‘Billy,’ I nodded.
‘After I came out I asked them if they were O.K. and said we’d be landing in half an hour. The young one said “thanks Dad” as if he was bored to death, and I had to step over his legs again to get past. I can’t say I took to him enormously.’
‘You surprise me,’ I said sardonically. ‘Did Simon say anything?’
He hesitated. ‘It’s three weeks ago. I honestly can’t remember, but I don’t think so. Nothing special, anyway.’
I turned to the engineer. ‘How about you?’
He chewed, shook his head, swallowed, and took a sip of beer.
‘D... d... don’t think I’m much better. I w... w... was talking to him q... q... quite a lot at the beginning. In the g... g... galley. He said he’d come at the l... l... last minute instead of you. He t... t... talked about you quite a lot.’
The engineer took a mouthful of salad and stuttered through it without embarrassment. A direct man, secure in himself. ‘He s... said you were ice on a v... volcano. I said th... th... that didn’t make sense, and he said it w... was the only w... way to describe you.’
Without looking up from his plate Patrick murmured, ‘In a nutshell.’
‘That’s no help at all,’ I said, disregarding him. ‘Didn’t he say anything about where he was going, or what he might do, when you got to Milan?’
The engineer shook his head. ‘He m... m... meant to come straight back with us, in the afternoon, I’m sure of th... th... that.’
‘We didn’t come straight back, of course,’ said Kyle matter-of-factly.
‘You didn’t?’ I was surprised. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘We were supposed to. They got the return load of horses loaded up and then discovered there were no papers for one of the two they’d put in first. They had to get the whole lot out again, and they weren’t very quick because there were only two of them, and by that time I said it was pointless loading again, as it would be too late to start, I’d be out of hours.’
‘They should have checked they had all the papers before they loaded,’ I said.
‘Well, they didn’t.’
‘Only two of them,’ I said, frowning.
‘That’s right. The young one — Billy, did you say? — and one other. Not your friend Simon. A deaf old fellow.’
‘Alf,’ I said. ‘That’s Alf. What about the two others who went over? They were two specials going with horses from the studs they worked in.’
‘From what I could make out from the old man, those two were going on with their horses right to their destination, somewhere further south.’
I thought it over. Simon obviously hadn’t intended to come back at all, and it hadn’t been the unexpected overnight stop which had given him the idea.
‘You didn’t see where Simon was headed, I suppose, when you got to Milan?’ I spoke without much hope, and they both shook their heads.
‘We got off the plane before him,’ Kyle said.
I nodded. The crew didn’t have customs and unloading to see to.
‘Well... that’s that. Thank you for coming today, anyway. And thank you,’ I said directly to the engineer, ‘for delivering that bottle of pills to the girl in the souvenir shop.’
‘P... pills? Oh yes, I remember.’ He was surprised. ‘How on earth d... d... did you know about that?’
‘She told me a tall crew member brought them over for her.’
‘If... f... found them on the plane, standing on the w... w... washbasin in the k... k... karzy. I th... th... thought I might as well give them to her, as I was g... going across anyway. I did... didn’t see how they got there, b... b... but they had her name on them.’
‘Simon was taking them to her from me,’ I explained.
‘Oh, Is... see.’
Patrick said, grinning, ‘Were they...?’
‘Yes, they were.’
‘He didn’t go over to the airport building at all, then,’ said Patrick flatly. ‘He left the pills on board, hoping they would get to Gabriella somehow, and scooted from there.’
‘It looks like it,’ I agreed gloomily.
‘You can get off that end of the airfield quite easily, of course. It’s only that scrubland and bushes, and if you walk down that road leading away from the unloading area, the one the horseboxes often use, you’re off the place in no time. I should think that explains pretty well why no one saw him.’
‘Yes,’ I sighed, ‘that’s what he must have done.’
‘But it doesn’t explain why he went,’ said Patrick gently.
There was a pause.
‘He had... troubles,’ I said at last.
‘In trouble?’ said Kyle.
‘Looming. It might be because of something I discovered, that he went. I wanted to find him, and tell him it was... safe... to come back.’
‘On your conscience,’ said Patrick.
‘You might say so.’
They all nodded, acknowledging their final understanding of my concern for a lost colleague. The waiter brought their cheese and asked whether they would like coffee. I stood up.
‘I’ll see you again,’ I said. ‘How about after the fifth, outside the weighing room? After I’ve changed.’
‘Sure thing,’ said Patrick.
I ambled off to the weighing room and later got dressed in Mr Thackery’s red and blue colours. I’d never ridden in the Gold Cup before, and although I privately agreed with the engineer’s assessment of the situation, there was still something remarkably stirring in going out in the best class race of the season. My human opponents were all handpicked professionals and all Clobber’s bunch looked to have the beating of him, but nevertheless my mouth grew dry and my heart thumped.
I suspected Mr Thackery had entered Clobber more for the prestige of having a Gold Cup runner than from any thought that he would win, and his manner in the parade ring confirmed it. He was enjoying himself enormously, untouched by the sort of anxious excitement characteristic of the hopeful.
‘Julian’s regards,’ he said, beaming and shaking hands vigorously. ‘He’ll be watching on T.V.’
T.V. There was always the fair chance that one of the people I knew at Fenland might be watching television, though none that I’d heard of was interested in racing. I turned my back on the cameras, as usual.
‘Just don’t disgrace me,’ said Mr Thackery happily. ‘Don’t disgrace me, that’s all I ask.’
‘You could have got a professional,’ I pointed out.
‘Oh, eh, I could. But frankly, it hasn’t done me any harm, here and there, for folks to know you’re riding my horses.’
‘A mutually satisfactory arrangement, then,’ I said dryly.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Thackery contentedly. ‘That’s about it.’
I swung up on his horse, walked out in the parade, and cantered down to the start. Clobber, an eight year old thoroughbred chestnut hunter, had only once won (thanks to being low in the handicap) in the company he was taking on now at level weights, but he shone with condition and his step was bursting with good feeling. Like so many horses, he responded well to spring air and sun on his back and my own spirits lifted with his. It was not, after all, going to be a fiasco.
We lined up and the tapes went up, and Clobber set off to the first fence pulling like a train. As he hadn’t a snowball’s hope in hell of winning, I thought Mr Thackery might as well enjoy a few moments in the limelight, and I let Clobber surge his way to the front. Once he got there he settled down and stopped trying to run away with me and we stayed there, surprisingly leading the distinguished field for over two and a half of the three and a quarter miles.
Clobber had never been run in front before, according to the form book, but from his willingness it was evidently to his liking. Holding him up against his inclination, I thought, probably accounted for his inconsistency: he must have lost interest on many occasions when thwarted, and simply packed up trying.