Whip Hand

CHAPTER THREE

I telephoned the North London Comprehensive School and asked to speak to Chico Barnes.

'He's teaching judo,' a voice said repressively. 'His class usually ends about now.'

'Wait a minute.'

I waited, driving towards London with my right hand on the wheel and my left round the receiver and a spatter of rain on the windscreen. The car had been adapted for one-handed steering by the addition of a knob on the front face of the wheel's rim: very simple, very effective, and no objections from the police.

'Hullo?'

Chico 's voice, cheerful, full even in one single word of his general irreverent view of the world.

'Want a job?' I said.

'Yeah.' His grin travelled distinctly. down the line. 'It's been too dead quiet this past week.'

'Can you go to the flat? I'll meet you there.'

'I've got an extra class. They lumbered me. Some other guy's evening class of stout ladies. He's ill. I don't blame him. Where are you 'phoning from?'

'The car. From Kempton to London. I'm calling in at Roehampton, at the limb centre, as it's on the way, but I could be outside your school in… say… an hour and a half. I'll pick you up. O.K.?'

'Sure,' he said. 'What are you going to the limb centre for?'

'To see Alan Stephenson.' 'He'll have gone home.'

'He said he'd be there, working late.'

'Your arm hurting again?'

'No… Matter of screws and such.'

'Yeah,' he said. 'O. K. See you.'

I put the 'phone down with the feeling of satisfaction that Chico nearly always engendered. There was no doubt that as a working companion I found him great: funny, inventive, persistent, and deceptively strong. Many a rogue had discovered too late that young slender Chico with his boyish grin could throw a twenty stone man over his shoulder with the greatest ease.

When I first got to know him he was working, as I was, in the Radnor detective agency, where I had learned my new trade. At one point there had been a chance that I would become first a partner and eventually the owner of that agency, but although Radnor and I had come to an agreement, and had even changed the agency's name to Radnor-Halley, life had delivered an earthquake upheaval and decided things otherwise. It must have been only a day before the partnership agreements were ready to be signed, with finances arranged and the champagne approaching the ice, that Radnor himself sat down for a quiet snooze in his armchair at home, and never woke up.

Back from Canada, as if on stretched elastic, had immediately snapped an unsuspected nephew, brandishing a will in his favour and demanding his rights. He did not, he said forth-rightly, want to sell half his inheritance to a one-handed ex-jockey, especially at the price agreed. He himself would be taking over and breathing new life into the whole works. He himself would be setting it all up in new modern offices, not the old crummy bomb-damaged joint in the Cromwell Road, and anyone who didn't like the transfer could vote with his feet.

Most of the old bunch had stayed on into the new order, but Chico had had a blazing row with the nephew and opted for the dole. Without much trouble he had then found the part-time job teaching judo, and the first time I'd asked for his help he'd joined up with enthusiasm. Since then I myself seemed to have become the most regularly employed investigator working in racing, and if Radnor's nephew didn't like it (and he was reputed to be furious) it was just too bad.

Chico bounced out through the swinging glass doors of the school with the lights behind him making a halo round his curly hair. Any resemblance to sainthood stopped precisely there, since the person under the curls was in no way long-suffering, god-fearing or chaste.

He slid into the car, gave me a wide grin, and said, 'There's a pub round the corner with a great set of bristols.'

Resignedly I pulled into the pub's car park, and followed him into the bar. The girl dispensing drinks was, as he'd said, nicely endowed, and moreover she greeted Chico with telling warmth. I listened to the flirting chit chat and paid for the drinks.

We sat on a bench by the wall, and Chico approached his pint with the thirst brought on by too much healthy exercise.

'Ah,' he said, putting down the tankard temporarily. 'That's better.' He eyed my glass. 'Is that straight orange juice?'

I nodded. 'Been drinking on and off all day.'

'Don't know how you bear it, all that high life and luxury.'

'Easily.'

'Yeah.' He finished the pint, went back for a refill and another close encounter with the girl, and finally retracked to the bench. 'Where do I go then, Sid? And what do I do?'

' Newmarket. Spot of pub-crawling.'

'Can't be bad.'

'You're looking for a head lad called Paddy Young. He's George Caspar's head lad. Find out where he drinks, and sort of drift into conversation.'

'Right.'

'We want to know the present whereabouts of three horses which used to be in his yard.'

'We do?'

'He shouldn't have any reason for not telling you, or at least, I don't think so.'

Chico eyed me. 'Why don't you ask George Caspar, right out? Be simpler, wouldn't it?'

'At the moment we don't want George Caspar to know we're asking questions about his horses.'

'Like that, is it?'

'I don't know, really.' I sighed. 'Anyway, the three horses are Bethesda, Gleaner, and Zingaloo.'

'O. K. I'll go up there tomorrow. Shouldn't be too difficult. You want me to ring you?'

'Soon as you can.'

He glanced at me sideways. 'What did the limb man say?'

'Hallo, Sid, nice to see you.'

He made a resigned noise with his mouth. 'Might as well ask questions of a brick wall.'

'He said the ship wasn't leaking and the voyage could go on.'

'Better than nothing.'

'As you say.'

I went to Aynsford, as Charles had known I would, driving down on Saturday afternoon and feeling the apprehensive gloom deepen with every mile. For distraction I concentrated on Chico 's news from Newmarket, telephoned through at lunchtime.

'I found him,' he said. 'He's a much-married man who has to take his pay packet home like a good boy on Friday evenings, but he sneaked out for a quick jar just now. The pub's nearly next door to the yard; very handy. Anyway, if you can understand what he says, and he's so Irish it's like talking to a foreigner, what it boils down to is that all three of those horses have gone to stud.'

'Did he know where?'

'Sure. Bethesda went to some place called Garvey's in Gloucestershire, and the other two are at a place just outside Newmarket, which Paddy Young called Traces, or at least I think that's what he said, although as I told you, he chews his words up something horrible.'

' Thrace,' I said. 'Henry Thrace.'

'Yeah? Well, maybe you can make sense of some other things he said, which were that Gleaner had a tritus and Zingaloo had the virus and Bruttersmit gave them both the turns down as quick as Concorde.'

'Gleaner had a what?'

'Tritus.'

I tried turning 'Gleaner had a tritus' into an Irish accent in my head and came up with Gleaner had arthritis, which sounded a lot more likely. I said to Chico, '… and Brothersmith gave them the thumbs down…'

'Yeah,' he said. 'You got it.'

'Where are you 'phoning from?'

'Box in the street.' 'There's a bit of boozing time left,' I said. 'Would you see if you can find out if this Brothersmith is George Caspar's vet, and if so, look him up in the 'phone book and bring back his address and number.'

'O. K. Anything else?'

'No.' I paused. ' Chico, did Paddy Young give you any impression that there was anything odd in these three horses going wrong?'

'Can't say he did. He didn't seem to care much, one way or the other. I just asked him casual like where they'd gone, and he told me, and threw in the rest for good measure. Philosophical, you could say he was.'

'Right, then,' I said. 'Thanks.'

We disconnected, but he rang again an hour later to tell me that Brothersmith was indeed George Caspar's vet, and to give me his address.

'If that's all, then, Sid, there's a train leaving in half an hour, and I've a nice little dolly waiting for me round Wembley way who'll have her Saturday night ruined if I don't get back.'

The more I thought about Chico 's report and Bobby Unwin's comments the less I believed in Rosemary's suspicions; but I'd promised her I would try, and try I still would, for a little while longer. For as long as it took me, anyway, to check up on Bethesda, Zingaloo and Gleaner, and talk to Brothersmith the vet.

Aynsford still looked its mellow stone self, but the daffodil-studded tranquillity applied to the exterior only. I stopped the car gently in front of the house and sat there wishing I didn't have to go in.

Charles, as if sensing that even then I might back off and drive away, came purposefully out of his front door and strode across the gravel. Watching for me, I thought. Waiting. Wanting me to come.

'Sid,' he said, opening my door and stooping down to smile. 'I knew you would.'

'You hoped,' I said. I climbed out onto my feet.

'All right.' The smile stayed in his eyes. 'Hoped. But I know you.'

I looked up at the front of the house, seeing only blank windows reflecting the greyish sky.

'Is she here?' I said.

He nodded. I turned away, went round to the back of the car, and lugged out my suitcase.

'Come on, then,' I said. 'Let's get it over.'

'She's upset,' he said, walking beside me. 'She needs your understanding.'

I glanced at him and said 'Mm.' We finished the short journey in silence, and went through the door.

Jenny was standing there, in the hall.

I had never got used to the pang of seeing her on the rare occasions we had met since she left. I saw her as I had when I first loved her, a girl not of great classical beauty, but very pretty, with brown curling hair and a neat figure, and a way of holding her head high, like a bird on the alert. The old curving smile and the warmth in her eyes were gone, but I tended to expect them, with hopeless nostalgia.

'So you came,' she said. 'I said you wouldn't.'

I put down the suitcase and took the usual deep breath. 'Charles wanted me to,' I said. I walked the steps towards her, and as always, we gave each other a brief kiss on the cheek. We had maintained the habit as the outward and public mark of a civilised divorce; but privately, I often thought, it was more like the ritual salute before a duel.

Charles shook his head impatiently at the lack of real affection, and walked ahead of us into the drawing room. He had tried in the past to keep us together, but the glue for any marriage had to come from the inside, and ours had dried to dust.

Jenny said, 'I don't want any lectures from you, Sid, about this beastly affair.'

'No.'

'You're not perfect yourself, even though you like to think so.'

'Give it a rest, Jenny,' I said.

She walked abruptly away into the drawing room, and I more slowly followed. She would use me, I thought, and discard me again, and because of Charles I would let her. I was surprised that I felt no tremendous desire to offer comfort. It seemed that irritation was still well in the ascendancy over compassion.

She and Charles were not alone. When I went in she had crossed the room to stand at the side of a tall blond man whom I'd met before; and beside Charles stood a stranger, a stocky young-old man whose austere eyes were disconcertingly surrounded by a rosy country face.

Charles said in his most ultra-civilised voice, 'You know Toby, don't you, Sid?', and Jenny's shield and supporter and I nodded to each other and gave the faint smiles of an acquaintanceship we would each have been happier without. 'And this, Sid, is my solicitor, Oliver Quayle. Gave up his golf to be here. Very good of him.'

'So you're Sid Halley,' the young-old man said, shaking hands. There was nothing in his voice either way, but his gaze slid down and sideways, seeking to see the half-hidden hand that he wouldn't have looked at if he hadn't known. It often happened that way. He brought his gaze back to my face and saw that I knew what he'd been doing. There was the smallest flicker in his lower eyelids, but no other remark. Judgement suspended, I thought, on either side.

Charles's mouth twitched, and he said smoothly, 'I warned you, Oliver. If you don't want him to read your thoughts, you mustn't move your eyes.'

'Yours don't move,' I said to him.

'I learned that lesson years ago.'

He made courteous sit-down motions with his hands, and the five of us sank into comfort and pale gold brocade.

'I've told Oliver,' Charles said, 'that if anyone can find this Nicholas Ashe person, you will.'

'Frightfully useful, don't you know,' drawled Toby, 'having a plumber in the family, when the pipes burst.'

It was a fraction short of offensiveness. I gave him the benefit of a doubt I didn't have, and asked nobody in particular whether the police wouldn't do the job more quickly.

'The trouble is,' Quayle said, 'that technically it is Jenny alone who is guilty of obtaining money by false pretences. The police have listened to her, of course, and the man in charge seems to be remarkably sympathetic, but…' He slowly shrugged the heavy shoulders in a way that skilfully combined sympathy and resignation,'… one feels they might choose to settle for the case they have.'

'But I say,' protested Toby, 'it was that Ashe's idea, all of it.' 'Can you prove it?' Quayle said. 'Jenny says so,' Toby said, as if that were proof enough. Quayle shook his head. 'As I've told Charles, it would appear from all documents that she signed that she did know the scheme was fraudulent. And ignorance, even if genuine, is always a poor, if not impossible, defence.'

I said, 'If there's no evidence against him, what would you do, even if I did find him?'

Quayle looked my way attentively. 'I'm hoping that if you find him, you'll find evidence as well.'

Jenny sat up exceedingly straight and spoke in a voice sharp with perhaps anxiety but certainly anger.

'This is all rubbish, Sid. Why don't you say straight out that the job's beyond you?'

'I don't know if it is.'

'It's pathetic,' she said to Quayle, 'how he longs to prove he's clever, now he's disabled.'

The flicking sneer in her voice shocked Quayle and Charles into visible discomfort, and I thought dejectedly that this was what I'd caused in her, this compulsive need to hurt. I didn't just mind what she'd said, I minded bitterly that because of me she was not showing to Quayle the sunny-tempered person she would still be if I wasn't there.

'If I find Nicholas Ashe,' I said grimly, 'I'll give him to Jenny. Poor fellow.'

None of the men liked it. Quayle looked disillusioned, Toby showed he despised me, and Charles sorrowfully shook his head. Jenny alone, behind her anger, looked secretly pleased. She seldom managed nowadays to goad me into a reply to her insults, and counted it a victory that I'd done it and earned such general disapproval. My own silly fault. There was only one way not to let her see when her barbs went it, and that was to smile… and the matter in hand was not very funny.

I said, more moderately, 'There might be ways… if I can find him. At any rate, I'll do my best. If there's anything I can do… I'll do it.'

Jenny looked unplacated, and no one else said anything. I sighed internally. 'What did he look like?' I said.

After a pause Charles said, 'I saw him once only, for about thirty minutes, four months ago. I have a general impression, but that's all. Young, personable, dark haired, clean-shaven. Something too ingratiating in his manner to me. I would not have welcomed him as a junior officer aboard my ship.'

Jenny compressed her lips and looked away from him, but could not protest against this judgement. I felt the first faint stirrings of sympathy for her and tried to stamp on them: they would only make me more vulnerable, which was something I could do without.

I said to Toby, 'Did you meet him?'

'No,' he said loftily. 'Actually, I didn't.'

'Toby has been in Australia,' Charles said, explaining. They all waited. It couldn't be shirked. I said directly to her, neutrally, 'Jenny?'

'He was fun,' she said vehemently, unexpectedly. 'My God, he was fun. And after you…' She stopped. Her head swung round my way with bitter eyes. 'He was full of life and jokes. He made me laugh. He was terrific. He lit things up. It was like… it was like…' She suddenly faltered and stopped, and I knew she was thinking, like us when we first met. Jenny, I thought desperately, don't say it, please don't.

Perhaps it was too much, even for her. How could people, I wondered for the ten thousandth useless time, how could people who had loved so dearly come to such a wilderness; and yet the change in us was irreversible, and neither of us would even search for a way back. It was impossible. The fire was out. Only a few live coals lurked in the ashes, searing unexpectedly at the incautious touch.

I swallowed. 'How tall was he?' I said.

'Taller than you.'

'Age?' 'Twenty-nine.'

The same age as Jenny. Two years younger than I. If he had told the truth, that was. A confidence trickster might lie about absolutely everything as a matter of prudence.

'Where did he stay, while he was… er… operating?'

Jenny looked unhelpful, and it was Charles who answered. 'He told Jenny he was staying with an aunt, but after he had gone, Oliver and I checked up. The aunt, unfortunately, proved to be a landlady who lets rooms to students in north Oxford. And in any case…' he cleared his throat, '… it seems that fairly soon he left the lodgings and moved into the flat Jenny is sharing in Oxford with another girl.'

'He lived in your flat?' I said to Jenny. 'So what of it?' She was defiant. And something else…

'So when he left, did he leave anything behind?'

'No.'

'Nothing at all?'

'No.'

'Do you want him found?' I said.

To Charles and Quayle and Toby the answer to that question was an automatic yes, but Jenny didn't answer, and the blush that started at her throat rose fast to two bright spots on her cheekbones.

'He's done you great harm,' I said.

With stubbornness stiffening her neck, she said, 'Oliver says I won't go to prison.'

'Jenny!' I was exasperated. 'A conviction for fraud will affect your whole life in all sorts of horrible ways. I see that you liked him. Maybe you even loved him. But he's not just a naughty boy who pinched the jampot for a lark. He has callously arranged for you to be punished in his stead. That's the crime for which I'll catch him if I damned well can, even if you don't want me to.'

Charles protested vigorously, 'Sid, that's ridiculous. Of course she wants to see him punished. She agreed that you should try to find him. She wants you to, of course she does.'

I sighed and shrugged. 'She agreed, to please you. And because she doesn't think I'll succeed; and she's very likely right. But even talk of my succeeding is putting her in a turmoil and making her angry… and it's by no means unknown for women to go on loving scoundrels who've ruined them.'

Jenny rose to her feet, stared at me blindly, and walked out of the room. Toby took a step after her and Charles too got to his feet, but I said with some force, 'Mr Quayle, please will you go after her and tell her the consequences if she's convicted. Tell her brutally, make her understand, make it shock.'

He had taken the decision and was on his way after her before I'd finished.

'It's hardly kind,' Charles said. 'We've been trying to spare her.'

'You can't expect Halley to show her any sympathy,' Toby said waspishly.

I eyed him. Not the brightest of men, but Jenny's choice of undemanding escort, the calm sea after the hurricane. A few months earlier she had been thinking of marrying him, but whether she would do it post-Ashe was to my mind doubtful.

He gave me his usual lofty look of non-comprehension and decided Jenny needed him at once.

Charles watched his departing back and said, with a tired note of despair, 'I simply don't understand her. And it took you about ten minutes to see… what I wouldn't have seen at all.' He looked at me gloomily. 'It was pointless, then, to try to reassure her, as I've been doing?'

'Oh Charles, what a bloody muddle… It won't have done any harm. It's just given her a way of excusing him… Ashe… and putting off the time when she'll have to admit to herself that she's made a shattering… shaming… mistake.'

The lines in his face had deepened with distress. He said sombrely, 'It's worse. Worse than I thought.' 'Sadder,' I said. 'Not worse.' 'Do you think you can find him?' he said. 'How on earth do you start?'