Rat Race Part 21

'You included?' I suggested.

She nodded. 'Oh yes. He's always very persuasive. It's always for something extremely plausible, but all the deals fall through...' She looked away across the Heath, considering. 'And then this year, back in February or March, I think, he turned up one day and said he wouldn't need to borrow any more from me, he'd got a good thing going which would make him rich.'

'What was it?'

'He wouldn't say. Just told me not to worry, it was all legal. He had gone into partners.h.i.+p with someone with a cast iron idea for making a fortune. Well, I'd heard that sort of thing from him so often before. The only difference was that this time he didn't want money....'

'He wanted something else?'

'Yes.' She frowned. 'He wanted me to introduce him to Bobbie Wess.e.x. He said... just casually... how much he'd like to meet him, and I suppose I was so relieved not to find him cadging five hundred or so that I instantly agreed. It was very silly of me, but it didn't seem important...'

'What happened then?'

She shrugged. 'They were both at the Doncaster meeting at the opening of the fiat season, so I introduced them. Nothing to it. Just a casual racecourse introduction. And then,' she looked annoyed, 'the next time Rupert turned up with that man Goldenberg, saying Bobbie Wess.e.x had given him permission to decide how Rudiments should be run in all his races. I said he certainly wasn't going to do that, and telephoned to Bobbie. But,' she sighed, 'Rupert had indeed talked him into giving him carte blanche with Rudiments. Rupert is an expert persuader, and Bobbie, well, poor Bobbie is easily open to suggestion. Anyone with half an eye could see that Goldenberg was as straight as a corkscrew but Rupert said he was essential as someone had got to put the bets on, and he, Rupert, couldn't, as no bookmaker would accept his credit and you had to have hard cash for the Tote.'

'And then the scheme went wrong,' I said.

'The first time Rudiments won, they'd both collected a lot of money. I had told them the horse would win. Must win. It started at a hundred to six, first time out, and they were both as high as kites afterwards.'

'And next time Kenny Bayst won again when he wasn't supposed to, when they had laid it?'

She looked startled. 'So you did understand what they were saying.'

'Eventually.'

'Just like Rupert to let it out. No sense of discretion.'

I sighed. 'Well, thank you very much for being so frank. Even if I still can't see what connection Rudiments has with Major Tyderman blowing up one aircraft and crippling another.'

She twisted her mouth. 'I told you,' she said, 'Right at the beginning, that nothing I told you would be of any help.'

Colin stopped beside me in pink and green silks on his way from the weighing room to the parade ring for the last race. He gave me a concentrated enquiring look which softened into something like compa.s.sion.

'The waiting's doing you no good,' he said.

'Has she telephoned again?'

He shook his head. 'Midge won't leave the house, in case she does.'

'I'll be at Warwick races on Sat.u.r.day... flying some people up from Kent... Will you ask her... just to talk to me?'

'I'll wring her stupid little neck,' he said.

I flew the customers back to Wilts.h.i.+re and the Six back to Buckingham. Harley, waiting around with bitter eyes, told me the Board of Trade had let him know they were definitely proceeding against me.

'I expected they would.'

'But that's not what I wanted to speak to you about. Come into the office.' He was unfriendly, as usual. Snappy. He picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and waved it at me.

'Look at these times. I've been going through the bills Honey has sent out since you've been here. All the times are shorter. We've had to charge less... we're not making enough profit. It's got to stop. D'you understand? Got to stop.'

'Very well.'

He looked nonplussed: hadn't expected such an easy victory.

'And I'm taking on another pilot.'

'Am I out, then?' I found I scarcely cared.

He was surprised. 'No. Of course not. We simply seem to be getting too much taxi work just lately for you to handle on your own, even with Don's help.'

'Maybe we're getting more work because we're doing the trips faster and charging less,' I suggested.

He was affronted. 'Don't be ridiculous.'

Another long evening in the caravan, aching and empty.

Nowhere to go, no way of going, and nothing to spend when I got there. That didn't matter, because wherever I went, whatever I spent, the inescapable thoughts lay in wait. Might as well suffer them alone and cheaply as anywhere else.

For something to do, I cleaned the caravan from end to end. When it was finished, it looked better, but I, on the whole, felt worse. Scrambled myself two eggs, ate them unenthusiastically on toast. Drank a dingy cup of dried coffee, dried milk.

Switched on the television. Old movie, circa 1950, pirates, cutla.s.ses, heaving bosoms. Switched off.

Sat and watched night arrive on the airfield. Tried to concentrate on what Annie Villars had told me, so as not to think of night arriving over the fields and tents of Warwicks.h.i.+re. For a long time, had no success at all.

Look at everything upside down. Take absolutely nothing for granted.

The middle of the night produced out of a shallow restless sleep a singularly wild idea. Most sleep-sp.a.w.ned revelations from the subconscious wither and die of ridicule in the dawn, but this time it was different. At five, six, seven o'clock, it still looked possible. I traipsed in my mind through everything I had seen and heard since the day of the bomb, and added a satisfactory answer to why to the answer to who.

That Friday I had to set off early in the Aztec to Germany with some television cameramen from Denham, wait while they took their shots, and bring them home again. In spite of breaking Harley's ruling about speed into pin-sized fragments it was seven-thirty before I climbed stiffly out of the c.o.c.kpit and helped Joe push the st.u.r.dy twin into the hangar.

'Need it for Sunday, don't you?' he asked.

'That's right. Colin Ross to France.' I stretched and yawned, and picked up my heavy flight bag with all its charts and doc.u.ments.

'We're working you hard.'

'What I'm here for.'

He put his hands in his overall pockets. 'You're light on those aeroplanes, I'll give you that. Larry, now, Larry was heavy-handed. Always needing things repaired, we were, before you came.'

I gave him a sketch of an appreciative smile and walked up to fill in the records in the office. Harley and Don were both still flying, Harley giving a lesson, and Don a sight-seeing trip in the Six, and Honey was still traffic-copping up in the tower. I climbed up there to see her and ask her a considerable favour.

'Borrow my Mini?' she repeated in surprise. 'Do you mean now, this minute?'

I nodded. 'For the evening.'

'I suppose I could get Uncle to take me home,' she reflected. 'If you'll fetch me in the morning?'

'Certainly.'

'Well... all right. I don't really need it this evening. Just fill it up with petrol before you hand it back.'

'O.K. And thanks a lot.'

She gave me a frankly vulgar grin. 'Minis are too small for what you want.'

I managed to grin back. 'Yeah...'

Given the wheels, make the appointment. A pleasant male voice answered the telephone, polite and quiet.

'The Duke of Wess.e.x? Yes, this is his house. Who is speaking please?'

'Matthew Sh.o.r.e.'

'One moment, sir.'

The one moment stretched to four minutes, and I fed a week's beer money into the greedy box. At last the receiver at the other end was picked up and with slightly heavy breathing the Duke's unmistakable voice said, 'Matt? My dear chap, what can I do for you?'

'If you are not busy this evening, sir, could I call in to see you for a few minutes?'

'This evening? Busy? Hm... Is it about young Matthew's flight?'

'No, sir, something different. I won't take up much of your time.'

'Come by all means, my dear chap, if you want to. After dinner, perhaps? Nine o'clock, say?'

'Nine o'clock,' I confirmed. 'I'll be there.'

The Duke lived near Royston, west of Cambridge. Honey's Mini ate up the miles like Billy Bunter so that it was nine o'clock exactly when I stopped at a local garage to ask for directions to the Duke's house. On Honey's radio, someone was reading the news. I listened idly at first while the attendant finished filling up the car in front, and then with sharp and sickened attention. 'Racehorse trainer Jarvis Kitch and owner Dobson Ambrose, whose filly Scotchbright won the Oaks last month, were killed today in a multiple traffic accident just outside Newmarket. The Australian jockey Kenny Bayst, who was in the car with them, was taken to hospital with multiple injuries. His condition tonight is said to be fair. Three stable lads, trapped when a lorry crushed their car, also died in the crash.'

Mechanically I asked for, got, and followed, the directions to the Duke's house. I was thinking about poor large aggressive Ambrose and his cowed trainer Kitch, hoping that Kenny wasn't too badly hurt to race again, and trying to foresee the ramifications.

There was nothing else on the news except the weather forecast: heatwave indefinitely continuing.

No mention of Rupert Tyderman. But Tyderman, that day, had been seen by the police.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

The Duke's manservant was as pleasant as his voice: a short, a.s.sured, slightly pop-eyed man in his later forties with a good deal of the Duke's natural benevolence in his manner. The house he presided over opened to the public, a notice read, every day between 1st March and 30th November. The Duke, I discovered, lived privately in the upper third of the south-west wing.

'The Duke is expecting you, sir. Will you come this way?'

I followed. The distance I followed accounted for the length of time I had waited for the Duke to come to the telephone and also his breathlessness when he got there. We went up three floors, along a two furlong straight, and up again, to the attics. The attics in eighteenth century stately homes were a long way from the front hall.

The manservant opened a white-painted door and gravely showed me in.

'Mr Sh.o.r.e, your Grace.'

'Come in, come in, my dear chap,' said the Duke.

I went in, and smiled with instant, spontaneous delight. The square low-ceilinged room contained a vast toy electric train set laid out on an irregular ring of wide green-covered trestle tables. A terminus, sidings, two small towns, a branch line, tunnels, gradients, viaducts, the Duke had the lot. In the centre of the ring, he and his nephew Matthew stood behind a large control table pressing the switches which sent about six different trains clanking on different courses round the complex.

The Duke nudged his nephew. 'There you are, what did we say? He likes it.'

Young Matthew gave me a fleeting glance and went back to some complicated point changing. 'He was bound to. He's got the right sort of face.'

The Duke said, 'You can crawl in here best under that table with the signal box and level crossing.' He pointed, so I went down on hands and knees and made the indicated journey. Stood up in the centre. Looked around at the rows of lines and remembered the hopeless pa.s.sion I'd felt in toy shops as a child: my father had been an underpaid schoolmaster who had spent his money on books.

The two enthusiasts showed me where the lines crossed and how the trains could be switched without cras.h.i.+ng. Their voices were filled with contentment, their eyes s.h.i.+ning, their faces intent.

'Built this lot up gradually, of course,' the Duke said. 'Started when I was a boy. Then for years I never came up here. Not until young Matthew got old enough. Now, as I expect you can see, we have great times.'

'We're thinking of running a branch line right through that wall over there into the next attic,' Matthew said. 'There isn't much room in here.'

The Duke nodded. 'Next week, perhaps. For your birthday.'

Young Matthew gave him a huge grin and deftly let a pullman cross three seconds in front of a chugging goods. 'It's getting dark,' he observed. 'Lighting up time.'

'So it is,' agreed the Duke.

Matthew with a flourish pressed a switch, and they both watched my face. All round the track, and on all the stations and signal boxes and in the signals themselves, tiny electric lights suddenly shone out. The effect, to my eyes, was enchanting.

'There you are,' said the Duke. 'He likes it.'

'Bound to,' young Matthew said.

They played with the trains for another whole hour, because they had worked out a timetable and they wanted to see if they could keep to it before they pinned it up on the notice board in the terminal. The Duke apologised, not very apologetically, for keeping me waiting, but it was, he explained, Matthew's first evening out of school, and they had been waiting all through the term for this occasion.

At twenty to eleven the last shuttle service stopped at the buffers in the terminal and Matthew yawned. With the satisfaction of a job well done the two railwaymen unfolded several large dustsheets and laid them carefully over the silent tracks, and then we all three crawled back under the table which held the level crossing.

The Duke led the way down the first flight and along the two furlongs, and we were then, it appeared, in his living quarters.

'You'd better cut along to bed, now, Matthew,' he said to his nephew. 'See you in the morning. Eight o'clock sharp, out in the stables.'

'Sure thing,' Matthew said. 'And after that, the races.' He sighed with utter content. 'Better than school,' he said.

The Duke showed me into a smallish white-painted sitting-room furnished with Persian rugs, leather armchairs, and endless sporting prints.

'A drink?' he suggested, indicating a tray.

I looked at the bottles. 'Whisky, please.'