Most of the drivers were in the canteen when I arrived on that Friday. The sky outside was gloriously pink and ginger, high, clear and cold. In the canteen the tea looked the colour of teak with strength to match, and white plastic teaspoons stood upright in the sugar bowl.
‘Morning, Freddie...’
I answered the chorus. ‘Good morning.’
Harve had already set off to Wolverhampton. I checked the other assembled drivers against the list I’d copied from the computer screen and found them all well briefed by Harve and Isobel. I realised I’d left a lot to those two since Tuesday night and had been more affected than I’d acknowledged by the rattling of my brain.
Phil, Dave and Lewis were there, Lewis showing no sign of flu. Nigel, despite his late return the evening before, exuded undiminished animal strength. Aziz smiled, as ever. A bunch of others looked at their watches, drank their tannin, used the washroom and ambled out on a collective mission to pick up most of the Pixhill horses that were running that afternoon at Lingfield Park.
Dave was down to go with Aziz in the nine-box on a broodmare mission to Ireland. Both men had arrived in plenty of time, and I asked Dave to come along to my office as I had something to discuss with him. He came in his usual happy-go-lucky way, carrying his tea mug and wearing an amiable unsuspecting expression.
I gestured to him to sit in the chair in front of the desk and closed the door behind us.
‘OK, Dave,’ I said, taking the chair behind the desk and feeling irritation with him, rather than outright anger, ‘who arranged your diarrhoea?’
‘What?’ He blinked, dismissing the thought crossing his mind. Dismissing the possibility that I knew what he’d done. Dismissing it wrongly, too soon.
‘Diarrhoea,’ I reminded him, ‘needing a stop at South Mimms service station to buy Imodium.’
‘Oh... yes. That. Mm. That’s right.’
‘Who arranged that stop?’
‘What? Well, no one. I had the squits, like.’
‘Let’s just face it, Dave,’ I said a shade wearily, ‘you did not pick up Kevin Keith Ogden by accident.’
‘Who?’
‘The hitchhiker. And let’s stop playing games. You know perfectly well who I mean. You went to his inquest yesterday. You and Brett stopped at South Mimms not because of any mythical squits but to pick up a passenger in order to take him to Chieveley. All of which you did not tell the coroner.’
Dave’s mouth opened with automatic denials ready and closed on account of what he saw in my face.
‘Who arranged it?’ I repeated.
He didn’t know what to say. I could almost chart the tumbling thoughts; could clearly see the indecision. I waited while he consulted his tea and searched for answers in the brightening sky beyond the window. The little-boy freckles as always lent his expression a natural air of innocence but the half-sly artful assessing look he finally gave me spoke of a more adult guilt.
‘There was nothing wrong in it,’ he said wheedlingly.
‘How do you know?’
He tried one of the ingratiating grins to which I was by then immune. ‘What makes you think it was arranged? Like I said, there was this geezer cadging a lift...’
‘Stop it, Dave,’ I said sharply. ‘If you want to keep your job, you’ll tell me the truth.’
Shock stopped him. I’d never looked forbidding to him before. ‘The truth,’ I urged.
‘Honestly, Freddie, I didn’t mean no harm.’ He began to look worried. ‘What harm could it do?’
‘What was the arrangement?’
‘Look, it couldn’t do no harm to give a man a lift.’
‘Who paid you?’
‘I... well...’
‘Who?’ I insisted. ‘Or you get on your bike now and you don’t come back.’
‘No one,’ he said desperately. ‘All right. All right. I was supposed to be paid, but I never was.’ His disgust looked genuine. ‘I mean, you weren’t supposed to know about him, but then he died...’ His voice faded, the realisation of his admission hitting home. ‘They said I would find an envelope in the cab of the nine-box first thing Friday, but of course the box was outside your house and there was no envelope in it in the morning, though I looked for it when we were cleaning, like, and I’ve never heard no more, and it’s not fair.’
‘Serves you right,’ I said unsympathetically. ‘Who are they?’
‘What?’
‘ “They” who said you would find an envelope in the cab?’
‘Well...’
‘Dave!’ I said, exasperated. ‘Get on with it.’
‘Yes, but, see, I don’t know.’
I said sarcastically, ‘You agreed to do something you knew I had over and over again forbidden, and you don’t know who you jeopardised your job for?’
‘Yes, but...’
‘No buts,’ I said. ‘How did “they” get in touch with you, and were “they” a man or a woman?’
‘Er...’
I would strangle him, I thought.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘all right.’ He took an unhappy breath. ‘It was a she, and she phoned me at home and my wife answered it and she didn’t like it being some strange woman, not Isobel, like, but anyway this woman just said it would be worth my while to give this man a lift, and you don’t turn down windfalls like that. I mean... well... it’s all beer money, isn’t it?’
‘Did you recognise her voice?’
He shook his head miserably.
‘What accent did she have?’
He seemed merely puzzled by the question. ‘She was English,’ he said, ‘not foreign.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Like I said, she said to pick up this man...’
‘How were you to know him?’
‘She said he would be near the diesel pumps and he’d see us pull up and he would speak to me... and he did.’
‘Who thought up the diarrhoea?’
‘Like, she did. See, she said I had to have some way of getting Brett to stop at South Mimms. So I told Brett if he didn’t stop, I’d have to drop my trousers in the cab and he would have to clean it up.’ He laughed uneasily. ‘Brett said he would rub my face in it. But anyway, he stopped.’
‘So Brett wasn’t in the scheme?’
Dave looked furious. ‘Brett’s a shit.’
‘Why, exactly?’
Dave’s sense of injustice overcame caution. ‘He said he wouldn’t take the man unless he paid us. So I asked this Ogden, but he said he hadn’t any money. He must have had some, but he said that wasn’t in the bargain, I would be getting paid later, and I said Brett wouldn’t agree to it without being paid first, and this Ogden got sort of purple, he was so upset, and he found some money after all, but not a lot, and Brett said it wasn’t enough and so I gave Brett some money and I had to tell him I’d be getting it back, so then he said he’d be wanting some of that if I didn’t want him to tell you that I’d fixed up a hitchhiker for money. And not only that,’ Dave’s fury increased, ‘but Brett came to the pub on Saturday evening and made me pay for his beer and he was effing gloating, and I told him the pay envelope hadn’t turned up but all he said was, “Too bad, mate, that’s your bad luck” and went on drinking.’