I thanked him and paid him, took my clean disks out to the car and set off on the drive south to Portsmouth, giving Southampton Docks a wide berth.
Customs and Excise were fortunately helpful, extending the impression that talking to the general public made a change from regular bureaucracy. The near-top man I was finally steered to, who introduced himself briefly as ‘Collins,’ offered me a seat, a cup of tea and a willing expression. An office around us: desk, green plant, second-generation Scandinavian decor.
‘What may your drivers carry and what may they not?’ Collins repeated.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Yes. As you know, it’s all different from the old cut-and-dried days.’
‘Mm.’
‘We’re positively forbidden to make spot checks on anything coming in from the EC.’ He paused. ‘European Community,’ he said.
‘Mm.’
‘Even drugs.’ He spread his hands in what looked like a long-standing frustration. ‘We can act — search — only on specific information. The stuff floods in, I’ve no doubt, but we can’t do anything about it. Customs checks on goods are now allowed only at the point of entry into the Community. Once inside, movement is free.’
‘I expect it saves a lot of paperwork,’ I said.
‘Tons of it. Hundreds of tons. Sixty million fewer forms.’ The plus side lightened his scowl. ‘Saves time too, saves days and months.’ He searched briefly for a booklet, found it and slid it towards me across his desk. ‘Most of the present regulations are listed in there. There’s very little restriction on alcohol, tobacco and personal goods. One day there’ll be none. But of course there’ll still be duty and restrictions of goods entering from outside the EC.’
I picked up the booklet and thanked him.
‘We spend a good deal of our time juggling with VAT,’ he said. ‘Different rates, you see, in different EC countries.’
‘I was wondering,’ I murmured, ‘what one may still not bring into this country from Europe, and... er... what one may not take out.’
His eyebrows rose. ‘Not take out?’
‘Anything that doesn’t have free movement.’
He pursed his lips. ‘Some things need licences,’ he said. ‘Are your drivers breaking the law?’
‘I came to find out.’
His interest sharpened as if he’d suddenly realised I was there from more than normal curiosity.
‘Your horseboxes come and go through Portsmouth, don’t they?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘And they’re never searched.’
‘No.’
‘And you have the necessary permissions, of course, to move live animals across the Channel.’
‘All that’s done for us by a specialist firm.’
He nodded. He thought. ‘I suppose if your boxes carried other animals than horses, we’d never know. Your drivers haven’t been bringing in cats or dogs, have they?’ His voice was censorious and alarmed. ‘We maintain the quarantine laws, of course. The threat of rabies is always with us.’
I said calmingly, ‘I’ve never heard of them bringing in cats or dogs, and if they had it would be common knowledge in my village, where news travels faster than lightning.’
He relaxed slightly; a fortyish man with receding hair and white careful hands.
‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘thanks to vaccines, no one has died of rabies contracted in Europe for the past thirty years, but we still don’t want the disease here.’
‘Um,’ I said, ‘what do you need a licence for?’
‘Dozens of things. From your point of view, I suppose veterinary medicines would be interesting. You’d need to get a separate licence for each movement, a Therapeutic Substance licence from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Veterinary Medicines Directorate. But there would be no check on the substance here on entry through Portsmouth. Enforcement of licensing would be a matter for MAFF itself.’
MAFF? Oh, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Shades of Jogger.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘what else isn’t one supposed to bring in and out?’
‘Guns,’ he said. ‘There are still exit checks, of course, for firearms in baggage at airports. No import checks here. You could bring in a horseboxful of guns, and we’d never know. Smuggling in the old sense has vanished within the EC.’
‘So it seems.’
‘There are intellectual property rights,’ he said. ‘That’s about the infringement of existing patents between member states.’
‘I don’t think my drivers are into intellectual property rights.’
He smiled briefly, a quick movement of lips. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t been of much help.’
‘Indeed you’ve been most kind,’ I assured him, rising to go. ‘Negative results are often as helpful as positive.’
I thought, however, as I drove back to Pixhill with the Single Market booklet on the seat beside me, that I was as far as ever from understanding why anyone should need or want to fix hiding-places under my lorries. If smuggling was out, what were they for?
At home I sat in my poor green leather chair with the stuffing coming out of the axe-holes and one by one fed my clean disks and their information into my new computer. Then, feeling rusty and all thumbs and impatient to begin my lessons with the wizard, I looked up my original computer manuals and worked out how to organise all the data now inside the machine into various categories, both chronological and geographic.
I studied in turn each driver’s work over the past three years, looking for I knew not what. A pattern? Something worth destroying my records for, if that should happen not to be the work of Isobel’s brother. I tended to doubt it was Paul’s doing as, first, he was more idle than bright and, second, Isobel would never let him play games in the office.
The patterns I was looking for were definitely there, but told me nothing I didn’t know. Each driver went most often to the racecourses favoured by the trainers they mostly drove for. Lewis, for instance, drove most regularly each summer to Newbury, Sandown, Goodwood, Epsom, Salisbury and Newmarket, Michael Watermead’s preferred prestigious destinations. At other times he went where Benjy Usher sent his jumpers, Lingfield, Fontwell, Chepstow, Cheltenham, Warwick and Worcester. Most of his overseas journeys had been for Michael, all to Italy, Ireland or France.
Although there was horseracing all over Europe, British trainers rarely sent horses anywhere but Italy, Ireland and France. Often British runners travelled by air (and had to be taken to the airports), but Michael much preferred to go all the way by road; all the better for me.
Nigel had made the most overseas journeys, but that was my doing, owing to his long-distance stamina. Harve had made few, both my choice and his. Dave had made dozens as relief driver and horse-handler, often with broodmares rather than racers.
All in all, the categories were informative but told me nothing surprising, and after about an hour I switched off, as puzzled as ever.
I phoned Nina, reckoning she would be in her horsebox on the way back from Lingfield, and she answered immediately.
‘Phone me when you get to Pixhill,’ I said briefly.
‘Will do.’
End of conversation.
I phoned Isobel at her home. Nothing unusual had happened during the day’s work, she assured me. She’d told Lewis that Nina was following him, and all the Usher horses had run in the right races at Lingfield. Aziz and Dave had arrived in Ireland with their mares. Harve and Phil had each taken a winner to Wolverhampton, great rejoicing. None of the other drivers had hit snags.
‘Great,’ I said. ‘Um... your brother Paul...’
‘I’ve told him not to bother me at work.’ She sounded guiltily apologetic.