Hot Money Part 22

'I'll take you safely to Heathrow and see you off.'

'Dammit, that's not what I meant.'

'No,' I said. 'Well... the Breeders' Cup races are three weeks tomorrow at Santa Anita. Why don't we phone Ramsey Osborn? Why don't we phone Blue Clancy's trainer? Why don't you fly to Los Angeles tomorrow and have a n'ne old time at the races for three weeks? They have racing every day on the same track. If I know you, you'll be cronies with the racetrack committee immediately. Ramsey Osborn will send introductions. You can stay where the Breeders' Cup organisers do, at the Beverly Wils.h.i.+re hotel which I've heard is right at the end of Rodeo Drive where there's a man's shop so expensive you have to make an appointment to be let in. Buy a few s.h.i.+rts there, it'll make a nice dent in your bankroll. Forget Quantum. Forget the b.l.o.o.d.y family. They won't know where you are and they'll never find you.'

I stopped only a fraction for breath, not long enough for him to raise objections. 'On the Tuesday after the Breeders' Cup, they're running the Melbourne Cup in Melbourne, Australia. That's their biggest race. The whole country stops for it. A lot of the people from the Breeders' Cup will go on to Australia. You'll have made cronies among them by the dozen. I've heard it's all marvellous. I've never been, and I'd love to. I'll join you as soon as my pa.s.sport's renewed and I'll go on minding your back - if you still want me to.'

He had listened at first with apathy, but by the end he was smiling. I'd proposed the sort of impulsive behaviour that had greatly appealed to him in the past, and it still did, I was grateful to see.

'A d.a.m.n sight better than rotting at the Ritz,' he announced.

'Great,' I said. 'Get out your diary for the numbers.'

It was soon settled. Blue Clancy would go over for the Breeders' Cup as long as he was fit. Ramsey Osborn, booming away in Stamford, Connecticut, promised introductions galore to a score of very dear friends he'd met a couple of times out West. Why didn't Malcolm stop off at Lexington on the way and feast his eyes on some real bloodstock? Ramsey had some very good friends in Lexington who would be delighted to have Malcolm stay with them. Ramsey would call them and fix it. Stay by the phone, you guys, he said. He would fix it and call back. It was breakfast time in Connecticut, he said. It would be an hour earlier in Lexington. He would see if the lazy so and so's were out of bed.

Whether they were or they weren't, Ramsey phoned back within twenty minutes. As before, Malcolm talked on the sitting-room telephone, I on the extension in my bedroom.

'All set,' Ramsey said. 'They're expecting you, Malcolm, tomorrow, and I'm flying down Sunday. They're real sweet guys, you'll love them. Dave and Sally Cander. Dogwood Drift Farm, outside of Lexington.' He read out the telephone number. 'You got that?'

Malcolm had got it.

Ramsey asked where Malcolm was planning to stay for the Breeders' Cup. 'Beverly Wils.h.i.+re? Couldn't be better. Centre of the universe. I'll make reservations right away.'

Malcolm explained he needed a two-bedroom suite for himself and me. Sure thing, Ramsey agreed. No problem. See you, he said. We had made his day, he said, and to have a good one.

The sitting-room seemed smaller and quieter when he'd gone off the line, but Malcolm had revitalised remarkably. We went at once by taxi to Australia House where Malcolm got his visa without delay, and on the way back stopped first at his bank for more travellers' cheques and then in Piccadilly a little short of the Ritz to shop in Simpson's for replacement clothes from the skin up, not forgetting suitcases to pack them in. Malcolm paid for all of mine with his credit card, which was a relief. I hardly liked to ask him outright for my fare to California, but he'd thought of my other finances himself already and that evening gave me a b.u.mper cheque to cover several additional destinations.

'Your fare and so on. Pay Arthur Bellbrook. Pay Norman West. Pay the contractors for weatherproofing Quantum. Pay for the hired car. Pay your own expenses. Anything else?'

'Tickets to Australia?'

'We'll get those in the morning. I'll pay for them here, with mine to Lexington. If we can get you a Los Angeles ticket without a date on, I can pay for that, too.'

We made plans about telephone calls. He was not to phone me, I would phone him.

We dined in good spirits, the dreadful morning at least overlaid. He raised his gla.s.s: 'To Blue Clancy' and 'To racing' and 'To life.'

'To life,' I said.

I drove him to Heathrow in the morning safely as promised, and saw him on his way to Lexington via New York and Cincinnati. He was fizzing at least at half strength and gave me a long blue look before he departed.

'Don't think I don't know what I owe you,' he said.

'You owe me nothing.'

'b.l.o.o.d.y Moira,' he said unexpectedly, and looked back and waved as he went.

Feeling good about him, I telephoned from the airport to Superintendent Yale but got one of his a.s.sistants: his chief was out at Quantum and had left a message that if I phoned I was to be asked if I could join him. Yes, I could, I agreed, and arrived in the village about forty minutes later.

The road to the house wasn't as congested as the day before, but fresh waves of sightseers still came and went continuously. I drove up to the gate and after radio consultation the constable there let me pa.s.s. Another policeman was at my side the moment I stopped in front of the house. Different men, both of them, from the day before.

Superintendent Yale appeared from the direction of the kitchen, having been alerted by the gateman, I surmised.

'How is Mr Pembroke?' he asked, shaking hands with every sign of having adopted humanity as a policy.

'Shaken,' I said.

He nodded understandingly. He was wearing an overcoat and looked cold in the face, as if he'd been out of doors for some time. The mild wind of yesterday had intensified rawly and the clouds looked more threatening, as if it would rain. Yale glanced with anxiety at the heavens and asked me to go round with him to the back garden.

The front of the house looked sad and blind, with light brown plywood hammered over all the windows and a heavy black tarpaulin hanging from under the roof to hide the hole in the centre. At the rear, the windows were shuttered and the bare roof rafters were covered but the devastated centre was still open to the elements. Several men in hard hats and overalls were working there, slowly picking up pieces from the huge jumble and carrying them to throw them into a rubbish skip which stood a short distance away across the lawn.

'Do they propose to move all that by hand?' I asked.

'As much as is necessary,' Yale said. 'We've got a surprise for you.' He waved to a man in beige overalls with a blue hard hat who came over to us and asked me my name.

'Ian Pembroke,' I said obligingly.

He unzipped the front of his overalls, put a hand inside and drew out a battered navy-blue object which he held out to me with a small satisfied smile. 'You may need this,' he said.

Never a truer word. It was my pa.s.sport.

'Where on earth did you find it?' I said, delighted.

He shrugged and pointed to the mess. 'We always come across a few things unharmed. We're making a pile of them for you, but don't get your hopes up.'

I zipped the pa.s.sport into my new Simpson's Barbour and thought gratefully that I wouldn't have to trail around getting a new one.

'Have you found any gold-and-silver-backed brushes?' I asked.

'Not so far.'

'They're my father's favourite things.'

'We'll look out for them,' he said. 'Now, we'd like you to help us in return.'

'Anything I can.'

He was a lean, highly professional sort of man, late forties I guessed, giving an impression of army. He said his name was Smith. He was an explosives expert.

'When you first came here yesterday morning,' he said, 'did you smell anything?'

I was surprised. I thought back.

'Brick dust,' I said. 'The wind was stirring it up. It was in my throat.'

He grunted. 'This looks like a gas explosion, but you're quite certain, aren't you, that there was no gas in the house?'

'Absolutely certain.'

'Do you know what cordite smells like?' he asked.

'Cordite? Like after a gun's been fired, do you mean?'

"That's right.'

'Well, yes, I know what it smells like.'

'And you didn't smell that here yesterday morning?'

I looked at him, puzzled. 'No one was shot,' I said.

He smiled briefly. 'Do you know what cordite is?' he asked.

'Not really.'

'It was used very commonly as a general explosive,' he said, 'before n.o.bel invented dynamite in 1867. It's less fierce than dynamite. It's sort of high-grade gunpowder, and it's still used in some types of quarries. It explodes comparatively slowly, at about two thousand five hundred metres per second, or a little over. It explodes like a gas. It doesn't punch small holes through walls like a battering ram. It's rather like an expanding balloon that knocks them flat.'

I looked at the house.

'Yes, like that,' Smith said.

'Cordite ...' I frowned. 'It means nothing.'

'Its strong smell lingers,' he said.

'Well... we didn't get here until ten, and the explosion was at four-thirty in the morning, and it was fairly windy, though not as rough as today. I should think any smell had blown away.' I paused. 'What about all the people who were here before us? What do they say?'

'They're not here today,' Smith said succinctly. 'I haven't asked them.'

'No one said anything to me about a smell,' I said.

Smith shrugged. 'We'll do microscopic tests. We would do, anyway. But it looks to me as if cordite is a strong possibility.'

'Can you buy cordite?' I asked vaguely. 'Can anyone?'

'No, they definitely can't,' Smith said with decision. 'Twenty years or so ago, maybe, but not now. Since terrorism became a part of life, most sorts of explosives are highly regulated. It's extremely difficult for the general public to get hold of them. There are a few explosive substances on the open market, but detonators to set them off are not.'

I found I was thinking of cordite in terms of the small quant.i.ties used in firearms, whereas to knock down half a house ...

'How much cordite would that have taken?' I asked, gesturing to the results.

'I haven't yet worked it out. A good deal.'

'What would it have been in?'

'Anything.'

'What does it look like? Is it like jelly?'

'No, you're thinking of high-explosive TNT. That's liquid when it's fed into bomb cases, then it gels inside. Bombs dropped from aircraft are that sort. Cordite is loose grains, like gunpowder. To get a useful result, you have to compress it. Confine it. Then you need heat to start off the chemical reaction, which proceeds at such a rate that the ingredients appear to explode.'

'Appear!' I said, and added hastily, 'OK, I take your word for it, don't explain.'

He gave me a slightly pitying look but let up on the lecture and went back to searching in the ruins. Superintendent Yale asked if any of the Pembrokes had ever had any connection whatever with quarries. None that I knew of, I said. It was most improbable.

'Or had friends who had quarries, or who worked in quarries?'

I didn't know. I'd never heard of any.

My gaze wandered away from Smith and his fellow diggers after truth, and I became more aware of the audience beyond the rope in the garden. There weren't anything like as many as the day before, but clearly the work in progress was a draw in itself.

Arthur Bellbrook was there again, talking away. He must enjoy the celebrity, I thought. He'd been the one who'd found Moira, and now there was the house... Arthur was talking as if he owned the news, rocking back on his heels and sticking his stomach out. The dogs on their leads patiently waited. It didn't matter to them, I supposed, that Arthur was into maybe the twentieth account of life and death with the Pembrokes.

A stray piece of memory connected Arthur to the smell of cordite, and I couldn't think why that should be until I remembered him carrying his shotgun into the house on the day he'd thought I was a burglar.

I cast the stray thought out but it sauntered back, telling me it was nothing to do with Arthur and shotguns.

What then?

I frowned, trying to remember.

'What's the matter?' Yale said, watching me.

'Nothing, really.'

'You've thought of something. One of your family does have a quarry connection, is that it?'

'Oh no,' I half laughed. 'Not that. The smell of cordite ...'

The smell of cordite on a misty morning, and the gardener... not Arthur, but old Fred before him... telling us children to keep out of the way, to go right back out of the field, he didn't want our heads blown off...

I remembered abruptly, like a whole scene springing to life on a film screen. I walked across to where Smith in his hard blue hat bent to his task and said, without preamble, 'Does cordite have another name?'

He straightened, with a piece of brick and plaster in his hand.

'I suppose so,' he said. 'It's commonly called "black powder".'

Black powder.

'Why?' he said.

'Well, we had some here once. But long ago, when we were children. Twenty years ago at least, probably more. But I suppose... some of the family could have remembered... as I just have.'

Yale, who had followed me to listen, said, 'Remember what?'

'There used to be four or five great old willow trees down by the stream, across the field.' I pointed. 'Those you can see now are only twenty years old or so. They grow very fast... they were planted after they took the old trees down. They were splendid old trees, huge, magnificent.'

Yale made hurrying-up motions with his hands, as if to say the state of long-gone willows, however patrician, was immaterial.