The Edge

Chapter Three

I looked away instantly but smoothly, and presently glanced back.

Filmer was still talking to the bookmaker. I edged upwards through the crowd behind me until I was about five steps higher and surrounded by other racegoers.

Filmer didn't look back to where I'd been standing. He didn't search up or down or sideways to see where I had gone.

My thumping heart quietened down a bit. The meeting of eyes had been accidental: had to have been. Dreadfully unwelcome, all the same, particularly at this point.

I hadn't expected him to have been at Nottingham, and hadn't looked for him. Two of his horses were certainly down to run, but Filmer himself almost never went to the midland courses of Nottingham, Leicester or Wolverhampton. He had definite preferences in racecourses, as in so much else: always a creature of habit.

I made no attempt to shadow him closely, as it wasn't necessary: before the following race he would be down in the parade ring to watch his horse walk round and I could catch him up there. I watched him conclude his bet and walk away to climb the stands for the race about to start, and as far as I could see he was alone, which also was unusual, as either the girlfriend or the male companion was normally in obsequious attendance.

The race began and I watched it with interest. The chatty apprentice wasn't riding in it himself, but the stable that employed him had a runner. The runner started third favourite and finished third last. I switched my gaze to Collie Goodboy, and found him smiling. A common, sad, fraudulent sequence that did racing no good.

Filmer stepped down from the stands and headed in the direction of the saddling boxes, to supervise, as he always did, the final preparation for his horse's race. I drifted along in his wake to make sure, but that was indeed where he went. From there to the parade ring, from there to place a bet with the same bookmaker as before, from there to the stands to watch his horse race. From there to the unsaddling enclosure allotted to the horse that finished second.

Filmer took his defeat graciously, making a point as always of congratulating the winning owner, in this case a large middle-aged lady who looked flushed and flattered.

Filmer left the unsaddling enclosure with a smirk of self-satisfaction and was immediately confronted by a young man who tried to thrust a briefcase into his hand.

Julius Apollo's face turned from smug to fury quicker than Shergar won the Derby, as Paul Shacklebury would have said. Filmer wouldn't take the case and he practically spat at the offerer, his black head going forward like a striking cobra. The young man with the briefcase retreated ultra-nervously and in panic ran away, and Filmer, regaining control of himself, began looking around in the general direction of stewards and pressmen to see if any of them had noticed. He visibly sighed with relief that none of them showed any sign of it-and he hadn't looked my way at all.

I followed the demoralized young man, who still held on to the briefcase. He made straight for the men's cloakroom, stayed there for a fair time and came out looking pale.

Filmer's effect on people's guts, I reflected, would put any laxative to shame.

The shaken youth with the briefcase then made his nervous way to a rendezvous with a thin, older man who was waiting just outside the exit gate, biting his nails. When the thin man saw the briefcase still in the nervous youth's possession he looked almost as furious as Filmer had done, and a strong argument developed in which one could read the dressing-down in the vigorous chopping gestures, even if one couldn't hear the words.

Thin man poked nervous man several times sharply in the chest. Nervous man's shoulders drooped. Thin man turned away and walked off deep into the car park.

Nervous man brought the briefcase with him back through the gate and into the nearest bar, and I had to hang around for a long time in the small crowd there before anything else happened. The scattered clientele was watching the television: nervous man shuffled from foot to foot and sweated, and kept a sharp look-out at the people passing by outside in the open air. Then, some time after Filmer's second runner had tried and (according to the closed-circuit commentary) lost, Filmer himself came past, tearing up betting tickets and not looking pleased.

Nervous man shot out from his waiting position just inside the door of the sheltering bar and offered the briefcase again, and this time Filmer took it, but in fierce irritation and with another sharp set of glances around him. He saw nothing to disturb him. He was leaving after the fifth of the six races and all forms of authority were still engaged to his rear. He gripped the case's handle and strode purposefully out on his way to his car.

Nervous man shuffled a bit on the spot a bit more and then followed Filmer through the exit gate and into the car park. I tagged along again and saw both of them still making for their transport, though in different directions. I followed nervous man, not Filmer, and saw him get into the front passenger seat of a car already occupied by thin man, who still looked cross. They didn't set off immediately and I had time to walk at a steady pace past the rear of their car on the way to my own which was parked strategically, as ever, near the gate to the road, for making quick following getaways. I memorized their number plate in case I later lost them: and out on the road, comfortably falling into place behind them, I telephoned Millington.

I told him about the briefcase and read him the number plate still ahead in my sight.

'The car's going north, though,' I said. 'How far do you want me to go?'

'What time's your flight tomorrow?'

'Noon, from Heathrow. But I have to go home first to pick up my gear and passport.'

He thought for a few moments. 'You'd better decide for yourself. If he gets on the motorway to Scotland… well, don't go.'

'All right.'

'Very interesting,' Millington said, 'that he didn't want to be seen in public accepting that briefcase.'

'Very.'

'Anything special about it?'

'As far as I could see,' I said, 'it was black, polished, possibly crocodile, with gold clasps.'

'Well, well,' Millington said vaguely. 'I'll get back to you with that car number.'

The thin man's car aimed unerringly for the motorway in the direction of Scotland. I decided to keep on going at least until Millington called back, which he did with impressive speed, telling me that my quarry was registered to I. J. Horfitz, resident of Doncaster, address supplied.

'All right,' I said, 'I'll go to Doncaster.' An hour and a bit ahead, I thought, with plenty of time to return.

'Does that name Horfitz ring any bells with you?' Millington asked.

'None at all,' I said positively. 'And by the way, you know that promising young apprentice of Pete Shaw's? All that talent? The silly young fool passed some verbal info to a new character on the racecourse who turned out to be writing the book for Collie Goodboy. Collie Goodboy thought it good news.'

'What was it, do you know?'

'Pete Shaw had a runner in the second race, third favourite, finished nearly last. The apprentice knew the score, though he wasn't riding it.'

'Huh,' Millington said. 'I'll put the fear of God into the lot of them, Pete Shaw, the owner, the jockey, the apprentice and Collie Goodboy. Stir them up and warn them. I suppose,' he said as an afterthought, 'you didn't get any photos? We haven't any actual proof?'

'Not really. I took one shot of the apprentice talking to Collie's man, but they had their backs to me. One of Collie's man with. One of Collie s board with the generous odds.'

'Better than nothing,' he said judiciously 'It'll give them all an unholy fright. The innocent ones will be livid and sack the guilty, like they usually do. Clean their own house. Save us a job. And we'll keep a permanent eye on that stupid apprentice. Ring me when you get to Doncaster '

'OK. And I took some more photos One of the nervous young man with the briefcase, one of him with the thin man… er… I. J. Horfitz possibly, I suppose, and one of Filmer with the briefcase, though I'm not sure if that one will be very clear, I had almost no time and I was quite far away, and I was using the cigarette lighter camera, it's less conspicuous.'

'All right. We need that film before you go. Um… er… you'd better give me a ring when you're on the way back, and I'll have thought of somewhere we can meet tonight. Right?'

'Yes, 'I said. 'Right.'

'This Horfitz person, what did he look like?'

'Thin, elderly, wore a dark overcoat and a black trilby, and glasses. Looked ready for a funeral, not the races.'

Millington grunted in what seemed to me to be recognition.

'Do you know him?' I asked.

'He was before your time. But yes, I know him. Ivor Horfitz. It must be him. We got him warned off for life five years ago.'

'What for?'

'It's a long story. I'll tell you later. And I don't think after all you need to spend all that time going to Doncaster. We can always find him, if we want to. Turn round at the next exit and come back to London, and I'll meet you in that pub at Victoria. Not the snack-bar; the pub.'

'Yes, right. See you in about… um… two and a half hours, with luck.'

Two and a half hours later, beer and pork pie time in a dark far corner in a noisy bar, Millington 's preferred sort of habitat.

I gave him the exposed but undeveloped film, which he put in his pocket saying, 'Eyes in the back of my head,' with conspicuous satisfaction.

'Who is Horfitz?' I said, quenching the long drive's thirst in a half-pint of draught. 'Did you know he knew Filmer?'

'No,' he said, answering the second question first. 'And Filmer wouldn't want to be seen with him, nor to be seen in any sort of contact.'

'What you're saying,' I said slowly, 'is that the messenger, the nervous young man, is also known by sight to the stewards… to you yourself probably… because if he were an unidentifiable stranger, why should Filmer react so violently to being seen with him; to being seen accepting something from him?'

Millington gave me a sideways look. 'You've learned a thing or two, haven't you, since you started.' He patted the pocket containing the film. 'This will tell us if we know him. What did he look like?’

'Fairly plump, fairly gormless. Sweaty. Unhappy. A worm between two hawks.'

Millington shook his head. 'Might be anyone,' he said.

'What did Horfitz do?' I asked.

Millington bit into pork pie and took his time, speaking eventually round escaping crumbs of pastry.

'He owned a small stableful of horses in Newmarket and employed his own trainer for them, who naturally did what he was told. Very successful little stable in a quiet way. Amazing results, but there you are, some owners are always lucky. Then the trainer got cold feet because he thought we were on to him, which we actually weren't, we'd never reckoned him for a villain. Anyway, he blew the whistle on the operation, saying the strain was getting too much for him. He said all the horses in the yard were as good as interchangeable. They ran in whatever races he and Horfitz thought they could win. Three-year-olds in two-year-old races, past winners in maidens-at-starting, any old thing. Horfitz bought and sold horses continually so the yard never looked the same from week to week, and the stable lads came and went like yo-yos, like they do pretty much anyway. They employed all sorts of different jockeys. No one cottoned on. Horfitz had some nice long-priced winners but no bookmakers hollered foul. It was a small unfashionable stable, see? Never in the newspapers. Because they didn't run in big races, just small ones at tracks the press don't go to, but you can win as much by betting on those as on any others. It was all pretty low key, but we found out that Horfitz had made literally hundreds of thousands, not just by betting but by selling his winners. Only he always sold the real horses which fitted the names on the race-card, not the horses that had actually run. He kept those and ran them again, and sold the horses in whose names they'd run, and so on and so on. Audacious little fiddle, the whole thing.'

'Yes,' I agreed, and felt a certain amount of awe at the energy and organization put into the enterprise.

'So when the trainer ratted we set a few traps with his help and caught Horfitz with his pants down, so to speak. He got warned off for life and swore to kill his trainer, which he hasn't done so far. The trainer was warned off for three years with a severe caution, but he got his licence back two years ago. Part of the bargain. So he's in business again in a small way but we keep his runners under a microscope, checking their passports every time they run. We're a lot hotter at checking passports randomly all over the place now, as of course you know.'

I nodded.

Then Millington 's jaw literally dropped. I looked at the classic sign of astonishment and said, 'What's the matter?'

'Gawd,' he said. 'What a turn up. Can you believe it? Paul Shacklebury, that murdered stable lad, he was working for Horfitz's old trainer.'

I left Millington frowning with concentration over a replenished pint while he tried to work out the significance of Horfitz's old trainer employing a lad who was murdered for knowing too much about Filmer. What had Paul Shacklebury known, Millington demanded rhetorically for the hundredth time. And, more to the minute, what was in the briefcase, and why was Horfitz giving it to Filmer?

'Work on the sweating messenger,' I suggested, getting up to go. 'He might crack open like the trainer. You never know.'

'Maybe we will,' Millington said. 'And Tor… look out for yourself on the train.'

He could be quite human sometimes, I thought.

I flew to Ottawa the next day and gave in to temptation at Heathrow to the extent of changing my ticket from knees-against-chest economy to full-stretch-out first class. I also asked the Ottawa taxi driver who took me into the city from the airport to find me a decent hotel; he cast a rapid eye over my clothes and the new suitcase and said the Four Seasons should suit.

It suited. They gave me a small pleasant suite and I telephoned straight away to the number I'd been given for Bill Baudelaire. He answered himself at the first ring, rather to my surprise, and said yes, he'd had a telex to confirm I was on my way. He had a bass voice with a lot of timbre even over the wires and was softly Canadian in accent.

He asked where I would be in an hour and said he would come around then to brief me on the matter in hand, and I gathered from his circumspect sentences that he wasn't alone and didn't want to be understood. Just like home, I thought comfortably, and unpacked a few things, and. showered off the journey and awaited events.

Outside, the deepening orange of the autumn sunshine was turning the green copper roofs of the turreted stone government buildings to a transient shimmering gold, and I reflected, watching from the windows, that I'd much liked this graceful city when I'd been here before. I was filled with a serene sense of peace and contentment, which I remembered a few times in the days lying ahead.

Bill Baudelaire came when the sky had grown dark and I'd switched on the lights, and he looked round the suite with quizzical eyebrows.

'I'm glad to see old Val has staked you to rooms befitting a rich young owner.'

I smiled and didn't enlighten him. He'd shaken my hand when I opened the door to him and looked me quickly, piercingly up and down in the way of those used to assessing strangers instantly and with no inhibitions about letting them know it.

I saw a man of plain looks but positive charm, a solid man much younger than the Brigadier, maybe forty, with reddish hair, pale blue eyes and pale skin pitted by the scars of old acne. Once seen, I thought, difficult to forget.

He was wearing a dark grey business suit with a cream shirt and a red tie out of step with his hair, and I wondered if he were colour-blind or simply liked the effect.

He walked straight across the sitting room, sat in the armchair nearest to the telephone and picked up the receiver.

'Room service?' he said. 'Please send up as soon as possible a bottle of vodka and… er…' He raised his eyebrows in my direction, in invitation.

'Wine,' I said. 'Red. Bordeaux preferably.'

Bill Baudelaire repeated my request with a ceiling price and disconnected.

'You can put the drinks on your expense sheet and I'll initial it,' he said. 'You do have an expense sheet, I suppose?'

'I do in England.'

'Then start one here, of course. How are you paying the hotel bills?'

'By credit card. My own.'

'Is that usual? Never mind. You give all the bills to me when you've paid them, along with your expense sheet, and Val and I will deal with it.'

'Thank you,' I said. Val would have a fit, I thought, but then on second thoughts, no he probably wouldn't. He would pay me the agreed budget; fair was fair.

'Sit down,' Bill Baudelaire said, and I sat opposite him in another armchair, crossing one knee over the other. The room seemed hot to me with the central heating, and I wasn't wearing a jacket. He considered me for a while, his brow furrowing with seeming uncertainty.

'How old are you?' he said abruptly.

'Twenty-nine.'

'Val said you were experienced.' It wasn't exactly a question, nor a matter of disbelief.

'I've worked for him for three years.'

'He said you would look this part… and you do.' He sounded more puzzled than pleased, though. 'You seem so polished… I suppose it's not what I expected.'

I said, 'If you saw me in the cheaper sections of a racecourse, you would think I'd been born there, too.'

His face lightened into a smile. 'Right, then. I'll accept that. Well, I've brought you a whole lot of papers.' He glanced at the large envelope that he had put on the table beside the telephone. 'Details about the train and about some of the people who'll be on it, and details about the horses and the arrangements for those. This has all been an enormous undertaking. Everyone has worked very hard on it. It's essential that it retains a good, substantial, untarnished image from start to finish. We're hoping for increased world-wide awareness of Canadian racing. Although we do of course hit world headlines with theQueen's Plate in June or July, we want to draw more international horses here. We want to put our programmes more on the map. Canada 's a great country. We want to maximize our impact on the international racing circuit.'

'Yes,' I said, 'I do understand.' I hesitated. 'Do you have a public relations firm working on it?'

'What? Why do you ask? Yes, we do, as a matter of fact. What difference does it make?'

'None, really. Will they have a representative on the train?'

'To minimize negative incidents? No, not unless…' he stopped and listened to what he'd said. 'I'm using their jargon, damn it. I'll watch that. So easy to repeat what they say.'

A knock on the door announced the drinks in charge of an ultra-polite slow-moving waiter who knew where to find ice and mixers in the room's own refrigerator. The waiter took his deliberate time over uncorking the wine, and Bill Baudelaire, stifling impatience, said we would do the pouring ourselves. When the tortoise waiter had gone he gestured to me to help myself, and on his own account fixed a lengthy splash of vodka over a tumblerful of cubes.

He had suggested to the Brigadier that I should meet him first here in Ottawa, as he had business in that city which couldn't be postponed. It would also, they both thought, be more securely private, as everyone going on the train in the normal way would be collecting in Toronto.

'You and I,' Bill Baudelaire said over his vodka, 'will fly to Toronto tomorrow evening on separate planes, after you've spent the day absorbing all the material I've brought you and asking any questions that arise. I propose to drop by your sitting room here again at two o'clock for a final briefing.'

'Will I be able to get in touch with you fairly easily after tomorrow?' I asked. 'I'd like to be able to.'

'Yes, indeed. I'm not going on the train myself, as of course you know, but I'll be at Winnipeg for the races there, and at Vancouver. And at Toronto, of course. I've outlined everything. You'll find it in the package. We can't really discuss anything properly until you've read it.'

'All right.'

'There's one unwelcome piece of news, however, that isn't in there because I heard it too late to include. It seems Julius Filmer had bought a share in one of the horses travelling on the train. The partnership was registered today and I was told just now by telephone. The Ontario Racing Commission is deeply concerned, but we can't do anything about it. No regulations have been broken. They won't let people who've been convicted of felonies such as arson, fraud or illegal gambling own horses, but Filmer hasn't been convicted of anything.'

'Which horse?' I said.

'Which horse? Laurentide Ice. Quite useful. You can read about it in there.' He nodded to the package. 'The problem is that we made a rule that only owners could go along to the horse car to see the horses. We couldn't have everyone tramping about there, both for security reasons and for preventing the animals being upset. We thought the only comfort left to us about Filmer's being on the train was that he wouldn't have access to the horse car, and now he will.'

'Awkward.'

'Infuriating.' He refilled his glass with the suppressed violence of his frustration. 'Why for God's sake couldn't that goddam crook have kept his snotty nose out. He's trouble. We all know it. He's planning something. He'll ruin the whole thing. He practically said as much.' He looked me over and shook his head. 'No offence to you, but how are you going to stop him?'

'It depends what needs to be stopped.'

His face lightened suddenly to a smile as before. 'Yes, all right, we'll wait and see. Val said you don't miss things. Let's hope he's right.'

He went away after a while and with a great deal of interest I opened the package and found it absolutely fascinating from start to finish.

The Great Transcontinental Mystery Race Train', as emblazoned in red on the gold cover of the glossy prospectus, had indeed entailed an enormous amount of organization. Briefly, the enterprise offered to the racehorse owners of the world a chance to race a horse in Toronto, to go by train to Winnipeg, and race a horse there, to stop for two nights at a hotel high in the Rockies, and to continue by train to Vancouver, where they might again race a horse. There was accommodation for eleven horses on the train, and for forty-eight human VIP passengers.

At Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver there would be overnight stays in top-class hotels. Transport from train to hotels to races and back to the train was also included as required. The entire trip would last from lunch at Toronto races on the Saturday, to the end of the special race day at Vancouver ten days later.

On the train there would be special sleeping cars, a special dining car, two private chefs and a load of good wine. People who owned their own private rail cars could, as in the past, apply for them to be joined to the train.

Every possible extra luxury would be available if requested in advance, and in addition, for entertainment along the way, an intriguing mystery would be enacted on board and at the stop-overs, which passengers would be invited to solve.

I winced a shade at that last piece of information: keeping eyes on Filmer would be hard enough anyhow without all sorts of imaginary mayhem going on around him. He himself was mystery enough.

Special races, I read, had been introduced into the regular programmes at Woodbine racecourse, Toronto, at Assiniboia Downs, Winnipeg, and at Exhibition Park, Vancouver. The races had been framed to be ultra-attractive to the paying public, with magnificent prize money to please the owners. The owners of the horses and indeed all the train passengers would be given VIP treatment at all the racecourses, including lunch with the presidents.

It wasn't to be expected that owners would want to run the horses on the train three times in so short a span.

Any owner was free to run a horse just once. Any owner (or any other passenger on the train) was free to bring any other of his horses to Toronto, Winnipeg or Vancouver by road or by air to run in the special races. The trip was to be a lighthearted junket for the visitors, a celebration of racing in Canada.

In smaller print after all that trumpeting came the information that accommodation was available also for one groom for each horse. If owners wanted space for extra attendants, would they please specify early. Grooms and other attendants would have their own dining and sleeping cars and their own separate entertainments.

Stabling had been reserved at Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver for the horses going by train, and they would be able to exercise normally at all three places. In addition, during the passengers' visit to the mountains, the horses would be stabled and exercised in Calgary. The good care of the horses was of prime importance, and a veterinarian would be at once helicoptered to the train if his services should become necessary between scheduled stops.

Next in the package was a pencilled note from Bill Baudelaire:

All eleven horse places were sold out within two weeks of the first major announcement.

All forty-eight VIP passenger places were sold within a month.

There are dozens of entries for the special races.

This is going to be a success!

After that came a list of the eleven horses, with past form, followed by a list of their owners, with nationalities. Three owners from England (including Filmer), one from Australia, three from the United States and five from Canada (including Filmer's partner).

The owners, with husbands, wives, families and friends, had taken up twenty-seven of the forty-eight passenger places. Four of the remaining twenty-one places had also been taken by well-known Canadian owners (identified by a star against their names), and Bill Baudelaire, in a note pencilled at the bottom of this passenger list had put, 'Splendid response from our appeal to our owners to support the project!'

There were no trainers mentioned on the passenger list, and in fact I later learned that the trainers were making their own way by air as usual to Winnipeg and Vancouver, presumably because the train trip was too time-consuming and expensive.

Next in the package came a bunch of hand-outs from the three racecourses, from the Canadian railway company and from the four hotels, all shiny pamphlets extolling their individual excellencies. Finally, a fat brochure with good colour plates put together by the travel organizers in charge of getting the show on the railroad, a job which seemed well within their powers since they apparently also arranged safaris to outer deserts, treks to the Poles and tours to anywhere anyone cared to go.

They also staged mysteries as entertainment; evenings, weekends, moving or stationary. They were experts from much practice.

For the Great Transcontinental Mystery Race Train, they said, they had arranged something extra-special. 'A mystery that will grab you by the throat. A stunning experience. All around you the story will unfold. Clues will appear. BE ON YOUR GUARD.'

Oh great, I thought wryly. But they hadn't finished. There was a parting shot.

'BEWARE! MANY PEOPLE ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM.'