of head on long neck, the same air of bending the world to their ways, instead of being themselves bent. He looked at her fondly, a hint of civilised amusement in his fatherly pride. Even her habitual mockery, it seemed, stemmed from him.

He turned his greying head to me again, and said he expected the police would sort out all the troubles, in time.

‘I expect so,’ I said neutrally.

‘And I hope the villains get shut up in small spaces for years and years,’ Jossie said.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘they may.’

Finch buried his nose in a large gin and tonic and surfaced with a return to the subject which interested him most. Kidnappings came a poor second to racing.

‘My next ride?’ I echoed. ‘Tomorrow, as a matter of fact. Tapestry runs in the Oasthouse Cup.’

His astonishment scarcely boosted my non-existent confidence. ‘Good heavens,’ he said. ‘I mean, to be frank, Ro, is it wise?’

‘Totally not.’

‘Then why?’

‘I have awful difficulty in saying no.’

Jossie laughed. ‘Spineless,’ she said.

The door opened and a dark-haired woman came in, walking beautifully in a long black dress. She seemed to move in a glow of her own; and the joy died out of Jossie like an extinguished fire.

Finch went towards the newcomer with a welcoming smile, took her elbow proprietorially, and steered her in my direction. ‘Lida, my dear, this is Roland Britten. Ro, Lida Swann.’

A tapeworm with hooks, Jossie had said. The tapeworm had a broad expanse of unlined forehead, dark blue eyes, and raven hair combed smoothly back. As we shook hands, she pressed my fingers warmly. Her heavy sweet scent broadcast the same message as full breasts, tiny waist, narrow hips, and challenging smile: the sexual woman in full bloom. Diametrically opposite, I reflected, to my own preference for astringency and humour. Jossie watched our polite social exchanges with a scowl, and I wanted to walk over and hug her.

Why not, I thought. I disengaged myself from the sultry aura of Lida, took the necessary steps, and slid my arm firmly round Jossie’s waist.

‘We’ll be off, then,’ I said. ‘To feed the starving.’

Jossie’s scowl persisted across the hall, into the car, and five miles down the road.

‘I hate her,’ she said. ‘That sexy throaty voice... it’s all put on.’

‘It’s gin,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Too much gin alters the vocal chords.’

‘You’re having me on.’

‘I think I love you,’ I said.

‘That’s a damn silly thing to say.’

‘Why?’

‘You can’t love someone just because she hates her father’s girlfriend.’

‘A better reason than many.’

She turned her big eyes searchingly my way. I kept my own looking straight ahead, dealing with night on the country road.

‘Strong men fall for her like ninepins,’ she said.

‘But I’m weak.’

‘Spineless.’ She cheered up a good deal, and finally managed a smile. ‘Do you want me to come to Kempton tomorrow and cheer you on?’

‘Come and give Moira Longerman a double brandy when I fall off.’

Over dinner she said with some seriousness, ‘I suppose it’s occurred to you that the last twice you’ve raced, you’ve been whipped off into black holes straight after?’

‘It has,’ I said.

‘So are you — uh — at all scared, about tomorrow?’

‘I’d be surprised if it happened again.’

‘Surprise wouldn’t help you much.’

‘True.’

‘You’re absolutely infuriating,’ she said explosively. ‘If you know why you were abducted, why not tell me?’

‘I might be wrong, and I want to ask some questions first.’

‘What questions?’

‘What are you doing on Sunday?’

‘That’s not a question.’

‘Yes, it is,’ I said. ‘Would you care for a day on the Isle of Wight?’

With guilty misgivings about riding Tapestry I did my best to eat, and later, after leaving Jossie on her doorstep, to go home and sleep. As my system seemed to be stubbornly resisting my intention that it should return to normal, both enterprises met with only partial success. The Saturday morning face in the shaving mirror would have inspired faith in no one, not even Moira herself.

‘You’re a bloody fool,’ I said aloud, and my reflection agreed.

Coffee, boiled egg and toast to the good, I went down into the town to seek out owners of destitute warehouses. The estate agents, busy with hand-holding couples, told me impatiently that they had already given the information to the police.

‘Give it to me, too, then,’ I said. ‘It’s hardly a secret, is it?’

The bearded pale-faced man I’d asked looked harried and went off to consult. He came back with a slip of paper which he handed over as if contact with it had sullied his soul.

‘We have ceased to act for these people,’ he said earnestly. ‘Our board should no longer be affixed to the wall.’

I’d never known anyone actually say the word ‘affixed’ before. It wasn’t all he could say, either. ‘We wish to be considered as disassociated from the whole situation.’

I read the words written on the paper. ‘I’m sure you do,’ I said. ‘Could you tell me when you last heard from these people? And has anyone been enquiring recently about hiring or using the warehouse?’

‘Those people,’ he said disapprovingly, ‘appear to have let the warehouse several years ago to some army surplus suppliers, without informing us or paying fees due to us. We have received no instructions from them, then or since, regarding any further letting or sub-letting.’

‘Ta ever so,’ I said, and went grinning out to the street.

The words on the paper, which had so fussed the agents in retrospect, were ‘National Construction (Wessex) Ltd’, or in other words the mythical builders invented by Ownslow and Glitberg.

I picked up the rush reprint enlargements of Hilary’s photographs, and walked along to the office. All quiet there, as usual on Saturdays, with undone work still sitting repoachfully in heaps.

Averting my eyes, I telephoned to the police.

‘Any news?’ I said; and they said no there wasn’t.

‘Did you trace the owner of the van?’ I asked. No, they hadn’t.

‘Did it have an engine number?’ I said. Yes, they said, but it was not the original number for that particular vehicle, said vehicle having probably passed through many hands and rebuilding processes on its way to the warehouse.

‘And have you asked Mr Glitberg and Mr Ownslow what I was doing in a van inside their warehouse?’

There was silence at the other end.

‘Have you?’ I repeated.

They wanted to know why I should ask.

‘Oh come off it,’ I said. ‘I’ve been to the estate agents, same as you.’

Mr Glitberg and Mr Ownslow, it appeared, had been totally mystified as to why their warehouse should have been used in such a way. As far as they were concerned, it was let to an army surplus supply company, and the police should direct their enquiries to them.

‘Can you find these army surplus people?’ I asked. Not so far, they said. They cleared the police throat and cautiously added that Mr Glitberg and Mr Ownslow had categorically denied that they had imprisoned Mr Britten in a van in their warehouse, or anywhere else, for that matter, as revenge for the said Mr Britten having been instrumental in their custodial sentences for fraud.

‘Their actual words?’ I asked with interest. Not exactly. I had been given the gist.

I thanked them for the information, and disconnected. I thought they had probably not passed on everything they knew, but then neither had I, which made us quits.

The door of Trevor’s private office was locked, as mine had been, but we both had keys for each other’s rooms. I knew all the same that he wouldn’t have been pleased to see me searching uninvited through the papers in his filing cupboard, but I reckoned that as I’d had access to them anyway while he was on holiday, another peep would be no real invasion. I spent a concentrated hour reading cash books and ledgers; and then with a mind functioning more or less as normal I checked through the Denby Crest figures yet again. I had made no mistake with them, even in a daze. Fifty thousand pounds of clients’ trust funds were missing. I stared unseeingly at ‘Lady and Gentleman in a Carriage’ and thought bleakly about consequences.

There was a photo-copier in the outer office, busily operated every weekday by Debbie and Peter. I spent another hour of that quiet Saturday morning methodically printing private copies for my own use. Then I put all the books and papers back where I’d found them, locked Trevor’s office, and went down to the store in the basement.

The files I was looking for there were easy to find but were slim and uninformative, containing only copies of audits and not all the invoices, cash books and paying-in books from which the accounts had been drawn.

There was nothing odd in that. Under the Companies Act 1976, and also under the value added tax system, all such papers had to be kept available for three years and could legally be thrown away only after that, but most accountants returned the books to their clients for keeping, as like us they simply didn’t have enough storage space for everyone.

I left the files where they were, locked all the office doors, sealed my folder of photo-copies into a large envelope, and took it with me in some depression to Kempton Park.

The sight of Jossie in her swirly brown skirt brought the sun out considerably, and we despatched grapefruit juice in amicable understanding.

‘Dad’s brought the detestable Lida,’ she said, ‘so I came on my own.’

‘Does she live with you?’ I asked.

‘No, thank God.’ The idea alarmed her. ‘Five miles away, and that’s five thousand miles too close.’

‘What does the ever-sick secretary have to say about her?’

‘Sandy? It makes her even sicker.’ She drank the remains of her juice, smiling over the glass. ‘Actually Sandy wouldn’t be so bad, if she weren’t so wet. And you can cast out any slick theories about daughters being possessive of their footloose fathers, because actually I would have liked it rather a lot if he’d fallen for a peach.’

‘Does he know you don’t like Lida?’

‘Oh sure,’ she sighed. ‘I told him she was a flesh-eating orchid and he said I didn’t understand. End of conversation. The funny thing is,’ she added, ‘that it’s only when I’m with you that I can think of her without spitting.’

‘Appendicitis diverts the mind from toothache,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Thoughts from inside little white vans.’

‘Half the time,’ she said, ‘I think you’re crazy.’

She met some friends and went off with them, and I repaired to the weighing room to change into breeches, boots, and Moira Longerman’s red and white colours. When I came out, with my jacket on over the bright shirt, Binny Tomkins was waiting. On his countenance, the reverse of warmth and light.

‘I want to talk to you,’ he said.

‘Fine. Why not?’

He scowled. ‘Not here. Too many people. Walk down this way.’ He pointed to the path taken by the horses on their way from parade ring to track: a broad stretch of grass mostly unpopulated by racegoing crowds.

‘What is it?’ I said, as we emerged from the throng round the weighing room door, and started in the direction he wanted. ‘Is there something wrong with Tapestry?’

He shook his head impatiently, as if the idea were silly.

‘I want you to give the horse an easy race.’

I stopped walking. An easy race, in those terms, meant trying not to win.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Come on, there’s more...’ He went on a pace or two, looking back and waiting for me to follow. ‘I must talk to you. You must listen.’

There was more than usual scowling bad temper in his manner. Something like plain fear. Shaking my head, I went on with him, across the grass.

‘How much would you want?’ he said.

I stopped again. ‘I’m not doing it,’ I said.

‘I know, but... How about two hundred, tax free?’

‘You’re stupid, Binny.’

‘It’s all right for you,’ he said furiously. ‘But if Tapestry wins today I’ll lose everything. My yard, my livelihood — everything.’

‘Why?’

He was trembling with tension. ‘I owe a lot of money.’

‘To bookmakers?’ I said.

‘Of course to bookmakers.’

‘You’re a fool,’ I said flatly.

‘Smug bastard,’ he said furiously. ‘I’d give anything to have you back inside that van, and not here today.’

I looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Tapestry may not win anyway,’ I said. ‘Nothing’s a certainty.’

‘I’ve got to know in advance,’ he said incautiously.

‘And if you assure your bookmaker Tapestry won’t win, he’ll let you off the hook?’

‘He’ll let me off a bit,’ he said. ‘He won’t press for the rest.’

‘Until next time,’ I said. ‘Until you’re in deeper still.’

Bunny’s eyes stared inwards to the hopeless future, and I guessed he would never take the first step back to firm ground, which was in his case to stop gambling altogether.

‘There are easier ways for trainers to lose races,’ I pointed out, ‘than trying to bribe the jockey.’

His scowl reached Neanderthal proportions. ‘She pays the lad who does her horse to watch him like a hawk and give her a report on everything that happens. I can’t sack him or change him to another horse, because she says if I do she’ll send Tapestry to another trainer.’

‘I’m amazed she hasn’t already,’ I said: and she would have done, I thought, if she’d been able to hear that conversation.

‘You’ve only got to ride a bad race,’ he said. ‘Get boxed in down the far side and swing wide coming into the straight.’

‘No,’ said. ‘Not on purpose.’

I seemed to be remarkably good at inspiring fury. Binny would happily have seen me fall dead at his feet.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry about the fix you’re in. I really am, whether you believe it or not. But I’m not going to try to get you out of it by cheating Moira or the horse or the punters or myself, and that’s that.’

‘You bastard,’ he said.

Five minutes later, when I was back in the hub of the racecourse outside the weighing room, a hand touched me on the arm and a drawly voice spoke behind my ear.

‘My dear Ro, what are your chances?’

I turned, smiling, to the intelligent face of Vivian Iverson. In the daylight on a racecourse, where I’d first met him, he wore his clothes with the same elegance and flair that he had extended to his Vivat Club. Dark green blazer over grey checked trousers; hair shining black in the April sun. Quiet amusement in the observant eyes.

‘In love, war, or the three-thirty?’ I said.

‘Of remaining at liberty, my dear chap.’

I blinked. ‘Um,’ I said. ‘What would you offer?’

‘Five to four against?’

‘I hope you’re wrong,’ I said.

Underneath the banter, he was detectably serious. ‘It just so happens that last night in the club I heard our friend Connaught Powys talking on the telephone. To be frank, my dear Ro, after I’d heard your name mentioned, I more or less deliberately listened.’

‘On an extension?’

‘Tut tut,’ he said reprovingly. ‘Unfortunately not. I don’t know who he was talking to. But he said — his exact words — “As far as Britten is concerned you must agree that precaution is better than cure,” and a bit later he said “If dogs start sniffing around, the best thing to do is chain them up”.’

‘Charming,’ I said blankly.

‘Do you need a bodyguard?’

‘Are you offering yourself?’

He shook his head, smiling. ‘I could hire you one. Karate. Bullet proof glass. All the mod cons.’

‘I think,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘that I’ll just increase the insurance policies.’

‘Against kidnapping? No one will take you on.’

‘Checks and balances,’ I said. ‘No one’ll push me off a spring-board if it means a rock falling on their own head.’

‘Be sure to let them know the rock exists.’

‘Your advice,’ I said, smiling, ‘is worth its weight in ocean-going sailing boats.’

Moira Longerman twinkled with her bright bird-eyes in the parade ring before Tapestry’s race and stroked my arm repeatedly, her small thin hand sliding delicately over the shiny scarlet sleeve.

‘Now, Roland, you’ll do your best, I know you’ll do your best.’

‘Yes,’ I said guiltily, flexing several flabby muscles and watching Tapestry’s highly tuned ones ripple under his coat as he walked round the ring with his lad.

‘I saw you talking to Binny just now, Roland.’

‘Did you, Moira?’ I switched my gaze to her face.

‘Yes, I did.’ She nodded brightly. ‘I was up in the stands, up there in the bar, looking down to the paddock. I saw Binny take you away for a talk.’

She looked at me steadily, shrewdly, asking the vital question in total silence. Her hand went on stroking. She waited intently, expecting an answer.

‘I promise you,’ I said plainly, ‘that if I make a hash of it, it’ll be against my will.’

She stopped stroking: patted my arm instead, and smiled. ‘That will do nicely, Roland.’

Binny stood ten feet away, unable to make even a show of the civility due from trainer to owner. His face was rigid, his eyes expressionless, and even the usual scowl had frozen into a more general and powerful gloom. I thought I had probably been wrong to think of Binny as a stupid fool. There was something about him at that moment which raised prickles on the skin and images of murder.

The bell rang for jockeys to mount, and it was the lad, not Binny, who gave me a leg-up into the saddle.

‘I’m not going to take much more of this,’ Moira said pleasantly to the world in general.

Binny ignored her as if he hadn’t heard; and maybe he hadn’t. He’d also given me no riding instructions, which I didn’t mind in the least. He seemed wholly withdrawn and unresponsive, and when Moira waved briefly as I walked away on Tapestry, he did not accompany her across to the stands. Even for him, his behaviour was incredible.

Tapestry himself was in a great mood, tossing his head with excitement and bouncing along in tiny cantering strides as if he had April spring fever in all his veins. I remembered his plunging start in the Gold Cup and realised that this time I’d be lucky if he didn’t bolt with me from the post. Far from being last from indecision, this time, in my weakened state, I could be forty lengths in front by the second fence, throwing away all chance of staying-power at the end.

Tapestry bounced gently on his toes in the parade past the stands, while the other runners walked. Bounced playfully back at a canter to the start, which in three mile ’chases at Kempton Park was to the left of the stands and in full view of most of the crowd.

There were eleven other jockeys walking around there, making final adjustments to girths and goggles and answering to the starter’s roll call. The starter’s assistant, tightening the girths of the horse beside me, looked over his shoulder and asked me if mine were all right, or should he tighten those too.

If I hadn’t recently been through so many wringers, I would simply have said yes, and he would have pulled the buckles up a notch or two, and I wouldn’t have given it another thought. As it was, in my over-cautious state, I had a sudden sharp vision of Binny’s dangerous detachment, and remembered the desperation behind his appeal to me to lose. The prickles returned in force.

I slid off Tapestry’s back and looped his reins over my arm.

‘Just want to check...’ I said vaguely to the starter’s assistant.

He nodded briefly, glancing at his watch. One minute to race-time, his face said, so hurry up.

It was my own saddle. I intimately knew its every flap, buckle, scratch and stain. I checked it thoroughly inch by inch with fingers and eyes, and could see nothing wrong. Girths, stirrups, leathers, buckles; everything as it should be. I pulled the girths tighter myself, and the starter told me to get mounted.

Looking over my shoulder, I thought, for the rest of my life. Seeing demons in shadows. But the feeling of danger wouldn’t go away.

‘Hurry up, Britten.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I stood on the ground, looking at Tapestry tossing his head.

‘Britten!’

Reins, I thought. Bridle. Bit. Reins. If the bridle broke, I couldn’t control the horse and he wouldn’t win the race. Many races had been lost, from broken bridles.

It was not too difficult to see, if one looked really closely. The leather reins were stitched on to the rings at each side of the bit, and the stitches on the off-side rein had nearly all been severed.

Three miles and twenty fences at bucketing speed with just two strands of thread holding my right-hand rein.

‘Britten!’

I gave a jerking tug, and the remaining stitches came apart in my hand. I pulled the rein off the ring and waved the free end in the air.

‘Sorry, sir,’ I said. ‘I need another bridle.’

‘What? Oh very well...’ He used his telephone to call the weighing room to send a replacement out quickly. Tapestry’s lad appeared, looking worried, to help change the headpiece, and I pointed out to him, as I gave him Binny’s bridle, the parted stitching.

‘I don’t know how it could have got like that,’ he said anxiously. ‘I didn’t know it was like that, honest. I cleaned it yesterday, and all.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It’s not your fault.’

‘Yes, but...’

‘Give me a leg-up,’ I said, ‘and don’t worry.’

He continued all the same to look upset. Good lads took it grievously to heart if anything was proved lacking in the way they turned out their horses, and Tapestry’s lad was as good as the horse deserved. Binny, I thought not for the first time, was an all-out one-man disaster area, a blight to himself and everyone around.

‘Line up,’ shouted the starter, with his hand on the lever. ‘We’re five minutes late.’

Tapestry did his best to put that right two seconds later with another arm-wrenching departure, but owing to one or two equally impetuous opponents I thankfully got him anchored in mid-field; and there we stayed for all of the first circuit. The pace, once we’d settled down, was nothing like as fast as the Gold Cup, and I had time to worry about the more usual things, like meeting the fences right, and not running out altogether, which was an added hazard at Kempton where the wings leading to the fences were smaller and lower than on other courses, and tended to give tricky horses bad ideas.

During the second circuit my state of unfitness raised its ugly head in no uncertain way, and it would be fair to say that for the last mile Tapestry’s jockey did little except cling on. Tapestry truly was, however, a great performer, and in consequence of the cheers and acclaim in the unsaddling enclosure after the Gold Cup, he seemed, like many much-feted horses, to have become conscious of his own star status. It was the extra dimension of his new pride which took us in a straight faultless run over the last three fences in the straight, and his own will to win which extended his neck and his stride on the run-in. Tapestry won the Oasthouse Cup by four lengths, and it was all the horse’s doing, not mine.

Moira kissed her horse with tears running down her cheeks, and kissed me as well, and everyone else within mouth-shot, indiscriminately. There was nothing uptight or inhibited about the Longerman joy, and the most notable person not there to share it was the horse’s trainer. Binny Tomkins was nowhere to be seen.

‘Drink,’ Moira shrieked at me. ‘Owners and trainers bar.’

I nodded, speechless from exertion and back-slapping, and struggled through the throng with my saddle to be weighed in. It was fabulous, I thought dazedly; fantastic, winning another big race. More than I’d ever reckoned possible. A bursting delight like no other on earth. Even knowing how little I’d contributed couldn’t dampen the wild inner rejoicing. I’d never be able to give it up, I thought. I’d still be struggling round in the mud and the rain at fifty, chasing the marvellous dream. Addiction wasn’t only a matter of needles in the arm.

Moira in the bar was dispensing champagne and bright laughs in copious quantities, and had taken Jossie closely in tow.

‘Ro, darling Ro,’ Moira said, ‘have you seen Binny anywhere?’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Wasn’t it odd, the bridle breaking like that?’ Her innocent-seeming eyes stared up into my own. ‘I talked to the lad, you see.’

‘These things do happen,’ I said.

‘You mean, no one can prove anything?’

‘Roughly that.’

‘But aren’t you the teeniest bit angry?’

I smiled from the glowing inner pleasure. ‘We won the race. What else matters?’

She shook her head. ‘It was a wicked thing to do.’

Desperation, I thought, could spawn deeds the doers wouldn’t sanely contemplate. Like cutting loose a rein. Like kidnapping the enemy. Like whatever else lay ahead before we were done. I shut out the shadowy devils and drank to life and the Oasthouse Cup.

Jossie, too, had a go at me when we wandered later out to the carpark.

‘Is Moira right?’ she demanded. ‘Did Binny rig it for you to come to grief?’

‘I should think so.’

‘She says you ought to report it.’

‘There’s no need.’

‘Why not?’

‘He’s programmed to self-destruct before the end of the season.’

‘Do you mean suicide?’ she said.

‘You’re too literal. I meant he’ll go bust to the bookies with a reverberating bang.’

‘You’re drunk.’

I shook my head, grinning. ‘High. Quite different. Care to join me on my cloud?’

‘A puff of wind,’ she said, ‘and you’d evaporate.’