Risk

8

‘Don’t I know you?’ I said, puzzled, standing up.

‘Sure.’ She looked resigned, as if this sort of thing happened often. ‘Cast your mind back to long hair, no lipstick, dirty jeans and ponies.’

I looked at the short bouncy bob, the fashionable make-up, the swirling brown skirt topped by a neat waist-length fur-fabric jacket. Someone’s daughter, I thought; recently and satisfactorily grown up.

‘Whose daughter?’ I said.

‘My own woman.’

‘Reasonable.’

She was enjoying herself, pleased with her impact on men.

‘Jossie Finch, actually.’

‘Wow,’ I said.

‘Every grub spreads its wings.’

‘To where will you fly?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’ve heard you were smooth.’

‘Trevor isn’t here, I’m afraid.’

‘Mm. Still on his hols?’

I nodded.

‘Then I was to deliver the same message to you, if you were here instead.’

‘Sit down?’ I suggested, gesturing to a chair.

‘Can’t stop. Sorry. Message from Dad. What are you doing about the Commissioners? He said he was absolutely not going before any so and so Commissioners next Thursday, or lurid words to that effect.’

‘No, he won’t have to.’

‘He also says he would have sent the Petty Cash book, or whatever, in with me this morning, but his secretary is sick, and if you ask me she’s the sickest thing that ever broke fingernails on a typewriter, and she has not done something or other with petty cash receipts or vouchers, or whatever it is you need. However...’ she paused, drawing an exaggerated breath. ‘Dad says, if you would like to drop in this evening you could go round the yard with him at evening stables, and have a noggin afterwards, and he will personally press into your hot little palms the book your assistant has been driving him mad about.’

‘I’d like that,’ I said.

‘Good. I’ll tell him.’

‘And will you be there?’

‘Ah,’ she said, her eyes laughing, ‘a little uncertainty is the H.P. sauce on the chips.’

‘And the spice of life to you, too.’

She gave me an excellent smile, spun on her heel so that the skirt swirled and the hair bounced, and walked out of the office.

Jossie Finch, daughter of William Finch, master of Axwood Stables. I knew her father in the way all long-time amateur riders knew all top trainers; enough to greet and chat to at the races. Since his was one of the racing accounts which pre-dated my arrival in the firm, and which Trevor liked to do himself, I had never before actually visited his yard.

I was interested enough to want to go, in spite of all my troubles. He had approximately ninety horses in his care, both jumpers and flat racers, and winners were taken for granted. Apart from Tapestry, most of the horses I usually rode were of moderate class, owned with more hope than expectation. To see a big stableful of top performers was always a feast. I would be safe from abduction there. And Jossie looked a cherry on the top.

When Peter and Debbie came back I laid into them for going out and leaving the outer door unlocked, and they adopted put-upon expressions and said they thought it was all right, as I was there, which would stop people sneaking in to steal things.

My fault, I thought more reasonably. I should have locked it after them myself. I would have to reshape a lot of habits. It could easily have been the enemy who walked in, not Jossie Finch.

I spent part of the afternoon on Mr Wells, but more of it trying to trace Connaught Powys.

We had his original address on file, left over from the days when he had rigged the computer and milked his firm of a quarter of a million pounds in five years. The firm’s audit was normally Trevor’s affair, but one year, when Trevor was away a great deal with an ulcer, I had done it instead, and by some fluke had discovered the fraud. It had been one of those things you don’t believe even when it is in front of your eyes. Connaught Powys had been an active director, and had paid his taxes on a comfortable income. The solid, untaxed lolly had disappeared without trace, but Connaught himself hadn’t been quick enough.

I tried his old address. A sharp voice on the telephone told me the new occupants knew nothing of the Powys whereabouts, and wished people would stop bothering them, and regretted the day they’d ever moved into a crook’s house.

I tried his solicitors, who froze when they heard who was trying to find him. They could not, they said, divulge his present address without his express permission: which, their tone added, he was as likely to give as Shylock to a church bazaar.

I tried Leyhill Prison. No good.

I tried finally a racing acquaintance called Vivian Iverson who ran a gambling club in London and always seemed to know of corruption scandals before the stories publicly broke.

‘My dear Ro,’ he said, ‘you’re fairly non gratis in that quarter, don’t you know.’

‘I could guess.’

‘You put the shivers up embezzlers, my friend. They’re leaving the Newbury area in droves.’

‘Oh sure. And I pick the Derby winner every year.’

‘You may well jest, my dear chap, but the whisper has gone round.’ He hesitated. ‘Those two little dazzlers, Glitberg and Ownslow, have been seen talking to Powys, who has got rid of his indoor pallor under a sun lamp. The gist, so I’m fairly reliably told, was a hate-Britten chorus.’

‘With vengeance intended?’

‘No information, my dear chap.’

‘Could you find out?’

‘I only listen, my dear Ro,’ he said. ‘If I hear the knives are out, I’ll tell you.’

‘You’re a pet,’ I said dryly.

He laughed. ‘Connaught Powys comes here to play, most Fridays.’

‘What time?’

‘You do ask a lot, my dear chap. After dinner to dawn.’

‘How about making me an instant member?’

He sighed heavily. ‘If you are bent on suicide, I’ll tell the desk to let you in.’

‘See you,’ I said. ‘And thanks.’

I put down the receiver and stared gloomily into space. Glitberg and Ownslow. Six years apiece, reduced for good behaviour... They could have met Connaught Powys in Leyhill, and it would have been no joy to any of them that I had put them all there.

Glitberg and Ownslow had served on a local council and robbed the ratepayers blind, and I’d turned them up through some dealings they’d done with one of my clients. My client had escaped with a fine, and had removed his custom from me with violent curses.

I wondered how much time all the embezzlers and bent solicitors and corrupted politicians in Leyhill Prison spent in thinking up new schemes for when they got out. Glitberg and Ownslow must already have been out for about six months.

Debbie had gone to the dentist and Peter to his Institute of Accounting Staff class, and this time I did lock the door behind them.

I felt too wretchedly tired to bother any further with Mr Wells. The shakes of the morning had gone, but even the swift tonic of Jossie Finch couldn’t lift the persistent feeling of threat. I spent an hour dozing in the armchair we kept for favoured clients, and when it was time, locked the filing cabinets and my desk and every door in the office, and went down to my car.

There was no one hiding behind the front seats. No one lurking round the edges of the car park. Nothing in the boot except the suitcase I’d stowed there that morning. I started up and drove out into the road, assaulted by nothing but my own nerves.

William Finch’s yard lay south-west of Newbury: a huge spread of buildings sheltering in a hollow, with a creeper-covered Victorian mansion rising on the hillside above. I arrived at the house just as Finch was coming out of it, and we walked down together to the first cluster of boxes.

‘Glad you could come,’ he said.

‘It’s a treat.’

He smiled with easy charm. A tall man, going grey at about fifty, very much in command of himself and everything else. He had a broad face, fine well-shaped mouth, and the eyes of experience. Horses and owners thrived in his care, and years of success had given him a stature he plainly enjoyed.

We went from box to box, spending a couple of minutes in each. Finch told me which horse we were looking at, with some of its breeding and form. He held brief reassurance conversations in each case with the lad holding the horse’s head, and with his head lad, who walked round with us. If all was well, he patted the horse’s neck and fed him a carrot from a bag which his head lad carried. A practised important routine evening inspection, as carried out by every trainer in the country.

We came to an empty box in a full row. Finch gestured to it with a smile.

‘Ivansky. My National runner. He’s gone up to Liverpool.’

I almost gaped like an idiot. I’d been out of touch with the normal world so much that I had completely forgotten that the Grand National was due that Saturday.

I cleared my throat. ‘He should... er... have a fair chance at the weights.’ It seemed a fairly safe comment, but he disagreed.

‘Ten twelve is far too much on his Haydock form. He’s badly in with Wasserman, don’t you think?’

I raked back for all the opinions I’d held in the safe and distant life of three weeks ago. Nothing much surfaced.

‘I’m sure he’ll do well,’ I said.

He nodded as if he hadn’t noticed the feebleness of the remark, and we went on. The horses were truly an impressive bunch, glowing with good feeding, thorough grooming and well-judged exercise. I ran out of compliments long before he ran out of horses.

‘Drink?’ he said, as the head lad shut the last door.

‘Great.’

We walked up to the house, and he led the way into a sitting-room-cum-office. Chintz-covered sofa and chairs, big desk, table with drinks and glasses, walls covered with framed racing photographs. Normal affluent trainer ambience.

‘Gin?’ he said.

‘Scotch, if you have it.’

He gave me a stiff one and poured gin like water for himself.

‘Your health,’ he said.

‘And yours.’

We drank the ritual first sip, and he gestured to me to sit down.

‘I’ve found that damned cash book for you,’ he said, opening a drawer in the desk. ‘There you are. Book, and file of petty cash receipts.’

‘That’s fine.’

‘And what about these Commissioners?’

‘Don’t worry, I’ve applied for a postponement.’

‘But will they grant it?’

‘Never refused us yet,’ I said. ‘They’ll set a new date about a month ahead, and we’ll do your accounts and audit before then.’

He relaxed contentedly over his draught of gin. ‘We can expect Trevor here next week, then? Counting hay bales and saddles?’ There was humour in his voice at the thoroughness ahead.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘maybe at the end of the week, or the one after. He won’t be back until Wednesday or Thursday.’ Did ‘Returning Wednesday’, I wondered, mean travelling Wednesday, or turning up for work. ‘I’ll do a lot of the preliminary paperwork for him, to save time.’

Finch turned to the drinks table and unscrewed the gin. ‘I thought he was due back on Monday.’

‘His car’s broken down somewhere in France.’

‘That’ll please him.’ He drank deeply. ‘Still, if you make a start on things, the audit should get done in time.’

‘Don’t worry about the Commissioners,’ I said; but everyone did worry when the peremptory summons dropped through their door. If one neither asked for a postponement nor attended at the due hour, the Commissioners would fix one’s year’s tax at whatever figure they cared to, and to that assessment there was no appeal. As such assessments were customarily far higher than the amount of tax actually due, one avoided them like black ice.

To my pleasure, the swirly brown skirt and bouncy fair hair made a swooping entrance. She was holding a marmalade cat which was trying to jump out of her arms.

‘Damn thing,’ she said, ‘why won’t he be stroked.’

‘It’s a mouser,’ said her father, unemotionally.

‘You’d think it would be glad of a cuddle.’

The cat freed itself and bolted. Jossie shrugged. ‘Hello,’ she said to me. ‘So you got here.’

‘Mm.’

‘Well,’ she said to her father, ‘what did he say?’

‘Eh? Oh... I haven’t asked him yet.’

She gave him a fond exasperated smile and said to me, ‘He wants to ask you to ride a horse for him.’

Finch shook his head at her, and I said, ‘When?’

‘Tomorrow,’ Jossie said. ‘At Towcester.’

‘Er,’ I said, ‘I’m not really ultra fit.’

‘Nonsense. You won the Gold Cup a fortnight ago. You must be.’

‘Josephine,’ her father said. ‘Clam up.’ He turned to me. ‘I’m flying up to Liverpool in the morning, but I have this horse in at Towcester, and to be blunt he’s still entered there only because someone forgot to scratch him by the eleven o’clock deadline this morning...’

‘The chronically sick secretary,’ muttered Jossie.

‘So we’ve either got to run him after all or pay a fine, and I was toying with the idea of sending him up there, if I could get a suitable jockey.’

‘Most of them having gone to the National,’ Jossie added.

‘Which horse?’ I said.

‘Notebook. Novice hurdler. Four-year-old chestnut gelding, in the top yard.’

‘The one with the flaxen mane and tail?’

‘That’s right. He’s run a couple of times so far. Shows promise, but still green.’

‘Last of twenty-six at Newbury,’ Jossie said cheerfully. ‘It won’t matter a curse if you’re not fit.’ She paused. ‘I’ve been delegated to saddle it up, so you might do us a favour and come and ride it.’

‘Up to you,’ Finch said.

The delegated saddler was a powerful attraction, even if Notebook himself was nothing much.

‘Yes,’ I said weakly. ‘O.K.’

‘Good.’ Jossie gave me a flashing smile. ‘I’ll drive you up there, if you like.’

‘I would like,’ I said regretfully, ‘but I’ll be in London tonight. I’ll go straight to Towcester from there.’

‘I’ll meet you outside the weighing room, then. He’s in the last race, by the way. He would be.’

Novice hurdles were customarily first or last (or both), on a day’s programme: the races a lot of racegoers chose to miss through lunch or leaving early to avoid the crush. The poor-relation races for the mediocre majority, where every so often a new blazing star scorched out of the ruck on its way to fame.

Running horses in novice hurdles meant starting from home early or getting back late; but there were far more runners in novice hurdles than in any other type of race.

When I left it was Jossie who came back with me through the entrance hall to see me off. As we crossed a vast decrepit Persian rug I glanced at the large dark portraits occupying acres of wall-space.

‘Those are Nantuckets, of course,’ she said, following my gaze. ‘They came with the house.’

‘Po-faced lot,’ I said.

‘You did know that Dad doesn’t actually own all this?’

‘Yes, I actually did know.’ I smiled to myself, but she saw it.

She said defensively, ‘All right, but you’d be surprised how many people make up to me, thinking that they’ll marry the trainer’s daughter and step into all this when he retires.’

‘So you like to establish the ground rules first?’

‘O.K., greyhound-brain, I’d forgotten you’d know from Trevor.’

I knew in general that Axwood Stables Ltd. belonged to an American family, the Nantuckets, who rarely took much personal interest in the place except as a business asset. It had been bought and brought to greatness in the fifties by a rumbustious tycoon thrown up atypically from prudent banking stock. Old Naylor Nantucket had brought his energies and enterprise to England, had fallen in love with English racing, had built a splendid modern stable yard and filled it with splendid horses. He had engaged the young William Finch to train them for him, and the middle-aged William Finch was still doing it for his heirs, except that nowadays nine tenths of the horses belonged to other owners, and the young Nantuckets, faintly ashamed of Uncle Naylor, never crossed the Atlantic to see their own horses perform.

‘Doesn’t your father ever get tired of training for absent owners?’ I said.

‘No. They don’t argue. They don’t ring him up in the middle of the night. And when they lose, they don’t complain. He says training would be a lot easier if all owners lived in New York.’

She stood on the doorstep to wave me goodbye, assured and half-mocking, a girl with bright brown eyes, graceful neck, and neat nose and mouth in between.

I booked into the Gloucester Hotel, where I’d never stayed before, and ate a leisurely and much needed dinner in a nearby restaurant. I shouldn’t have accepted the ride on Notebook, I thought ruefully; I’d hardly enough strength to cut up a steak.

A strong feeling of walking blindfold towards a precipice dragged at my feet all the way to Vivian Iverson’s gambling club. I didn’t know which way the precipice lay: ahead, behind, or all round. I only suspected that it was still there, and if I did nothing about finding it, I could walk straight over.

The Vivat Club proved as suave and well-manicured as its owner, and was a matter of interconnecting small rooms, not open expanses like casinos. There were no croupiers in eye-shades with bright dramatic spotlights over the tables, and no ladies tinkling with diamonds in half shadow. There were however two or three discreet chandeliers, a good deal of cigar smoke, and a sort of reverent hush.

Vivian, good as his word, had left a note for me to be let in, and as an extra, treated as a guest. I walked slowly from room to room, balloon glass of brandy in hand, looking for his elegant shape, and not finding it.

There were a good many businessmen in lounge suits earnestly playing chemin-de-fer, and women among them with eyes that flicked concentratedly from side to side with every delivered card. I’d never had an urge towards betting for hours on the turn of a card, but everyone to his own poison.

‘Ro, my dear fellow,’ Vivian said behind me. ‘Come to play?’

‘On an accountant’s earnings?’ I said, turning to him and smiling. ‘What are the stakes?’

‘Whatever you can afford to lose, my dear fellow.’

‘Life, liberty, and a ticket to the Cup Final.’

His eyes didn’t smile as thoroughly as his mouth. ‘Some people lose honour, fortunes, reputation, and their heads.’

‘Does it disturb you?’ I asked.

He made a small waving gesture towards the chemin-de-fer. ‘I provide a pastime to cater for an impulse. Like bingo.’

He put his hand on my shoulder as if we were long-lost friends and steered me towards a further room. There were heavy gold links in his cuffs, and a silk cord edging to his blue velvet jacket. Dark glossy hair on a well-shaped head, flat stomach, faint smell of fresh talc. About thirty-five, and shrewdly succeeding where others had fallen to bailiffs.

There was a green baize raised-edge gaming table in the further room, but no one was playing cards.

Behind the table, in the club’s ubiquitous wooden-armed, studded-leather armchairs, sat three men.

They were all large, smoothly dressed, and unfriendly. I knew them, from way back.

Connaught Powys. Glitberg. Ownslow.

‘We hear you’re looking for us,’ Connaught Powys said.