‘Found a horse, have you, sir?’ said a cheerful sergeant’s voice robustly. ‘And you’re not the only one, I’ll tell you that. There’s horses all over the village, here. Some fool opened all the boxes at Jim Turner’s place and let them all out. It might be a tramp. Turner says he chased one out of his yard earlier. We’re looking for that one as lived on your land. But it’s dark and it’s snowing and I’m short of men, of course, as today’s Christmas Eve.’
Christmas Eve.
The landowner felt first a burst of irritation with the tramp, and then, like a stab, understood that he wouldn’t have set loose the horses if he hadn’t been turned out of his own home at Christmas. He decided not to tell the sergeant that he’d seen the tramp with the horse now in his own stable, nor which way the tramp had gone.
‘I’ll tell Jim Turner to come and fetch that horse, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘He’ll be glad to have it back. In a proper tizzy, he is.’
‘Er...’ said the landowner, slowly, not wanting to be thought a fool, ‘I don’t know if you’ve read the papers about that stolen horse, sergeant, but I think instead of returning this one to Jim Turner immediately, we might try that “phone at any time” number for reaching the Director of the Racecourse Security Service.’ He paused. ‘I don’t suppose that the Director believes in Christmas miracles, but the horse I have here in my stable is a young bay colt with a bright white star on his forehead... and whorls in all the right places...’
Collision Course
No murder here. No blood.
PREJUDICE, sure, and PRIDE, OK, but this isn’t Austen Bonnet and Bennet land; this is today’s out-of-work newspaper editor versus a brash operator putting his foot in it.
With a mug of strong black coffee at his elbow the editor of the Cotswold Voice sat at his desk in his shirt sleeves and read the splashy column that would lead the newspaper’s racing pages the next day, unless he vetoed it. The words were a blur. His mind spun from being sacked.
Twice a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays, from uninspiring factory-type premises on an industrial park west of Oxford, the Cotswold Voice fed a stream of lively newsprint into the towns and villages along the Cotswold hills.
On Tuesdays the slant was towards news, comment and interpretation and on Saturday to sport, fashion and general knowledge competitions. Something for everyone, the paper announced. Something for mums, dads, kids and aunties. Births, deaths and ‘wanted’ ads. Lots of verve. Horoscopes, scandal... All a succulent worm for a hawk.
The present editor of the Cotswold Voice, twenty-nine years old when he’d been surprisingly appointed, had in four short years doubled the paper’s circulation while himself being reasonably mistaken for the office gofer.
Short and thin, he had exceptionally sharp eyesight, acute hearing and a sense of smell that could distinguish oil on the north wind and sheep on the west. His accent was a mixture of Berkshire, Wiltshire and the University of Cambridge. He could read at light-speed, his brain a sponge. He’d been christened Absalom Elvis da Vinci Williams, and he could lose his cool like a bolt of lightning. His staff, who recognised power when they felt it, walked round him warily, and at his bidding called him Bill.
The editor — Absalom Elvis et cetera Williams — scanned the racing pages’ leader over again. Concentrate, he told himself. Don’t leave with a whimper.
He read:
‘Coronary cases, don’t read on. Others, give your valves aerobic work-outs while couch-potatoing it Saturdays p.m. Snap a can. Feet up? Down to the start, and they’re off!’
The work was technically perfect; neat typing, double spacing, an impeccable paper print-out of a computer disc. This racing correspondent never scattered his pages with messy amendments.
A wade through another couple of florid paragraphs encouraging heart-thumping indolence finally revealed the core of the guff to be advice on buying shares in syndicated racehorses.
Bill Williams frowned. Syndicated racehorses were hardly hot news. What made this spiel different was that the meat of it explained that the syndicated horses, when acquired, would not be sent to an established trainer, but would form the nucleus of a new stable with a new trainer, one Dennis Kinser.
The Voice assured its readers the scheme was an exciting financial prospect. Buy, buy, and — er — buy.
The editor picked up the pulse-stirring article and walked unhurriedly down the lengthy editorial floor to where his chief racing writer awaited a verdict. The whole busy room was noticeably quiet owing to the editor, during his first weeks in office, having had the last of the crash-tinkle tap-tap typewriters pensioned off and the squeaky functional vinyl flooring covered in dark blue sound-absorbing carpet tiles. The frenetic hyper-activity common to newspapers had died with the clatter, but productivity had nevertheless soared. The older hands yearned for a return to noise.
The editor sat on a rolling stool drawn up beside the racing writer’s desk and, floating the typed pages in front of him, asked without belligerence, ‘What’s all this really about?’
‘Well... syndicates.’ The racing writer, lazy, middle-aged, heavily moustached, showed more energy on the page than off it.
‘This Dennis Kinser,’ the editor asked, ‘have you yourself met him?’
‘Well... no.’
‘Where did you get the story?’
‘From the agent who’s putting the syndicates together.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘No. He phoned.’
The editor drew a blue-pencil line through the multiple advice to buy and buy, and initialled the rest of the column for publication. There was little of more pressing interest: it was August, the month of newspaper and racing doldrums.
‘Follow up the story,’ he said. ‘Do a personality piece on Dennis Kinser. Get a picture. If there are no bigger stories and no one scoops you, we’ll run it next Saturday.’
‘What if he’s a fraud?’
‘Frauds are news,’ the editor said. ‘Be sure of the facts.’
The racing writer winced, watching the editor walk away. Bone idle, the racing writer had once written a cuttingly satirical ‘eye-witness’ account of a much looked forward to parade of champions that had in fact been cancelled by heavy rain. The editor’s fury had frightened the racing writer into diarrhoea and the shakes. This time, he morosely supposed, he would actually have to get off his backside and track down the wannabe trainer. (The racing writer thought in journalese, much as he wrote.) The only bright area on his constricted horizon was that after next Saturday the editor would be out on holiday for a week. The racing writer could get away with much sloppier reporting, he cosily reflected, when the sharp little blue-pencil bastard wasn’t creeping around demanding actual physical work. The racing writer liked to gather his information via the telephone, sitting down. He picked up the receiver and talked to the syndicate-arranging agent.
Bill Williams went back to his desk and drank his left-over lukewarm coffee, his thoughts as stark and black as the liquid. The Voice had belonged to a dynasty whose kindly head had recently died. The descendants, wanting to divide the cash, had sold their biggest asset to a multi-faceted company as just one more local rag in their commercial chain. Individualism the new men did not want. Maximum profit, they did. As far as possible, their array of provincial papers would all speak economically as one. Consequently, they would appoint their own rubber-stamp editor for the Voice. It was fortunate that ex-editor Williams was due for a week off. He could clear his desk and not come back.