“Hello,” I said. “Have any trouble?”
“No,” said Luca. “Traffic was fairly light, really, from Richmond, for a Friday.”
“No problems in the parking lot?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “But I forgot how bloody hard it is to get that trolley across from the center of the course.”
“I’ve just been given a message,” I said to him.
“Where?” he asked.
“In the parking lot behind the stands,” I said.
“Who by?” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Someone who’s not very happy about what happened at Stratford races on Wednesday.”
“What sort of message?” asked Luca with concern.
“Fists and steel toe caps,” I said.
“What!” He seemed genuinely distressed. “Here? In the parking lot?”
I nodded.
“You’re having me on?” he said, but he wasn’t smiling.
“Sadly, I’m not,” I said. “And I could show you my bruised solar plexus to prove it.”
“God,” he said, clearly upset. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” said Betsy. “You didn’t do it.”
“Shut up, Betsy,” said Luca sharply, clearly annoyed.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” she whined at him.
“Then don’t say such stupid things,” he said to her. He turned back to me. “Ned, I’m really sorry. Are you OK?”
“I’ll live,” I said without much warmth. It would do no harm, I thought, for Luca to realize that his little games had consequences, some of which were decidedly unpleasant, and not just for him.
Betsy went off towards the grandstand in a huff, and both Luca and I watched her go.
“Go after her, if you like,” I said to him.
He said nothing but shrugged his shoulders and stayed just where he was. It would appear, I reflected, that we would soon need another junior assistant. And I wouldn’t be sorry. I decided I didn’t really like Betsy much. Maybe it was because she wasn’t very bright. She was certainly streets behind Luca, and perhaps he could see it too.
“How about Larry?” I said. “Is he here this evening?”
“He should be,” said Luca.
“Really?” I said. Why, I wondered, did Luca know that Larry should be here?
He looked at me sideways. “Yeah, well,” he said, “I just know.” I looked at him in mock surprise. “He told me last night. At Leicester, all right?” Luca was visibly flustered, and that was a rarity.
“Do you have his phone number?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said.
“Then call him,” I said. “Warn him to watch his back. And his stomach.”
Luca pulled his mobile from his pocket and pushed the buttons.
“Larry,” he said. “It’s Luca.”
He listened for a moment.
“So where are you now?” he said.
He listened again for a moment.
“Right,” he said. “I’ll call you later.” He hung up and looked at me. “Too late. He’s in Ascot Hospital having X-rays for suspected broken ribs.”
“So who were they?” I said.
“Who?” he asked.
“Who do you think?” I said. “Mike Tyson and his chum?”
“How the hell would I know?” he said. “I didn’t see them.”
“Who did we upset so much?”
“All of them,” he said. “The talk was of nothing else last night at Leicester. Some of the other bookies were openly delighted, and one or two even congratulated us.” He was smiling.
What bloody fools, I thought. And it was me that gets the “message,” not Luca, because it’s my name on the board.
“I told you not to mess with the big outfits,” I said. “At least, you shouldn’t mess with them so openly and obviously. We need to be more subtle. And far more devious.” I smiled back at him.
He was confused. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But if you think I am going to let them get away with beating me up in racetrack parking lots, you can have another think coming.”
Luca smiled broadly. “Right,” he said. “Great.”
“But first we need to know which of the big outfits resorts to use of the heavy mob.”
The rest of the evening was quiet in comparison, with not a single bullyboy to be seen. Business was brisk, with the largely young crowd eager to be tempted into the evils of gambling.
Many of them were actually there for the pop concert that was taking place in front of the grandstand after racing rather than for any particular love of the sport. But that didn’t deter them from having a bet on the horses, a flutter on the gee-gees, first.
The evening was conducted in huge good humor, helped by a continuous flow of alcoholic beverages and a string of tight finishes. I was almost able to ignore the dull ache in my guts that refused to go away completely, in spite of me swallowing a couple of painkillers.
A young woman stood in front of me, wearing tight blue jeans and a skimpy top that displayed a pleasing amount of sun-bronzed midriff.
“Remember me?” she said.
I looked up from her midriff to her face “At Ascot last week,” I said. “Black-and-white hat. I didn’t recognize you without your finery on.”
She laughed, and I laughed back. Then she blushed. I remembered that too.
“Come on, Anna,” said a young man who was pulling at her arm. The damn boyfriend, I assumed.
He pulled her away with him, and I watched them go. Fleetingly, she turned once and waved at me before disappearing into the throng. At least someone thought of her bookie as a human being.
“I don’t think Betsy will be coming back,” said Luca over my shoulder. Perhaps he had also watched the young woman being pulled away by her boyfriend, and it had reminded him of his own perilous romantic position.
“Do you want to go and find her?” I asked him. “I’ll manage on my own for a while.”
“In your dreams,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder.
That was a good sign, I thought.
“Do you want to go anyway?” I said.
“Nah,” he said. “She’ll come back if she wants to. I’m not going to go running after her. To tell you the truth, I don’t really care if she comes back or not.”
I cared. Luca was much more fun without her.
“Are you staying on after?” he said.
“If you mean am I waiting to listen to the concert, then, no, I’m not.”
“Are you going straight home?” he asked.
“Why?” I had intended going to see Sophie if it wasn’t too late.
“I was hoping for a lift. We came in Betsy’s car, and she’s probably gone home now without me. We were going to stay for the concert, but I don’t want to anymore.” He paused. “At least I’ve missed the little horrors at the electronics club.”
Was it really only a week since I had given the microcoder to Luca to take to the club? It seemed like a month.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll give you a lift, but you might need to get the train the last bit. I was hoping to go and see Sophie if we’re not too late.”
“Ned, it’s fine,” he said. “I’ll get the train home from here. It’s no problem.”
I tried to think of the stations on the line to High Wycombe.
“I could drop you at Beaconsfield,” I said. “That’s on my way.”
“No, it’s not,” he said. “And it would take you ages to get to the station. I’ll go on the train from here. Honestly, it’s no problem.”
“OK,” I said, somewhat relieved. I would be pushed to get to the hospital for the end of the news anyway.
The last race of the evening was a five-furlong sprint for two-year-old maidens.“Maiden” didn’t imply the sex of the animal, there were male maidens too. A maiden was a horse that had yet to win a race. Many of these maidens had never even been on a racetrack before, let alone won a race on one. Only one horse in the field had good previous form, finishing second twice, on one occasion just a neck behind the blossoming two-year-old star of the year. Naturally, the horse, East Imperial, was a short-priced favorite when the betting opened.