Straight

11

I didn’t get as far as the steps up to the front door. A dark figure, dimly glimpsed in the floodlight’s glare, came launching itself at me from behind in a cannonball rugger tackle and when I reached the ground something very hard hit my head.

I had no sensation of blacking out or of time passing. One moment I was awake, and the next moment I was awake also, or so it seemed, but I knew in a dim way that there had been an interval.

I didn’t know where I was except that I was lying facedown on grass. I’d woken up concussed on grass several times in my life, but never before in the dark. They couldn’t have all gone home from the races, I thought, and left me alone out on the course all night.

The memory of where I was drifted back quietly. In Greville’s front garden. Alive. Hooray for small mercies.

I knew from experience that the best way to deal with being knocked out was not to hurry. On the other hand, this time I hadn’t come off a horse, not on Greville’s pocket handkerchief turf. There might be urgent reasons for getting up quickly, if I could think of them.

I remembered a lot of things in a rush and groaned slightly, rolling up onto my knees, wincing and groping about for the crutches. I felt stupid and went on behaving stupidly, acting on fifty percent brain power. Looking back afterward, I thought that what I ought to have done was slither silently away through the gate to go to any neighboring house and call the police. What I actually did was to start toward Greville’s front door, and of course the lights flashed on again and the dog started barking and I stood rooted to the spot expecting another attack, swaying unsteadily on the crutches, absolutely dim and pathetic.

The door was ajar, I saw, with lights on in the hall, and while I stood dithering it was pulled wide open from inside and the cannonball figure shot out.

The cannonball was a motorcycle helmet, shiny and black, its transparent visor pulled down over the face. Behind the visor the face also seemed to be black, but a black balaclava, I thought, not black skin. There was an impression of jeans, denim jacket, gloves, black running shoes, all moving fast. He turned his head a fraction and must have seen me standing there insecurely, but he didn’t stop to give me another unbalancing shove. He vaulted the gate and set off at a run down the street and I simply stood where I was in the garden waiting for my head to clear a bit more and start working.

When that happened to some extent, I went up the short flight of steps and in through the front door. The keys, I found, were still in the lowest of the locks; the small bunch of three keys that Clarissa had had, which I’d been using instead of Greville’s larger bunch as they were easier. I’d made things simple for the intruder, I thought, by having them ready in my hand.

With a spurt of alarm I felt my trousers pocket to find if Greville’s main bunch had been stolen, but to my relief they were still there, clinking.

I switched off the floodlights and the dog and in the sudden silence closed the front door. Greville’s small sitting room, when I reached it, looked like the path of a hurricane. I surveyed the mess in fury rather than horror and picked the tumbled phone off the floor to call the police. A burglary, I said. The burglar had gone.

Then I sat in Greville’s chair with my head in my hands and said “shit” aloud with heartfelt rage and gingerly felt the sore bump swelling on my scalp. A bloody pushover, I thought. Like last Sunday. Too like last Sunday to be a coincidence. The cannonball had known both times that I wouldn’t be able to stand upright against a sudden unexpected rush. I supposed I should be grateful he hadn’t smashed my head in altogether this time while he had the chance. No knife, this time, either.

After a bit I looked wearily round the room. The pictures were off the walls, most of the glass smashed. The drawers had been yanked out of the tables and the tables themselves overturned. The little pink and brown stone bears lay scattered on the floor, the chrysanthemum plant and its dirt were trampled into the carpet, the chrysanthemum pot itself was embedded in the smashed screen of the television, the video recorder had been tom from its unit and dropped, the video cassettes of the races lay pulled out in yards of ruined tape. The violence of it all angered me as much as my own sense of failure in letting it happen.

Many of the books were out of the bookshelves, but I saw with grim satisfaction that none of them lay open. Even if none of the hollow books had contained diamonds, at least the burglar hadn’t known the books were hollow. A poor consolation, I thought.

The police arrived eventually, one in uniform, one not. I went along the hall when they rang the doorbell, checked through the peephole and let them in, explaining who I was and why I was there. They were both of about my own age and they’d seen a great many break-ins.

Looking without emotion at Greville’s wrecked room, they produced notebooks and took down an account of the assault in the garden. (Did I want a doctor for the bump? No, I didn’t.) They knew of this house, they said. The new owner, my brother, had installed all the window grilles and had them wired on a direct alarm to the police station so that if anyone tried to enter that way they would be nicked. Police specialists had given their advice over the defenses and had considered the house as secure as was possible, up to now: but shouldn’t there have been active floodlights and a dog alarm? They’d worked well, I said, but before they came I’d turned them off.

“Well, sir,” they said, not caring much, “what’s been stolen?”

I didn’t know. Nothing large, I said, because the burglar had had both hands free, when he vaulted the gate.

Small enough to go into a pocket, they wrote.

What about the rest of the house? Was it in the same state?

I said I hadn’t looked yet. Crutches. Bang on head. That sort of thing. They asked about the crutches. Broken ankle, I said. Paining me, perhaps? Just a bit.

I went with them on a tour of the house and found the tornado had blown through all of it. The long drawing room on the ground floor was missing all the pictures from the walls and all the drawers from chests and tables.

“Looking for a safe,” one of the policemen said, turning over a ruined picture. “Did your brother have one here, do you know?”

“I haven’t seen one,” I said.

They nodded and we went upstairs. The black and white bedroom had been ransacked in the same fashion and the bathroom also. Clothes were scattered everywhere. In the bathroom, aspirins and other pills were scattered on the floor. A toothpaste tube had been squeezed flat by a shoe. A can of shaving cream lay in a washbasin, with some of the contents squirted out in loops on the mirror. They commented that as there was no graffiti and no excrement smeared over everything, I had got off lightly.

“Looking for something small,” the nonuni-formed man said. “Your brother was a gem merchant, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Have you found any jewels here yourself?”

“No, I haven’t.”

They looked into the empty bedroom on that floor, still empty, and went up the stairs to look around above, but coming down reported nothing to see but space. It’s one big attic room, they explained, when I said I hadn’t been up there. Might have been a studio once, perhaps.

We all descended to the semibasement where the mess in the kitchen was indescribable. Every packet of cereal had been poured out, sugar and flour had been emptied and apparently sieved in a strainer. The fridge’s door hung open with the contents gutted. All liquids had been poured down the sinks, the cartons and bottles either standing empty or smashed by the draining boards. The ice cubes I’d wondered about were missing, presumably melted. Half of the floor of carpet tiles had been pulled up from the concrete beneath.

The policemen went phlegmatically round looking at things but touching little, leaving a few footprints in the floury dust.

I said uncertainly, “How long was I unconscious? If he did all this...”

“Twenty minutes, I’d say,” one said, and the other nodded. “He was working fast, you can see. He was probably longest down here. I’d say he was pulling up these tiles looking for a floor safe when you set the alarms off again. I’d reckon he panicked then, he’d been here long enough. And also, if it’s any use to you, I’d guess that if he was looking for anything particular, he didn’t find it.”

“Good news, is that?” asked the other, shrewdly, watching me.

“Yes, of course.” I explained about the Saxony Franklin office being broken into the previous weekend. “We weren’t sure what had been stolen, apart from an address book. In view of this,” I gestured to the shambles, “probably nothing was.”

“Reasonable assumption,” one said.

“When you come back here another time in the dark,” the other advised, “shine a good big torch all around the garden before you come through the gate. Sounds as if he was waiting there for you, hiding in the shadow of the hedge, out of range of the body-heat-detecting mechanism of the lights.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“And switch all the alarms on again, when we leave.”

“Yes.”

“And draw the curtains. Burglars sometimes wait about outside, if they haven’t found what they’re after, hoping that the householders, when they come home, will go straight to the valuables to check if they’re there. Then they come rampaging back to steal them.”

“I’ll draw the curtains,” I said.

They looked around in the garden on the way out and found half a brick lying on the grass near where I’d woken up. They showed it to me. Robbery with violence, that made it.

“If you catch the robber,” I said.

They shrugged. They were unlikely to, as things stood. I thanked them for coming and they said they’d be putting in a report, which I could refer to for insurance purposes when I made a claim. Then they retreated to the police car double-parked outside the gate and presently drove away, and I shut the front door, switched on the alarms, and felt depressed and stupid and without energy, none of which states was normal.

The policemen had left lights on behind them everywhere. I went slowly down the stairs to the kitchen meaning merely to turn them off, but when I got there I stood for a while contemplating the mess and the reason for it.

Whoever had come had come because the diamonds were still somewhere to be found. I supposed I should be grateful at least for that information; and I was also inclined to believe the policemen who said the burglar hadn’t found what he was looking for. But could I find it, if I looked harder?

I hadn’t particularly noticed on my first trip downstairs that the kitchen’s red carpet was in fact carpet tiles, washable squares that were silent and warmer underfoot than conventional tiles. I’d been brought up on such flooring in our parents’ house.

The big tiles, lying flat and fitting snugly, weren’t stuck to the hard surface beneath, and the intruder had had no trouble in pulling them up. The intruder hadn’t been certain there was a safe, I thought, or he wouldn’t have sieved the sugar. And if he’d been successful and found a safe, what then? He hadn’t given himself time to do anything about it. He hadn’t killed me. Hadn’t tied me. Must have known I would wake up.

All it added up to, I thought, was a frantic and rather unintelligent search, which didn’t make the bump on my head or my again knocked-about ankle any less sore. Grinding machines had no brains either. Nor, I thought dispiritedly, had the ground product.

I drew the curtains as advised and bent down and pulled up another of the red tiles, thinking about Greville’s security complex. It would be just like him to build a safe into the solid base of the house and cover it with something deceptive. Setting a safe in concrete, as the pamphlet had said. People tended to think of safes as being built into walls: floors were less obvious and more secure, but far less convenient. I pulled up a few more tiles, doubting my conclusions, doubting my sanity.

The same sort of feeling as in the vaults kept me going. I didn’t expect to find anything but it would be stupid not to make sure, just in case. This time it took half an hour, not three days, and in the end the whole area was up except for a piece under a serving table on wheels. Under that carpet square, when I’d moved the table, I found a flat circular piece of silvery metal flush with the hard base floor, with a recessed ring in it for lifting.

Amazed and suddenly unbearably hopeful, I knelt and pulled the ring up and tugged, and the flat piece of metal came away and off like the lid of a biscuit tin, revealing another layer of metal beneath: an extremely solid-looking circular metal plate the size of a dinner plate in which there was a single keyhole and another handle for lifting.

I pulled the second handle. As well tried to pull up the house by its roots. I tried all of Greville’s bunch of keys in the keyhole but none of them came near to fitting.

Even Greville, I thought, must have kept the key reasonably handy, but the prospect of searching anew for anything at all filled me with weariness. Greville’s affairs were a maze with more blind alleys than Hampton Court.

There were keys in the hollow books, I remembered. Might as well start with those. I shifted upstairs and dug out With a Mule in Patagonia and the others, rediscovering the two businesslike keys and also the decorative one which looked too flamboyant for sensible use. True to Greville’s mind, however, it was that one whose wards slid easily into the keyhole of the safe and under pressure turned the mechanism inside.

Even then the circular lid wouldn’t pull out. Seesawing between hope and frustration I found that, if one turned instead of pulling, the whole top of the safe went round like a wheel until it came against stops; and at that point it finally gave up the struggle and came up loose in my grasp.

The space below was big enough to hold a case of champagne but to my acute disappointment it contained no nestegg, only a clutch of businesslike brown envelopes. Sighing deeply I took out the top two and found the first contained the freehold deeds of the house and the second the paperwork involved in raising a mortgage to buy it. I read the latter with resignation: Greville’s house belonged in essence to a finance company, not to me.

Another of the envelopes contained a copy of his will, which was as simple as the lawyers had said, and in another there was his birth certificate and our parents’ birth and marriage certificates. Another yielded an endowment insurance policy taken out long ago to provide him with an income at sixty-five: but inflation had eaten away its worth and he had apparently not bothered to increase it. Instead, I realized, remembering what I’d learned of his company’s finances, he had plowed back his profits into expanding his business which would itself ride on the tide of inflation and provide him with a munificent income when he retired and sold.

A good plan, I thought, until he’d knocked the props out by throwing one point five million dollars to the winds. Only he hadn’t, of course. He’d had a sensible plan for a sober profit. Deal with honor... He’d made a good income, lived a comfortable life and run his racehorses, but he had stacked away no great personal fortune. His wealth, whichever way one looked at it, was in the stones.

Hell and damnation, I thought. If I couldn’t find the damned diamonds I’d be failing him as much as myself. He would long for me to find them, but where the bloody hell had he put them?

I stuffed most of the envelopes back into their private basement, keeping out only the insurance policy, and replaced the heavy circular lid. Turned it, turned the key, replaced the upper piece of metal and laid a carpet tile on top. Fireproof the hiding place undoubtedly was, and thiefproof it had proved, and I couldn’t imagine why Greville hadn’t used it for jewels.

Feeling defeated, I climbed at length to the bedroom where I found my own overnight bag had, along with everything else, been tipped up and emptied. It hardly seemed to matter. I picked up my sleeping shorts and changed into them and went into the bathroom. The mirror was still half covered with shaving cream and by the time I’d wiped that off with a face cloth and swallowed a Distalgesic and brushed my teeth and swept a lot of the crunching underfoot junk to one side with a towel, I had used up that day’s ration of stamina pretty thoroughly.

Even then, though it was long past midnight, I couldn’t sleep. Bangs on the head were odd, I thought. There had been one time when I’d dozed for a week afterward, going to sleep in midsentence as often as not. Another time I’d apparently walked and talked rationally to a doctor but hadn’t any recollection of it half an hour later. This time, in Greville’s bed, I felt shivery and unsettled, and thought that that had probably as much to do with being attacked as concussed.

I lay still and let the hours pass, thinking of bad and good and of why things happened, and by morning felt calm and much better. Sitting on the lid of the loo in the bathroom, I unwrapped the crepe bandage and by hopping and holding on to things took a long, luxurious and much needed shower, washing my hair, letting the dust and debris and the mental tensions of the week run away in the soft bombardment of water. After that, loinclothed in a bath towel, I sat on the black and white bed and more closely surveyed the ankle scenery.

It was better than six days earlier, one could confidently say that. On the other hand it was still black, still fairly swollen and still sore to the touch. Still vulnerable to knocks. I flexed my calf and foot muscles several times: the bones and ligaments still violently protested, but none of it could be helped. To stay young the muscles had to move, and that was that. I kneaded the calf muscle a bit to give it some encouragement and thought about borrowing an apparatus called Electrovet which Milo had tucked away somewhere, which he used on his horses’ legs to give their muscles electrical stimuli to bring down swelling and get them fit again. What worked on horses should work on me, I reckoned.

Eventually I wound the bandage on again, not as neatly as the surgeon, but I hoped as effectively. Then I dressed, borrowing one of Greville’s clean white shirts and, down in the forlorn little sitting room, telephoned to Nicholas Loder.

He didn’t sound pleased to hear my voice.

“Well done with Dozen Roses,” I said.

He grunted.

“To solve the question of who owns him,” I continued, “I’ve found a buyer for him.”

“Now look here!” he began angrily. “I...”

“Yes, I know,” I interrupted, “you’d ideally like to sell him to one of your own owners and keep him in your yard, and I do sympathize with that, but Mr. and Mrs. Ostermeyer, the people I was with yesterday at York, they’ve told me they would like the horse themselves.”

“I strongly protest,” he said.

“They want to send him to Milo Shandy to be trained for jumping.”

“You owe it to me to leave him here,” he said obstinately. “Four wins in a row... it’s downright dishonorable to take him away.”

“He’s suitable for jumping, now that he’s been gelded.” I said it without threat, but he knew he was in an awkward position. He’d had no right to geld the horse. In addition, there was in fact nothing to stop Greville’s executor selling the horse to whomever he pleased, as Milo had discovered for me, and which Nicholas Loder had no doubt discovered for himself, and in the racing world in general the sale to the Ostermeyers would make exquisite sense as I would get to ride the horse even if I couldn’t own him.

Into Loder’s continued silence I said, “If you find a buyer for Gemstones, though, I’ll give my approval.”

“He’s not as good.”

“No, but not useless. No doubt you’d take a commission, I wouldn’t object to that.”

He grunted again, which I took to mean assent, but he also said grittily, “Don’t expect any favors from me, ever.”

“I’ve done one for you,” I pointed out, “in not lodging a complaint. Anyway, I’m lunching with the Ostermeyers at Milo’s today and we’ll do the paperwork of the sale. So Milo should be sending a box to collect Dozen Roses sometime this week. No doubt he’ll fix a day with you.”

“Rot you,” he said.

“I don’t want to quarrel.”

“You’re having a damn good try.” He slammed down his receiver and left me feeling perplexed as much as anything else by his constant rudeness. All trainers lost horses regularly when owners sold them and, as he’d said himself, it wasn’t as if Dozen Roses were a Derby hope. Nicholas Loder’s stable held far better prospects than a five-year-old gelding, prolific winner though he might be.

Shrugging, I picked up my overnight bag and felt vaguely guilty at turning my back on so much chaos in the house. I’d done minimum tidying upstairs, hanging up Greville’s suits and shirts and so on, and I’d left my own suit and some other things with them because it seemed I might spend more nights there, but the rest was physically difficult and would have to wait for the anonymous Mrs. P., poor woman, who was going to get an atrocious shock.

I went by taxi to the Ostermeyers’ hotel and again found them in champagne spirits, and it was again Simms, fortyish, with a mustache, who turned up as chauffeur. When I commented on his working Sunday as well as Saturday he smiled faintly and said he was glad of the opportunity to earn extra; Monday to Friday he developed films in the dark.

“Films?” Martha asked. “Do you mean movies?”

“Family snapshots, madam, in a one-hour photo shop.”

“Oh.” Martha sounded as if she couldn’t envisage such a life. “How interesting.”

“Not very, madam,” Simms said resignedly, and set off smoothly into the sparse Sunday traffic. He asked me for directions as we neared Lambourn and we arrived without delay at Milo’s door, where Milo himself greeted me with the news that Nicholas Loder wanted me to phone him at once.

“It sounded to me,” Milo said, “like a great deal of agitation pretending to be casual.”

“I don’t understand him.”

“He doesn’t want me to have Dozen Roses, for some reason.”

“Oh, but,” Martha said to him anxiously, overhearing, “you are going to, aren’t you?”

“Of course, yes, don’t worry. Derek, get it over with while we go and look at Datepalm.” He bore the Ostermeyers away, dazzling them with twinkling charm, and I went into his kitchen and phoned Nicholas Loder, wondering why I was bothering.

“Look,” he said, sounding persuasive. “I’ve an owner who’s very interested in Dozen Roses. He says he’ll top whatever your Ostermeyers are offering. What do you say?”

I didn’t answer immediately, and he said forcefully, “You’ll make a good clear profit that way. There’s no guarantee the horse will be able to jump. You can’t ask a high price for him, because of that. My owner will top their offer and add a cash bonus for you personally. Name your figure.”

“Um,” I said slowly, “this owner wouldn’t be yourself, would it?”

He said sharply, “No, certainly not.”

“The horse that ran at York yesterday,” I said even more slowly, “does he fit Dozen Roses’ passport?”

“That’s slanderous!”

“It’s a question.”

“The answer is yes. The horse is Dozen Roses. Is that good enough for you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then,” he sounded relieved, “name your figure.”

I hadn’t yet discussed any figure at all with Martha and Harley and I’d been going to ask a bloodstock agent friend for a snap valuation. I said as much to Nicholas Loder who, sounding exasperated, repeated that his owner would offer more, plus a tax-free sweetener for myself.

I had every firm intention of selling Dozen Roses to the Ostermeyers and no so-called sweetener that I could think of would have persuaded me otherwise.

“Please tell your owner I’m sorry,” I said, “but the Ostermeyers have bought Datepalm, as I told you, and I am obligated to them, and loyalty to them comes first. I’m sure you’ll find your owner another horse as good as Dozen Roses.”

“What if he offered double what you’d take from the Ostermeyers?”

“It’s not a matter of money.”

“Everyone can be bought,” he said.

“Well, no, I’m sorry, but no.”

“Think it over,” he said, and slammed the receiver down again. I wondered in amusement how often he broke them. But he hadn’t in fact been amusing, and the situation as a whole held no joy. I was going to have to meet him on racecourses forever once I was a trainer myself, and I had no appetite for chronic feuds.

I went out into the yard where, seeing me, Milo broke away from the Ostermeyers, who were feasting their eyes as Datepalm was being led round on the gravel to delight them.

“What did Loder want?” Milo demanded, coming toward me.

“He offered double whatever I was asking the Ostermeyers to pay for Dozen Roses.”

Milo stared. “Double? Without knowing what it was?”

“That’s right.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What do you think?” I asked.

“If you’ve accepted, I’ll flatten you.”

I laughed. Too many people that past week had flattened me and no doubt Milo could do it with the best.

“Well?” he said belligerently.

“I told him to stuff it.”

“Good.”

“Mm, perhaps. But you’d better arrange to fetch the horse here at once. Like tomorrow morning, as we don’t want him having a nasty accident and ending up at the knackers, do you think?”

“Christ!” He was appalled. “He wouldn’t! Not Nicholas Loder.”

“One wouldn’t think so. But no harm in removing the temptation.”

“No.” He looked at me attentively. “Are you all right?” he asked suddenly. “You don’t look too well.”

I told him briefly about being knocked out in Greville’s garden. “Those phone calls you took,” I said, “were designed to make sure I turned up in the right place at the right time. So I walked straight into an ambush and, if you want to know, I feel a fool.”

“Derek!” He was dumbfounded, but also of course practical. “It’s not going to delay your getting back on a horse?”

“No, don’t worry.”

“Did you tell the Ostermeyers?”

“No, don’t bother them. They don’t like me being unfit.”

He nodded in complete understanding. To Martha, and to Harley to a lesser but still considerable extent, it seemed that proprietorship in the jockey was as important as in the horse. I’d met that feeling a few times before and never undervalued it: they were the best owners to ride for, even if often the most demanding. The quasi-love relationship could however turn to dust and damaging rejection if one ever put them second, which was why I would never jeopardize my place on Datepalm for a profit on Dozen Roses. It was hard to explain to more rational people, but I rode races, as every jump jockey did, from a different impetus than making money, though the money was nice enough and thoroughly earned besides.

When Martha and Harley at length ran out of questions and admiration of Datepalm we all returned to the house, where over drinks in Milo’s comfortable living room we telephoned to the bloodstock agent for an opinion and then agreed on a price which was less than he’d suggested. Milo beamed. Martha clapped her hands together with pleasure. Harley drew out his checkbook and wrote in it carefully, “Saxony Franklin Ltd.”

“Subject to a vet’s certificate,” I said.

“Oh yes, dear,” Martha agreed, smiling. “As if you would ever sell us a lemon.”

Milo produced the “Change of Ownership” forms, which Martha and Harley and I all signed, and Milo said he would register the new arrangements with Weatherby’s in the morning.

“Is Dozen Roses ours, now?” Martha asked, shiny-eyed.

“Indeed he is,” Milo said, “subject to his being alive and in good condition when he arrives here. If he isn’t the sale is void and he still belongs to Saxony Franklin.”

I wondered briefly if he were insured. Didn’t want to find out the hard way.

With the business concluded Milo drove us all out to lunch at a nearby restaurant which as usual was crammed with Lambourn people: Martha and Harley held splendid court as the new owners of Gold Cup winner Datepalm and were pink with gratification over the compliments to their purchase. I watched their stimulated faces, hers rounded and still pretty under the blonde-rinsed gray hair, his heavily handsome, the square jaw showing the beginning of jowls. Both now looking sixty, they still displayed enthusiasms and enjoyments that were almost childlike in their simplicity, which did no harm in the weary old world.

Milo drove us back to rejoin the Daimler and Simms, who’d eaten his lunch in a village pub, and Martha in farewell gave Milo a kiss with flirtation but also real affection. Milo had bound the Ostermeyers to his stable with hoops of charm and all we needed now was for the two horses to carry on winning.

Milo said ‘“Thanks” to me briefly as we got into the car, but in truth I wanted what he wanted, and securing the Ostermeyers had been a joint venture. We drove out of the yard with Martha waving and then settling back into her seat with murmurs and soft remarks of pleasure.

I told Simms the way to Hungerford so that he could drop me off there, and the big car purred along with Sunday afternoon somnolence.

Martha said something I didn’t quite catch and I turned my face back between the headrests, looking toward her and asking her to say it again. I saw a flash of raw horror begin on Harley’s face, and then with a crash and a bang the car rocketed out of control across the road toward a wall and there was blood and shredded glass everywhere and we careened off the wall back onto the road and into the path of a fifty-seater touring coach which had been behind us and was now bearing down on us like a runaway cliff.