I went into the sitting-room to see what I could retrieve from the mess, and stood considering the answering machine, which had been split into two pieces with its guts, in the shape of recording tape, unspooling onto the floor.
On the tape, I thought, was Jogger’s voice.
I hadn’t in the end written down exactly what he’d said, and although I could more or less remember, I wasn’t certain of being exact. No amount of rhyming dictionary would help if I got the original words wrong. I rummaged in the kitchen for a star screwdriver and other tools and liberated the hacked pieces of cassette from the answering machine, trying not to tear the tape itself but finding that the axe, in going through one of the spools, had severed a lot of it into very short lengths.
Cursing, I sought and found an old cassette with nothing of note on it, and took that apart and removed all the tape from it. Then I carefully unrolled the whole of the longest section of tape from the answering machine’s one undamaged spool and wound it from its beginning onto one of the newly freed spools. I attached the severed end to the second freed spool and replaced them into their cassette, screwing it shut again.
Then I searched the house for an old seldom-used pocket-sized cassette player which I knew I had somewhere, but naturally when I finally ran it to earth its batteries were flat.
A short pause ensued while I raided another gadget with the same size batteries in working order, but finally, with a sort of prayer, I pressed the play button and held my breath.
‘I hate this bloody machine,’ Jogger’s voice said. ‘Where have you gone, Freddie?’
Loud and clear. Hallelujah.
The whole of his message was there, though slightly distorted by my not having wound the tape evenly enough. When I ran it back and then forward again the distortions had disappeared. I took a sheet of paper and wrote down what he’d said, word for word, indicating his pauses with dots, but I still didn’t understand his meaning.
A dead nun in the pit last August.
Most unlikely! Someone would have told me about it even though I’d spent a good deal of August in France (Deauville races) and America (Saratoga, ditto).
What rhymed with nun? Bun, done, fun, run, sun...
No. What paired with nun?
Nun and monk.
Monk... bunk, chunk, dunk, drunk, funk, hunk, junk, punk, sunk, stunk, chipmunk.
A dead chipmunk? A dead funk? A dead hunk? Hunk of what? Dead junk. Dead punk? A dead drunk?
I would give the transcript to Nina, I thought, and let the collective brains of the Jockey Club Security Service loose on it. I laid the nonsense aside feeling that even if we cracked the code the message could turn out to be irrelevant. Jogger obviously hadn’t known he was going to die. He hadn’t been leaving me an intensely significant message, fearing it to be his last.
With a shift of focus I switched on the new computer, hoping there wouldn’t be a flash and a fizzle and another total collapse of hard disk. Amazingly, however, the wizard had restored me to smooth computer life, everything working as before. I called up Isobel’s office machine to see what, if anything, she and Rose had entered and filed since that morning.
They’d been busy, both of them. They’d been quick, conscientious, generous with their time. I’d told both of them to start with that day’s entries and go slowly backwards between their other jobs, if they could, but not to go further back in any case than the beginning of the month.
‘Leave it on paper for now,’ I said.
‘But the spreadsheets...’ Rose said.
‘Leave the spreadsheets.’
‘If you say so,’ she agreed doubtfully.
‘It’s our own fault we lost everything,’ Isobel said dolefully.
‘Never mind.’ I still didn’t tell them I might produce full back-up copies if, first, the safe cracker didn’t somehow destroy them in getting the safe open, and if, second, the Michelangelo virus hadn’t already wiped them out. I also didn’t want to incur a repeat attack on myself or my belongings if someone heard the disks existed and knew they could reveal high risk information. The bruise on my head might be fading, but my car and my sitting-room continually reminded me that melodrama in Pixhill had come through my gates and might not yet be extinct.
On the screen I read the next day’s engagements for the fleet. Not bad for that week: steeplechasers to Wolverhampton and Lingfield Park. Broodmares to three studs. Irish horses to Bristol airport, returning home from Cheltenham.
Advance plans for Saturday looked good.
I called up the directory of files to see what else Isobel and Rose had entered and found an unusual one there: ‘Visitors.’
‘Visitors’ turned out to be the list I’d asked them for of everyone they could remember who’d visited the farmyard office lately.
The dears, I thought, pleased. Helpful beyond duty.
The list read:
All the drivers except Gerry and Pat, who have the flu. (They’ll both be working again next week, they say.)
Vic and his wife (they both now have flu.).
Tessa Watermead (looking for Nigel or Lewis).
Jericho Rich (about his horses).
Constable Smith (about the dead man).
Dr Farway (about the dead man).
Mr Tigwood (collecting box).
Betsy (Mr Watermead’s secretary).
Brett Gardner (when he left).
Mrs Williams (cleaner).
Lorna Lipton (looking for FC, but he was driving the shuttle).
Paul (Isobel’s brother, borrowed some money).
Man delivering disinfectant chemicals.
I typed a thank you message onto the list and made a back-up copy of the new work onto a clean unused floppy, though I suspected the office would be ankle-deep in back-ups from now on. I switched off the computer, made some food, drank the rest of the champagne and thought a lot about viruses, both organic and electronic.
Nina telephoned, yawning, at about ten.
‘Where are you?’ I asked.
‘In the cab of the horsebox, in the farmyard. We’ve refuelled and Nigel’s hosing down the outside of the box, thank God. I’m knackered.’
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing, don’t worry. The trip went according to plan. We’ve delivered the showjumper. The owner’s father, Jericho Rich, he was there when we unloaded, shouting orders all over the place. What a bloody awkward man. I nearly snapped his head off but thought I’d better not, for your sake. No, nothing much else happened, it’s just that this long-distance driving lark is a job for strong young men; you’re right about that.’
‘How did you get on with Nigel?’
‘My God, he’s randy. Had his hand on my knee a couple of times and I’m old enough to be his mother. Actually he’s not bad fun. No complaints. We chatted a lot. Can I tell you tomorrow?’ She yawned again. ‘He’s nearly finished the cleaning. He’s got inexhaustible stamina.’
‘His chief virtue,’ I agreed.
‘See you in the morning. Bye.’
In the morning I went to the farmyard early, wanting to see some of the drivers before they set off. Harve himself was down for an early start to Wolverhampton, and in such absences of his I very often wandered around in case there were last-minute queries or alterations.
Early starts were normal, as most trainers insisted on their horses arriving at a course at least three hours before they were due to race. In the winter, when racing could start at noon in order to complete the programme in the abbreviated daylight, the drivers could be loading at six or seven in the dark and unloading in the dark twelve hours later, according to the length of the journey. By the vernal equinox, we were loading and unloading at dawn and dusk with the long light summer days beckoning, and in the three years I’d had the business I’d seen a regular pattern of energy enhanced by the sun. The workload might be the same in January and June, but not the fatigue level.